who attempt to burn them at the stake. Joyce takes a leadership role, giving a speech to concerned parents about the unnatural evils in the town, citing the "slayers and witches" among other monsters. Her compulsion to become involved in Buffy's dark world, with its disastrous results, represents her feeling of helplessness in relation to Buffy's calling. She is unable to protect or comprehend what Buffy must endure—another expression of teenage-parent alienation. In the fourth season, as Buffy and Willow attend college, Joyce's role is scaled back considerably. Kristine Sutherland and her family moved to Italy to live, so she starred in only five episodes in the season, including the first one, "The Freshman," when Buffy comes home during her bewildering first week at college to discover that Joyce has filled her room with packing crates from the art gallery. This sign of her mother's life going on without her increases Buffy's disorientation and underscores Joyce's independent life. Consequent to her mother's distance, Buffy must begin to face some of her problems alone, the least of which is cooking Thanksgiving dinner for Giles and the Scooby Gang in "Pangs". Buffy encounters a female psychology professor at college who challenges and frustrates her, but also validates her intellect, something Buffy has not been well known for. Professor Maggie Walsh becomes, for the first part of the season, a substitute mother for Buffy. The last episode of the season,"Restless", explores the dreams of Willow, Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), Giles, and Buffy. Joyce appears as a seductress to Xander (in a red silk nightgown), and appears again in Buffy's dream as Buffy wanders the halls of college. Joyce is stuck inside a wall, saying that she is content making lemonade and learning to play mahjong. The enigmatic nature of "Restless" allows analysts to explain the depth of the characters and their relationships, as well as the foreshadowing of events to come in subsequent seasons. Joyce's confinement in a tight space in Buffy's dream indicates that Buffy considers her mother's life to be very limited. The hole in the wall through which Joyce and Buffy speak briefly shows only Joyce's head and shoulders, which, according to Nikki Stafford, is the prevailing image in the fifth-season episode "The Body", an episode which explores Joyce's death and its immediate aftermath. Season 5: Joyce's death As noted by author Roz Kaveney, Joyce becomes central to the fifth