Chief Seattle Review of Buffy S5 E4 ?
Linda
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Episode Title "Out of My Mind"
I was away for a few days last week so again this review was delayed. But
with the end of reruns approaching I hope to get a couple more done before
the end of next weekend.
Out of My Mind
I like to see an episode exploring a single theme or idea through the medium
of two different plots. Not only does this add a pleasing sense of unity
to the program. The contrasts or comparisons between the way the different
plot treats the same theme or idea is usually very enlightening. Here we
see several different characters who may be described as out of their mind.
Joyce for example, just before she collapses, experiences a moment of
clarity
in which she asks Dawn:
"Who are you?"
But the two individuals who really are out of their mind and around whom
the two plots in this episode revolve are Riley and Spike.
Buffy and Riley
In "The Replacement" we began to see Riley's insecurities about his
relationship
with Buffy and at the end of that episode he sums up for Xander his
understanding
of the relationship he has with her:
"Hey, I'm well aware of how lucky I am. Like, lottery lucky. Buffy's like
nobody else in the world. When I'm with her it's like ... it's like I'm
split
in two. Half of me is just ... on fire, going crazy if I'm not touching her.
The other half ... is so still and peaceful ... just perfectly content. Just
knows: this is the one. But she doesn't love me."
And that conversation serves as the lead into this episode's principal focus
- how those insecurities are affecting Riley.
From the start his physical strength and stamina and the way he is revelling
in both are stressed. In the teaser he is out hunting on his own and bumps
into Buffy almost by accident:
Buffy: Riley?
Riley: Buffy, what are you doing here?
Buffy: My job?
Riley: Well, I just thought you were in the north sector.
When a vampire then attacks it is Riley who kicks his legs out from under
him and throws him aside, ten punches and stakes him. Buffy can see he needs
no help.
Later in the new Training Room he seems keen for a workout with Buffy and
after that we find the two after they have been engaged in a yet more
strenuous
form of exercise:
Buffy: Mm, that was relaxing.
Riley: You, uh ... wanna relax some more?
Buffy: Again? Right away again?
Riley: Maybe you're too tired.
Buffy: Hey. I have the endurance of ten men.
Riley: Let's make it women, okay? Just for the imagery.
Buffy: Whatever. You know, it takes a lot to wear me out.
Riley: Oh, I love a challenge.
Again it is Riley who seems anxious for the exercise. Why the need to
assert
his strength? Then we have the strange tachycardia first detected quite
accidentally by Dawn:
Doctor: I have never in all my years of medicine let a patient with
tachycardia
this severe leave a hospital.
Riley: You said you couldn't keep me.
Doctor: Legally, no, I can't force you to do a thing. But with that pulse,
believe me, I'd get on my knees and beg you if I thought I could change your
mind.
Riley: You can't. I'm going home.
Riley's condition is described by Graham in the following terms:
"Hyperadrenal overload and a bunch of stuff that sounds even worse than
that,
and all it means is he's way stronger than he oughta be and feeling no pain.
His heart can't take it. We've been at him for weeks about it."
The puzzle is Riley's attitude to his own condition. First he denies that
it is a problem at all:
Buffy: What's going on? What are you doing? What if you have a heart attack?
Riley: Listen to me. Calm down.
Buffy: *Me* calm down? I'm not the one with a pulse of a hundred and fifty.
Riley: My heart's different than yours, Buffy. It works differently now,
but it's okay.
Buffy: But you're still a human, Riley. You could still have a heart attack.
Riley: I'm a human who was used as a lab rat for months.
Then, to Graham, he seems to accept there is a problem but professes not
to trust the Government to solve it:
Graham: What's goin' on, man? You gotta get this taken care of immediately.
We gotta get you into an operating room.
Riley: Very convincing. Makes me completely wanna put myself under
government
control.
It is only later that the real trouble is disclosed. And here I think that
I can do no better than to reproduce the crucial exchange between Buffy and
Riley:
Buffy: What's happening to you?
Riley: I go back ... let the government get whimsical with my innards again
.. They could do anything that. Best-case scenario, they turn me into Joe
Normal, just...just another guy.
Buffy: And that's not enough for you?
Riley: It's not enough for *you*.
Up until now there seemed no obvious connection between Riley's sheer
physicality
with Buffy, his need to help with the slaying, to match her in training and
in other "exercises" and his unwillingness to confront his own health
problems.
Now they fitted together. In "The Replacement" he had said that she didn't
love him; here he seems to indicate why.
And this is how Riley is "out of his mind". To Buffy he says himself that:
"Loving you is the scariest thing I've ever done".
Xander also tries to explain things through a none too subtle comparison:
"Like, I had this friend once, who really liked this girl, and ... he got
all worried that maybe she didn't like him back... and maybe that made him
act like a total jerk. Maybe Riley reminds me of that friend."
In the relationship between Buffy and Riley or the way that it has hit the
rocks it's hard to see the writers saying anything worthwhile of general
application. Of course at one level we can see Riley's inability to cope
with Buffy as the slayer as an expression of the difficulty one partner
(especially
a man) can have in coping with the power and success of the other. But to
say that A fears B cannot love him if she is more successful than he is
surely
a gross oversimplification, especially shorn of its social context. In what
is surely intended to be the central confrontation between Buffy and Riley
(only part of which I have quoted) Riley is left without an explanation for
his behavior that made any sense at all, even from his point of view. His
anxiety about losing his "super powers" is a mixture of irrational jealousy
and insecurity. Buffy for her part says that her love doesn't depend on
how powerful Riley is. A comparison on the one hand between a highly
simplistic
stupidity on the one hand and trite platitudes on the other hardly provides
much food for thought. If the writers did intend to try to examine this
particular phenomenon they made an abysmal attempt at it. That is why I
think this was only ever intended to be a story about two individuals rather
than an exploration of a complex social phenomenon. We are therefore firmly
in soap opera territory here. Abraham Lincoln was once asked what he
thought
of a particular book and is reported to have replied along the lines that
"those who like that sort of thing will like that sort of thing". And that
certainly sums up my feelings about that fact. I understand that there are
many people who do enjoy and appreciate soap opera with its focus on
personal
relationships, their triumphs and disasters. I don't. Soap opera type
stories
are commonplace. BUFFY's unique selling point is it's use of the
supernatural
to explore ideas. Graham sums up my feeling about these type of storylines
only too well when he challenges Riley:
"You used to have a mission, and now you're what? The mission's boyfriend?
Mission's true love."
For me the mission is the important thing. The romance is simply an
unwelcome
distraction. So an episode that concentrated so heavily on the Riley/Buffy
romance was, I will confess, something of a penance for me. But over and
above this personal preference there is a lot to criticize here.
First of all the set up is so completely artificial that it lacks any
credibility.
In "Goodbye Iowa" Riley started getting withdrawal symptoms because he was
no longer taking a cocktail of drugs. He recovered because he was kept in
a military hospital. We must assume that he completed "cold turkey" there
because self-evidently he could not have been taking the same cocktail of
drugs once he had left the Initiative. His tachycardia is therefore due
to something else, presumably physical because it can be cured by an
operation.
What this might be is left very vague. This is the first we have heard
of this. Indeed this is the first we have seen it produce dangerous side
effects. Graham and the others are apparently cured. They have been
worried
about Riley for weeks. Why weeks? Wouldn't they have been worried about
this from the moment they found out what had been done to Riley? Why wait
until now to contact him? This is especially true when the doctors are
apparently
saying that it may already be too late to save Riley. Then when he does
suffer an apparently massive heart attack the "operation" (whatever it
involves)
leaves him cured but now normal and healthy. To describe this as idiot
plotting
is to be kind. When writers have to produce these sort of nonsensical
developments
to set up character exploration, it ruins the whole point of the exercise.
I have already referred to the fact that Riley is left without rational
explanation
for his behavior. Can you sympathize with someone who acts like that for
no good reason? There is no real basis on which Riley can connect Buffy's
increasing strength with her inability to love him. So how can you
understand
his attachment to his own strength as a way of cementing their relationship?
And if you cannot at least understand why Riley thought that way you cannot
wish him well. Instead he becomes annoying.
When the whole focus of an episode is a stupid and annoying piece of
behavior
that is set up by some unbelievable plot contortions then you had better
believe the episode is in trouble.
Buffy and Spike
Of course Riley isn't the only one who is confused about his relationship
with Buffy. So is Spike. Throughout this episode, Buffy's attitude towards
Spike remains fairly constant. It is one essentially of contempt,
exemplified
by two moments. First of all when she, Riley and Spike come together in
the teaser and Spike starts to push her buttons:
"Spike ... I just saw you taste your own nose blood, you know what? I'm too
grossed out to hear anything you have to say. Go home."
Then, when she goes to enlist his help in the search for Riley we have the
following exchange:
Buffy: "Riley's sick with some Initiative thing and he's missing. I think
he might be in the caves. You find him, bring him to the fourth floor of
the hospital, their doctors get to him in time... you get the cash."
Spike: "Oh, dear, is the enormous hall monitor sick? Tell me, is he gonna
die?" [Buffy slaps him across the face.]
Buffy: "He is not the only person that can die."
Spike: "Hey. I'm just saying, if it's really that important to you, I think
I'll get half now." [Buffy tears the notes in half, slams one half against
Spike's chest and leaves].
Spike for his part seems to return the contempt with hatred. He is
(excusing
the overblown language) going to:
"bathe in the slayer's blood. Gonna dive in it. Swim in it."
He even tries to carry out his threats when he thinks the chip has been
removed
and he is again free to kill. But having failed in this, at the very end,
when we think we see a fatal confrontation between them, it turns into a
dream (or is it a nightmare) for Spike where he and Buffy become lovers.
The odd thing was that this moment for me actually worked very well. Spike
had spent so much of the previous hour talking about Buffy that it quickly
became obvious that she was always in his mind. It is often said that the
opposite of love is not hatred but indifference and Buffy's capacity to
arouse
strong emotion in Spike may be easily understood. She was, in Harmony's
words "totally his arch-nemesis" and it's hard not to see respect in his
description of her:
"She's not the type to give up, either. She'll hunt you down, day and night,
till you're too tired and too hungry to run any more. And then? [grabs a
handful of dust] Then... [dusting off his hands] that is you."
Indeed near the end we had what for a proud creature like Spike a very
significant
moment. He almost breaks down in rage and frustration:
Spike: "She follows me, you know, tracks me down. I'm her pet project. Drive
Spike round the bend. Makes every day a fresh bout of torture."
Harmony: "Spike!"
Spike: "You don't understand. I can't get rid of her. She's everywhere.
She's
haunting me, Harmony! This ... has got to end."
This makes the final scene when Spike offers his bare chest to an enraged
Buffy seem all the more realistic. So the shock value of what happens next
is also all the greater. Moreover because we can believe in Spike's growing
obsession with his arch nemesis his schizophrenic attitude towards her is
also entirely believable. At one level he is emotionally attracted to her,
at another he hates her.
But while, I personally have no trouble with the notion that Spike was
developing
an obsession with her, the precise nature of that obsession is, for me
important.
In particular that obsession must remain consistent with my understanding
of Spike's nature as a demon and I may return to the topic as this storyline
develops. But much more troubling for me at the moment is the way that
the writers present Buffy's view of Spike. As we have seen she held him
in contempt. This was partly because he was a vampire and they had "gross"
tastes (for example blood). It was also in part an ethical judgement. He
was concerned only for himself and refused to help anyone else unless there
was something in it for him. But these differences are not the stuff of
which "mortal enemies" are made. Buffy's attitude to Spike is much the same
as her attitude would be to Willie or any slightly shady human living at
the edges of society. There is no recognition here as to what Spike has
done in the past, no mention of the fact that he is a mass murderer or that,
even with the chip, he tried to get Buffy and the others killed. You might
think that this would weigh more heavily with the slayer than the fact that
he drinks his nose blood or likes money. And in spite of the fact that
Spike
tried very hard to rid himself of the chip and could have ended up costing
Riley his life, in the real world (as opposed to Spike's fantasy life) there
is no indication that Buffy has changed her mind about staking him. Indeed
it is interesting to see how Spike's threats to Buffy and his attempt to
free himself of the chip are treated by the writers. He doesn't make a very
good fist of trying to kill the vampire in the teaser. When he utters his
first threat against Buffy he falls into an open grave. When Buffy says
she knows he is up to something nasty we see him engaged in 20 questions
with Harmony. Indeed the fact that Harmony is involved in the attempt to
remove the chip makes the whole thing more of a joke than something really
serious. It is almost as of the writers were trying to have it both ways
- present Buffy and Spike as enemies but at the same time portraying Spike
as someone who is not that dangerous.
Of course at this stage it is impossible to predict where the writers intend
to go with this. But "Out of My Mind" bears all the hallmarks of a set up
for a major shift in the way that Buffy and Spike relate to one another.
We have the deliberate trailing of the mutual hostility but the downplaying
of the real nature of the gulf between the slayer and the neutered monster.
Then through Spike's eyes this hostility is turned on its head to become
some form of sexual attraction. This is nor incompatible with the hostility
but obviously puts it in a completely different light. We can only wait
to see where the writers go with this one but the fact that they seem to
have tried to airbrush his past, downplayed his dangerousness and above all
shown no interest in the difference between the moral differences between
the demon within him and humans does not fill me with any great hope.
Plot
The biggest single problem with the plot of this episode is the painfully
slow pace at which it crawls along. The teaser embodies a very nice idea.
As we have seen the focus of this episode is the way that both Riley and
Spike relate to Buffy. So bringing them all together at the start to
establish
the baselines worked very well. We could see the tensions and
preoccupations
that would come to dominate the storyline being laid out. But it is too
drawn out and for the next fifteen minutes nothing happens. Act 1, for
example,
starts with a completely pointless conversation between Willow and Buffy
which is notable only for the awful stilted dialogue. This is immediately
followed by an extended and almost equally meaningless visit to the Magic
Shop. The episode doesn't begin to move until Joyce collapses and we are
then (in a somewhat forced way) introduced to Riley tachycardia. But even
then there are pointless or even just overlong scenes in which nothing
happens
to advance either theme or plot. For example the scenes at the Summers'
house after Joyce is released, Spike and Harmony's 20 questions or the "fiat
lux" scene between Willow and Tara. It is actually sobering to think how
little actually happens in this episode. The action might have been
compressed
into twenty minutes and the program might have been all the better for it.
And what action there was cannot be described as especially tightly plotted.
There were some good things. I like for example the way that Riley first
denies he has a problem, then claims that he doesn't rust the government
to solve it and only at the end admits the truth. When you are trying to
understand the motivations of a character the fact that their own
rationalizations
cannot be taken at their face value and that you have to continually dig
deeper is not only inherently more interesting but also far more realistic.
The way Buffy got the Initiative involved was a very neat touch. And
indeed
the re-introduction of the Initiative in this context was in theory at least
a very good idea. It could act as a focal point for both Riley's distress
and the means of ending it and Spike's very different distress and the means
of ending that. The central idea of having Spike (and his desire to have
the chip removed so that he could show Buffy who is boss) as the principal
obstacle to saving Riley because both needed the same Initiative doctor was
in theory a good one. Unfortunately the execution of this idea shows the
gap that all too often can open up between theory and practice.
I have already dealt with the implausible set up and resolution for Riley's
illness. Here, in biref form, are some of the other problems. When Riley
fled from Graham and the others why would he go to the Initiative Caves of
all places? Secondly, when Buffy went to Spike it was ostensibly to get
him to help her find Riley. But then when she went looking for him on her
own it became all too obvious that this was just a poor excuse to let Spike
know that there was an Initiative doctor waiting to be kidnapped. Which
leads to the question how did Spike know where the Initiative doctor was?
And when he kidnapped him how did Buffy and Riley still manage to find
them?
None of this is credible. But the final problem is Buffy's reaction to
Spike's treachery. When she finds out about it she promises:
"When I get my hands on Spike, I'm gonna rip his head off."
And why wouldn't she? Except she doesn't. We only see a vengeful slayer
in Spike's fevered dreams. As I have already said what works about that
scene is that, Buffy wanting vengeance on Spike seems so natural. So then
why didn't she actually turn up and kill him?
Overview
D (6/10): This was bad. Not just sub-par but actually bad. First of all
I had no interest in the subject matter and, as this is my review, I make
no apologies for marking the episode down on this score alone. But there
was worse. The whole episode depended upon the credibility of Riley's
medical
problems and the need to solve them urgently. For the reasons I have
already
given (and which I do not mean to repeat here) this aspect of the episode
was so obviously contrived that it had no credibility. Moreover the fact
that the central character in the episode exhibited an obvious and wholly
inexplicable stupidity throughout left us without any interest in or
sympathy
for his plight. And as the whole point was surely to make us care about
what happens to him that is an obvious drawback. The sub-plot involving
Spike was not quite as disappointing and it did contain some very
interesting
elements. As I have already said there are, for me, some worrying straws
in the wind but it is far too early to guess where the writers are going
with this storyline yet so I am not going to rush to judgement here. But
above all the slow pace and repeated plotting problems of the episode mean
that it is really without much in the way of redeeming qualities.