Thoughts about grace and Buffy

Spoilers for Buffy eps 1-4 in Season 7 -- warning!

I’ve been rethinking how I felt about Help. I’ve read a lot of posts on lists and at the message board I hang out on, and am changing my opinion just a little bit about Buffy -- not a lot, just a little.

I still feel like the fact that the episode is called Help, and yet the one person who needs help most, Spike, can’t get even a tiny shred of it from Buffy, is disappointing. I also know that a lot of her reactions are being written by people without knowledge of the reshot ending of Beneath You, and that in the near future, we’ll likely see more kindness from her, especially in sweeps, as that newer version is taken into account.

But people have made good points — that she’s not unfeeling, she’s just overwhelmed by feelings, that she has to work her way around to caring because she’s still haunted by the AR, that she’s mostly focused on imminent danger, such as Cassie’s life, because of the nature of being the slayer, etc. And I’m warming to these ideas -- anything to help me get over feeling so disappointed.

But then my thoughts turned to the idea of grace. Of what I hope Help is trying to pave the way for -- that Spike will be graced by Buffy, by a higher being, by everyone. Grace has an entire column of definitions in the Webster’s Third really big-ass unabridged dictionary, but I mostly kept looking at the definitions of love and kindness granted from God (even though I’m an agnostic/atheistic type, I think the Buffy universe definitely has higher powers at work), and clemency and mercy granted from one person to another.

Spike is seeking grace in both aspects. And he’s tormented by thoughts that he doesn’t deserve it (which the big evil is making worse by convincing him further he doesn’t), and that Buffy shouldn’t give it to him because he’s a bad man. But I’m hoping right now that Help is indicating the direction they’re going -- that helping, giving grace to someone, is what Buffy’s about now.

Not to get all songficcy, but I keep thinking of the end of Becoming 2, when Buffy leaves town with Sarah McLachlan’s Full of Grace on the soundtrack. That’s always been one of my favorite songs, and a lot of it feels almost prescient to me right now. Buffy leaves because she’s filled with despair over what’s happened. She doesn’t believe she can be granted dispensation for what happened, because she can’t grant it to herself. She’s killed her lover, she’s sacrificed everything she was and is and loves in order to save the world. She’s given up love to save us all. And now she feels like she can’t find grace, or has to go away from the people she loves in order to have it granted to her. That she’s undeserving.

It’s not a strong parallel, but Spike also leaves after something devastating, and he knows he can’t receive mercy or clemency, forgiveness, unless he does something unbelievably drastic. He wants to do the right thing for love, he sacrifices himself for love. The lines from the song I keep coming back to are:

I know I could love you much better than this
It’s better this way

I think Buffy sees Spike now, in his condition, and thinks that being away from him is better for her and for him. I might not agree with this, but it could be what they’re working toward. And she possibly does know that she *could* love him much better, now, with his soul, once she’s able to forgive, to give him the grace he’s so desperately seeking. That will be the thing that helps him. That helps them both.

But it may also be that she can’t help him, she can’t find the grace in her, until she learns to help others. The students, Cassie, her friends — until she helps them, she may not know how to help Spike. The students especially have little knowledge of her, there’s no past as there is with Spike, so they’re safer, and easier. She can learn from helping them, maybe learn how to help Spike and grant him mercy. I want to believe this episode’s title can be prophetic and not simply a throw-away.

I’m pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
In all the darkness I feel like letting go

This was Buffy in season six every bit as much as it was Buffy after Becoming. The only person trying to pull her up from the undertow and keep her alive was Spike. Not even Giles was there for her the way she needed it. And now that she’s free of it, now that she really is in the clear, she has to learn how to stay there. By being the counselor, she may be able to not just keep herself afloat, but others too, and by learning how to do that, teach herself enough to help Spike. Whether ME can really do this, I don’t know, but I’m hoping that Help isn’t just a useless concept, that it really will be the foundation on which forgiveness and grace are built.

I believe Buffy does know she could love Spike better -- and I don’t necessarily mean romantically, but as a human being, as one who’s full of love and forgiveness. I believe she now knows he’s worthy of that, but she hasn’t got the maturity and ability yet to know how to be full of grace, as well. Perhaps it’s this job, perhaps seeing that she will “make a difference,” that will show her this part of herself, and it will help Spike. I want desperately for that to happen because it’s good not just for Spike, but for Buffy, who’s only been out of the undertow for a short time.

If all of the strength and all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
Full of grace

I’m hopeful that this is where Help is heading us, and it’s not just a throwaway episode. That the track Buffy is on is going to lift both herself and Spike (and by extension, Willow and the others) from this place of pain and misery they’ve been trapped in. I know it’s not a happy happy joy joy universe, and that’s okay. But if Spike can find grace from a higher being for his sacrifice and Buffy can give it to him, they’ll both heal and they can fight the evil better together, whole and healed. They’ll both be brought into the light. Forgiveness provides grace to them both — in The Merchant of Venice, Portia’s speech spells this out better than anything else: “The quality of mercy is not strained...it is twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes; ‘tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.”

I look back to Becoming, and I want that kind of storytelling here, I want that concept that being forgiving, and loving, and giving one’s self up to love and a higher calling and duty and honor, become these characters better than their fighting skills or their quick wits. If the theme of Help doesn’t lead into that, then it will have been a huge waste.

I think what Buffy will tell Spike is love -- the love that comes from forgiveness, that’s dispensed with grace. And once Spike finally does get that grace he seeks from her, they’ll both be brought into the light that love and forgiveness provide. They’ll both be blessed by her grace.