Buffy Review (with spoilers)
Nov. 27th, 2002 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernist"Never Leave Me"
The last Buffy of the sweeps ended with a bang, not with a whimper. As in, the CoW headquarters getting blown up. (Permit me a small tangent: doesn’t the concept “axis of evil” strike you as something that would make more sense on BtVS? Like, it would be a real axis in the space-time continuum, revealed by some talisman or spell or something, and it would be like a portal that channelled evil. The whole beauty of Buffy is that it takes real-life things and presents them as hyperbolized metaphors, making those metaphors literal on the level of the plot (e.g. the original premise of the show being “high school is hell”--voila--you get Sunnydale High School sitting literally atop of the hellmouth). Hence the real, possibly corporeal axis. The appreciation of this beauty is contingent on a constant self-awareness of being engaged in reading the text. Even the text knows it’s the text. President Bush engaged in the opposite process: he took something that would only function as a Buffy-type metaphor, and deployed it into real-world discourse, constructing it on that literal level of metaphor-to-actual the way that BtVS does, but without any self-awareness.) So anyway, no whimper. Although it would have been completely understandable if Spike had been whimpering after being carved into a bloody mess and suspended over a pentagram in the high school basement, while some sort of ur-vampire got raised.
Where are the characters at the end of the first part of the most fast-paced season...well, ever? Usually we don’t even get the real Big Bad until the second half of the season, and not without misdirection (Spike and Dru seemed to be the Big Bads of season 2, whereas in reality Angel/Angelus played that part; The Trio seemed to be heading that way last year, especially after Warren killed Katrina in “Dead Things” but the real Big Bad was Willow). Here, however, the Scoobs are dealing with The First, some sort of prime evil (possibly a counterpart to the First Slayer?) that really has it in for vampires with souls (tormenting Angel in “Amends” and making him all broody (well, more so than usual) and suicidal, and now going after Spike), possibly taking it as a personal affront, since apparently it’s materialized as a vampire (with some creepy eyeless minions).
Spike, with his new superego, I mean soul, is all about repenting and angsting, except when he is being programmed, Manchurian Candidate-style to do various wetworks for The First. I think that it’s intereststing that he has killed more people this season, while in possession of the soul, than in the last three seasons combined. True, something was controlling him, but the important thing is that now he feels accountable. He takes responsibility even where Buffy won’t place it on him, fully understanding how he is a menace to society, begging her, then trying to provoke her into killing him : “Do you know what I’ve done to girls Dawn’s age?”
Obviously, Buffy does not kills him, and instead another mini-psychology session commences. Spike lacks the Psych 101 tools that charming vamp from Dartmouth Holden had brought to the table in “Conversations with Dead People,” but Spike knows Buffy inside and out; he does not need her to talk about why she slept with him, or why she engaged in certain kinds of sex with him; he was there to feel her embody her emotions, her self-loathing, her dark id, so he knows. Unfortunately, in a kind of post-soul-acquisition solipsistic stupor, he equates Buffy’s self-hatred of season 6 with his own at the moment, which is not a valid analogy. I have long postulated that Buffy’s emotional season 5/season 6 arc was a metaphor for depression/ suicide attempt/ hospotalization/ recovery. Spike is almost akin to somebody who found religion, not in the brainwashing sense, but in the sense of becoming aware of a system of morality for the first time in his life (or maybe I am just thinking of that because of the cross imagery in “Beneath You,”) or like a recovering addict who is slowly realizing how many people he hurt and fucked up. Still, the two seem to have a better understanding of each other, or at least themselves, than when they were fucking.
There is a lot more to say about the episode. It flashes glimpses that are left unexplained for now. For example, what’s up with the principle? Is he good or evil? Or murky, like CoW? More importantly, will he follow in the footsteps of principal Flootie and principal Snyder and be eaten? Why is homoerotic Andrew, sporting a Spike-esque duster, the last surviving member of the trio? Was that a real flash of the Dark Willow when she intimidates Andrew in the alley behind the butcher’s shop: “I am Willow...I am death” or was that just a calculated scare tactic, since Andrew is well aware of her flaying abilities. Most importantly, where is Giles? And is head still attached to his body?
The last Buffy of the sweeps ended with a bang, not with a whimper. As in, the CoW headquarters getting blown up. (Permit me a small tangent: doesn’t the concept “axis of evil” strike you as something that would make more sense on BtVS? Like, it would be a real axis in the space-time continuum, revealed by some talisman or spell or something, and it would be like a portal that channelled evil. The whole beauty of Buffy is that it takes real-life things and presents them as hyperbolized metaphors, making those metaphors literal on the level of the plot (e.g. the original premise of the show being “high school is hell”--voila--you get Sunnydale High School sitting literally atop of the hellmouth). Hence the real, possibly corporeal axis. The appreciation of this beauty is contingent on a constant self-awareness of being engaged in reading the text. Even the text knows it’s the text. President Bush engaged in the opposite process: he took something that would only function as a Buffy-type metaphor, and deployed it into real-world discourse, constructing it on that literal level of metaphor-to-actual the way that BtVS does, but without any self-awareness.) So anyway, no whimper. Although it would have been completely understandable if Spike had been whimpering after being carved into a bloody mess and suspended over a pentagram in the high school basement, while some sort of ur-vampire got raised.
Where are the characters at the end of the first part of the most fast-paced season...well, ever? Usually we don’t even get the real Big Bad until the second half of the season, and not without misdirection (Spike and Dru seemed to be the Big Bads of season 2, whereas in reality Angel/Angelus played that part; The Trio seemed to be heading that way last year, especially after Warren killed Katrina in “Dead Things” but the real Big Bad was Willow). Here, however, the Scoobs are dealing with The First, some sort of prime evil (possibly a counterpart to the First Slayer?) that really has it in for vampires with souls (tormenting Angel in “Amends” and making him all broody (well, more so than usual) and suicidal, and now going after Spike), possibly taking it as a personal affront, since apparently it’s materialized as a vampire (with some creepy eyeless minions).
Spike, with his new superego, I mean soul, is all about repenting and angsting, except when he is being programmed, Manchurian Candidate-style to do various wetworks for The First. I think that it’s intereststing that he has killed more people this season, while in possession of the soul, than in the last three seasons combined. True, something was controlling him, but the important thing is that now he feels accountable. He takes responsibility even where Buffy won’t place it on him, fully understanding how he is a menace to society, begging her, then trying to provoke her into killing him : “Do you know what I’ve done to girls Dawn’s age?”
Obviously, Buffy does not kills him, and instead another mini-psychology session commences. Spike lacks the Psych 101 tools that charming vamp from Dartmouth Holden had brought to the table in “Conversations with Dead People,” but Spike knows Buffy inside and out; he does not need her to talk about why she slept with him, or why she engaged in certain kinds of sex with him; he was there to feel her embody her emotions, her self-loathing, her dark id, so he knows. Unfortunately, in a kind of post-soul-acquisition solipsistic stupor, he equates Buffy’s self-hatred of season 6 with his own at the moment, which is not a valid analogy. I have long postulated that Buffy’s emotional season 5/season 6 arc was a metaphor for depression/ suicide attempt/ hospotalization/ recovery. Spike is almost akin to somebody who found religion, not in the brainwashing sense, but in the sense of becoming aware of a system of morality for the first time in his life (or maybe I am just thinking of that because of the cross imagery in “Beneath You,”) or like a recovering addict who is slowly realizing how many people he hurt and fucked up. Still, the two seem to have a better understanding of each other, or at least themselves, than when they were fucking.
There is a lot more to say about the episode. It flashes glimpses that are left unexplained for now. For example, what’s up with the principle? Is he good or evil? Or murky, like CoW? More importantly, will he follow in the footsteps of principal Flootie and principal Snyder and be eaten? Why is homoerotic Andrew, sporting a Spike-esque duster, the last surviving member of the trio? Was that a real flash of the Dark Willow when she intimidates Andrew in the alley behind the butcher’s shop: “I am Willow...I am death” or was that just a calculated scare tactic, since Andrew is well aware of her flaying abilities. Most importantly, where is Giles? And is head still attached to his body?
