I still think we're being punished
May. 14th, 2003 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI had a bad night last night, my general insomnia worse than usual, plus being sick and a bunch of other problems, lumped on top of my Buffy anxiety. And I feel all mixed up, hot and cold about End of Days, and really not sure what I think of this, the penultimate episode of probably my favorite show ever. So I figured the only way to deal with this is to take it in character chunks.
I guess I should start with Giles, since so much of my misery has been invested in him lately. I felt like for the first time we were getting a glimpse of old Giles again, though what was interesting was that it had to be with Willow, rather than Buffy. As if there’s a gulf there so wide the writers, even one as generous as Jane Espenson, can’t get across it, and it’s easier to bring the Giles we love back with Willow. They’ve always had a strong connection, whether it was with him as an advisor, or as an adult figure trying to keep her from getting in over her head, so it’s not an unlikely way to return the real Giles to us. I liked the scene with Willow, Buffy and Giles together, especially the size joke, and the way Buffy got her dig in about communication issues with him, but it seemed strange that they didn’t capitalize on it later. Trimming a few scenes with the First, or other related but less consequential stuff, might have given us a few minutes to start Giles and Buffy on the road to reconciliation that I am assuming (possibly stupidly, but my great curse in life is that I’m a hopeful cynic) they will bring about in the finale. At least the issue is on the table, and possibly now Giles and Buffy can bring it out in the open, the way she forced the issue with Spike. I’d love a comparable emotion-laden scene between the two of them. I got the distinct impression that Giles is ready, that he realizes he’s made a few terrible mistakes at this point (did anyone else feel confused about the “her” in the early scene when the Scoobs came back from looking for Buffy — did they mean Faith or Buffy they had to go to? It was strangely hard to tell for me, especially based on Giles’s reaction, which seemed full of trepidation and concern), but as a typically English male he needs something to spur him towards rapprochement. (I might write later about how I see Helpless as possibly the defining episode of the series in some ways, along with Becoming, because I think Helpless relates very much to these recent eps, but I have to gather thoughts about that. It sounded brilliant in my swirly head at about 3 a.m. last night.)
Willow: I’m so glad that she’s still so afraid of her own powers. And that, at the same time, she’s comfortable now with what she has, enough to joke about it and to step back from it. I feel like we missed a scene of reconciliation with Buffy — after all, Will is her best friend, period. And they seemed quickly comfortable with each other, but maybe that’s natural, I don’t know. I have friends who I don’t see for months or years, and we can pick up a conversation as if we were in the middle of it just a moment ago. Perhaps that’s what they were saying here. But it’s clear that Will has some connecting to do to magic, and they’re setting us up for the finale and the vital role she’ll have to play as the most powerful weapon (“there are other weapons” — yeehah!). And that scene from the teaser — whoa doggies, does she look cool.
Anya and Andrew: The one thing I noticed about this episode is that everyone had a good scene. Every one of the core characters, and Andrew, got a good scene (although I would so have been happier if Kennedy had been killed in the beginning, but at least she was mostly out of the way after that) with meat and emotion in it, and it was nice to have something like that for Anya, especially after the annoying shrew behavior of the past few months. It’s still hard for me not to carry a grudge against her for what she said to Buffy, but her dialog with Andrew, the humor of it and the way they related (especially “you’re the perfect woman” “I’ve often thought so”), and the adorable wheelchair fight, were spot on. One of the things BtVS often lost sight of in recent months was the human interaction and tension relief that is inherent in wartime. I was reading a book recently about the Christmas truce in WWI that sprang up spontaneously the first year, and could nearly have ended the war if not for the politicians, and these scenes with the two of them, particularly taking time for the wheelchair fight, reminded me of that book. People do, in times of great stress, retreat into trying to lighten their world, and this was a lovely picture of that from two characters who can, too often, be highly negative. And I do almost kind of want Andrew to die, like he said — he seems to think that he might be able to atone that way, I got the impression, and I think it would make him happy if he could do something to protect others, something that would ennoble his life in a way he’d never imagined. I found that terribly poignant.
Xander, and Dawn: I’m not sure I could be as forgiving as Buffy was to everyone around her, but I liked that her first scenes where you got a sense of this forgiveness came with Xander. That was somehow terribly right. Of all the people who didn’t back her up and rejected her, he was the one with the most to lose and gain, and this brought them back where they needed to be — Buffy was showing him that she trusts and forgives him, he was showing her trust and forgiveness in return, and still willing to lay his life on the line for her and her fight... this is the Xander I love. And I admit that I was totally taken aback when he knocked Dawn out, and then taken aback again when she hit him with the taser gun. Usually I feel like I can see everything about ten steps ahead, it’s all telegraphed, but they did an excellent job of not telegraphing those actions, and I loved that they felt a little scary and at the same time almost funny. (And I’m not sure if Dawn meant she killed Miss Kitty Fantastico or just something horrible happened, but I was glad at least for the gratuitous MKF reference.) I’m glad that Dawn hasn’t completely lost her senses after her ungrateful bitch attack of Empty Places, and that despite what her “mother” told her, she is choosing to go back with Buffy.
Caleb: So at least now we’ve seen where and how he gets his strength, but I’d still love to know why. I enjoyed his “Darn” tremendously (that flash of Mal Reynolds), and Angel taunting him with “You’re so gonna lose,” but he’s still a bit of a cipher to me regarding his motivations. Unless all he wants is to be a god. Did anyone else think of Firefly’s Out of Gas episode when he hit the floor face first, and the camera came close-up on his face like that? I wondered if it was a deliberate nod or not; I certainly took it that way.
Buffy and Faith: This was such a long time coming. I wasn’t on the bandwagon last week with the whole Faith is doing a good job as a leader thing, mostly because I didn’t think she was doing anything different than what Buffy was doing except to be less tactically sound and dissing Buffy while being her. It really bothered me seeing her get props just for being not-Buffy, yet doing the same “follow the leader” crap. The thing is, I don’t feel leading is her strength. Faith is the id side of Buffy’s superego and ego, and she has little control of her own ego (the Freudian kind, not the arrogance kind), and no contact whatsoever with her superego. And that’s what makes her great. She’s not a leader, she’s action girl, and she should have taken the time to consider what Buffy knew before they kicked her out so as not to lead them into a trap, despite Buffy’s protestations that anyone could have done that. Buffy is simply the better strategist, the better tactician, because of her tendency to be closed and guarded and consider everything carefully, maybe too carefully, before she acts. That’s what makes them a super team (besides being hot chicks!). In Bad Girls, the two of them together were dynamite at first, and we saw that in early eps when Faith and Buffy were getting to know each other. Faith was teaching Buffy to let go, and Buffy was slowly teaching her to think prior to acting, before everything went pear-shaped. So having Faith finally acknowledge her own strengths and weaknesses while recognizing Buffy’s was so long overdue, and such a lovely scene between two young and talented actresses. They hit just the right amount of humor and regret, and hope for second chances, that they should, and it left us with a killer scene that sets up a really cool super slayer team, with a fully balanced id, ego, and superego between the two of them.
Spike and Buffy: Well, hey, here it is. The source of my misery and my joy. I honestly don’t know how to articulate my feelings about this, and it’s impossible for me to step back and be the least bit objective about it. Because I wanted more, so much more, and I also got something I’ve waited desperately for, and still it’s not enough, and it left me with so much sniffly happiness and extreme pain that I can’t really decide how I feel. I wanted more acknowledgement from Buffy, I wanted at least some kind of physical contact — a typical Spike touching Buffy’s face move, or a tender kiss, or Buffy touching him tentatively. I wanted something clearer and stronger. And yet I got this incredible scene where not only did Spike look more gorgeous than he has the whole season (wow, did the lighting guy finally get it right), we got a head tilt and a beautiful admission of something so deep down inside of him it felt like he was ripping it from his soul. And we got Buffy on the verge of tears, and telling him that he means something to her. But if anything could have convinced me further that they will not have the big love I want for him, and that his life is so forfeit for hers, for theirs, well, it was the kitchen scene. I loved their casual humor at the beginning of that scene, his jokes about the holy hand grenade, and his instinct to deny to her that the night before was significant for him. It’s perfectly in keeping with Buffy’s nature to yell at him in order to admit her feelings. But everything I want for him rests on Buffy, and it’s clear to me that he’s not going to have the one thing he wants most. (No, I’m most definitely not one of those people who thinks he deserves someone else better than her, or just someone else entirely — to me, she is what he wants most, he is what she needs but doesn’t know it, and I wanted nothing more for him than to have, just for a little while, this thing he’s done so much to earn and achieve.)
And the kiss with Angel... I started out BtVS fan life as a huge B/A shipper. Once I got into the show, I loved his character and how they related, and their story touched me a lot. I was never tempted to write fic for them, though, just to vid mostly, because the show did such a good job of torturing us and keeping us on tenterhooks over it. It was the so wrong it’s right-ness of Spuffy that finally got me into writing in this fandom. And I had moved on from B/A as the show had over the years, by the time Spike realized he loved Buffy. I feel like this is not just punishing us for liking Spike, which, goddammit, ME did to us, so why they feel this constant need to remind us we shouldn’t love Spike so much is beyond me. It seems like a way to go back to something that people feel more fondly about in a nostalgic, never finished way. The fact that for the past four years, long after Angel was gone, the merchandisers at Fox and ME have constantly fed us B/A over and over, and only recently seemed to understand Spike’s popularity, and the fact that ME has consistently tried to throw cold water on the huge Spike fandom, just makes me feel weirdly resentful of something I used to adore. The kiss felt strange and forced, designed just to make Spike feel jealous and hurt, which of course only convinces me further of his impending unsatisfied and lonely doom. Don’t get me wrong — I still love Angel (although there was that dark time on his series with the baby talk when I didn’t much like the character at all), but it still somehow felt like it was designed to remind us (oh-so-carefully, deliberately manufactured) that Angel is Buffy’s One True Love and screw Spike, who never felt anything but twisted obsession (I swear if I see that phrase one more time in a magazine article I will have to kill someone). I notice they carefully avoided many shots of Angel’s role in the teaser for next week, and focused a lot on Spike, but... that only makes me feel worse, not better. I ache for Spike, for trying so hard both with his free will and now with the soul, and getting this engineered reunion as his reward — and as an audience member, I kind of feel just like him. It will be interesting to see next week how they would resolve such a thing.
I’m not sure I could ever be satisfied, not at this stage. So my whining should come with a huge grain of rock salt. That scenes like the kitchen scene could exist between Buffy and Spike makes me want so much from this relationship that I can never now have, and it’s a little hard to let go. Spike broke my heart last night. He opened himself so completely to someone who can’t really ever do the same, it’s not in her nature (which is okay, I still love her), and then he tossed his pain off with a “let’s go be heroes” casualness that reduces me to pudding. I also noticed that the music they used in the background was a variation on some of their standard background music, and wondered if that was their lone attempt at having a Spike & Buffy theme, so late in the game. It was pretty, but I wonder if they consider the relationship important enough to have given them a theme. There is so much power there in scenes with those two, they still have so much chemistry it hurts, that my little Spuffy heart just aches for the possibilities I’ll never get to see. I’m both happy and sad about this all, and I’m not sure I’m going to get over it for a long time.
I guess I should start with Giles, since so much of my misery has been invested in him lately. I felt like for the first time we were getting a glimpse of old Giles again, though what was interesting was that it had to be with Willow, rather than Buffy. As if there’s a gulf there so wide the writers, even one as generous as Jane Espenson, can’t get across it, and it’s easier to bring the Giles we love back with Willow. They’ve always had a strong connection, whether it was with him as an advisor, or as an adult figure trying to keep her from getting in over her head, so it’s not an unlikely way to return the real Giles to us. I liked the scene with Willow, Buffy and Giles together, especially the size joke, and the way Buffy got her dig in about communication issues with him, but it seemed strange that they didn’t capitalize on it later. Trimming a few scenes with the First, or other related but less consequential stuff, might have given us a few minutes to start Giles and Buffy on the road to reconciliation that I am assuming (possibly stupidly, but my great curse in life is that I’m a hopeful cynic) they will bring about in the finale. At least the issue is on the table, and possibly now Giles and Buffy can bring it out in the open, the way she forced the issue with Spike. I’d love a comparable emotion-laden scene between the two of them. I got the distinct impression that Giles is ready, that he realizes he’s made a few terrible mistakes at this point (did anyone else feel confused about the “her” in the early scene when the Scoobs came back from looking for Buffy — did they mean Faith or Buffy they had to go to? It was strangely hard to tell for me, especially based on Giles’s reaction, which seemed full of trepidation and concern), but as a typically English male he needs something to spur him towards rapprochement. (I might write later about how I see Helpless as possibly the defining episode of the series in some ways, along with Becoming, because I think Helpless relates very much to these recent eps, but I have to gather thoughts about that. It sounded brilliant in my swirly head at about 3 a.m. last night.)
Willow: I’m so glad that she’s still so afraid of her own powers. And that, at the same time, she’s comfortable now with what she has, enough to joke about it and to step back from it. I feel like we missed a scene of reconciliation with Buffy — after all, Will is her best friend, period. And they seemed quickly comfortable with each other, but maybe that’s natural, I don’t know. I have friends who I don’t see for months or years, and we can pick up a conversation as if we were in the middle of it just a moment ago. Perhaps that’s what they were saying here. But it’s clear that Will has some connecting to do to magic, and they’re setting us up for the finale and the vital role she’ll have to play as the most powerful weapon (“there are other weapons” — yeehah!). And that scene from the teaser — whoa doggies, does she look cool.
Anya and Andrew: The one thing I noticed about this episode is that everyone had a good scene. Every one of the core characters, and Andrew, got a good scene (although I would so have been happier if Kennedy had been killed in the beginning, but at least she was mostly out of the way after that) with meat and emotion in it, and it was nice to have something like that for Anya, especially after the annoying shrew behavior of the past few months. It’s still hard for me not to carry a grudge against her for what she said to Buffy, but her dialog with Andrew, the humor of it and the way they related (especially “you’re the perfect woman” “I’ve often thought so”), and the adorable wheelchair fight, were spot on. One of the things BtVS often lost sight of in recent months was the human interaction and tension relief that is inherent in wartime. I was reading a book recently about the Christmas truce in WWI that sprang up spontaneously the first year, and could nearly have ended the war if not for the politicians, and these scenes with the two of them, particularly taking time for the wheelchair fight, reminded me of that book. People do, in times of great stress, retreat into trying to lighten their world, and this was a lovely picture of that from two characters who can, too often, be highly negative. And I do almost kind of want Andrew to die, like he said — he seems to think that he might be able to atone that way, I got the impression, and I think it would make him happy if he could do something to protect others, something that would ennoble his life in a way he’d never imagined. I found that terribly poignant.
Xander, and Dawn: I’m not sure I could be as forgiving as Buffy was to everyone around her, but I liked that her first scenes where you got a sense of this forgiveness came with Xander. That was somehow terribly right. Of all the people who didn’t back her up and rejected her, he was the one with the most to lose and gain, and this brought them back where they needed to be — Buffy was showing him that she trusts and forgives him, he was showing her trust and forgiveness in return, and still willing to lay his life on the line for her and her fight... this is the Xander I love. And I admit that I was totally taken aback when he knocked Dawn out, and then taken aback again when she hit him with the taser gun. Usually I feel like I can see everything about ten steps ahead, it’s all telegraphed, but they did an excellent job of not telegraphing those actions, and I loved that they felt a little scary and at the same time almost funny. (And I’m not sure if Dawn meant she killed Miss Kitty Fantastico or just something horrible happened, but I was glad at least for the gratuitous MKF reference.) I’m glad that Dawn hasn’t completely lost her senses after her ungrateful bitch attack of Empty Places, and that despite what her “mother” told her, she is choosing to go back with Buffy.
Caleb: So at least now we’ve seen where and how he gets his strength, but I’d still love to know why. I enjoyed his “Darn” tremendously (that flash of Mal Reynolds), and Angel taunting him with “You’re so gonna lose,” but he’s still a bit of a cipher to me regarding his motivations. Unless all he wants is to be a god. Did anyone else think of Firefly’s Out of Gas episode when he hit the floor face first, and the camera came close-up on his face like that? I wondered if it was a deliberate nod or not; I certainly took it that way.
Buffy and Faith: This was such a long time coming. I wasn’t on the bandwagon last week with the whole Faith is doing a good job as a leader thing, mostly because I didn’t think she was doing anything different than what Buffy was doing except to be less tactically sound and dissing Buffy while being her. It really bothered me seeing her get props just for being not-Buffy, yet doing the same “follow the leader” crap. The thing is, I don’t feel leading is her strength. Faith is the id side of Buffy’s superego and ego, and she has little control of her own ego (the Freudian kind, not the arrogance kind), and no contact whatsoever with her superego. And that’s what makes her great. She’s not a leader, she’s action girl, and she should have taken the time to consider what Buffy knew before they kicked her out so as not to lead them into a trap, despite Buffy’s protestations that anyone could have done that. Buffy is simply the better strategist, the better tactician, because of her tendency to be closed and guarded and consider everything carefully, maybe too carefully, before she acts. That’s what makes them a super team (besides being hot chicks!). In Bad Girls, the two of them together were dynamite at first, and we saw that in early eps when Faith and Buffy were getting to know each other. Faith was teaching Buffy to let go, and Buffy was slowly teaching her to think prior to acting, before everything went pear-shaped. So having Faith finally acknowledge her own strengths and weaknesses while recognizing Buffy’s was so long overdue, and such a lovely scene between two young and talented actresses. They hit just the right amount of humor and regret, and hope for second chances, that they should, and it left us with a killer scene that sets up a really cool super slayer team, with a fully balanced id, ego, and superego between the two of them.
Spike and Buffy: Well, hey, here it is. The source of my misery and my joy. I honestly don’t know how to articulate my feelings about this, and it’s impossible for me to step back and be the least bit objective about it. Because I wanted more, so much more, and I also got something I’ve waited desperately for, and still it’s not enough, and it left me with so much sniffly happiness and extreme pain that I can’t really decide how I feel. I wanted more acknowledgement from Buffy, I wanted at least some kind of physical contact — a typical Spike touching Buffy’s face move, or a tender kiss, or Buffy touching him tentatively. I wanted something clearer and stronger. And yet I got this incredible scene where not only did Spike look more gorgeous than he has the whole season (wow, did the lighting guy finally get it right), we got a head tilt and a beautiful admission of something so deep down inside of him it felt like he was ripping it from his soul. And we got Buffy on the verge of tears, and telling him that he means something to her. But if anything could have convinced me further that they will not have the big love I want for him, and that his life is so forfeit for hers, for theirs, well, it was the kitchen scene. I loved their casual humor at the beginning of that scene, his jokes about the holy hand grenade, and his instinct to deny to her that the night before was significant for him. It’s perfectly in keeping with Buffy’s nature to yell at him in order to admit her feelings. But everything I want for him rests on Buffy, and it’s clear to me that he’s not going to have the one thing he wants most. (No, I’m most definitely not one of those people who thinks he deserves someone else better than her, or just someone else entirely — to me, she is what he wants most, he is what she needs but doesn’t know it, and I wanted nothing more for him than to have, just for a little while, this thing he’s done so much to earn and achieve.)
And the kiss with Angel... I started out BtVS fan life as a huge B/A shipper. Once I got into the show, I loved his character and how they related, and their story touched me a lot. I was never tempted to write fic for them, though, just to vid mostly, because the show did such a good job of torturing us and keeping us on tenterhooks over it. It was the so wrong it’s right-ness of Spuffy that finally got me into writing in this fandom. And I had moved on from B/A as the show had over the years, by the time Spike realized he loved Buffy. I feel like this is not just punishing us for liking Spike, which, goddammit, ME did to us, so why they feel this constant need to remind us we shouldn’t love Spike so much is beyond me. It seems like a way to go back to something that people feel more fondly about in a nostalgic, never finished way. The fact that for the past four years, long after Angel was gone, the merchandisers at Fox and ME have constantly fed us B/A over and over, and only recently seemed to understand Spike’s popularity, and the fact that ME has consistently tried to throw cold water on the huge Spike fandom, just makes me feel weirdly resentful of something I used to adore. The kiss felt strange and forced, designed just to make Spike feel jealous and hurt, which of course only convinces me further of his impending unsatisfied and lonely doom. Don’t get me wrong — I still love Angel (although there was that dark time on his series with the baby talk when I didn’t much like the character at all), but it still somehow felt like it was designed to remind us (oh-so-carefully, deliberately manufactured) that Angel is Buffy’s One True Love and screw Spike, who never felt anything but twisted obsession (I swear if I see that phrase one more time in a magazine article I will have to kill someone). I notice they carefully avoided many shots of Angel’s role in the teaser for next week, and focused a lot on Spike, but... that only makes me feel worse, not better. I ache for Spike, for trying so hard both with his free will and now with the soul, and getting this engineered reunion as his reward — and as an audience member, I kind of feel just like him. It will be interesting to see next week how they would resolve such a thing.
I’m not sure I could ever be satisfied, not at this stage. So my whining should come with a huge grain of rock salt. That scenes like the kitchen scene could exist between Buffy and Spike makes me want so much from this relationship that I can never now have, and it’s a little hard to let go. Spike broke my heart last night. He opened himself so completely to someone who can’t really ever do the same, it’s not in her nature (which is okay, I still love her), and then he tossed his pain off with a “let’s go be heroes” casualness that reduces me to pudding. I also noticed that the music they used in the background was a variation on some of their standard background music, and wondered if that was their lone attempt at having a Spike & Buffy theme, so late in the game. It was pretty, but I wonder if they consider the relationship important enough to have given them a theme. There is so much power there in scenes with those two, they still have so much chemistry it hurts, that my little Spuffy heart just aches for the possibilities I’ll never get to see. I’m both happy and sad about this all, and I’m not sure I’m going to get over it for a long time.
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Date: 2003-05-14 11:19 am (UTC)Oh, I'll be a hopeful cynic right along with you, especially when it comes to this. I agree with you that Giles seems ready, and Buffy does as well. As much as I was grateful to see the return of a Giles I recognized, I wanted more between them than a subtle smile after a communication dig. Their falling out was so dramatic and long in coming that it needs a more overt reconcilliation to feel... well, real.
I don't see how they can not put some sort of scene in before the end. It wouldn't make sense and would be such a loss, given the long history between the two. In many ways, I felt like they were giving some of the characters their last big hurrah in this episode- the kitchen scene with Xander, Anya and Andrew had their hospital bonding moment, Faith had her long-needed conversation with Buffy (though I'm sure there is more to come when she faces the S'siT).
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Date: 2003-05-14 11:54 am (UTC)All's i can say now.
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Date: 2003-05-14 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-14 01:22 pm (UTC)But yeah... it's weird. I'm so terribly grateful to ME and Joss for giving me this show. And these characters. But I do keep feeling as if I'm being punished for liking Spike even though they wanted us to -- and that it's marginalized in favor of this long-over B/A thing that I used to love so much. It's a strange mixed message they send. I adore Joss and his creations, but perfect, he is not. I think they mis-timed the Angel thing, and so it felt forced and awkward. But that's just one humble viewer's opinion, alas.
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Date: 2003-05-14 02:22 pm (UTC)There have been so many weird mixed signals coming from people at ME regarding Spike, B/A, etc. that I really have no idea *what* I'm supposed to think these days. And I like to know what the writers want me to think, because I always want to be as open to the story they're trying to tell as I am to the story I want to see. It can definitely be frustrating.
I'd love to hear some honest opinions out of Joss after the finale.
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Date: 2003-05-14 12:57 pm (UTC)Damn it, girl, you're killing me! Do you know how hard it is to answer reception phones with this lump in my throat?
*whimpers*
It doesn't help that, just as I was finishing reading this, "Rest In Peace" from OMWF came on my Media Player. *waaaaaaaaah*
I got the feeling from The Kitchen Scene that we were supposed to see this is all they could ever be, the best Buffy and Spike could hope for. He's helped her immeasurably, and she's made a new man out of him, but they will never be able to get past their respective damage to meet in the middle.
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Date: 2003-05-14 12:59 pm (UTC)Back in the pillow fort!
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Date: 2003-05-14 04:21 pm (UTC)Your reactions always make me feel good. So. Thanks.
Also for expressing what's on my mind when I don't have the patience or talent to.