Month: March 2015

What does it mean to have your name in title of the show? Especially when your name is accompanied by a succinct job description: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Recent episodes have put this question into focus, with both Halloween and The Dark Age spending much of their runtimes with Buffy stripped of her rights and responsibilities as protagonist, and the first part of this story shining a light on the relationship between the Buffy part of the title and the Vampire Slayer part. Of all the possible directions to take in this second season, the show has turned its focus on its own premise (as represented by the title character), and started interrogating itself, forcing itself to justify and re-justify the storytelling choices involved in placing this particular teenage girl at the centre of a narrative world where both emotions and threats are real.

That’s not all that’s at work in the show right now. In this episode we properly meet Kendra the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s successor after her death (nearly) at the hands of the Master in Prophecy Girl. Kendra brings on-stage more of the wider supernatural world. We already knew about the Watchers and the lineage of Slayers – they’ve been part of the mythology from the very beginning – but we’ve never really seen them before, and it’s no coincidence that they materialise now just after Halloween and part one of this story revealed more of a monster society, while Lie To Me and The Dark Age allow glimpses of how humanity at large copes with the existence of magic and monsters. Again, this is the show interrogating itself, extrapolating from its own conceits not to build a coherent and believable world – it doesn’t much care about that – but to add weight to the core structure of Buffy and friends versus monsters.

And it’s no coincidence either that almost all the episodes I just mentioned are from the Halloween-onwards period. I said in that episode write-up that it was the beginning of a fantastic run of episodes, and it’s obvious that the show’s creative team are getting fuel from diving hard into the story they’ve created. They’re engaging with Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the zeal and care of fans who write fanfiction and create video mixes and write lengthy analysis on their blogs, and while their priorities are necessarily different to those fans, there is an obvious deep respect for their own creation that is often absent on such shows. (I hasten to add that this absence of respect in other shows is often due to the frenzied pace of creation and the contradictory pressures of studio higher-ups, not because the writers and producers themselves have contempt for what they are doing.) To me, this ascension of Buffy into excellence is intimately linked to its embrace of the fandom aesthetic.

Returning to the point – what does it mean for Buffy to be a protagonist? Buffy’s uneasy relationship with Kendra can easily be read as her reaction to the existential threat Kendra poses. How can she be the protagonist if her titular role is claimed by another?

The episode spends its time reassuring Buffy of her position. Kendra represents tradition, the accepted and expected way Vampire Slaying should be done, the very approach Buffy spent her first season rejecting. Indeed, her rejection of it was so successful – so moral, in fact – that Giles himself became her biggest champion, and her friend rather than her master. Simply explaining to Kendra about Angel and Buffy indicates the extent to which the show has the rejection of traditional expectations and restraints at its heart. Likewise Buffy’s and Kendra’s argument about emotions – assets or weaknesses? – which, in a narrative world where emotions are real, is
basically asking “are you a central character in this story?”

The implication is that Kendra is not just compromised and limited by her adherence to tradition, but that she is also unable to be a protagonist. She doesn’t have the freedom and initiative to assert herself over a narrative, and so she cannot be a good centre to a story world. (One might imagine that in the future Buffy might encounter the counter-example, a potential usurper who is unable to be a protagonist because she is too committed to freedom and initiative.)

This encounter with Kendra is, in a sense, the ultimate challenge for Buffy, rounding off the process of becoming a Slayer that began with her choice in Prophecy Girl. The demonstration is a charming decision to treat Angel as a damsel in distress – a male damsel is still vanishingly rare in popular culture, and Buffy relishes the chance to rescue him. Buffy emerges from this reinforced in her role, and in fact even more freed from limitation, as Kendra carries the baggage of tradition with her when she walks away.

Buffy is at the peak of her powers. She is confident and together. She defeats Spike, who has emerged as the most significant threat to her so far. At this point, it looks like she will move steadily forward to conquer every obstacle that might be set before her. It’s a high point.

But stories are like rollercoasters, and the high point always comes just before a fall.

Other notes:
* I recall at the time of this episode a lot of geeks proposed a female empowerment methodology: the Watcher’s Council should stop the heart of each new Slayer, then revive her. You get a new Slayer so you haven’t lost anything, and if they survive the heart-stop and stick around like Buffy did, you have a net gain! Sweet! You only have to murder a bunch of innocent teenagers to get there! (At the time this proposal struck me as ridiculous because it was so out of keeping with the storytelling approach in the show, but given what is later told about the Slayer lineage and its origins, I actually think it would be a chillingly plausible plotline for late-period Buffy.)
* Xander and Cordy makeouts. It’s played for comedy – overplayed, probably – but it’s nice to realise that they’ve had a romantic comedy playing out in the margins for the whole season. Contrast with Oz and Willow finally getting together, which is also hilarious but is played for beautiful, beautiful pathos. Oz is just so charming. SO charming. But he’s been set up for so long you know he’s totally genuine underneath the quippy stuff. And his animal crackers monologue is perfect. Apparently most of this dialogue was ad lib by the actors, and Seth Green has said the Monkey Pants line was taken from a dream Alyson Hannigan had.
* The other deadly assassin: a person with a gun. Guns are still pretty much the scariest thing in this world. Also, HOSTAGE JONATHAN!
* I haven’t talked about Spike-and-Dru here. The original plan, I believe, was that Spike was going to die here, but a cured Dru would rise up to become an even more bad-ass foe – the little bad/big bad pattern that this show will return to several times. The show knew Spike was special, though, and spared his life, leading to a very interesting dynamic in the back half of the season.
* Also, Kendra. First significant character of colour in the show – there’s a whole discussion to have about Buffy & race. But that’s for later.

In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

These words have been intoned near the beginning of nearly every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and if the show has any mission at all it is to prove them wrong. Yes, Buffy was chosen – but the more important choice was the one she made herself. And Buffy will not stand alone – her friends are with her, no matter the risks. And yes, she slays vampires and demons, but “the Slayer” label isn’t enough. There’s more to her than that. Right?

One of the principles of this show is a commitment to emotional realism, and this is applied to the nature of Buffy’s heroic identity. “Vampire Slayer” is an iconic role that exists in immediate tension with normal life. In a simpler show, that wouldn’t matter – Buffy wouldn’t need to worry about mundane concerns because her heroic identity would define her completely, the way Michael Knight never had to worry about the real-word costs of having his face shot off then assuming a new name and new identity fighting crime with a talking car as an agent of a mysterious agency with the initials FLAG. Here, though, Buffy is a teenage girl with ordinary emotional concerns, and integrating the business of being a chosen slayer of vampires with her desire to do fun stuff and fit in and have a boyfriend – that’s a challenge. How can you be a Slayer and still fit into the rest of the world?

It’s career day at Sunnydale High. Everyone is prompted to start thinking long-term about how they might enter the world beyond high school, and more simply, about what they want to be. Buffy doesn’t see the point in thinking about it, because as far as she can tell her future is fully booked up with vampire slaying. Giles encourages her to think about finding “gainful employment” but she is unconvinced. Hoping for a normal life seems futile. The comparison is gently made with her naive childhood ambitions to be a figure skater like Dorothy Hamill: “I wanted to *be* her. My parents were fighting all the time, and skating was an escape. I felt safe.”

This confession was made to Angel, in a scene that really gives us a sense of how they make sense as a couple – Buffy relaxes around him, and he becomes less impossibly uptight as well. This episode does a good job of showing their compatibility, with a nice scene later where Buffy reassures Angel that his vampiric look doesn’t upset her, because she still sees that it’s him within; and by rhyming Angel waiting in her bedroom with Buffy going to his apartment and falling asleep in his bed. For the first time the show takes the time to make sure they feel like two people in love.

It is Angel’s thoughtful care for Buffy that points the way out of her frustrating cycle of futility: he offers to take her skating. The scene at the rink is shot with a different emotional rhythm to the rest of the show. It’s a notable breakout from the house style by new director David Solomon. Buffy skates, and we (like Angel) watch, and it’s kind of lovely. This sequence comes directly out of actress Sarah Michelle Gellar’s own life – she was a competitive figure skater with a few placings under her belt. It’s a moment of simplicity, and an indication that the answer to Buffy’s dilemma is to embrace knowingly the idea of escape – she is stuck with her calling, but she can still create moments where she is allowed to be something else. This will be Buffy’s challenge – being able to find peace on her own terms, and enjoy it in the shadow of her responsibilities. (Of course, the show issues a pointed reminder of those when she is attacked at the rink. It’s a short, brutal fight scene, finishing with the skate blade gag you knew was coming.)

That’s a coping strategy, however. It’s important, and it does mark a lesson learned for Buffy, but it doesn’t banish the burden of being the Chosen One. The show has a plan here as well, revealed in the climax, which is a tremendous swerve: one of the mysterious figures stalking Buffy is revealed not to be an assassin after all, but instead claims to be the Slayer. Buffy is not alone after all.

It’s a fittingly momentous end to the first installment of a two-parter, the show’s first proper double. (Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest was conceived and aired as a single double-length episode.) The episode takes care to raise the stakes all over, with the new Slayer locking Angel up to face the rising sun, a strange assassin threatening Xander and Cordelia, and Giles and Willow discovering Spike’s ultimate goal in Sunnydale – the restoration of the clearly damaged Drusilla to full health. This is a proper event episode, and it shows that the Buffy team don’t need a season-ender to shake everything up – in fact they had barely settled into their new status quo. Once again, it’s clear that they have ambitions for this show. If this is the kind of upset we’re seeing in episode nine, then what might be coming down the pike in episode fourteen?

Other notes:
* Co-writer on this episode is Marti Noxon, whose importance to the show will rapidly grow in the seasons to come.
* We get some more neat scenes with Oz, but the show still isn’t ready to pay him off. He even gets his long-awaited meeting with Willow, but the scene cuts away before they even interact. Still, his selection as an exceptional student with the smarts to match Willow, combined with his sense of humour and rocker credentials, not to mention his good taste in being interested in her – all of this does an excellent job in putting him over. In fact, it finally gives me an idea why they’ve put so much effort into giving him point-of-view scenes even though he’s outside the Scooby Gang. Willow’s innocence and emotions make her the exposed nerve of the group, and the audience is highly protective of her – these scenes show us we can trust Oz not to hurt her.
* Speaking of which: “Scooby Gang” is used for the first time here. “Slayerettes” will turn up again I think, but “Scoobies” will soon catch on.
* Back in Halloween, the show started binding its monsters together. No longer just a series of isolated threats to normal life, the monsters now present an alternative society and culture. Spike’s move to call in the “big guns” is the most dramatic example of this so far, giving a sense of scale to this hidden world. Another, bigger, marker of this transition is the arrival of the demon bar, Willy’s Place. The main bad guys of season one and season two both had standing sets, but now the everyday sort of monsters do as well.

Chris Claremont took over the Marvel Comic The Uncanny X-Men for issue #94, cover date May 1975. Joss Whedon was about to turn eleven. And since the golden age of science fiction comics is twelve, he was perfectly placed to soak up Claremont’s heady mix of outsized action and soap operatics across the coming years. Claremont’s X-Men work is known for its strong female characters and closely-tracked emotions, and the influences on Whedon’s vision for Buffy the Vampire Slayer are obvious. Like other Marvel books, continuity was celebrated, with returning villains a particularly common occurrence. Plot threads would deliberately be left dangling, relationships between characters would constantly change under the influence of dramatic events, and shocking revelations would be made that change your understanding of a character. You were constantly reminded that the story you were reading was just a component in a larger narrative, one that a casual reader might not fully understand.

The first season of Buffy had the Claremontian strong female characters and sympathetic emotions, but it was also very episodic, with only occasional and superficial nods to continuity and development. From the start of season two a clear shift was evident as Whedon and his team started encouraging continuity and pushing characters into arcs of change. In this, the eighth episode of the second season, Buffy slips entirely out of the world of self-contained episodes and becomes the television equivalent of a Chris Claremont comic: full of action, full of emotions, and comprehensible only as part of a greater whole.

Sure, you could watch this episode as your first Buffy and you’d be fine. Scary stuff happens, there’s jokes, it’s an engaging way to spend your time. But you’d also spend the whole episode thinking “I’ve arrived in the middle of something”. This episode draws on multiple plot threads spun out over this season and the last: the flirtation between Giles and Jenny, the changing relationship between Giles and Buffy, the mystery of Giles’ past with Ethan Rayne, the uncertain position Angel holds with the rest of the group, to name the most prominent examples. As of now the show doesn’t just reward the committed, it aims directly at them and leaves casual viewers to fend for themselves. It’s a daring move. Buffy wasn’t the first show to bring in continuity-dense ongoing narrative to weekly drama/action TV, but this mode was still uncommon. The move was also very savvy indeed, because it turned out that the show’s audience was ready to commit, and commit hard.

A commitment to long-form structures allows (requires?) a heightened engagement with the show’s ensemble. This episode delivers something genuinely new: a Giles spotlight episode. Giles is an odd character, both inside the core group (because he knows the truth) and outside of it (because he’s an adult). When a show about being a teenager at high school suddenly turns its focus upon an adult… well, what does happen?

The precredits sequence has a man seeking Giles getting killed by a very creepy monster. His screams for help are drowned out by Buffy’s aerobics music, which is perhaps the cruelest gag in the series so far, but also puts us gently in the Giles frame of mind – he spends the sequence complaining about the noise. But this is just softening us up for what we get right after the credits: a spooky dream sequence like the ones that bothered Buffy in season one, only this time it’s Giles having the rough sleep. And once we get that shot of Giles in his PJs, our point of view is locked in with him for the first time. Not coincidentally, it’s clear we’re about the get some insight into Giles’s dubious history, as hinted at just two episodes previous.

We get some time with our Buffy/Xander/Willow trio, as they talk about and speculate about Giles, before handing off to the man himself. Away from the young people we track Giles through a lovely moment with Jenny Calendar, who continues to be charmingly forthright about what she wants, and then crash right into trouble: there are police in the library investigating the murder of the precredits victim.

Now this is a shocking moment for this show. There have been quite a few deaths on this show before, several of them on-campus, but apart from the brief moment at the end of School Hard, the police haven’t been seen once. (And they were only seen in that episode to make the point that they absolutely wouldn’t be investigating the death.) A murder investigation is simply not part of the way stories work in Buffy. We have to suspend our disbelief for metaphor monsters to keep threatening high schoolers, and police investigations put all of that in doubt.

What this signifies, of course, is that we are not in a Buffy story any more. We are in a Giles story. He’s an adult, the gatekeeper to the real world, and handing him the point of view means opening the door to all kinds of adult complications. Speaking of doors – shortly afterward he closes his door in Buffy’s face, refusing to allow her to reclaim the POV of her own show. And a few scenes after that we see that the logic of Giles-POV is asserting itself over the entire show, when Buffy makes the uncharacteristic suggestion of handing Ethan Rayne over to the police, instead of electing to just beat the snot out of him. We’re in the Giles show now, whether we like it or not – and it’s clear from Giles’s behaviour that no-one’s going to like this one.

The monster, a possessing demon, seizes control of Jenny Calendar. We then have an unnerving sequence where demon-Jenny tries to follow through on real-Jenny’s promises by seducing Giles. And so we see the merit of Giles’s caution and reserve – he doesn’t give in to a demon, of course, but more importantly, he refuses to take advantage of a situation where consent is unclear. Nice work, Giles.

So, Giles has shown his worth by remaining steadfast and moral in the face of temptation, but he’s also shown he’s unworthy of carrying the show by shutting Buffy out in the first place. Time for the title character to grab control of her own show again. She does so, of course, by kicking in the door that Giles had previously closed in her face. She stomps in to save Giles from Jenny, and the truth comes out about Giles’s youthful foolishness, meddling with powerful forces that are now coming to kill him (and his old mate Ethan – the point isn’t made strongly, but Giles’ old circle is a clear parallel to the current group around Buffy).

With Buffy reinstated as protagonist for the final section of the show, we get a rush of problem-solving and ass-kicking. Willow figures out a way to out-manoeuvre the demon and Angel shows up at just the right time to make it happen. Of course, the police disappear from the narrative entirely.

Then we get a concluding moment between Giles and Jenny. Traditionally in this kind of adventure narrative, jeopardy like this brings a couple closer together – but this show is not that show. In accordance with the principles of genuine emotion and genuine threat, Jenny is unnerved by her experience and doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with Giles any more. It’s a very human reaction, and completely unexpected in terms of television storytelling, although perhaps not as surprising if considered as a relative of the unlucky sad sacks of Marvel comics. It’s also a further illumination as to how this show intends to manage the Problem of Jesse: by embracing the misery, when it comes, so the bright spots shine all the brighter in comparison.

The episode closes, as it must, with an exchange between Buffy and Giles, where Buffy reflects on her greater understanding of Giles as a person. She takes on the role of adviser and comforter to him – a direct mirror of the closing moments of the previous episode. The most interesting thing in this exchange is so small you almost miss it, however. Giles says “I never wanted you to see that side of me.” Note that he speaks in the present tense. The Giles that Ethan calls Ripper, the short-sighted and angry and foolish and dangerous Giles, is not gone. Ripper isn’t a youthful phase he grew out of – it’s an aspect of his personality that remains, suppressed but far from gone. This conversation with Buffy is the start of Giles’s slow journey to accept that side of himself. We have not seen the last of Ripper.

Other notes:
* Curious that Buffy’s breaking up a blood heist – surely it’s preferable that vampires drink stolen blood supplies rather than go out hunting for the fresh variety? And doesn’t Angel get his blood from supplies like this? This is all glossed, typically for this show, which never really pays much attention to where all these vampires are getting their blood. The real-world implications of a vampire plague in Sunnydale would belong in the Giles show, but they have no place in Buffy.
* There’s a great bit where Xander can’t stop Ethan, but Cordy promptly nutsacks him and he goes down. There’s some great Xander-Cordy action throughout this episode showing their growing sympatico – Xander grabs Cordy to protect her, Cordy asks Xander to explain things – but they still talk about how much they hate each other at every opportunity. The show is canny here, quietly priming us for something to happen between these characters but always hiding it in the periphery of scenes so it never gets soap-opera obvious.
* It’s unpleasant to see the show go after Jenny, who’s such a fun character. Luckily it all turns out all right! Phew, it’s good to know she’s safe from now on!
* This episode has a superlative three-quarter swerve: Buffy gets betrayed by Ethan Rayne. After spending the whole episode convincing you that they wouldn’t do the most obvious thing in the world, they then do the most obvious thing in the world. Love it.
* Crazy green backlight as demon Jenny arrives at Ethan’s shop. It goes out as she comes in. Traffic lights? Or is a Russell Mulcahy film being shot outside?
* “We’ve got to figure out how to solve this problem and we have to do it now!” *sips cup of tea*

The arrival of Spike & Dru has changed up the vampire metaphor at work in the show. Now vampires are the cool kids, the dangerous ones who get into fights and have sex and don’t do their homework. This episode takes this imagery and swerves it hilariously, by introducing a subculture of wannabe vampires. They desperately want to be in with the cool kids, even if they don’t really understand what that means.

The Vampire groupies are played for laughs – there’s a fantastic gag, one of the best in the whole series, when Angel sees a groupie dressed just like he is – but it also allows them some beats of tragedy because the groupies are obviously much more like the nerds and outcasts of the library than the cool kids of vampiredom. Their attraction to the cool kids is understandable, but their sheer cluelessness is almost painful to watch, because we know – we have seen – that Spike and Drusilla and their kind are dangerous to be around.

The groupies, desperately wanting more, mirror the emotion running in the main cast this week: jealousy. One of Buffy’s old friends has turned up, and Angel (and Xander) get jealous, but Buffy saw Angel with Drusilla, so she gets jealous too, and Spike gets jealous when he finds out Dru talked to Angel, and everyone’s pretty messed up with their jealousy.

The show’s principles are in action here – even though this show is full of vampires and silly groupies, it promises to take emotions seriously. All of these jealousies are not random, they are based on the insecurities built into each character. Spike knows Angel and Dru have history, and Buffy knows that Angel has a past gien his enormous age difference. Angel knows Buffy is a young girl with a life of her own that might have no place for him. Etc, etc.

This swirl of jealousy is actually just groundwork for even higher stakes. The insecurities drive the characters to expose themselves and that pushes their relationships to new places. Most notably, Angel asks Buffy if she loves him, and she says the words. That’s a big deal. But the show doesn’t stop there, moving on to use this moment to address the reality of Angel-as-love-interest. Angel confesses the horrific crimes of which he is guilty. It’s a crucial moment for the show – and a clear-eyed look at what exactly Buffy’s romance entails. (The show underlines that Angel is right to bring this up, despite his personal change this past overhangs the present – remember, at the start of the episode Angel saw Drusilla try to kill a child, and he let her go without a fight. The world looks different when you’re a vampire, even a vampire with a soul.)

Which brings us back to the groupies, specifically to Ford, Buffy’s old friend. His beliefs and hopes are also focused in a vampiric direction. Does he understand the horror he’s opening himself up to? The show equivocates on this a bit – Ford is played partly as clueless, and partly as ruthless. A late revelation that he’s terminally ill is meant to justify his embrace of horror, but it doesn’t quite work – it doesn’t really explain anything by itself, just muddies up the picture even more.

Nevertheless, the show ultimately makes clear that Ford doesn’t really appreciate what he’s dealing with, and in so doing it makes us uneasy about Buffy’s entanglement with Angel. In Ford’s fate we see the show’s principles unstintingly applied: the threats are real. There is no forgiveness for Ford, no easy out. He makes bad choices and he is killed. The show’s other principle is for the characters to experience real emotions as a result of this trauma, and this hurts Buffy. The final scene of the episode has Buffy and Giles by Ford’s grave, and we see her carry that weight: “Does it ever get any easier?”

And so we stare directly at the problem of Jesse. (If you’ve been following these posts you’re sick of me mentioning it, but for completeness, it’s this: putting real threat and real emotion into your stories threatens to trap you in misery.) Ford’s death has shaken Buffy. Yes, the loss is different: Jesse was an innocent casualty, whereas Ford betrayed Buffy and brought his death upon himself. But this just makes the loss all the more painful: Ford’s death is awful, but his betrayal is agonizing.

Back when Jesse was killed, the show didn’t know how to engage with the emotional impact that would follow, and so it dodged the issue entirely. Nineteen episodes later, the show has built up the emotional repertoire to embrace a character’s pain, confident that it can find its way back to joy. And in the final exchange of the episode, it demonstrates exactly how it intends to resolve the problem of Jesse. Buffy asks Giles if life will ever get easier:

Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes, it’s terribly simple.
Giles: The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar.

Life is hard and complicated, and people die, and it hurts like hell. Faced with this, Buffy asks Giles to lie to her. And – in a final confirmation that he has abandoned his Watcher remove – he does. And it is unconvincing, and of course it was always meant to be, because the lie is not the point. The point is, he gave Buffy what she needed.
We stave off despair by leaning on each other. It’s love, of course. The pathway from misery back to joy is simply love.

Problem solved.

Other thoughts:
* Unsurprisingly, given this one pretty much gives a thesis statement for the show, this is a Joss Whedon joint. Accordingly, the dialogue is heavy with his Buffy-speak: “You made him do that thing where he’s gone!” – and a sex joke that other writers wouldn’t dare: “Of course I had no idea what it was about.”
* Not to mention that the whole arc of the season is foreshadowed in this episode in Angel’s horrific past and Ford’s painful betrayal.
* The comic-book style storytelling goes full Claremont with some juicy backstory revealed (Buffy’s past life, Angel’s past life) and some continuity threads deliberately dropped now to be picked up later (a book is stolen from the library, Willow invites Angel into her home).
* Wisely, the show never goes back to the vamp groupies, and it mostly forgets about how normal people might react to a world where vampires are real. Doing so would torpedo the metaphorical work it’s trying to do – it’s hard to keep up the idea that monsters are metaphors if they’re forced to interact with normal people as well. (Later on, in the Angel spin-off, the show’s purpose is different, allowing a return to this well.)
* hello Chanterelle, another of Buffy’s recurring bit players – we’ll probably end up talking more about her later.