The Buffyverse Character Countdown (#16)

#16.

Hero: Daniel "Oz" Osbourne (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 2-4)

Call me a member of Team Tara… though not for the same reasons as most.

On the Buffyverse character sheet, very few characters even come close to Oz when it comes to an evaluation of overall goodness. In terms of the heroic virtue criterion I established at the beginning of this list, Oz maxes out the scale. Throughout Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s second and third seasons, Oz is almost inhumanly perfect. His relationship with Willow is absurdly healthy, featuring some of the very best instances of communication in any relationship ever shown on television. Oz is also keenly aware of his personal weaknesses and keeps them in check, unlike most every other hero in the series, all of whom succumb to their flaws due to willful ignorance of them. He’s almost so perfect as to become uninteresting. Oz’s only noticeable flaw – a flaw which appears exclusively in his final episode – is a misplaced sense that he knows his own limitations better than others and can thus determine his own path without the advice of those closest to him. This, of course, leads to “Wild at Heart,” the rare emotionally charged Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode of which I’m not a fan and a watershed moment in both Willow’s character arc and the show’s overriding philosophy. He’s undoubtedly a wonderful character, but his initial perfection being ruptured by a startling act of selfishness really does knock him back.

Oz is the bass player for the delightfully named high school alt-rock band, Dingoes Ate My Baby. He’s also one of the two resident geniuses of Sunnydale High, the other being Willow. That said, the two express innately different intellects: while Willow’s studious nature is the product of hard work, dedication, and stick-to-it-iveness, Oz’s derives from his innate approach to problem solving, emotional self-awareness, and a contemplative streak. Both outclass nearly every other student at Sunnydale High, yet it's their emotional reticence that eventually draws them to one another. They start dating in the middle of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s second season (though only after a great deal of foreshadowing). It is at this point that Oz and Willow’s relationship becomes a remarkable contrast to that of Buffy and Angel, a couple whose relationship is based around emotional obsession and possessiveness. At every point, Oz takes the relationship slowly in order to truly know and appreciate Willow: her identity as a human being takes precedence over his attraction to her and feelings for her. It’s the kind of selfless love only expressed by the adults in the series… and yet it takes place during the high school seasons. It’s a remarkable turn.

Yet, despite Oz’s remarkable emotional intelligence, he is also one of the show’s most important metaphors for sexual monstrosity. Oz is a werewolf, a monster most commonly used in the series to represent the unrestrained id. In most of his episodes, Oz must do what he can to restrain this monster when it emerges – initially on his own but eventually seeking the help of the Scoobies. It’s clear that Oz’s nigh perfect approach to relationships is the result of his having to temper his more animalistic urges. That said, the wolf does bring about what I consider to be the most problematic portion of Oz’s character. No one can deny that his few unethical actions in the series are the product of his werewolf form, yet that form is often treated as entirely separate from Oz himself. It’s only during the episodes “Wild at Heart” and “New Moon Rising” that he does anything that even approaches wrongdoing, yet, in those cases, he loses control of his entire body and has the wolf perform the incorrect actions. It never really feels like it’s a human being making the mistakes. Seeing him as a flawed character with room to grow and problems to resolve is thus somewhat more difficult. When one factors in the fact that the werewolf side of Oz is a particularly drawn-out metaphor, he’s definitely a hard character to sell.

Fortunately, Oz makes up for his problematic character elements for being such a joyful presence throughout the rest of the series. Aside from Xander, Oz is the single wittiest character of the high school seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; combine his clever dialogue with Seth Green’s excellent delivery, and one’s got a character who can effortlessly exude charm and intellect. His relationship with Willow is wholly adorable; Oz notices Willow’s strengths near instantaneously, and he always has just the right words to restore her faith or make her smile. Even when their relationship comes to a screeching halt in “Lovers’ Walk,” he finds the perfect way to both keep his distance and eventually reconcile with her. He’s such a reliable source for the audience’s smile that it’s honestly hard to watch his last few episodes in Buffy without getting somewhat frustrated.

The episode, “Wild at Heart,” is by no means one of my least favorite in the Buffyverse, but it does suffer from much of the rot that occurs in Season Four. Over the course of the episode, Oz’s werewolf side suffers from an insatiable desire for another werewolf named Veruca, with the human side of Oz being quite attracted to Veruca as well. Despite his best efforts, Oz can’t control his werewolf side, and he ends up sleeping with a lupine Veruca on a couple occasions. Granted, during the second sexual excursion, he ends up locking Veruca in a cage with him in order to prevent her from going on a feeding frenzy, but it’s still a massive betrayal of Willow’s trust. Unfortunately for the episode, the relationship between Veruca and Oz is utterly bizarre; the chemistry is horribly lopsided, with Seth Green’s performance being quite strong and Paige Moss’s being… underwhelming to say the least. Additionally, it’s truly shocking to see Oz, normally such a controlled and focused character, completely give way to his wolfish instincts. The episode leaves us in an uncomfortable place of playing the blame game: is Oz really cheating on Willow, or is the wolf doing things on his own? Oz’s choice to leave Willow at the end of the episode is heartbreaking, no doubt, but the path used to get to the point feels awkward and somewhat poorly developed.

It’s thanks to episodes like “Wild at Heart” that Oz ultimately pales in comparison to Tara as Willow’s best love interest in the series. The other major strikes against Oz’s character are his concluding few episodes in Season Four, in which he attacks Tara in wolf form after getting jealous, only to become captured and treated as a MacGuffin motivating Buffy’s turn against the Initiative. He’s by no means a bad hero – heck, one could make the case for him above some of the heroes ranked higher on this list – but I do think he’s the only character in the main cast (excepting Connor, of course) who suffers from outright poor writing decisions yet never quite comes back from them. Nearly everyone else in the Buffyverse recovers from his or her weakest hour, but Oz is a casualty of his writers’ decisions. It’s a shame: he’s a character who goes from too perfect to far too imperfect to truly land with the same weight as the very best heroes in the series.

Villain: Harmony Kendall (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 4-5, Angel Season 5)

I honestly questioned whether I should include comic relief villains onto the villains’ list, just as I did with Clem on the heroes’ list. I honestly needed Clem to fill in a spot – given the smaller number of heroic figures as opposed to villainous figures in both shows – but I didn’t need to give a spot to comic relief villains, most of whom barely register as threats in the Buffyverse. Two characters came to mind: Principal Snyder and Harmony. Both were, for a time, secondary antagonists during Buffy’s high school seasons, obstructing our heroes in minor, though by no means unimportant, ways. Moreover, of the two, Snyder was the more malicious and mean-spirited, as well as the more entertaining. Nonetheless, he ended up not making the list, as his actions rarely, if ever, caused outright harm to our heroes’ livelihood, and his character was ultimately far too shallow to warrant a spot. Harmony, by contrast, not only develops in her own right while playing an antagonistic role, but she also poses an actual threat to the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations on multiple occasions throughout the remainder of the story.

Throughout high school, Harmony is the undisputed second-most popular girl in the class, with only Cordelia standing atop the throne. More often than not, she serves as the main source of snark for the group, her only true talent being cruelty and insensitivity. Moreover, unlike Cordelia, who is genuinely cunning and smart, Harmony is a “dumb blonde” from top to bottom. While Cordelia is smart enough to get into Columbia and develop strategies for killing vampires and demons, Harmony is focused solely on boosting her own ego and ignoring pretty much everything else. It is thus not surprising at all that she is one of the Sunnydale high students who gets her blood sucked dry during the Mayor’s Ascension during “Graduation Day Pt. 2”; she’s honestly too incompetent to have saved herself.

Harmony comes back in a big way after her death, though. Having been sired, she soon forms a partnership – both villainous and sexual – with a recently returned Spike; the two are out to acquire power and control and, more importantly, kill Buffy. Unfortunately for Spike’s schemes, however, Harmony retains her human form’s pettiness, airheadedness, and ignorance. Moreover, she develops an even more acute sense of sexual and emotional dependency, requiring constant emotional validation from Spike in order to adequately function. Topping matters off, she’s absolutely hopeless at channeling her vampiric strength, such that even Xander can hold her off in a slapping contest. It’s little wonder that Spike – currently in one of his more Machiavellian villainous phases – treats her as if she were a dish rag. We have plenty of sympathy for the airheaded demon, even if she’s not fun in the same vein of the series’s main villains.

The most interesting element of Harmony’s character is her relative youth as compared to other vampires. Previous vampires who had been sired from from the Class of ’99 were killed off during the episodes in which they were introduced; we thus did not have a chance to see how being trapped in a high school body would affect their growth and personality. With Harmony, we see how her form and identity drastically limits her villainous potential. She is an ageless demon capable of living for thousands of years trapped with the mentality of a high schooler, and a moronic one at that. It’s thus not surprising that Harmony cannot rally those skills needed for her to become a truly threatening villain, as she’s constantly running up against her former self’s barriers. Her only weapon that’s in any way effective is her sexuality – essentially the only tool she is able to use to keep Spike and other actually competent villains close to her. The contrast between Harmony’s abilities and her aspirations is honestly quite compelling, especially as compared with other comic relief villains like Snyder or Sweet from “Once More, with Feeling.”

Yet Harmony’s arc doesn’t stop there. Once Spike begins to develop feelings for Buffy, Harmony… doesn’t take it well: she straight up forces Spike to leave her and indulge his fantasies elsewhere. She thereupon tries to develop a villainous identity of her own, even if she ends up screwing herself over time and time again. Eventually, Harmony finds her way to Los Angeles, where she nearly kills her former friend, Cordelia, and the rest of Angel Investigations after betraying them to a cabal of other vampires. She gets a shot at a villainous “redemption” of sorts in Angel’s fifth season, in which she becomes the secretary for Wolfram & Hart and plays the role of an enforcer, but even here, her selfish and villainous identity holds true. Even in the one episode dedicated to her character, she is interested in herself alone; while she now has the autonomy to be villainous on her own, she’s still only concerned with her own interests and carnal pleasure. In the series finale, “Not Fade Away,” she even betrays Angel Investigations’ schemes to Marcus Hamilton of the Circle of the Black Thorn. As humorously incompetent as she is, Harmony is a legitimate threat to others’ lives – a claim few other comic relief villains can rival.

Harmony’s ranking on this list is mid-tier largely because of two factors: her overall ineffectiveness and her willingness to serve as the flunky to bigger bads. She might have the evil of any of the series’s other vampires, but her childish nature and general incompetence nearly always leads to her defeat. Moreover, her sexual dependency nearly always leads to her serving as a henchman for a more sinister villain, be it Spike, the Circle of the Black Thorn, or even generic monsters-of-the-week. As such, she doesn’t quite earn a spot as high as the best Big Bads or even the most frightening recurring villains of the series. But, for what she is, Harmony is extremely memorable and fun. She just doesn’t do enough harm for me to rank her higher on the villainy scale.