She believes in me
Dec. 18th, 2002 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynMassive spoilerin for Buffy 12/17, Bring on the Night, and some speculatin' too!
First things first (har har). How rare it is to see Buffy get her ass so significantly kicked. This is the first time in a long time, maybe even more than with Glory, where we get a sense that this is a little tiny woman, endowed with superior fighting skills and strength but not much more, up against forces that are far more powerful than she should be. She really has only one ally who can match her in terms of supernatural abilities to go up against Big Bads, and Willow can’t do it — at least not now. So the complacency we as an audience have generally relied on — oh, Buffy can do it with the help of her friends — we now know, because of her death, is false, and here we’re being reminded of it in an even more frightening way.
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how this year isn’t about relationships, and it’s not about Spike and Buffy and a romance. But I think in some ways, I’d beg to differ — this may not be about sex and passionate romantic love, but what’s happening beneath the larger story is a more classically romantic, more deeply felt, caring and affection than we’ve ever had before when the emphasis is on the ‘ship. Having it be the secondary story, having it come from work and effort and struggle and healing, is making the relationship far stronger and greater than it was in all the sex and outward passion of last season. The fact that Buffy’s belief in Spike is enough to get him through the torture and keep him going when he shouldn’t want to speaks, to my mind, volumes about the relationship, because it’s now on a different plane altogether — and I think they know that. It seemed as if Buffy, too, wanted to get Spike back not for the fight alone, but because she knows he is the one who will help them, that he is the person she needs at her side, that she cares for him and doesn’t want to see him suffer or used again by the FE. This is a different level of understanding and caring for Buffy, just as it is for Spike, and it made me so happy that even in a script by the dreaded Marti Noxon and Doug Petrie, this new relationship, forged out of friendship, is possibly what will get them both through it all. Spike is now a part of the “us” that Buffy talked about in her general-leading-the-troops speech, and I think that’s a more happy Spuffy place for me than anything sexual that happened in season six. Even if they don’t get together physically, much as I hope they do, this is far deeper and truer than that.
Into the speculation and the wonderings: (if speculation is spoilery to you, don’t read this!)
So, Giles never touched anything except to lean on things. He never took off his coat, or seemed to do anything other than stand and walk around. We never saw how he got out of the axe coming for his head. Does this mean he’s dead and being used by the FE? Or are we being fed red herrings? I don’t know. I actually found it disturbing that he was so distant — and the fact that he neither knocked on the door, nor when he and Buffy came into her house after their first encounter with the ubervamp, did he touch the door; in fact, he seemed to dodge its closing, made me really wonder. And I admit I don’t want him to be dead — as much as I usually am the big death fan, always preferring a death scene over any kind of ending, for some reason on Buffy, I’ve had enough death. And I fear that it could mean Spike next. I adore Giles, and I just don’t want him to be dead, so I’m putting my hands over my ears and going la la la.
However, I have problems with all of this, if it is true that he’s a manifestation of the FE: How could he have brought those three girls together and brought them to America if he was noncorporeal? Wouldn’t someone have noticed that he wasn’t carrying anything, touching anything, even so much as handling an airline ticket? Why go to the trouble of getting those slayers and bringing them there, when the harbingers could have killed them and be done with it? Wouldn’t Buffy and crew have noticed something odd, after all that time — that Giles, for instance, didn’t even touch Buffy or help pick her up when she was unconscious if that was the case? What, Xander and Willow were left to carry her, and Giles wouldn’t help? All that would seem terribly suspicious. Wouldn’t they notice that he hadn’t hugged them, when we’ve seen that his appearances always result in hugs now?
I think this has to be a red herring, because none of this makes sense to me. If the FE is in the house, why waste time torturing Spike? Why waste time when you could just kill the slayer and the others, be done with it? If you’re there, why pussyfoot around? I realize much of Buffy has been predicated on not making sense and MN is not the queen of following the show’s own canon, but still — this would be a great deal of effort for no reward. The FE as Giles wasn’t even sowing dissent — rather, that fell to Joyce’s appearances in Buffy’s mind/dreams (which nearly made me cry. I used to have dreams of my mother being alive, talking to me, knowing she was dead, but still being there and being my mom. I was really affected by this, in some ways more than Joyce’s actual death on the show). Getting rid of everyone quickly and then going to get Faith and finishing it off... that makes more sense. All this lead-up and bringing the slayers in training and the explaining... it just doesn’t work for me.
Part of the reason it doesn’t is that so much happened off camera. We see only certain elements of the action in this episode, we’re denied everything else, so that we can be freed from dramatic irony — that situation where we as the audience know things about the characters and the action that they don’t, so we are more informed than they are. Dramatic irony can be immensely frustrating for an audience at times, because you’re screaming at the TV “don’t you see, he’s the First Evil!” since you know what’s happened already. If they’re dropping clues that are false, though, we’re not looking at it through a veil of dramatic irony — we’re speculating, as people who know the show and pick up clues, on something we haven’t seen, so can’t know whether it’s true or not. This could potentially be brilliant — we don’t know, they don’t know, so who knows what could possibly happen. And I suppose that I want to believe this, too — I want to believe it’s a setup, that we’ve missed out on the hugs scene, the making up a bed to sleep on scene, the taking off the damn coat scene, the having tea scene, the airline ticket scene, the “how did Giles get away from the axe” scene, all of it, just so that we would speculate, so we would feel less than certain. Because otherwise I’ll get too depressed.
The other thing I’m unclear about and am still puzzling over is the whole torturing of Spike/ubervamp thing. If the plan is finally being kicked into full gear, isn’t this still an enormous waste of time? Yes, the vamp kicked Buffy’s ass and nearly killed her. But it bothers me that they’re forgetting something important — if it’s afraid of sunlight, well, then, bring some torches. Set it afire. Decapitate it if a stake won’t work. There are other methods — or like that one vamp that was after Faith, get a bigger stake. I hate it when characters forget important things that we know — there’s that dramatic irony at work for you! Get some freaking fire! And what’s with the torture and the drowning? Yes, wet Spike is a good thing, but still — it’s not serving any special purpose, so why? “Because I wish it” doesn’t cut it for me. If the FE is Giles, then... why bother with Nosferatu’s little brother? And why the kicking and the demeaning of Spike — what purpose does that serve? I mean, hell — why have your ubervamp kicking and tormenting him, and why spend your time manifested as Dru, saying degrading things? Spike can certainly stand up to it, it’s not accomplishing anything anymore, and you don’t need him on your side. Hell, my family could do a better job of torment and degradation — I’ll just loan the FE my sister. (And I can’t even begin to think where the idea of dunking him under water came from, when he doesn’t breathe, supposedly. Arg.)
As much as we’re supposed to fear all this, it still seems built on a flimsy foundation of people not figuring things out, talking killerness, and a history that’s shaky at best. It doesn’t help that in Amends, Buffy sneered at the FE, and it ran away. So I think they’re trying too hard in certain directions to convince us, but the fact that the Scoobs are talking and sharing, that they’re believing in each other, that Spike now has enough reserves to fight back... all of this makes it a little hard to swallow the piddly things being thrown at them. I am hopeful it will be more significant, and the holes will be filled in.
I liked this ep, don’t get me wrong. The past couple months have just been kicking my ass up and down the street, they’re so good. I’m just confused about directions and reasons, and setup, possibly because I spend waaayyy too much time pondering things and their significance. Although all my pondering doesn’t help me figure out what’s going on with the Principal. I’m totally stumped by that one, no theories at all. Maybe he’s going to be some kind of key to fighting it...?
And it’s all worth it to have Spike saying “get bent” to Dru/FE, and “she believes in me.” That’s the best Christmas present I could have.
First things first (har har). How rare it is to see Buffy get her ass so significantly kicked. This is the first time in a long time, maybe even more than with Glory, where we get a sense that this is a little tiny woman, endowed with superior fighting skills and strength but not much more, up against forces that are far more powerful than she should be. She really has only one ally who can match her in terms of supernatural abilities to go up against Big Bads, and Willow can’t do it — at least not now. So the complacency we as an audience have generally relied on — oh, Buffy can do it with the help of her friends — we now know, because of her death, is false, and here we’re being reminded of it in an even more frightening way.
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about how this year isn’t about relationships, and it’s not about Spike and Buffy and a romance. But I think in some ways, I’d beg to differ — this may not be about sex and passionate romantic love, but what’s happening beneath the larger story is a more classically romantic, more deeply felt, caring and affection than we’ve ever had before when the emphasis is on the ‘ship. Having it be the secondary story, having it come from work and effort and struggle and healing, is making the relationship far stronger and greater than it was in all the sex and outward passion of last season. The fact that Buffy’s belief in Spike is enough to get him through the torture and keep him going when he shouldn’t want to speaks, to my mind, volumes about the relationship, because it’s now on a different plane altogether — and I think they know that. It seemed as if Buffy, too, wanted to get Spike back not for the fight alone, but because she knows he is the one who will help them, that he is the person she needs at her side, that she cares for him and doesn’t want to see him suffer or used again by the FE. This is a different level of understanding and caring for Buffy, just as it is for Spike, and it made me so happy that even in a script by the dreaded Marti Noxon and Doug Petrie, this new relationship, forged out of friendship, is possibly what will get them both through it all. Spike is now a part of the “us” that Buffy talked about in her general-leading-the-troops speech, and I think that’s a more happy Spuffy place for me than anything sexual that happened in season six. Even if they don’t get together physically, much as I hope they do, this is far deeper and truer than that.
Into the speculation and the wonderings: (if speculation is spoilery to you, don’t read this!)
So, Giles never touched anything except to lean on things. He never took off his coat, or seemed to do anything other than stand and walk around. We never saw how he got out of the axe coming for his head. Does this mean he’s dead and being used by the FE? Or are we being fed red herrings? I don’t know. I actually found it disturbing that he was so distant — and the fact that he neither knocked on the door, nor when he and Buffy came into her house after their first encounter with the ubervamp, did he touch the door; in fact, he seemed to dodge its closing, made me really wonder. And I admit I don’t want him to be dead — as much as I usually am the big death fan, always preferring a death scene over any kind of ending, for some reason on Buffy, I’ve had enough death. And I fear that it could mean Spike next. I adore Giles, and I just don’t want him to be dead, so I’m putting my hands over my ears and going la la la.
However, I have problems with all of this, if it is true that he’s a manifestation of the FE: How could he have brought those three girls together and brought them to America if he was noncorporeal? Wouldn’t someone have noticed that he wasn’t carrying anything, touching anything, even so much as handling an airline ticket? Why go to the trouble of getting those slayers and bringing them there, when the harbingers could have killed them and be done with it? Wouldn’t Buffy and crew have noticed something odd, after all that time — that Giles, for instance, didn’t even touch Buffy or help pick her up when she was unconscious if that was the case? What, Xander and Willow were left to carry her, and Giles wouldn’t help? All that would seem terribly suspicious. Wouldn’t they notice that he hadn’t hugged them, when we’ve seen that his appearances always result in hugs now?
I think this has to be a red herring, because none of this makes sense to me. If the FE is in the house, why waste time torturing Spike? Why waste time when you could just kill the slayer and the others, be done with it? If you’re there, why pussyfoot around? I realize much of Buffy has been predicated on not making sense and MN is not the queen of following the show’s own canon, but still — this would be a great deal of effort for no reward. The FE as Giles wasn’t even sowing dissent — rather, that fell to Joyce’s appearances in Buffy’s mind/dreams (which nearly made me cry. I used to have dreams of my mother being alive, talking to me, knowing she was dead, but still being there and being my mom. I was really affected by this, in some ways more than Joyce’s actual death on the show). Getting rid of everyone quickly and then going to get Faith and finishing it off... that makes more sense. All this lead-up and bringing the slayers in training and the explaining... it just doesn’t work for me.
Part of the reason it doesn’t is that so much happened off camera. We see only certain elements of the action in this episode, we’re denied everything else, so that we can be freed from dramatic irony — that situation where we as the audience know things about the characters and the action that they don’t, so we are more informed than they are. Dramatic irony can be immensely frustrating for an audience at times, because you’re screaming at the TV “don’t you see, he’s the First Evil!” since you know what’s happened already. If they’re dropping clues that are false, though, we’re not looking at it through a veil of dramatic irony — we’re speculating, as people who know the show and pick up clues, on something we haven’t seen, so can’t know whether it’s true or not. This could potentially be brilliant — we don’t know, they don’t know, so who knows what could possibly happen. And I suppose that I want to believe this, too — I want to believe it’s a setup, that we’ve missed out on the hugs scene, the making up a bed to sleep on scene, the taking off the damn coat scene, the having tea scene, the airline ticket scene, the “how did Giles get away from the axe” scene, all of it, just so that we would speculate, so we would feel less than certain. Because otherwise I’ll get too depressed.
The other thing I’m unclear about and am still puzzling over is the whole torturing of Spike/ubervamp thing. If the plan is finally being kicked into full gear, isn’t this still an enormous waste of time? Yes, the vamp kicked Buffy’s ass and nearly killed her. But it bothers me that they’re forgetting something important — if it’s afraid of sunlight, well, then, bring some torches. Set it afire. Decapitate it if a stake won’t work. There are other methods — or like that one vamp that was after Faith, get a bigger stake. I hate it when characters forget important things that we know — there’s that dramatic irony at work for you! Get some freaking fire! And what’s with the torture and the drowning? Yes, wet Spike is a good thing, but still — it’s not serving any special purpose, so why? “Because I wish it” doesn’t cut it for me. If the FE is Giles, then... why bother with Nosferatu’s little brother? And why the kicking and the demeaning of Spike — what purpose does that serve? I mean, hell — why have your ubervamp kicking and tormenting him, and why spend your time manifested as Dru, saying degrading things? Spike can certainly stand up to it, it’s not accomplishing anything anymore, and you don’t need him on your side. Hell, my family could do a better job of torment and degradation — I’ll just loan the FE my sister. (And I can’t even begin to think where the idea of dunking him under water came from, when he doesn’t breathe, supposedly. Arg.)
As much as we’re supposed to fear all this, it still seems built on a flimsy foundation of people not figuring things out, talking killerness, and a history that’s shaky at best. It doesn’t help that in Amends, Buffy sneered at the FE, and it ran away. So I think they’re trying too hard in certain directions to convince us, but the fact that the Scoobs are talking and sharing, that they’re believing in each other, that Spike now has enough reserves to fight back... all of this makes it a little hard to swallow the piddly things being thrown at them. I am hopeful it will be more significant, and the holes will be filled in.
I liked this ep, don’t get me wrong. The past couple months have just been kicking my ass up and down the street, they’re so good. I’m just confused about directions and reasons, and setup, possibly because I spend waaayyy too much time pondering things and their significance. Although all my pondering doesn’t help me figure out what’s going on with the Principal. I’m totally stumped by that one, no theories at all. Maybe he’s going to be some kind of key to fighting it...?
And it’s all worth it to have Spike saying “get bent” to Dru/FE, and “she believes in me.” That’s the best Christmas present I could have.
