AOQ Review 7-9: "Never Leave Me"
Arbitrar Of Quality
threads.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
(or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
Writer: Drew Goddard
Director: David Solomon
Just now realized that the title is reference to the tune First/Spike
sings.
There're a few intersecting plot threads here as the story takes
shape, and that's even with the show keeping Giles's fate a mystery
for another week. Somehow Andrew, who has a cool villain coat and has
at least gotten Buffy to learn his name, ends up as the catalyst for a
lot of this episode's action, bringing another posthumous appearance
for both of his Trio mates in the process. Here the episode does very
well with the comic writing, making something fun and Andrew-ish out of
something important without deflating it, and First/Warren ends up as a
good straight-man, patiently trying to come up with ways to make use of
what he has. "_Babe 2: Pig in the City_ was really underrated."
And then there's the transition from "isn't there some other way
we could get blood" to taking a number...
This is another show in which not a whole lot happens until the end
(which is kinda the payoff for all the trying-to-figure-stuff-out stuff
in the first half), and the action stays confined to a few locations.
But the dialogue is very sparkly so things stay entertaining. (I
don't know where this Drew Goddard person came from or how he got so
good right away, but he's the new star of the BTVS writing staff for
me.) Jumping ahead a little, take the quotable-laden explanation of
Spike's musical conditioning as an example of what BTVS does so well.
Throughout the episode, little nuances, like Buffy answering
Willow's question about how things are going by talking about Spike,
and her "I wasn't asking about him" response, are there too.
A chance meeting in line for blood makes the threads intersect, and
allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
Andrew and Willow - first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
Having that scene also thematically sets the stage for Xander and Anya
to play Good/Bad Cop later. From there, the parallel interrogations
gimmick holds up well, especially when they keep coming together with
Spike breaking out of his and almost putting an end to Andrew's.
Can I just throw in as an aside how much I appreciate seeing Xander
being helpful when he knows the situation demands it? A lesser episode
wouldn't have thought to have him do anything other than reminding us
how much he hates Spike every five seconds. As he says in "Him,"
"not the right time." Even the "constant" characters should be
discernibly different after seven years of show.
Somewhere on the side, Jonathan's corpse is used to reveal that,
shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
My working theory is that he's theoretically a "good guy" in the
same sense as the Watchers or the Initiative commandoes, but will end
up working at cross-purposes with our heroes. That's just because
that was what I was expecting them to do with Snyder back in late S2.
Now it's Spoik's turn to get chained up in all sorts of weird
positions. For those who've wondered why Buffy doesn't kill Spike,
here's an explicit answer. Despite a few clunky lines, their second
extended conversation in the cellar as a whole is one of their best.
(The earlier "feeling sorry for yourself?" exchange isn't too
shabby either, helping give these little bits of defining where the
differences are between S6 and S7 Spike.) When I complained vaguely
about the lack of "depth" in the dialogue last episode, this is
exactly what I was talking about. Spike channels his self-loathing
into doing his best to repulse Buffy with what he used to be, and when
she doesn't even flinch, he tries another tack, hitting hard with the
"you like men who hurt you" thing. It's great to see her
forcefully brush it away in a way she couldn't have last year,
turning things right back around. And that almost angry expression of
trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
that's so nice it practically demands that something bad happen a few
minutes later if the show wants to keep its reputation for cruelty.
A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
end, as does Xander. Andrew once again seems to the viewer like he's
in real danger, and could very easily be killed off, until Buffy makes
a literal last-minute rescue. Finally seeing the robed guys allows
Buffy to instantly drag up the proper memory to identify them.
According to Don, a lot of fans figured it out as quickly as she did,
back in the first few episodes of the year. I can't comment since I
was semi-spoiled that the First would be back, but I'm not good with
the visual memory, so I wouldn't have remembered the design of one
particular evil order that appeared briefly in one episode four years
earlier.
While we're on that, are we clear on how or why the First gets
certain people under its thrall more than others? The newly-souled
monster is an easy target for bringing out the crazy, but why Andrew
and Willow, and did the latter limit its ability to talk to her by
figuring out its game? And Spike seems to be genuinely controlled
where the others are just influenced.
Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered. Then
Spike gets bled to open the fold-out pentagram. The visuals in this
scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
start to all look the same after awhile.
A list of other parts that made me laugh, Really Stupid and otherwise:
- "I mean, you've always been part of the 'Spike Is Evil'
faction." [a little bit obvious, but I tend to enjoy those little
nicks in the fourth wall]
- Jonathan ruining the ritual by being anemic
- "No, I have to get out of the house. Xander's installing the new
windows, and he keeps giving lectures on proper tool maintenance"
- The girls' reaction to "I'll be pumping him in no time"
- "Is this left over from your days in the Army?" "No, this is
left over from every Army movie I've ever seen"
- "This trigger. How do we holster... safety, or... I don't know
guns"
- The big vampire at the end being credited as "Ubervamp"
So...
One-sentence summary: Not big on the ending, but a rich episode
otherwise.
AOQ rating: Good
[Season Seven so far:
1) "Lessons" - Good
2) "Beneath You" - Decent
3) "Same Time, Same Place" - Excellent
4) "Help" - Good
5) "Selfless" - SUPERLATIVE
6) "Him" - Bad
7) "Conversations With Dead People" - Good
8) "Sleeper" - Decent
9) "Never Leave Me" - Good]
Rowan Hawthorn
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
> Writer: Drew Goddard
> Director: David Solomon
>
> Just now realized that the title is reference to the tune First/Spike
> sings.
>
>
> (which is kinda the payoff for all the trying-to-figure-stuff-out stuff
> in the first half), and the action stays confined to a few locations.
> But the dialogue is very sparkly so things stay entertaining. (I
> don't know where this Drew Goddard person came from or how he got so
> good right away, but he's the new star of the BTVS writing staff for
> me.) Jumping ahead a little, take the quotable-laden explanation of
> Spike's musical conditioning as an example of what BTVS does so well.
> Throughout the episode, little nuances, like Buffy answering
> Willow's question about how things are going by talking about Spike,
> and her "I wasn't asking about him" response, are there too.
I also liked Willow's helpful (hopeful?) suggestion for a fresh supply
of blood for Spike - and the fact that Buffy actually seems a bit
regretful that she has to veto it (Anya's getting on everyone's nerves,
y'think?)
>
> A chance meeting in line for blood makes the threads intersect, and
> allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
> Andrew and Willow -
AKA "Showdown of the Nerds"
> first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
Another little deja vu moment, this one a callback to "Doppelgangland":
it's true that when Willow is really being bad, she's *Really Bad* - but
she can't *play* bad to save her life...
> And that almost angry expression of
> trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
> that's so nice it practically demands that something bad happen a few
> minutes later if the show wants to keep its reputation for cruelty.
Oh, I don't think there's much worry about that...
>
> A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
> as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
> She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
> end, as does Xander.
Dawn is a scrapper. Maybe she *has* been paying attention to Buffy all
this time.
>
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered. Then
> Spike gets bled to open the fold-out pentagram. The visuals in this
> scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
> start to all look the same after awhile.
But look at the bright side: at least you know the plural...
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
Don Sample
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
> Writer: Drew Goddard
> Director: David Solomon
>
> Somewhere on the side, Jonathan's corpse is used to reveal that,
> shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
> My working theory is that he's theoretically a "good guy" in the
> same sense as the Watchers or the Initiative commandoes, but will end
> up working at cross-purposes with our heroes. That's just because
> that was what I was expecting them to do with Snyder back in late S2.
Or is he under the thrall of the First? He's walking down the hall, and
for no reason he just stops, turns around, and goes down to the basement
where the body is. Is he acting under his own power here?
> While we're on that, are we clear on how or why the First gets
> certain people under its thrall more than others? The newly-souled
> monster is an easy target for bringing out the crazy, but why Andrew
> and Willow, and did the latter limit its ability to talk to her by
> figuring out its game? And Spike seems to be genuinely controlled
> where the others are just influenced.
Spike is susceptible because of the instability created by his newly
restored soul. Andrew is susceptible because he already lives in a
fantasy world, and is easily swayed. The First thought that it had a
shot at Willow, because she still isn't in the best of places at the
moment, still recovering from what happened to her last spring. It
never had her under its thrall though. She didn't cut off the First's
ability to talk to her. The First just decided that further talk at
that point would be pointless. The First can talk to anyone it choses
to. It revealed itself to Jonathan, just before Andrew stabbed him. It
revealed itself to Buffy, back in "Amends," to do a little "you're
boyfriend's going to die" taunting.
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered.
The building that gets blown up doesn't even look all that much like the
building that they used for the London establishing shot. There was
some speculation that there was a fake-out going on here, and someone
else got blown up. (It wasn't. They just passed a different angle shot
to the CGI team and told them to make it blow up.)
> - "This trigger. How do we holster... safety, or... I don't know
> guns"
You know, back in the first three seasons, Buffy *was* pretty good with
guns.
> - The big vampire at the end being credited as "Ubervamp"
Played by Camden Toy again.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
Don Sample
Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> > A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> > threads.
> >
> >
> > BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> > Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> > (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
> > Writer: Drew Goddard
> > Director: David Solomon
> >
> > first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
> > imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
> > you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
> > knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
> > work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
> > can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
> > or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
>
> Another little deja vu moment, this one a callback to "Doppelgangland":
> it's true that when Willow is really being bad, she's *Really Bad* - but
> she can't *play* bad to save her life...
But we do get a flash that she can be really bad, when Andrew starts
trying to weasel out by saying that it was Warren who killed Tara, and
he was really aiming at Buffy anyway.
> > A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
> > as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
> > She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
> > end, as does Xander.
>
> Dawn is a scrapper. Maybe she *has* been paying attention to Buffy all
> this time.
She needs to work on her killer instinct though. She shouldn't have
hesitated when going after that Bringer.
Rowan Hawthorn
> In article <--6dnVj2QKWe147Yn...@giganews.com>,
> Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>>> threads.
>>>
>>>
>>> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>>> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
>>> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
>>> Writer: Drew Goddard
>>> Director: David Solomon
>>>
>
>>> first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
>>> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
>>> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
>>> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
>>> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
>>> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
>>> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
>> Another little deja vu moment, this one a callback to "Doppelgangland":
>> it's true that when Willow is really being bad, she's *Really Bad* - but
>> she can't *play* bad to save her life...
>
> But we do get a flash that she can be really bad, when Andrew starts
> trying to weasel out by saying that it was Warren who killed Tara, and
> he was really aiming at Buffy anyway.
Yes; she very nearly slipped. But then that would have been her *Really
Bad* side coming out, not her "playing bad" side.
>
>
>>> A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
>>> as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
>>> She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
>>> end, as does Xander.
>> Dawn is a scrapper. Maybe she *has* been paying attention to Buffy all
>> this time.
>
> She needs to work on her killer instinct though. She shouldn't have
> hesitated when going after that Bringer.
>
True. Rule number 1: split the other guy's skull first, *then* take
time to feel bad about it.
Scythe Matters
> Just now realized that the title is reference to the tune First/Spike
> sings.
Also, Spike wants Buffy to "leave" (kill) him, and she won't. This is
crucial if he's to be helped.
Also, in the end Buffy leaves Spike alone...which turns out to be a
mistake. Definitely a third-tier meaning, but it's there.
> Here the episode does very
> well with the comic writing, making something fun and Andrew-ish out of
> something important without deflating it
The part of Andrew is almost impossible to play because it's so absurd,
and it's a real credit to Lenk that he's able to get as much mileage out
of it as he does. It could be immediately and permanently annoying
(well, I know that it's just that to some people), but usually Lenk
manages to find the right tone. (Of course, this doesn't preclude him
becoming annoying through overuse, but then even someone as talented as
Marsters can't overcome that.)
> and First/Warren ends up as a
> good straight-man, patiently trying to come up with ways to make use of
> what he has.
Also, a new datum: it can't take corporeal form. Which, of course, calls
into question how they're going to fight it.
> Somewhere on the side, Jonathan's corpse is used to reveal that,
> shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
> My working theory is that he's theoretically a "good guy" in the
> same sense as the Watchers or the Initiative commandoes, but will end
> up working at cross-purposes with our heroes. That's just because
> that was what I was expecting them to do with Snyder back in late S2.
As I said in the other thread: some people see what they want to see. ;-)
The burying of Jonathan doesn't indicate one inclination or another. But
why/how was he seemingly called to open the basement door and go
directly to the seal? The First? Some other reason? It's nice to have
some payoff to the "is he evil?" question that's been lingering since
the first episode, but the payoff doesn't actually answer anything.
Which is sorta what the main plot is doing, too: proceeding without
clarifying. Now that we've identified the villain, though, I think it's
natural to expect the next development to be a revelation of the plot.
Raising a bendy stunt guy with bad teeth can't be all there is.
> Now it's Spoik's turn to get chained up in all sorts of weird
> positions.
No doubt this episode is utter bliss for a certain segment of the fandom.
> Spike channels his self-loathing
> into doing his best to repulse Buffy with what he used to be, and when
> she doesn't even flinch, he tries another tack, hitting hard with the
> "you like men who hurt you" thing. It's great to see her
> forcefully brush it away in a way she couldn't have last year,
> turning things right back around.
Look at the whole exchange, though:
---
SPIKE
Don't do that. Don't rationalize this into some noble act. We both know
the truth of it. You like men who hurt you.
BUFFY
No.
SPIKE
You need the pain we cause you. You need the hate. You need it to do
your job, to be the slayer.
BUFFY
No. I don't hate like that. Not you, or myself. Not anymore. You think
you have insight now because your soul's drenched in blood? You don't
know me. You don't even know you.
---
There are several assertions here.
Liking men that hurt her would be understandable for Buffy considering
her past -- going right back to her father -- and in fact this point was
introduced (outside of season six's misery-fest) just a few episodes
ago, by Holden Webster. When the show repeats a point, it's usually
significant.
Needing the hate and the pain to do her job...that's pretty tightly knit
with the idea of her power having roots in or ties to darkness (going
back to "BvD"...no need to re-repeat the relevant dialogue).
Her not hating like that...I think I'm probably over-parsing here, but
she doesn't precisely address his full assertion. She rejects the idea
that she hates herself (which is supported by her actions starting
somewhere around "As You Were" and proceeding from there, albeit in fits
and starts) and him (supported by her actions thus far this season), but
she doesn't refute the idea that the hate and pain are part of what
fuels her job. Again: rooted in darkness.
I'm not arguing that he's right. Or wrong. I think there's a little of
both here, and for her to say "you don't know me" is a little
silly...he's rarely been 100% right about her, but he's almost always
been at least partially right. It's a fundamental part of their
interactions since...well, seasons and seasons ago. So while it's
important that she respond with the force you identify, because it shows
progress, I don't think a clear refutation of his perspective is
warranted. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
> And that almost angry expression of
> trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
> that's so nice it practically demands that something bad happen a few
> minutes later if the show wants to keep its reputation for cruelty.
---
BUFFY
Be easier, wouldn't it, it if were an act, but it's not. You faced the
monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked everything to be a
better man.
SPIKE
Buffy...
BUFFY
And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I believe
in you, Spike.
---
Probably not coincidentally, this pretty much parallels "Amends." It
interests me that you dismissed very similar conversations as
melodramatic in that episode. I'm not really saying you were wrong, but
I do think it represents a slight shift in your...I guess the word is
"acceptance" of the show's modes.
> A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
> as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
> She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
> end, as does Xander. Andrew once again seems to the viewer like he's
> in real danger, and could very easily be killed off, until Buffy makes
> a literal last-minute rescue.
Note Willow's role: the new Giles, knocked out at the beginning of a
fight. It's been clear for a while that giving her nearly unlimited
power is a difficult thing to deal with, plot-wise. And here we have one
ham-handed way to deal with it. It's fine as a one-time thing, but it
can't become a habit. It's the transporters malfunctioning when the
transporters could solve the problem in the first five minutes, or Troi
losing her empathy when knowing someone is lying could cut off the plot
at its knees. It needs to be used very, very sparingly, and the fact
that she's already afraid to use her powers should be just about enough
anyway.
> While we're on that, are we clear on how or why the First gets
> certain people under its thrall more than others? The newly-souled
> monster is an easy target for bringing out the crazy, but why Andrew
> and Willow, and did the latter limit its ability to talk to her by
> figuring out its game? And Spike seems to be genuinely controlled
> where the others are just influenced.
Spike is obviously controllable because he's already unstable
post-ensouling. We have no idea when the First first got to him, but it
could have been very shortly after he left the African cave. But he's
actually controlled with a trigger, the "installation" of which we're
probably not going to see as it has been accepted as fact by the plot.
But as you say, none of the others are controlled, they're influenced.
That's different. Andrew's influenced because he has/had a thing for
Warren...somewhere between love and worship...and because he seems to
have a tenuous hold on reality and consequences. I guess I'm not sure
why you see Willow as more thrallsome than anyone else, though. Did she
do anything the First desired?
> First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered.
For me, it was a mildly interesting moment: the Council finally appears
to be doing the right thing. They're going to take action, in force, and
they're presumably going to do so by helping Buffy rather than doing
something destructive (this is a guess, but I think it's a reasonable
assumption from the dialogue). And so as a reward, they get blow'd up.
Three things follow from that, though:
1) Blowing up what appears to be a major building in London (I suppose
this, like "Earshot" and "GD2," might have had to be suppressed in the
UK if it had aired a few years later) speaks of a much bigger worldwide
power than simply chasing young girls down alleys with knives. This
unquestionably ramps up the stakes in this fight. In "Amends," the First
just used apparitions and a few Bringers. Here, it's got lots of
Bringers, apparitions up the wazoo, the ability to completely destroy
the Council (and think about how long it has been around, and how many
apocalyptic battles it must have survived, only to be destroyed here and
now), this übervamp thing, Spike (at times), Andrew (at times), and
maybe even some assets we haven't yet seen or clarified yet (Wood, for
example). That's like upgrading from a crossbow to a tank division with
fighter support.
2) Why blow up the Council? What good have they been, especially of
late? What possible threat could they pose? And why steal, and destroy
copies of, files and records? Why not just blow them up with the rest?
3) Even though Buffy (and Faith, I guess) are living outside the
traditional Slayer/Watcher system handed down since ancient times, it's
always been a reasonable assumption that some re-linkage would occur.
Maybe even with the next Slayer, whoever that might be. Tradition could
be restored, or maybe the Council could be transformed into something
less ridiculous and hateful, but either way it's an awfully big thing to
just instantly eliminate from the Buffyverse. That's gotta have
consequences down the road, and one wonders what they are. But as I
wrote in point two, it's gotta have consequences *now* as well, else
what's the point?
> The visuals in this
> scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr.
As always, it will depend on the followup. But I have to say: a growly
demon rising from a hole in the ground where a pentagram once was...a
few minutes after the mildly scary "hmmm" provided by the scene, my mind
went somewhere I don't think the writers intended: Gachnar. ;-)
A few other things:
---
DAWN
And Spike could've sired countless others and buried them around town.
And we're waiting for him to do what, exactly? Do something crazy?
WILLOW
(sighs) It's not that simple.
ANYA
Shouldn't we stab him through the chest? Isn't that what we do when
these things happen?
WILLOW
Look, Buffy knows what she's doing.
ANYA
Well, Xander, you know what we're all talking about. I mean, you've
always been part of the "Spike is evil" faction.
XANDER
I've got a house to put back together.
---
As with the previous episode, it seems like there's not exactly full
buy-in on the part of the Scoobies. And there's clearly an ongoing issue
with Anya regarding being almost killed by Buffy. This could be
interesting as it develops.
I presume you didn't notice, due to apathy, some reappearing characters
from "Checkpoint" in the Council chambers. Not that it matters anymore...
---
WILLOW
No, I have to get out of the house. Xander's installing the new windows,
and he keeps giving lectures on proper tool maintenance. Tool talk—not
my thing.
---
...thereby destroying years of carefully-constructed lesbian stereotypes
in one throwaway line.
---
XANDER
Well, there was this one guy—there was this one guy, he, uh, he hurt her
real bad, so she paid him back. She killed him, but she did it real
slow. See first she stopped his heart, then she replaced it with
darkness, then she made him live his life like that. But he still had to
go do his job and see his friends and wake up in the morning and go to
bed at night, but he had to do it all empty. Without anything to look
forward to. Ever.
---
This is an interesting perspective, considering he's the one who left
her at the altar. But what it points out is that, while the show's dwelt
an awful lot on what that event meant for Anya -- back to vengeance
demonhood, sex with Spike, lots of tension between her and Xander, and
the events of "Beneath You" and "Selfless" -- it has pretty much ignored
Xander. He got the big redemptive moment in "Grave," sure, but nothing
has been done to address his ongoing issues.
---
SPIKE-2
(walks toward Spike, who's still tied to the chair) Well, we've got
ourselves a problem.
---
The First hasn't seemed all that concerned with what people do and don't
know. But this time -- with Andrew about to spill the beans about the
seal -- it is, and it goads Spike into attempting to kill Andrew. That
seems important. Maybe it's just to keep the Scoobies from stopping the
übervamp-raising before it starts, but maybe there's more to it.
---
ANYA
Maybe it's another musical. (Buffy glares) A much crappier musical.
---
I laughed.
It's interesting that, in the trigger discussion, Xander is actually the
one who stops the group from going down the "Spike's too dangerous, we
have to kill him" path, which is where it seems about to head. That's a
first.
---
QUENTIN TRAVERS
We'll be paying a visit to the hellmouth. My friends, these are the
times that define us. Proverbs 24:6. By wise counsel, you shall make
your war.
---
Maybe this war is not going to be made by "wise counsel." In other
words, the old Watcher/Slayer model of battling evil, so successful in
almost every other case, might not apply here. So what does that leave?
> AOQ rating: Good
Pretty much.
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
> shape, and that's even with the show keeping Giles's fate a mystery
since hes not a regular he doesnt get paid if he doesnt appear
> for another week. Somehow Andrew, who has a cool villain coat and has
the reveal is supposed to make you thinks its spike out on the hunt
until you pan up to andrwews face
> for both of his Trio mates in the process. Here the episode does very
> well with the comic writing, making something fun and Andrew-ish out of
> something important without deflating it, and First/Warren ends up as a
andrew does have a habit of prattling on and on
and making it hard to threaten him
> A chance meeting in line for blood makes the threads intersect, and
> allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
> Andrew and Willow - first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
again note the similarities of willow-xander and andrew-warren-jonathon
nerds and outcasts and comic book fans and some of the brighter kids
willow and andrew are both playing dungeons and dragons roles in the alley
as they posture without wanting to really be bad
> Having that scene also thematically sets the stage for Xander and Anya
> to play Good/Bad Cop later. From there, the parallel interrogations
> gimmick holds up well, especially when they keep coming together with
anya really seems to enjoy beating on andrew
i like buffys nonchalance to his interrogation
> how much he hates Spike every five seconds. As he says in "Him,"
> "not the right time." Even the "constant" characters should be
> discernibly different after seven years of show.
yes annoying xander has been disappearing more and more under suave xander
part of the reason for the three nerds is they were a kind of magic reset button
taking us back to the willow and xander of season one as the geeky outsiders
> Somewhere on the side, Jonathan's corpse is used to reveal that,
> shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
i guess this is one show where the black guy doesnt die first
> turning things right back around. And that almost angry expression of
> trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
on this show having a soul is worth more than mere life or death
also note the conversation in the basement strongly suggests
that besides the generic violence and killing
spike was also vicious sadistic rapist
keeping some victims alive for quite awhile as he abused them again and again
> While we're on that, are we clear on how or why the First gets
> certain people under its thrall more than others? The newly-souled
going back to the conversations
its clear willow was talking to the first in azura skyes form
holden the vampire said he felt he was connected to a greater evil
its possible he was completely controlled by fe
that would suggest it can control vampires and perhaps other demons
(or maybe holden was random evil undead guy)
spike was being triggerred by fe to kill his date
was joyce summers really first evil?
it couldve been real joyce fighting through barriers fe set up
and eventually reaching her daughter with an important warning
or it could be all fe and it made dawn go through all the fright and fight
because that would trick dawn into believe she was talking to mom instead of fe
and so the message is a deception to turn the sisters against each other
for humans its clear the first is restricted to daunting or persuading them
warren the first does what he can to persuade andrew
but when andrew refuses warren cannot do anything to him directly
demons might be enthralled to fe if holden was
note that both times we have a vampire with a soul
he gets personal attention from fe
the amends episode with angel
and the beginning of this season for spike
perhaps there is something about a soul and demon sharing a body
that makes them a special pet for fe
it doesnt appear souled spike is controlled
but the first can trigger a disassociative state
where souled spike is submerged and demon spike comes out to play
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
while budget constraints might make the shot confusing
the watchers council building is done blown up real good
with the watchers council inside
also many of the other watchers in the field have also been killed
so the entire organization is crippled
eventually buffy and faith will die
and while they themselves might not need or want watchers any more
their successor will miss not having a watcher to train and guide her
like it or not watchers had tremendous resources at hand
buffy would be a grease stain by now if it hadnt been for watchers
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
> start to all look the same after awhile.
kids these days
always need a newer and more exciting way to blow up the world
> A list of other parts that made me laugh, Really Stupid and otherwise:
ive got stuff coming out both ends (thats a romantic image)
willow offering to kill anya to feed spike
the worst attempted pig slaughtering ive ever seen
xander ready to pump andrew
anya pummeling andrew and then smiling over her shoulder to buffy
meow arf meow - they are performing horrible experiments in space
major grubert is watching you - beware the bakalite
there can only be one or two - the airtight garage has you neo
One Bit Shy
news:1158890816....@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> There're a few intersecting plot threads here as the story takes
> shape, and that's even with the show keeping Giles's fate a mystery
> for another week. Somehow Andrew, who has a cool villain coat
The first of several very cool images in this episode. Anya's lead in, "I
think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that William the
Bloody is back," switching to Spike in full regalia - er - Andrew. It's
easy - even cheap - but how can you not laugh?
> and has
> at least gotten Buffy to learn his name
They kind of pushed that joke to the edge though. Having "Tucker's brother"
explain who he is to Spike is playing the joke for its own sake since Spike
would have little reason to know who Tucker was, while he's actually met
Andrew.
> , ends up as the catalyst for a
> lot of this episode's action,
Who'd of thunk? Remembering first impressions, I had a hard time getting my
arms around the notion that Andrew would be the lone Trio survivor and
somehow the center of action amidst the Scoobies. It works though. Pretty
darn good in this episode.
> And then there's the transition from "isn't there some other way
> we could get blood" to taking a number...
And hurriedly slipping in the blood order amidst that massive meat order.
What a dweeb. Well, at least all that food went to a household that seems a
bit overfilled with people...
> This is another show in which not a whole lot happens until the end
> (which is kinda the payoff for all the trying-to-figure-stuff-out stuff
> in the first half), and the action stays confined to a few locations.
It also repeats a lot. More later.
But, oddly, the pacing is very lively.
> But the dialogue is very sparkly so things stay entertaining.
Yes. There's a lot of humor. Characters stay in character. And most
conversations have something to say - and make sense.
All the things I wish had been more in evidence last episode.
> A chance meeting in line for blood makes the threads intersect, and
> allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
> Andrew and Willow - first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
I laugh a lot at this scene too, but it's also kind of jarring. I've become
so attuned to dark Willow/recovering Willow that I forget just Willow. On
the other hand, Willow's, "Not making it better," when Andrew pushes the
Tara/Buffy shooting too far does remind us what's beneath.
> Having that scene also thematically sets the stage for Xander and Anya
> to play Good/Bad Cop later. From there, the parallel interrogations
> gimmick holds up well, especially when they keep coming together with
> Spike breaking out of his and almost putting an end to Andrew's.
The interrogation of Andrew is the highlight of the episode for me. "The
weasel wants to sing. He just needs a tune." Of course there is rather a
hint of the old vengeance demon breaking out here, but Anya is having so
much fun it's hard to deny her.
I guess some subtext here is Anya and Xander carving out a new friendship -
with room for Anya to clock Xander, and for Xander to ruminate on Anya
taking metaphorical vengeance on him... Until he snapped out of it and
startled Andrew with, "Then she tore out his intestines and rubbed it in his
face and took pictures of it."
> Can I just throw in as an aside how much I appreciate seeing Xander
> being helpful when he knows the situation demands it? A lesser episode
> wouldn't have thought to have him do anything other than reminding us
> how much he hates Spike every five seconds. As he says in "Him,"
> "not the right time." Even the "constant" characters should be
> discernibly different after seven years of show.
I'm glad you said that. I was noticing this last viewing how much Xander's
manner stood out this episode. Unusually comfortable with his place, and
fitting into things - differently. I wasn't sure exactly what it was, but
perhaps you've identified it. A lot of what I noticed seemed to be
physical, though, not just what he said.
> Somewhere on the side, Jonathan's corpse is used to reveal that,
> shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
> My working theory is that he's theoretically a "good guy" in the
> same sense as the Watchers or the Initiative commandoes, but will end
> up working at cross-purposes with our heroes. That's just because
> that was what I was expecting them to do with Snyder back in late S2.
Not a bad theory - though a little bit undercut by the Snyder reference.
;-) I think one question we're supposed to be left with is whether he's
under The First's influence too. The odd way he suddenly stopped and turned
to go to the basement. His impassive burial of Jonathan that reminds you of
Spike burying his victim last episode.
Whatever is going on, Principal Wood's scenes have more cool images and
effectively load up the mystery.
> Now it's Spoik's turn to get chained up in all sorts of weird
> positions. For those who've wondered why Buffy doesn't kill Spike,
> here's an explicit answer. Despite a few clunky lines, their second
> extended conversation in the cellar as a whole is one of their best.
> (The earlier "feeling sorry for yourself?" exchange isn't too
> shabby either, helping give these little bits of defining where the
> differences are between S6 and S7 Spike.) When I complained vaguely
> about the lack of "depth" in the dialogue last episode, this is
> exactly what I was talking about. Spike channels his self-loathing
> into doing his best to repulse Buffy with what he used to be, and when
> she doesn't even flinch, he tries another tack, hitting hard with the
> "you like men who hurt you" thing. It's great to see her
> forcefully brush it away in a way she couldn't have last year,
> turning things right back around. And that almost angry expression of
> trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
> that's so nice it practically demands that something bad happen a few
> minutes later if the show wants to keep its reputation for cruelty.
OK. First, Buffy saying, "I believe in you, Spike," followed by Spike's
expression of wonder is terrifically poignant. One of the better moments of
the season.
Another image I think is really cool is Buffy feeding Spike. Man, people in
this show find themselves having to do some pretty strange things. What a
way to show - without fighting - how, yes, Buffy's life is different than
mine or yours. (I'm also a little bit reminded of Cordelia finding herself
dissecting demon bodies and such in AtS.)
There is some nice expression of a number of ideas in their conversations,
but the thing is, it also repeats an awful lot of the ideas from the prior
episode. We've got Buffy and Friends raising pretty much the same issues
about helping Spike, with the same even tone, and the same result. Buffy
interrogates Spike about the killings, but he doesn't remember things.
Fake-Spike provokes an attack on a human, while Buffy marvels at how he
seemed to instantly change. We're reminded that Spike is a vicious killer,
and he asks Buffy to kill him because of that, but Buffy sees something good
in him and offers hope to him instead.
Yes, they do each of these things differently. Sometimes with major
differences in tone. Like bodies bursting through the floor to show Buffy
what Spike is capable of last episode. Here it's a smaller attack on Andrew
and a lot of words about how bad he really is from Spike. (Which,
incidentally, can't possibly impress Buffy. With the stuff she's seen - not
least of which being Angelus - Spike talking about knowing how much blood to
suck isn't really all that special.)
Most of it is pretty good too. (And at least the part about understanding
how Buffy used Spike last season is new - though there's still some
relationship overlap with last episode in the soul conversation.) They talk
about the soul again too, though this time it goes into the notion of it
being about self-loathing while leaving out the pride in getting it and how
it replaces the chip. The chip too, gets approached a little differently.
So it's not identical, but damn, it's still pretty much the same topics and
sequence, with an awful lot of similar conclusions.
And this takes up a great deal of both episodes - could be said to be the
heart of both episodes.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels really weird to me - and somewhat deflates
this episode since important elements, including the big conclusion of
believing in Spike, aren't really news any more.
I don't know what actually went on, but again, it feels like something is
askew in the way stories were breaking at this point in the season.
> A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
> as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
> She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
> end, as does Xander.
Dawn doesn't seem to have the kind of experience to know how to finish, for
example. But she's obviously been practicing and has become quite
resourceful - Buffy like.
> Andrew once again seems to the viewer like he's
> in real danger, and could very easily be killed off, until Buffy makes
> a literal last-minute rescue.
Another highlight. Using Andrew as a weapon - and then keeping him
contained. Buffy's really thinking on her feet there.
I suppose it's worth saying that this season deserves credit for finding a
few new, inventive ways to fight. The pocketbook with a brick in Lessons.
Throwing the axe up into the tree in Helpless. And know slinging Andrew
around. Not bad.
> Finally seeing the robed guys allows
> Buffy to instantly drag up the proper memory to identify them.
> According to Don, a lot of fans figured it out as quickly as she did,
> back in the first few episodes of the year. I can't comment since I
> was semi-spoiled that the First would be back, but I'm not good with
> the visual memory, so I wouldn't have remembered the design of one
> particular evil order that appeared briefly in one episode four years
> earlier.
On first viewing I could not for the life of me remember The First. I'm not
certain if I'd actually seen Amends or not at that point. With the
syndication cycle I had been following, I should have had 2 or 3 chances at
it by then, but I know I still missed a few episodes.
But I do remember when next I saw Amends thinking, that's it? That's where
we got the Big Bad from whom all Big Bads flow? Nothing against that
episode, but I wasn't impressed. Wondered for a long time why the series
chose to tie itself to that. And, you know, I kind of still do.
> While we're on that, are we clear on how or why the First gets
> certain people under its thrall more than others? The newly-souled
> monster is an easy target for bringing out the crazy, but why Andrew
> and Willow, and did the latter limit its ability to talk to her by
> figuring out its game? And Spike seems to be genuinely controlled
> where the others are just influenced.
One would naturally think that Andrew is weak of character and half-way into
his own fantasy land anyway. Beyond that... good questions.
Well, no, I'll add that the "influence" on Andrew seems to work not far from
control when The First is around. He really got Andrew believing the
malarky. Too a large extent, I think the same is/was true for Spike. (Not
sure yet what Buffy's influence will do.) But Spike also has this musical
trigger thing going on, which is different.
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered.
Heh.
> Then
> Spike gets bled to open the fold-out pentagram. The visuals in this
> scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
> start to all look the same after awhile.
Yeah, true. But it's still nicely shot. I think the closing image is
pretty cool. And we do get the tantalizing line, "Now, Spike, wanna see
what a real vampire looks like?"
>
> A list of other parts that made me laugh, Really Stupid and otherwise:
> - "I mean, you've always been part of the 'Spike Is Evil'
> faction." [a little bit obvious, but I tend to enjoy those little
> nicks in the fourth wall]
Then you ought to include, "I was going to bleed Andrew, but (sighs) you
look a lot better with your shirt off."
> So...
>
> One-sentence summary: Not big on the ending, but a rich episode
> otherwise.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
An immensely frustrating episode for me. It's very nicely constructed,
deserving a Good rating in most respects. But it effectively repeats way
too much of the last episode to work properly for me. And it can't replace
the last episode, because that's when mad Spike actually was seriously bad
and under the First's control. More of his mystery was unraveled then too,
though this one identifies The First. Plus what I think was a much more
powerful look at the soul element itself.
It's like this is take 2. Fixes a bunch of stuff, but can't replace take 1.
So we end up seeing an awful lot twice.
So I can't rate it above Decent.
OBS
jil...@hotmail.com
conclusion that The First isn't actually disturbed by the concept of a
vampire with a human soul. What seems to really upset it is the
conjunction of said souled vampire, the Slayer and the Sunnydale
Hellmouth.
Skipping the fact that things don't come up in stories until the
writers happen to decide to use them, I suspect The First had no
weaknesses to exploit until Angel came back from whichever hell
dimension Acathla dumped him in. Even then, it needed the help of its
minions to get at him. Spike, my guess is it got at him when he
arrived back in Sunnydale. Spike couldn't differentiate the nightmare
horrors his soul was shrieking about from the manipulations of The
First.
Angel also dreamed about killing Buffy (er, did he?). The First was
probably trying to brainwash Spike into killing her, and that certainly
made for confusion when the real Buffy arrived on his... er...
doorstep. Isn't the room Spike was in the same room the Seal was in?
I can't remember.
Spike is, of course, currently chock full of blood from killing and
siring so many people (presumably over the course of a night or two).
Good source for opening the Seal.
One Bit Shy
news:-dWdndm1CtnI-I7Y...@rcn.net...
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>> And that almost angry expression of
>> trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
>> that's so nice it practically demands that something bad happen a few
>> minutes later if the show wants to keep its reputation for cruelty.
>
> ---
>
> BUFFY
> Be easier, wouldn't it, it if were an act, but it's not. You faced the
> monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked everything to be a
> better man.
>
> SPIKE
> Buffy...
>
> BUFFY
> And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I believe in
> you, Spike.
>
> ---
>
> Probably not coincidentally, this pretty much parallels "Amends." It
> interests me that you dismissed very similar conversations as melodramatic
> in that episode. I'm not really saying you were wrong, but I do think it
> represents a slight shift in your...I guess the word is "acceptance" of
> the show's modes.
Yeah, but Amends dragged it out considerably longer with terribly awkward
ebbs and flows and false climaxes. I'm one who liked the content and
individual lines in the Buffy/Angel conversation, but still thought the play
of it was off. Joss squeezed five melodramas into a one melodrama slot.
OBS
Scythe Matters
> Yeah, but Amends dragged it out considerably longer with terribly awkward
> ebbs and flows and false climaxes. I'm one who liked the content and
> individual lines in the Buffy/Angel conversation, but still thought the play
> of it was off. Joss squeezed five melodramas into a one melodrama slot.
I think the major underlying difference is that, in "Amends," Joss
needed to (or felt he needed to) say something fundamental about Angel,
something that hadn't really been said before. The episode was *about*
him, and chose to bring all the grand melodrama of the Angel backstory
and the even more dramatic melo ;-) of his doomed relationship to bear
on the subject.
Here, the episode's not really about this subject, but only includes it
in the stew, and the little bit that does parallel "Amends" doesn't have
to say anything about Spike; all that's already been said, and recently
(as you note in your primary response). Instead, it's saying something
important but brief about Buffy: why is she pursuing this ostensibly
dangerous course of action? A question it answers in a single exchange.
"Never Leave Me" avoids what you think is wrong with "Amends" because
it's not just about one thing that happens to be fraught with melodrama.
It's a matter of taste, certainly, but I find the endless and recycled
melodrama of this particular relationship far more tiresome than the
most turgid parts of "Amends." Even though I greatly prefer Spike (at
just about any point) to Angel in season three (of _BtVS_).
In any case, I was simply noting the parallels here: both ensouled
vampires, both wracked with guilt, both trying to die, both being talked
down from the ledge by Buffy...and in both cases, the chief villain is
The First. The parallels only go so far, of course, because the episodes
end much differently...and yet, we haven't seen the end of either story.
In a very real way, "Amends" puts Angel on the path he's still on by the
end of AoQ's _Angel_ viewing, and so despite the melodrama it's an
Important (or perhaps Very Special) Episode. It remains to be seen where
Spike's going, other than to a King Diamond concert.
lili...@gmail.com
There's also another difference. When Angel is put in this situation in
Amends, Buffy's words aren't what changes his mind. In fact, he still
would have killed himself, no matter what she said. It's only the
magical snow that saves him. Spike on the other hand actually listens
to Buffy and takes her words into his heart.
Spike also takes full responsibility for what he's done, he won't let
her get away with saying that what he did wasn't him.
Lore
Arbitrar Of Quality
> > Spike channels his self-loathing
> > into doing his best to repulse Buffy with what he used to be, and when
> > she doesn't even flinch, he tries another tack, hitting hard with the
> > "you like men who hurt you" thing. It's great to see her
> > forcefully brush it away in a way she couldn't have last year,
> > turning things right back around.
>
> Look at the whole exchange, though:
> SPIKE
> Don't do that. Don't rationalize this into some noble act. We both know
> the truth of it. You like men who hurt you.
>
> BUFFY
> No.
>
> SPIKE
> You need the pain we cause you. You need the hate. You need it to do
> your job, to be the slayer.
>
> BUFFY
> No. I don't hate like that. Not you, or myself. Not anymore. You think
> you have insight now because your soul's drenched in blood? You don't
> know me. You don't even know you.
>
> ---
[snip]
> I'm not arguing that he's right. Or wrong. I think there's a little of
> both here, and for her to say "you don't know me" is a little
> silly...he's rarely been 100% right about her, but he's almost always
> been at least partially right. It's a fundamental part of their
> interactions since...well, seasons and seasons ago. So while it's
> important that she respond with the force you identify, because it shows
> progress, I don't think a clear refutation of his perspective is
> warranted. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Part of it at this particular moment, though, is that Spike is trying
to divert the conversation, and possibly to get her angry enough to
leave him. He can't get her riled up with the dissertation on why
unsouled Spike was a fairly unpleasant individual, but he's always
gotten a reaction with this before. It's not just about whether or not
he's right, but about Buffy refusing to let him steer these discussions
anymore the way he used to. Because she's decided that he needs to
live - and a big part of that is to stop trying to hide behind his past
self (also seen in "Beneath You") and accept how much she believes in
him, whether he wants to deal with that or not.
> Probably not coincidentally, this pretty much parallels "Amends." It
> interests me that you dismissed very similar conversations as
> melodramatic in that episode. I'm not really saying you were wrong, but
> I do think it represents a slight shift in your...I guess the word is
> "acceptance" of the show's modes.
I've had "shifts" that people have seen towards appreciating what the
show's doing, or its sense of humor, or whatever, that've turned out to
be illusory. I prefer to think that the leading theory at the moment
is that this scene is better than the one in "Amends." And yes, as OBS
says, the melodramatic parts are shorter.
> But as you say, none of the others are controlled, they're influenced.
> That's different. Andrew's influenced because he has/had a thing for
> Warren...somewhere between love and worship...and because he seems to
> have a tenuous hold on reality and consequences. I guess I'm not sure
> why you see Willow as more thrallsome than anyone else, though. Did she
> do anything the First desired?
I guess just the fact that it targeted her so intensively. As others
have pointed out, though, it's seeming like it can talk to anyone, it
just doesn't always choose to.
> ANYA
> Maybe it's another musical. (Buffy glares) A much crappier musical.
>
> ---
>
> I laughed.
Yeah, me too.
-AOQ
Scythe Matters
> In fact, he still
> would have killed himself, no matter what she said.
That's not at all clear. It's possible, but the reverse is possible as
well. Angel was clearly wavering at the end.
Scythe Matters
> Part of it at this particular moment, though, is that Spike is trying
> to divert the conversation [etc.]
Oh, absolutely. But this still doesn't render what he's saying
fundamentally untrue.
> I've had "shifts" that people have seen towards appreciating what the
> show's doing, or its sense of humor, or whatever, that've turned out to
> be illusory. I prefer to think that the leading theory at the moment
> is that this scene is better than the one in "Amends." And yes, as OBS
> says, the melodramatic parts are shorter.
We'll see, when you rewatch. As for appreciating humor, worry not:
you've not improved a whit in that regard. ;-)
> I guess just the fact that it targeted her so intensively. As others
> have pointed out, though, it's seeming like it can talk to anyone, it
> just doesn't always choose to.
Well, the season is young. But the targeting of Willow is more easily
explained by the facts that she's emotionally vunerable and immensely
powerful. She's a more interesting target than, say, Xander.
Daniel Damouth
news:1158907449.7...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> Scythe Matters wrote:
>> In any case, I was simply noting the parallels here: both
>> ensouled vampires, both wracked with guilt, both trying to die,
>> both being talked down from the ledge by Buffy...and in both
>> cases, the chief villain is The First. The parallels only go so
>> far, of course, because the episodes end much differently...and
>> yet, we haven't seen the end of either story. In a very real way,
>> "Amends" puts Angel on the path he's still on by the end of AoQ's
>> _Angel_ viewing, and so despite the melodrama it's an Important
>> (or perhaps Very Special) Episode. It remains to be seen where
>> Spike's going, other than to a King Diamond concert.
>
> There's also another difference. When Angel is put in this
> situation in Amends, Buffy's words aren't what changes his mind.
> In fact, he still would have killed himself, no matter what she
> said. It's only the magical snow that saves him. Spike on the
> other hand actually listens to Buffy and takes her words into his
> heart.
>
> Spike also takes full responsibility for what he's done, he won't
> let her get away with saying that what he did wasn't him.
Wasn't Angel the one who took full responsibility, who was going to
let himself die for what he'd done? Whereas Spike let Buffy talk him
down. Angel said "It's not the demon in me that needs killing, it's
the man."
-Dan Damouth
Ken from Chicago
"Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
news:dsample-DDBE91...@news.giganews.com...
> In article <--6dnVj2QKWe147Yn...@giganews.com>,
> Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>> > A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>> > threads.
>> >
>> >
>> > BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>> > Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
>> > (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
>> > Writer: Drew Goddard
>> > Director: David Solomon
>> >
>
>> > first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
>> > imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
>> > you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
>> > knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
>> > work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
>> > can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
>> > or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
>>
>> Another little deja vu moment, this one a callback to "Doppelgangland":
>> it's true that when Willow is really being bad, she's *Really Bad* - but
>> she can't *play* bad to save her life...
>
> But we do get a flash that she can be really bad, when Andrew starts
> trying to weasel out by saying that it was Warren who killed Tara, and
> he was really aiming at Buffy anyway.
He was "only" trying to kill her best friend, not her girl friend.
>> > A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
>> > as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
>> > She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
>> > end, as does Xander.
>>
>> Dawn is a scrapper. Maybe she *has* been paying attention to Buffy all
>> this time.
>
> She needs to work on her killer instinct though. She shouldn't have
> hesitated when going after that Bringer.
If she could use her scream as a weapon (like Black Canary, Banshee or
Siren), she'd be nuclear.
> --
> Quando omni flunkus moritati
> Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
-- Ken from Chicago
vague disclaimer
Scythe Matters <sp...@spam.spam> wrote:
> Blowing up what appears to be a major building in London (I suppose
> this, like "Earshot" and "GD2," might have had to be suppressed in the
> UK if it had aired a few years later)
Heh.
Yep. 'Cos everything we've learned about terrorism we've learned since
this episode aired.
--
Wikipedia: like Usenet, moderated by trolls
lili...@gmail.com
I always said that the First isn't so much about killing people (though
there is that too), it's about corrupting souls. Angel and Spike
weren't interesting until they got their souls and had a chance to
either redeem or damn themselves.
And in Spike's case, especially, with him voluntarily choosing the
soul, he basically gives the First a serious defeat doing that, which
is why he instantly gets the Firsts attention.
Notice that the First never bothered Angel, until there was a risk that
he'd actually actively start fighting on Buffy's side?
(I don't count s1 since he was mostly being annoyingly cryptic and
standing by the sides while Buffy risked her life then). But in s3, he
starts questioning things, his return and slowly starts turning into a
warrior for good and it's then that the First gets interested in him.
Once Angel moves over to LA, the First does seem to lose interest in
him, but how much of that is lack of slayer and how much of it is that
it just leaves the job to its minions, aka W&H (abg n fcbvyre rvgure
jnl, ohg V nyjnlf gubhtug gung J&U'f nggrzcgf ng frqhpvat Natry, jrer n
ybg yvxr Gur Svefgf nggrzcgf ng frqhpvat uvz va Nzraqf.)
Buffy wins, when she wins a soul for the side of good, and that is the
last thing that the First would ever want.
Lore
Elisi
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
> Writer: Drew Goddard
> Director: David Solomon
Going to focus on just two things this time, the interrogations and the
Spike/Buffy scene. Partly because I don't have much time, and partly
because I think these are the most important parts of the episode.
> From there, the parallel interrogations
> gimmick holds up well, especially when they keep coming together with
> Spike breaking out of his and almost putting an end to Andrew's.
I love these scenes. The juxtaposition of Spike and Andrew show very
clearly just how different they are:
Andrew isn't just young and immature, he's retreated almost completely
into a fantasy world. He changes his story all the time, trying to see
what answers will fit best. He's utterly irresponsible, and has no
understanding of the severity of his actions. He obviously feels bad
about killing Jonathan, but only in a 'naughty' way I think.
Spike on the other hand is honest - brutally so on occasion - but never
holds back. Knows what he did, knows he has to pay, knows that
pretending will get you nowhere. We see the difference between them
also in their relation to pain:
Spike shrugs of the torture and pain of the trials as inconsequential
compared to his mental anguish.
Andrew has no understanding of the sort of mental pain Xander is trying
to explain, and he has to resort to crude torture before Andrew reacts.
(Incidentally that speech is one of my favourite ever from Xander,
because we get a look at how he feels now, and how life is without
Anya:
XANDER: "Well, there was this one guy-there was this one guy, he, uh,
he hurt her real bad, so she paid him back. She killed him, but she did
it real slow. See first she stopped his heart, then she replaced it
with darkness, then she made him live his life like that. But he still
had to go do his job and see his friends and wake up in the morning and
go to bed at night, but he had to do it all empty. Without anything to
look forward to. Ever."
It's a little like Buffy's confessions to Holden - the whole 'there are
some things you can only tell a stranger'. Only in this case a stranger
too stupid to understand you're talking about yourself.)
> Now it's Spoik's turn to get chained up in all sorts of weird
> positions. For those who've wondered why Buffy doesn't kill Spike,
> here's an explicit answer. Despite a few clunky lines, their second
> extended conversation in the cellar as a whole is one of their best.
> When I complained vaguely
> about the lack of "depth" in the dialogue last episode, this is
> exactly what I was talking about. Spike channels his self-loathing
> into doing his best to repulse Buffy with what he used to be, and when
> she doesn't even flinch, he tries another tack, hitting hard with the
> "you like men who hurt you" thing. It's great to see her
> forcefully brush it away in a way she couldn't have last year,
> turning things right back around. And that almost angry expression of
> trust and faith, in spite of everything, is one of those things
> that's so nice it practically demands that something bad happen a few
> minutes later if the show wants to keep its reputation for cruelty.
I love that scene. It's one of the most important Spike/Buffy scenes in
the season if not the whole show. As some people have already pointed
out, this scene mirrors the one at the end of 'Amends'. I'm going to
try to lay out why, and also explain the reason this one works, and the
other doesn't (apart from the Amends one being waaaaay cheesy. I'm
talking about the relationships and how the characters deal with them).
Firstly there are obvious parallels, since in both episodes we have a
souled vampire being driven to the point of suicide by The First Evil.
But there are important differences:
Angel is terrified of losing control again - he wants to take comfort
in Buffy, but knows it will cost him his soul. When The First tells him
"You were _born_ to hurt her", he believes it. He knows he is on the
brink, and seeks the sunrise so he won't give in to his weaknesses.
Angel: " Look, I'm weak. I've never been anything else. It's not the
demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man."
Spike is being physically controlled. Hurting people is not something
he has control over, and when Buffy tells him what's going on he tells
her to kill him. He's a weapon, and a dangerous one at that. And it is
the demon in Spike that makes him dangerous, not the man.
So Spike has a much better case for getting dusted. Angel just wants
his internal battle to stop - Spike does not want to be used against
his will.
Anyway, then we get to the conversations, where both vampires try to
explain to Buffy just how bad they are and how they deserve death - and
Buffy's response:
~~~~~~
AMENDS:
Angel: Am I a thing worth saving, huh? Am I a righteous man? The world
wants me gone!
Buffy: What about me? I love you so much... And I tried to make you go
away... I killed you and it didn't help.
NEVER LEAVE ME:
Spike: I already did it. It's already done. You wanna know what I've
done to girls Dawn's age? This is me Buffy. You've got to kill me
before I get out.
<snip>
Buffy:You're alive because I saw you change. Because I saw your
penance.[...] Be easier, wouldn't it, it if were an act, but it's not.
You faced the monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked
everything to be a better man.
Spike: Buffy...
Buffy: And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I
believe in you, Spike.
~~~~~~~~
The key question is Angel's desperate "Am I a thing worth saing?" I
re-watched the ep recently and the pain behind those words just kills
me. And Buffy doesn't answer that question (she talks about being
strong later, and about fighting, but not about whether he's worth
saving). The main part of her argument is - if you die you'll hurt me
again. Angel asks if he's worth saving, and she says that _she_ needs
him. Stay because I love you.
And then the argument goes away when the magic snow comes. Would
Buffy's arguments have swayed Angel in time? We don't know - and The
Powers certainly didn't think so.
Spike in essence asks the same question, and Buffy comes out with a
resounding 'Yes'. He _is_ worth saving. Not because of any feelings she
might have, but for his own sake. The look on his face is amazing.
And I love that. To me, that's more important that a world full of 'I
love you's, and it's one of the reasons Spike/Buffy is so much more
satisfying to me than Buffy/Angel. Don't get me wrong, B/A is a great
story, in all its doomed glory, but take away the love and what's left?
Of course Spike then gets stolen by The First. Will Buffy's words make
a difference? Or will he give up the way Angel did?
And because I can't help myself, a couple more points.
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered.
I think the important thing is that this was Buffy's backup. Yes they
were idiots, but they had immense stores of knowledge and resources.
All wiped out. Also this time I noticed something I never had before:
Travers' last line: "My friends, these are the times that define us.
Proverbs, 24:6. "For by wise counsel, you shall make your war."
Wise Council? *snigggers*
> Then
> Spike gets bled to open the fold-out pentagram. The visuals in this
> scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
> start to all look the same after awhile.
But it's the Grr Argh monster! Look next time you see the credits! :)
> One-sentence summary: Not big on the ending, but a rich episode
> otherwise.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
Good - maybe Excellent, since there is no part of this that I don't
enjoy and the Spike/Buffy scenes are outstanding.
Elisi
How is committing suicide being responsible?
Stephen Tempest
<mair_...@yahoo.com> writes:
>also note the conversation in the basement strongly suggests
>that besides the generic violence and killing
>spike was also vicious sadistic rapist
>keeping some victims alive for quite awhile as he abused them again and again
Or that he wanted to convince Buffy of that, to make her angry and
repulsed enough to kill him.
That kind of slow, deliberate cruelty seems more like an Angelus than
a Spike thing to do - which doesn't rule out the possibility that
Spike learned it from Angelus ("you were my Yoda!") and did it to
impress him, during the 20 years or so they operated together.
Plus, given Spike's newly-ensouled status - and especially the fact of
*why* he got the soul - it's likely that even if he did that kind of
thing only once or twice, his memory of it would be a particularly
haunting and damning one.
>holden the vampire said he felt he was connected to a greater evil
>its possible he was completely controlled by fe
>that would suggest it can control vampires and perhaps other demons
>(or maybe holden was random evil undead guy)
I always assumed that was a generic thing that all vampires feel.
Given that The First was upset at Buffy learning about Spike so soon,
it doesn't seem likely that It sent Holden to talk to Buffy - the risk
of him giving away the plan was too great.
>was joyce summers really first evil?
>it couldve been real joyce fighting through barriers fe set up
>and eventually reaching her daughter with an important warning
According to Jane Espenson in the DVD commentary: Wblpr jnf, vaqrrq,
Gur Svefg. Fur nfxrq Wbff gung dhrfgvba naq ur fnvq lrf. Zvaq lbh, jr
xabj gung Wbff nyjnlf gryyf gur gehgu nobhg guvatf yvxr gung...
>anya pummeling andrew and then smiling over her shoulder to buffy
And her accidentally hitting Xander, then cringing and mouthing the
word 'sorry' before turning back to Andrew.
Stephen
George W Harris
<tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
:The visuals in this
:scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
:emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr.
Played by Camden Toy, previously seen as Gnarl, and
the lead Gentleman.
--
Firefly Fan Since September 20th, 2002 - Browncoat Since Birth
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >anya pummeling andrew and then smiling over her shoulder to buffy
>
> And her accidentally hitting Xander, then cringing and mouthing the
> word 'sorry' before turning back to Andrew.
anya missed her purpose in life
she should be a cia interrogator
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
"Elisi" <eli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wasn't Angel the one who took full responsibility, who was going to
> > let himself die for what he'd done? Whereas Spike let Buffy talk him
> > down. Angel said "It's not the demon in me that needs killing, it's
> > the man."
> >
> > -Dan Damouth
>
> How is committing suicide being responsible?
i knew someone once who intermittent bouts of severe schizophrenia
during one of his lucid periods he committed suicide
rather than going back into schizophrenia again
Apteryx
news:1158890816....@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> shape, and that's even with the show keeping Giles's fate a mystery
> for another week. Somehow Andrew, who has a cool villain coat and has
> at least gotten Buffy to learn his name, ends up as the catalyst for a
> lot of this episode's action, bringing another posthumous appearance
> for both of his Trio mates in the process. Here the episode does very
> well with the comic writing, making something fun and Andrew-ish out of
> something important without deflating it, and First/Warren ends up as a
> good straight-man, patiently trying to come up with ways to make use of
> what he has. "_Babe 2: Pig in the City_ was really underrated."
> And then there's the transition from "isn't there some other way
> we could get blood" to taking a number...
This could get boring. Nothing to disagree with so far...
> This is another show in which not a whole lot happens until the end
> (which is kinda the payoff for all the trying-to-figure-stuff-out stuff
> in the first half), and the action stays confined to a few locations.
> But the dialogue is very sparkly so things stay entertaining. (I
> don't know where this Drew Goddard person came from or how he got so
> good right away, but he's the new star of the BTVS writing staff for
> me.)
He's had a good start, certainly. But with so little of the series left, he
needs to keep up the momentum here to really establish himself.
>
> A chance meeting in line for blood makes the threads intersect, and
> allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
> Andrew and Willow - first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
Yeah, to me there's a great scene there struggling to get out. It's pretty
good, but should have been a lot better than that. I think the writing and
delivery is good (loved the "I'm not gonna" and the "okay"), but the camera
angles in the alley seem pretty amateurish
> Somewhere on the side, Jonathan's corpse is used to reveal that,
> shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
> My working theory is that he's theoretically a "good guy" in the
> same sense as the Watchers or the Initiative commandoes, but will end
> up working at cross-purposes with our heroes. That's just because
> that was what I was expecting them to do with Snyder back in late S2.
Well maybe he's just got the school board on his back about mysterious
deaths at the school, sees Jonathon, and figures he'd better tidy up before
anyone else notices.
> According to Don, a lot of fans figured it out as quickly as she did,
> back in the first few episodes of the year. I can't comment since I
> was semi-spoiled that the First would be back, but I'm not good with
> the visual memory, so I wouldn't have remembered the design of one
> particular evil order that appeared briefly in one episode four years
> earlier.
Of course, by the time season 7 aired, season 3 had been out on DVD for some
time (I assume even in the US and Canada where for some reason DVD releases
took longer than anywhere else) so people weren't just relying on the memory
of something from four years ago.
>
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered. Then
> Spike gets bled to open the fold-out pentagram. The visuals in this
> scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
> start to all look the same after awhile.
I don't mind the Council scenes so much, but yes, that monster who says grrr
is a huge anticlimax. Last two times the hellmouth was opened, first thing
out was a giant hydra thingy. I don't remember if that met its end in The
Zeppo, but whether its dead or just on a break, it seems a bit of a let down
that it's back up is just a monster who says grrr. It doesn't help that its
pose on emerging calls to mind the manifestation of the Fear Demon in Fear
Itself.
> A list of other parts that made me laugh, Really Stupid and otherwise:
> - "I mean, you've always been part of the 'Spike Is Evil'
> faction." [a little bit obvious, but I tend to enjoy those little
> nicks in the fourth wall]
> - Jonathan ruining the ritual by being anemic
> - "No, I have to get out of the house. Xander's installing the new
> windows, and he keeps giving lectures on proper tool maintenance"
> - The girls' reaction to "I'll be pumping him in no time"
> - "Is this left over from your days in the Army?" "No, this is
> left over from every Army movie I've ever seen"
> - "This trigger. How do we holster... safety, or... I don't know
> guns"
> - The big vampire at the end being credited as "Ubervamp"
>
>
> So...
>
> One-sentence summary: Not big on the ending, but a rich episode
> otherwise.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
For me, even though there is a lot of Good stuff in it, it just falls short
of Good in the end.
It's my 80th favourite BtVS episode, 7th best in season 7
--
Apteryx
Stephen Tempest
>Also, a new datum: it can't take corporeal form. Which, of course, calls
>into question how they're going to fight it.
Also calls into question the times we saw The First touch or caress
people - fairly sure there was quite a lot of that in 'Amends'. Maybe
it's purely psychosomatic - people see it touch them, and assume they
feel the touch even though they really don't. Or maybe it's the
equivalent of vampires getting accidentally reflected off things on
the set: just a mistake by the directors.
>Needing the hate and the pain to do her job...that's pretty tightly knit
>with the idea of her power having roots in or ties to darkness (going
>back to "BvD"...no need to re-repeat the relevant dialogue).
>
>Her not hating like that...I think I'm probably over-parsing here, but
>she doesn't precisely address his full assertion. She rejects the idea
>that she hates herself (which is supported by her actions starting
>somewhere around "As You Were" and proceeding from there, albeit in fits
>and starts) and him (supported by her actions thus far this season), but
>she doesn't refute the idea that the hate and pain are part of what
>fuels her job. Again: rooted in darkness.
Although that's not the only side to the story: you reference the
parallel to 'Amends' below, but there's another parallel relevant
here:
PRIMITIVE: You think you're losing your ability to love.
BUFFY:I didn't say that. (beat) Yes.
PRIMITIVE: You're afraid that being the Slayer means losing your
humanity.
BUFFY: Does it?
PRIMITIVE: You are full of love. You love with all of your soul. It's
brighter than the fire, blinding. That's why you pull away from it.
BUFFY: I'm full of love? I'm not losing it?
PRIMITIVE: Only if you reject it. Love is pain and the Slayer forges
strength from pain.
BUFFY: Yes.
Buffy nods
PRIMITIVE: Love. Give. Forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature. Love
will bring you to your gift.
So we do have a similar idea going on: "the Slayer forges strength
from pain." Buffy agreed with that statement then, even as she rejects
Spike's analysis now.. But in 'Intervention' we were told the pain
comes from love, not from hate. Is the Slayer power rooted in
darkness? Or is that simply what certain people want Buffy to think,
for their own reasons?
"Lbh'er nsenvq gung orvat gur Fynlre zrnaf ybfvat lbhe uhznavgl" jvyy
nyfb, bs pbhefr, svaq n gryyvat cnenyyry yngre ba gbb, va 'Trg Vg
Qbar'.
>1) Blowing up what appears to be a major building in London (I suppose
>this, like "Earshot" and "GD2," might have had to be suppressed in the
>UK if it had aired a few years later)
I don't think any episodes of Buffy were ever suppressed in the UK.
Postponed for a month because of snooker tournaments, yes. Having 10%
of their content edited out for excessive violence (in the case of
'Dead Things'), yes - although the uncut version was then shown after
midnight the same evening. But never actually banned.
Plus, we're used to having our buildings blown up in the UK. Happened
all the time, back then. <g>
>As always, it will depend on the followup. But I have to say: a growly
>demon rising from a hole in the ground where a pentagram once was...a
>few minutes after the mildly scary "hmmm" provided by the scene, my mind
>went somewhere I don't think the writers intended: Gachnar. ;-)
Yeah. While that's not the exact thought I had, I did feel that their
big dramatic ending was not quite as dramatic as the writers clearrly
hoped for...
>A few other things:
>ANYA
>Shouldn't we stab him through the chest? Isn't that what we do when
>these things happen?
She sounds a little bitter about that now, considering how she
actually seemed to welcome it back in 'Selfless'...
>WILLOW
>No, I have to get out of the house. Xander's installing the new windows,
>and he keeps giving lectures on proper tool maintenance. Tool talk... not
>my thing.
>
>...thereby destroying years of carefully-constructed lesbian stereotypes
>in one throwaway line.
"Bxnl, fnsr gb fnl ab bar jvyy rire npphfr lbh bs orvat gbb ohgpu."
Though I read that line using the non-literal meaning of 'tool', as in
the things Willow has to work around...
Stephen
Elisi
I can understand that. I can also understand Angel, but he has 3
choices:
1) Give in to the evil side of him.
2) Keep fighting.
3) Kill himself.
He chooses #3, but in the end The Powers choose #2 _for_ him. In S2 of
AtS he is brought to the same state of despair, only this time he
chooses #1 (and he's not worried about hurting Darla of course). That
road turns out to be a dead end, and he has his epiphany - he finds a
reason to keep fighting. (Buffy told him to fight, but she gave no
reason - the whole thing just got deferred.)
And I doubt that an episode called 'Amends' would really advocate
suicide as the best option. The whole thing is very similar to Willow's
talk with First!Cassie in CWDP (except the focus is different since
Willow's guide is 'good' whereas Angel's is 'evil'). She's told that
all she'll ever be is evil, and that killing herself is the only way
out. Angel bought it. Willow doesn't.
Scythe Matters
> Although that's not the only side to the story: you reference the
> parallel to 'Amends' below, but there's another parallel relevant
> here:
Good catch....
> So we do have a similar idea going on: "the Slayer forges strength
> from pain." Buffy agreed with that statement then, even as she rejects
> Spike's analysis now.. But in 'Intervention' we were told the pain
> comes from love, not from hate. Is the Slayer power rooted in
> darkness? Or is that simply what certain people want Buffy to think,
> for their own reasons?
...and a good question.
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Scythe Matters <sp...@spam.spam> writes:
>
> >Also, a new datum: it can't take corporeal form. Which, of course, calls
> >into question how they're going to fight it.
>
> Also calls into question the times we saw The First touch or caress
> people - fairly sure there was quite a lot of that in 'Amends'. Maybe
> it's purely psychosomatic - people see it touch them, and assume they
> feel the touch even though they really don't. Or maybe it's the
> equivalent of vampires getting accidentally reflected off things on
> the set: just a mistake by the directors.
in the basement scene with evil buffy comforting spike
then real buffy walks in
evil buffy is touching spike on the head
and then cut back and follow real buffy in
spike has his own hands in a similar position
Rincewind
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
> Writer: Drew Goddard
> Director: David Solomon
>
> allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
> Andrew and Willow - first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
It was a good enough scene, but I think it would have been better if we had
seen a glimpse of Dark Willow and then Just Willow struggle to suppress it.
After all we have seen in Selfless that her dark side is the first thing
that istinctively comes out in a moment of crisis: being face to face for
the first time with one of the villains that killed Tara certainly qualifies
as a good moment for it to happen.
> Andrew once again seems to the viewer like he's
> in real danger, and could very easily be killed off, until Buffy makes
> a literal last-minute rescue.
I love the way Buffy uses Andrew as a weapon against the bringers.
> I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered.
The worst visual effect in the history of television.
> One-sentence summary: Not big on the ending, but a rich episode
> otherwise.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
I agree with the Good.
As OBS said there is a lot of stuff that is simply a repetition of the
previous episode, but I think the intelligently funny parts (bad cop Anya,
the worst attempted pig slaughtering ever, "Hey, your hair's not even black
anymore") abundantly make up for it. And of course the Buffy / Spike
basement scene is really great.
Rincewind.
--
Lines you'll never hear on Buffy:
BUFFY to Spike: You're not alive because of hate or pain. You're alive
because Marti Noxon loves to see your naked body and will never let me stake
you.
Scythe Matters
> The worst visual effect in the history of television.
Let's not be hyperbolous, now.
(Yes, yes, "hypberbolic," I know... ;-) )
Ken from Chicago
"Elisi" <eli...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158921838.7...@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
Willow's advantage was she "only" murdered one person. Angel has a lot more
notches on his belt.
-- Ken from Chicago
Michael Ikeda
news:1158918482....@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>
>> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
>> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
>> Writer: Drew Goddard
>> Director: David Solomon
>
>
> I think the important thing is that this was Buffy's backup. Yes
> they were idiots, but they had immense stores of knowledge and
> resources. All wiped out. Also this time I noticed something I
> never had before:
>
> Travers' last line: "My friends, these are the times that define
> us. Proverbs, 24:6. "For by wise counsel, you shall make your
> war."
>
> Wise Council? *snigggers*
>
One other note is that Quentin's line slightly earlier: "We are
still masters of our fate, still captains of our souls." is a quote
from Winston Churchill. Quentin is trying to don his best
Churchillian persona here.
--
Michael Ikeda mmi...@erols.com
"Telling a statistician not to use sampling is like telling an
astronomer they can't say there is a moon and stars"
Lynne Billard, past president American Statistical Association
Rincewind
But this is usenet... where is the fun if one cannot be hyperbolisticous?
Rincewind.
--
Lines you'll never hear on Buffy:
BUFFY: Do you think it is a coincidence how every other week the world is
going to end, except when I go away for the summer? Hmm, maybe it is me.
Don Sample
lili...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Once Angel moves over to LA, the First does seem to lose interest in
> him, but how much of that is lack of slayer and how much of it is that
> it just leaves the job to its minions, aka W&H
The First has always acted through its minions. It really has very
little power in its own right. What it accomplishes, it does through
getting others to work in its behalf.
I always figured that the First was one of the "senior partners."
John Briggs
> In article <1158890816....@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>> threads.
>>
>>
>> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
>> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
>> Writer: Drew Goddard
>> Director: David Solomon
>>
>> shockingly, Principal Wood is in some way or another not an innocent.
>> My working theory is that he's theoretically a "good guy" in the
>> same sense as the Watchers or the Initiative commandoes, but will end
>> up working at cross-purposes with our heroes. That's just because
>> that was what I was expecting them to do with Snyder back in late S2.
>
> and for no reason he just stops, turns around, and goes down to the
> basement where the body is. Is he acting under his own power here?
>
>
>> While we're on that, are we clear on how or why the First gets
>> certain people under its thrall more than others? The newly-souled
>> monster is an easy target for bringing out the crazy, but why Andrew
>> and Willow, and did the latter limit its ability to talk to her by
>> figuring out its game? And Spike seems to be genuinely controlled
>> where the others are just influenced.
>
> Spike is susceptible because of the instability created by his newly
> restored soul. Andrew is susceptible because he already lives in a
> fantasy world, and is easily swayed. The First thought that it had a
> shot at Willow, because she still isn't in the best of places at the
> moment, still recovering from what happened to her last spring. It
> never had her under its thrall though. She didn't cut off the First's
> ability to talk to her. The First just decided that further talk at
> that point would be pointless. The First can talk to anyone it choses
> to. It revealed itself to Jonathan, just before Andrew stabbed him.
> It revealed itself to Buffy, back in "Amends," to do a little "you're
> boyfriend's going to die" taunting.
>
>
>> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
>> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
>> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
>> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
>> too. This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
>> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered.
>
> the building that they used for the London establishing shot. There
> was some speculation that there was a fake-out going on here, and
> someone else got blown up. (It wasn't. They just passed a different
> angle shot to the CGI team and told them to make it blow up.)
It was a production mistake. They had been filming in Whitehall (or using
stock footage.)
The first (establishing) shot is of the western facade of the (New)
Government Offices, Whitehall - the SW corner on Horse Guards Road and Great
George Street - what is now The Treasury.
The building being blown up is the Foreign Office! It's the SW corner on
Horse Guards Road and King Charles Street, i.e. the building next door to
(north of) The Treasury.
The film crew may have taken establishing shots of the Treasury across Great
George Street, then moved up Horse Guards Road where it was quieter and
filmed the Foreign Office using the same angle.
--
John Briggs
lpad...@voicenet.com
>
I remember reading somewhere that he showed up at the Wrap Party
without makeup and nobody (including SMG) knew who he was!
Don Sample
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
> <mair_...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> >holden the vampire said he felt he was connected to a greater evil
> >its possible he was completely controlled by fe
> >that would suggest it can control vampires and perhaps other demons
> >(or maybe holden was random evil undead guy)
>
> I always assumed that was a generic thing that all vampires feel.
It goes all the way back to Jesse in "The Harvest":
I feel good, Xander! I feel strong! I'm connected, man, to
everything!
> >was joyce summers really first evil?
> >it couldve been real joyce fighting through barriers fe set up
> >and eventually reaching her daughter with an important warning
What important warning? Did Joyce actually say anything useful?
Things are coming, Dawn. Listen, things are on their way. I love
you, and I love Buffy. But she won't be there for you. When it's
bad, Buffy won't choose you. She'll be against you."
What's coming? When? What won't Buffy choose Dawn for? How will she
be against Dawn? Maybe they're going to choose up volleyball teams, and
Buffy won't pick Dawn to be on hers, so Dawn will be on the other team,
against Buffy.
The only thing that message could accomplish was to disrupt the group,
make Dawn suspect Buffy.
Daniel Damouth
> The key question is Angel's desperate "Am I a thing worth saving?"
> I re-watched the ep recently and the pain behind those words just
> kills me. And Buffy doesn't answer that question (she talks about
> being strong later, and about fighting, but not about whether he's
> worth saving). The main part of her argument is - if you die
> you'll hurt me again. Angel asks if he's worth saving, and she
> says that _she_ needs him. Stay because I love you.
>
> And then the argument goes away when the magic snow comes. Would
> Buffy's arguments have swayed Angel in time? We don't know - and
> The Powers certainly didn't think so.
>
> Spike in essence asks the same question, and Buffy comes out with
> a resounding 'Yes'. He _is_ worth saving. Not because of any
> feelings she might have, but for his own sake. The look on his
> face is amazing.
>
> And I love that. To me, that's more important that a world full of
> 'I love you's, and it's one of the reasons Spike/Buffy is so much
> more satisfying to me than Buffy/Angel. Don't get me wrong, B/A is
> a great story, in all its doomed glory, but take away the love and
> what's left?
I see your point, and the "I believe in you" moment is truly moving
because Spike is at such a low point.
But to answer your question, take the love out of Buffy/Angel and what
you have is Buffy/Spike. If she'd professed her love for Spike, his
expression would have been even more amazing, but she doesn't feel that
way, so all she could do was say she believed in him.
In "Amends", Buffy doesn't just use personal reasons in her argument to
save Angel. She appeals to reason. She says he can hurt the First.
She says "Angel, you have the power to do real good". She repeatedly
tells him to fight. Near the end she falls apart and pleads for him to
live for her sake. But then she says "Strong is fighting! It's hard,
and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do." I
think it's clear that she believes in Angel, just as she believed in
Spike. But she was in love with Angel, so their scene was more
"cheesy", as you put it.
-Dan Damouth
rrh...@acme.com
Scythe Matters wrote:
> Note Willow's role: the new Giles, knocked out at the beginning of a
> fight. It's been clear for a while that giving her nearly unlimited
> power is a difficult thing to deal with, plot-wise. And here we have one
> ham-handed way to deal with it. It's fine as a one-time thing, but it
> can't become a habit. It's the transporters malfunctioning when the
> transporters could solve the problem in the first five minutes, or Troi
> losing her empathy when knowing someone is lying could cut off the plot
> at its knees. It needs to be used very, very sparingly, and the fact
> that she's already afraid to use her powers should be just about enough
> anyway.
Unlimited power is nearly always dramatically boring. At best you can
make it into a psychological drama: the character with the power
deciding how to use or not use this power. That is what we got at the
end of season 6. But too much of this and the drama devolves into a
bunch of people sitting around talking. So instead we get Stupid Plot
Devices like Superman running around trying to keep his identity hidden
from Lois Lane.
The specific issue here is that the fight could reasonably have fallen
within the bounds of (mostly) controlled-Willow power, like the spider
monster at the frat house. The easiest solution is to not have her in
the fight. As you point out, that works if used sparingly.
...
> WILLOW
> No, I have to get out of the house. Xander's installing the new windows,
> and he keeps giving lectures on proper tool maintenance. Tool talk-not
> my thing.
>
> ---
>
> ...thereby destroying years of carefully-constructed lesbian stereotypes
> in one throwaway line.
Well, there is more than one lesbian stereotype. Willow doesn't have
the haircut for the toolbelt lesbian stereotype, and toolbelt lesbians
don't really fit in with the Wicca thing anyway.
Richard R. Hershberger
John Briggs
> In article <-dWdndm1CtnI-I7Y...@rcn.net>,
> Scythe Matters <sp...@spam.spam> wrote:
>
>> Blowing up what appears to be a major building in London (I suppose
>> this, like "Earshot" and "GD2," might have had to be suppressed in
>> the UK if it had aired a few years later)
>
> Heh.
>
> Yep. 'Cos everything we've learned about terrorism we've learned since
> this episode aired.
And "Earshot" and "GD2" had to be suppressed in the UK...
--
John Briggs
William George Ferguson
The veracity of which is somewhat cast into doubt by the fact that SMG
wasn't at the wrap party (she was up in Vancouver filming Scooby Doo 2).
--
... and my sister is a vampire slayer, her best friend is a witch who
went bonkers and tried to destroy the world, um, I actually used to be
a little ball of energy until about two years ago when some monks
changed the past and made me Buffy's sister and for some reason, a big
klepto. My best friends are Leticia Jones, who moved to San Diego
because this town is evil, and a floppy eared demon named Clem.
(Dawn's fantasy of her intro speech in "Lessons", from the shooting script)
William George Ferguson
wrote:
>I've had "shifts" that people have seen towards appreciating what the
>show's doing, or its sense of humor, or whatever, that've turned out to
>be illusory. I prefer to think that the leading theory at the moment
>is that this scene is better than the one in "Amends." And yes, as OBS
>says, the melodramatic parts are shorter.
There's also this behind the scenes factor to consider. The Angel spinoff
was okayed in March of 1998 (before JW had even written Becoming), so
throughout season three ME knew there was going to be Angel the Series. One
of the reasons this is so Angel-centric is it's setting up Angel's
backstory for his own series. They didn't need to do that with Spike in
season seven (even if they had done a Spike spinoff they didn't need to)
Malsperanza
Although, to be fair, Angelus never mounted a plan to destroy the whole
world either.
~Mal
Malsperanza
The Buffyverse doesn't see suicide as necessarily cowardly or
irresponsible. One shining example of altruistic suicide is Buffy's
swan dive at the end of s5. Angel's suicide is intended by him at least
in part to relieve Buffy of the burden of having to stake him. Now and
then people in StVS get caught by some horrible evil demon who offers
them a choice between a fast and a slow death--or to trade their own
death for someone else's safety. Those are responsible suicides too.
And lastly, there is the suicide of someone who is terminally illand
sufferning terribly.
In "Never Leave Me" Spike has reached the end of his resources--he
tried every possible thing to overcome the "sickness" of vampirism,
only to discover now that he has a permanent case of monsteritis
homicidialus, commonly known as Inhuman Ethicodeficiency Syndrome.
~Mal
Rowan Hawthorn
Yes, he did, actually. Remember Acathla? Whose awakening was supposed
to suck the whole world into hell? And ended up taking only Angel?
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
Elisi
> "Elisi" <eli...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:1158918482....@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
> > The key question is Angel's desperate "Am I a thing worth saving?"
> > I re-watched the ep recently and the pain behind those words just
> > kills me. And Buffy doesn't answer that question (she talks about
> > being strong later, and about fighting, but not about whether he's
> > worth saving). The main part of her argument is - if you die
> > you'll hurt me again. Angel asks if he's worth saving, and she
> > says that _she_ needs him. Stay because I love you.
> >
> > And then the argument goes away when the magic snow comes. Would
> > Buffy's arguments have swayed Angel in time? We don't know - and
> > The Powers certainly didn't think so.
> >
> > Spike in essence asks the same question, and Buffy comes out with
> > a resounding 'Yes'. He _is_ worth saving. Not because of any
> > feelings she might have, but for his own sake. The look on his
> > face is amazing.
> >
> > And I love that. To me, that's more important that a world full of
> > 'I love you's, and it's one of the reasons Spike/Buffy is so much
> > more satisfying to me than Buffy/Angel. Don't get me wrong, B/A is
> > a great story, in all its doomed glory, but take away the love and
> > what's left?
>
> I see your point, and the "I believe in you" moment is truly moving
> because Spike is at such a low point.
And yet not as low as Angel.
> But to answer your question, take the love out of Buffy/Angel and what
> you have is Buffy/Spike.
No. No no no. If you take away the love from Buffy/Angel, you barely
have a relationship at all. See B/A happened because the two if them
fell in love. This is the normal way for people to start a
relationship, and if he hadn't been a vampire, and she hadn't been a
Slayer, they might have ended up married in the suburbs. But... what if
they hadn't fallen in love? The reason Angel hung around Buffy was
because he loved her, not because they had any shared interests - as a
matter of fact he has great difficulty understanding her, but makes the
effort because he loves her. She rarely knows what goes on in his head,
but tries to find out, if she can, because she loves him. Everything
these two do stems from the love they have for each other. Yes he comes
to Sunnydale to help fight evil, but he was sent there by The Powers.
Until S2 he just turns up, delivers a warning and leaves again. When
The Powers wanted him elsewhere he'd have moved.
Now Spike and Buffy started out as opponents. And they were well
matched, because they right from the start understood each other
extremely well. Just look at how quickly they negotiate their terms in
'Becoming' - they've worked each other out pretty well already then.
'Lovers Walk' shows this even clearer:
Buffy: Need him? He's probably just got them locked up in the factory.
(she knows exactly how he thinks, and is already ahead.)
Buffy: And I can fool Giles, and I can fool my friends, but I can't
fool myself. Or Spike, for some reason.
(He's got her number, and she knows it.)
The love that eventually appears (only on Spike's side so far) in S5
comes from their 'relationship' (speaking not romantically, but meaning
all their interactions). They have a connection - one so strong that
Dru can see it:
Drusilla: But you're lying! I can still see her floating all around
you, laughing. Why? Why won't you push her away?
And it isn't romance and it isn't love... it's something deeper I
think. As SMG put it in an interview way back in S5 (and no longer
spoilery I think - and it was all just speculation anyway):
Sarah Michelle Gellar: "There's a part of me that will always believe
that Angel was Buffy's true love. That there will be a piece of her
heart that will always be with him for the rest of her life. It
doesn't mean that's the person that she's meant to be with
eternally. The thing about Buffy and Spike is they understand each
other on a level that nobody else understands her. They've both lived
a hundred lives and I think there's a connection there that we will
see evolve over the next couple of years where she realizes that he
really is someone that she can trust, someone that's a companion to
her and someone that really understands her unlike anybody else."
To me B/S is interesting because the drama comes from the characters,
not from outside sources. Take outside influences away from B/A and you
have IWRY with all-day-in-bed eating ice cream etc. It's sweet, but not
very exciting to watch. Do the same with B/S and you have 'Something
Blue', with plenty of fun and bickering. Differences create good
sparks. (IMHO anyway! *g*)
> If she'd professed her love for Spike, his
> expression would have been even more amazing, but she doesn't feel that
> way, so all she could do was say she believed in him.
And I say that believing in Spike is far more important that love. For
*years* he's tried to change for her, and she's not been the least
impressed. And now she suddenly acknowledges it - says that she _has_
seen the changes, and that she thinks he can get better still. That's
huge. If she said she loved him it would not do the same thing at all.
She told Riley she loved him, and yet he left. Love doesn't fix things,
actions do.
> In "Amends", Buffy doesn't just use personal reasons in her argument to
> save Angel. She appeals to reason. She says he can hurt the First.
> She says "Angel, you have the power to do real good". She repeatedly
> tells him to fight. Near the end she falls apart and pleads for him to
> live for her sake. But then she says "Strong is fighting! It's hard,
> and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do." I
> think it's clear that she believes in Angel, just as she believed in
> Spike. But she was in love with Angel, so their scene was more
> "cheesy", as you put it.
The 'cheesy' was mostly a shout-out to AOQ's post of that episode. The
thing is, I can understand the emotions in that scene, but I believe
the two of them are talking past each other completely. Yes Buffy's
points about fighting are very good, and when Angel has time to think
about them he agrees, and later takes her guidance with him when he
leaves Sunnydale. But in that moment it isn't enough. He's made up his
mind, and he can be awfully stubborn. The key here is that Buffy is his
weakness - his love for her is what The First has been using to bring
him down. When Buffy says "I know everything that you did, because you
did it to me," she's trying to say that she understands the pain he's
feeling, but it also underlines the fact that the reason he _could_
hurt her so badly was because she loved him.
With Spike it's different. He's been relying on Buffy to show him the
way for years, taking er cue as to how to behave. My friend Anna once
put it beautifully: The key to Buffy/Spike comes down to one very
simple fact: _He_ trusts _her_. And now, finally, she's putting some
trust back. She has faith in him. The last time that happened he was
entrusted with Dawn's life. This time it's his soul. Buffy has been his
reason to fight because he loved her - now she's repaid him. And it
isn't love, and I don't think love would have done the same thing at
all. Not at this point anyway.
(Sorry if this is rambly and repetitive - I'm v. tired and have had a
long day, and my famimly has been complaining about the fact that I'm
so anti-social, so I have to go before I can polish it off. I hope it
isn't too muddled.)
Elisi
~~~~~~~~~~
"My favourite people are those who have walked through fire and out the
other side."
One Bit Shy
news:AvydnZN-0qQ6HI7Y...@rcn.net...
> One Bit Shy wrote:
>
>> Yeah, but Amends dragged it out considerably longer with terribly awkward
>> ebbs and flows and false climaxes. I'm one who liked the content and
>> individual lines in the Buffy/Angel conversation, but still thought the
>> play of it was off. Joss squeezed five melodramas into a one melodrama
>> slot.
>
> I think the major underlying difference is that, in "Amends," Joss needed
> to (or felt he needed to) say something fundamental about Angel, something
> that hadn't really been said before.
Gee, I wonder why Joss would think he needed to do that. ;-)
> The episode was *about* him, and chose to bring all the grand melodrama of
> the Angel backstory and the even more dramatic melo ;-) of his doomed
> relationship to bear on the subject.
>
> Here, the episode's not really about this subject, but only includes it in
> the stew, and the little bit that does parallel "Amends" doesn't have to
> say anything about Spike; all that's already been said, and recently (as
> you note in your primary response). Instead, it's saying something
> important but brief about Buffy: why is she pursuing this ostensibly
> dangerous course of action? A question it answers in a single exchange.
> "Never Leave Me" avoids what you think is wrong with "Amends" because it's
> not just about one thing that happens to be fraught with melodrama.
Well, getting Spike to believe in himself is a little bit about Spike. Be
that as it may, I have no issue with the content of either episode. I like
what's said in Amends - including many of the individual lines. It's quite
quotable. But the play of it is strained IMO. That kind of overwrought
language where every other sentence seems to be its own climax doesn't
sustain well. By the time the real climax came I was exhausted.
> It's a matter of taste, certainly, but I find the endless and recycled
> melodrama of this particular relationship far more tiresome than the most
> turgid parts of "Amends." Even though I greatly prefer Spike (at just
> about any point) to Angel in season three (of _BtVS_).
Hey, we were only talking about individual episodes. If you want to talk
endless melodrama, what about the perpetual break-up with Angel?
OBS
Malsperanza
One Bit Shy wrote:
[much snippage]
> There is some nice expression of a number of ideas in the [Buffy/Spike] conversations,
> but the thing is, it also repeats an awful lot of the ideas from the prior
> episode. We've got Buffy and Friends raising pretty much the same issues
> about helping Spike, with the same even tone, and the same result. Buffy
> interrogates Spike about the killings, but he doesn't remember things.
> Fake-Spike provokes an attack on a human, while Buffy marvels at how he
> seemed to instantly change. We're reminded that Spike is a vicious killer,
> and he asks Buffy to kill him because of that, but Buffy sees something good
> in him and offers hope to him instead.
>
> Yes, they do each of these things differently. Sometimes with major
> differences in tone. Like bodies bursting through the floor to show Buffy
> what Spike is capable of last episode. Here it's a smaller attack on Andrew
> and a lot of words about how bad he really is from Spike. (Which,
> incidentally, can't possibly impress Buffy. With the stuff she's seen - not
> least of which being Angelus - Spike talking about knowing how much blood to
> suck isn't really all that special.)
I see 3 things that are new in this episode, all presented obliquely,
but nonetheless important:
1. Spike is much less insane than last week.
Aside from the moments when he is possessed by the FE, he's coherent
and even articulate, clever. This means (among other things) that when
he argues his case for deserving the death penalty, he's not just
pitiably raving; he's stating a rational position. In fact, it's so
reasonable that Buffy has to overcome some pretty strong historical
arguments of her own in order to defy it. Which means, I think, that
the First Evil is able to manipulate whole situations: Spike himself
(not Fake-Spike) is arguing the case that Fake-Spike would have argued:
I'm too evil, I'm too dangerous: kill me now. So we have to consider
that the FE may already be deep in the workings of the Summers
household and the relationships of its denizens.
2. The fundamental link between having a soul and self-loathing (or, as
someone upthread nicely pointed out: the show's prime link between love
and pain) is now explicit, expressed once and for all.
Aside from the profound existential grimness of that idea, what I think
it means *here* is that Buffy and Spike are both right about what
drives the Slayer and gives her her power: they're talking about the
same thing. Spike calls it "hate," the Dark Side, and Buffy recoils at
the word but doesn't entirely reject the underlying concept. The
alternative word they are both dancing around without uttering is
"love." As both of them have amply demonstrated through empirical
experiment, love can work for both good and evil, sometimes both at
once. (Spike comes close, in the earlier conversation, when he says, "I
have come to redefine the words pain and suffering since I fell in love
with you." When we hear that, it just sounds like a classic romancey
statement--grand melodrama. Buffy also thinks so too. But Spike may
also be speaking quite literally there.)
I don't mean that Buffy lurves Spike, but that the dark, violent force
that drives her, that makes her never give up, that turns her into such
a formidable adversary, is clearly the same vital force that made her
pledge herself 4-evah to Angel, made her give up her life for Dawn (who
wasn't even really her sister), and has motivated her every sacrifice
all along. As Dante says, love is the motive force that "drives the sun
and the other stars." (If all Slayers have this quality of loving
intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
poach Buffy's turf.)
3. Buffy's power to rescue Spike (and, by extension, anyone with a
soul) is now far more than just the physical rescue of a person in
bodily peril. She has a power now to perform emotional or spiritual
rescues, soul-rescues. When she says "I believe in you," those words
have an extraordinary healing power, which the scene allows us to feel.
Perhaps they mean so much to Spike because he's in lurve, but that's
not the only reason they're powerful. The implication is that Buffy is
now a visionary, a Truth-Speaker, one whose power to discern *and
uphold* goodness and virtue is supernatural. She is, therefore, an
immense threat to the First Evil. Since Buffyverse is pretty Manichean,
we are now officially permitted to begin speculating on just what the
*opposite* power of the First Evil might be. (The First Good? The Last
Good?)
And this nascent concept, though barely hinted at, explains (to me, at
least) why the writers wanted the Lastest Most Biggest Bad of the
series to be one of the first Big Bads--one that was around from pretty
early on. It can't be something new; it's got to be something that's
been around long enough to know Buffy, to have seen her grow into the
figure she now is. And perhaps to have grown along with her. Most of
the other past Big Bads were just monsters; the First Evil is a
concept. (Admittedly, in "Amends" he looks like a monster, but we'll
just stick our fingers in our ears and go na-na-na regarding the
continuity problems.)
> Maybe it's just me, but it feels really weird to me - and somewhat deflates
> this episode since important elements, including the big conclusion of
> believing in Spike, aren't really news any more.
Aside from the above revelations, 90% of the episode repeats stuff
we've seen already. It's just audience pandering, but I have to say I
enjoyed it enormously, because it hit all the marks I like best: angsty
Spike/Buffy; Xander in non-irritating mode, Xander/Anya banter, comedic
Willow, hardly any Dawn, lots of good one-liners. Also, I like the
Andrew we're now seeing. He's less one-note than Warren and Jonathan,
somehow. So the repetition didn't bug me.
> I don't know what actually went on, but again, it feels like something is
> askew in the way stories were breaking at this point in the season.
Nterrq, gubhtu guvf rcvfbqr qvqa'g ortva gb zngpu fbzr bs gur yngre
barf sbe cher ubeevoyrarff bs zvfgvzvat.
~Mal
chr...@removethistoreply.gwu.edu
> threads.
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
> Writer: Drew Goddard
> Director: David Solomon
.
> something important without deflating it, and First/Warren ends up as a
> good straight-man, patiently trying to come up with ways to make use of
> what he has. "_Babe 2: Pig in the City_ was really underrated."
That pig would have even less blood than Jonathan, anemic or not.
Apparently applications of blood are cumulative.
> Having that scene also thematically sets the stage for Xander and Anya
> to play Good/Bad Cop later. From there, the parallel interrogations
> gimmick holds up well, especially when they keep coming together with
> Spike breaking out of his and almost putting an end to Andrew's.
You noticed the ass-biting reference in Sleeper. No mention now of how
experienced Xander seems to be at tying people up? (Buffy seems pretty
comfortable with the ropes, too.)
When Buffy fed blood to Spike in Something Blue, she looked disgusted.
This time, even though Spike's table manners are much worse, she just
looks grimly determined.
> Can I just throw in as an aside how much I appreciate seeing Xander
> being helpful when he knows the situation demands it? A lesser episode
> wouldn't have thought to have him do anything other than reminding us
> how much he hates Spike every five seconds. As he says in "Him,"
> "not the right time." Even the "constant" characters should be
> discernibly different after seven years of show.
If I can quibble (and what else do I ever do?), Xander has always been
helpful when the situation demands it. A good early example is when he
goes to get Angel, someone he doesn't much like, in Prophecy Girl. The
real difference now is that Xander will not only be helpful, he'll also
drop the *attitude* when it's not the right time for it. He could
occasionally do that too back in the old days, but it comes to him more
easily now in his mature years.
> exactly what I was talking about. Spike channels his self-loathing
> into doing his best to repulse Buffy with what he used to be,
"Do you know how much blood you can drink from a girl before she'll die? I
do. You see, the trick is to drink just enough to know how to damage them
just enough so that they'll still cry when you ... 'cause it's not worth
it if they don't cry." This is the most graphic they've gotten about
Spike's past activities since FFL. In fact it gets even more disturbing
than FFL once you start wondering what exactly he was going to say where
that ellipsis is. Now we're finally getting sane Spike's view on his
pre-soul past. BTW, this scene contradicts the argument occasionally
heard that Spike only liked fighting, not torture or abuse or killing.
> Sadly, the last few scenes don't seem to mesh too well with the rest
> of the show. First there's the extended stuff in London, which
> mainly comes across as an homage to 1950s/60s British TV. Well,
> Quentin and friends are up to something which may or may not be
> helpful... I'm so over the WC at this point, and the series might be
> too.
In recent episodes the FBYG has been trying to weaken or eliminate Buffy's
allies: it's taken over Spike, tried to make Willow commit suicide, and
tried to turn Dawn against Buffy. Now it has continued by wiping out the
Watchers' Council. But there might be more to it than just getting rid of
another potential source of help for Buffy; keep watching. And keep
thinking about what else the FBYG and its minions have been up to. The
important thing here is not just the WC itself, but where its demise fits
in the larger pattern.
> This dulled my attention to the point where their building (or
> some building, somewhere) blowing up barely even registered. Then
> Spike gets bled to open the fold-out pentagram. The visuals in this
> scene are great, but the actual content involves basically the
> emergence of a big growling monster who says grrrr. These apocalypses
> start to all look the same after awhile.
Is this the actual apocalypse, or just one more step in starting it?
> A list of other parts that made me laugh, Really Stupid and otherwise:
-Dawn's message about how sick Buffy is. The funniest part isn't the
details themselves, it's her evident glee in telling them.
-The butcher calling Andrew "Neo."
-"The weasel wants to sing. He just needs a tune." And then maybe the
weasel will fly around like a monkey?
-The silent looks between Anya and Xander after she slaps him
> - "Is this left over from your days in the Army?" "No, this is
> left over from every Army movie I've ever seen"
Seems more like a spy movie thing, though.
> - The big vampire at the end being credited as "Ubervamp"
Ubie to his friends.
> AOQ rating: Good
Very Good.
--Chris
______________________________________________________________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.
lili...@gmail.com
Uhm, what did you think that Acathla was about?
Lore
>
> ~Mal
lili...@gmail.com
Yeah, the big problem with B/A is that they're in love with the image
they have of the other. Take that away and you have two people with all
the same problems and issues who barely even know one another. They've
never had a real relationship, they were never friends, they never had
anything between them other than their socalled 'love'.
They're just two people who were in love with the idea of being in
love. Which is part of why Buffy's words to Angel aren't enough to
impact him.
The fact alone that she claims she knows what Angel's done because he
did it to her, shows exactly how little she knows about him. She
doesn't have the beginning of a clue of how utterly horrifyingly evil
Angelus really was. And the fact she thinks she knows shows how blind
she is to the real Angelus. Which is why her words wouldn't reach Angel
cause he of all people would realize how wrong Buffy is.
Spike on the other hand doesn't let Buffy get away with saying she
knows the kind of things he's done. He tells her instantly,
(paraphrasing here) 'that's rubish, what I did to you was nothing
compared to the things I've done in the past and you don't even have a
clue of what I'm capable of'; and that's something that Angel would
never trust her with, because he doesn't fully trust her with the real
him because he's too focussed on the sweet innocent that he believes
her to be.
Lore
chr...@removethistoreply.gwu.edu
>>also note the conversation in the basement strongly suggests
>>that besides the generic violence and killing
>>spike was also vicious sadistic rapist
>>keeping some victims alive for quite awhile as he abused them again and again
>
> Or that he wanted to convince Buffy of that, to make her angry and
> repulsed enough to kill him.
I don't see any sign that he's lying about his past. And if he wanted to
lie to make Buffy kill him, the way to go would be to act like he's evil
*now*, not to lie about his past. I think Spike is being painfully honest
here.
> That kind of slow, deliberate cruelty seems more like an Angelus than
> a Spike thing to do - which doesn't rule out the possibility that
> Spike learned it from Angelus ("you were my Yoda!") and did it to
> impress him, during the 20 years or so they operated together.
Or the possibility that, while Angelus was into this kind of cruelty
*more* than Spike was, Spike liked it too. I agree that Spike usually
tended more towards immediate blood-and-thunder kills, but I've never seen
any grounds to think that Spike *only* killed that way or *disliked*
other kinds of torment.
> Plus, given Spike's newly-ensouled status - and especially the fact of
> *why* he got the soul - it's likely that even if he did that kind of
> thing only once or twice, his memory of it would be a particularly
> haunting and damning one.
Certainly. And since at this point he's telling Buffy things that he's
capable of, once would be enough. (Though he *might* have done it a
hundred times, for all we know.)
One Bit Shy
> Anyway, then we get to the conversations, where both vampires try to
> explain to Buffy just how bad they are and how they deserve death - and
> Buffy's response:
> ~~~~~~
> AMENDS:
> Angel: Am I a thing worth saving, huh? Am I a righteous man? The world
> wants me gone!
> Buffy: What about me? I love you so much... And I tried to make you go
> away... I killed you and it didn't help.
>
> NEVER LEAVE ME:
> Spike: I already did it. It's already done. You wanna know what I've
> done to girls Dawn's age? This is me Buffy. You've got to kill me
> before I get out.
> <snip>
> Buffy:You're alive because I saw you change. Because I saw your
> penance.[...] Be easier, wouldn't it, it if were an act, but it's not.
> You faced the monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked
> everything to be a better man.
> Spike: Buffy...
> Buffy: And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I
> believe in you, Spike.
> ~~~~~~~~
>
> The key question is Angel's desperate "Am I a thing worth saing?" I
> re-watched the ep recently and the pain behind those words just kills
> me. And Buffy doesn't answer that question (she talks about being
> strong later, and about fighting, but not about whether he's worth
> saving). The main part of her argument is - if you die you'll hurt me
> again. Angel asks if he's worth saving, and she says that _she_ needs
> him. Stay because I love you.
Well, B/A always was very much about the love story. Buffy personally was
the inspiration for Angel to pull himself out of his 100 year funk and give
his life purpose. So, playing on his love for her as a reason to live
pretty much has to be attempted.
But that's not the only argument she used, nor the first. It was a very
long scene. There's also the point earlier on when Angel said it was the
man in him that needed killing - a pretty big moment in itself. That led to
this from Buffy:
Buffy: Angel, you have the power to do real good, to make amends. But if
you die now, then all that you ever were was a monster.
I think the elements of that line compare very well to the line you quoted
from Buffy to Spike. Different tonal qualities - the Amends line is more
how dying would be a failure, while Never Leave Me's line tells Spike he's
already succeeded. But both are about facing down the monster to be a
better man.
So I think the effort is more comparable than you give it credit for. There
is a narrower difference. Faith. (The concept, not the person.) Buffy
tells Spike that she believes in him. She doesn't seem able to do that in
Amends. Yet that message does get delivered in the end by the PTB. And
both Angel and Spike are left in wonder at that message.
(You know, sometime we probably do need to discuss how much S5-S7 parallels
S1-S3.)
OBS
William George Ferguson
<rincewi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>> threads.
>>
>>
>> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
>> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
>> Writer: Drew Goddard
>> Director: David Solomon
>>
>> A chance meeting in line for blood makes the threads intersect, and
>> allows for more comedy. I absolutely adore the villain-off between
>> Andrew and Willow - first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
>> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
>> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
>> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
>> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
>> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
>> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
>
>It was a good enough scene, but I think it would have been better if we had
>seen a glimpse of Dark Willow and then Just Willow struggle to suppress it.
Actually, we did. We didn't get the visual, but when Andrew said that
Warren killing Tara was an accident, the next voice we heard was Scary
Veiny Willow.
Apteryx
news:1158902877.4...@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> Spike is, of course, currently chock full of blood from killing and
> siring so many people (presumably over the course of a night or two).
> Good source for opening the Seal.
There is one thing that always makes a vampire a poor choice for something
to bleed, no matter how full of blood he may be - no beating heart to pump
the blood out once arteries are opened. We know vampires can bleed, but if
want to get a lot of blood in the minimum time, you can't beat a living
creature with a beating heart. I guess The First isn't pressed for time..
--
Apteryx
Malsperanza
Vampires are like game: you have to hang them for a while.
~Mal
George W Harris
wrote:
:(If all Slayers have this quality of loving
:intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
:why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
:poach Buffy's turf.)
It would explain it if there were any evidence
that it were true.
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste more like
prunes than rhubarb does" -Groucho Marx
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Malsperanza
Angel was responsible for Acathla? Oops, I totally forgot that. I
thought Acathla got dug up by accident and Angel just jumped on the
Bandwagon o' Doom after the fact. Gotta admit I try hard not to rewatch
Angel episodes.
~Mal
lili...@gmail.com
Angel had Acathla specifically stolen, as soon as Dru told him it had
been found. He's the one who does al the effort into getting Acathla to
awaken and he's the one who's plan it is.
I always thought that he was so disgusted by how human Buffy had made
him feel, that he wanted to destroy the world just to get rid of the
taint of that humanity.
Lore
Rowan Hawthorn
He got dug up by accident, but Angel stole him from the archaeologists
with a very specific intent, as soon as he found out about it - even
before Giles or anyone else knew for certain what was entombed in the
"big rock."
Malsperanza
George W Harris wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2006 12:52:09 -0700, "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> :(If all Slayers have this quality of loving
> :intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
> :why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
> :poach Buffy's turf.)
>
> It would explain it if there were any evidence that it were true.
:-) Well, there was a bit of shorthand in my post, to be sure. I mean,
if you want to explain Faith's behavior with regard to Angel as purely
trying to get Buffy's goat, go ahead. To me, a Faith without any
special Slayer sense and motivated purely by sexual urges and childish
rivalry, is a much less interesting character than one who has a full
range of Slayer attributes (which includes more than mere physical
strength and the ability to heal fast), but with other problems that
drive her to the Dark Side. Cyhf, vs Snvgu unf ab frafr bs gur cbjre bs
ybir nf n sbepr sbe tbbq va gur jbeyq, gura vg'f oybbql uneq gb rkcynva
jung znxrf ure ghea tbbq va gur ynfg pbhcyr bs rcvfbqrf.
~Mal
Malsperanza
OK... I guess I think of Acathla as being the one who wanted to destroy
the world in that story line, and Angelus being just kind of generally
vengeful and mindlessly Evol, in his charmingly one-dimensional way.
But it's a distinction without much difference, I agree.
~Mal
lili...@gmail.com
Ah, but Acathla is not the active one, for all intents and purposes,
he's nothing more than a tool, a weapon. It's not up to what he wants,
he has no real say in it. Angel has to look for, find and carry out a
specific ritual just to awaken acathla.
Angel's the active one, knowing exactly what he's planning to do and
how to carry it out.
SPIKE: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the
world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends
over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got...
dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of
people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here.
But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for
destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Picadilly. Farewell,
Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm saying?
Lore
One Bit Shy
news:1158954729.7...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
> One Bit Shy wrote:
> 1. Spike is much less insane than last week.
>
> Aside from the moments when he is possessed by the FE, he's coherent
> and even articulate, clever. This means (among other things) that when
> he argues his case for deserving the death penalty, he's not just
> pitiably raving; he's stating a rational position. In fact, it's so
> reasonable that Buffy has to overcome some pretty strong historical
> arguments of her own in order to defy it. Which means, I think, that
> the First Evil is able to manipulate whole situations: Spike himself
> (not Fake-Spike) is arguing the case that Fake-Spike would have argued:
> I'm too evil, I'm too dangerous: kill me now. So we have to consider
> that the FE may already be deep in the workings of the Summers
> household and the relationships of its denizens.
I'm considerably less impressed by Spike's argument and revelation of past
transgressions than some others seem to be. The issue to Buffy can't just
be what evil Spike is capable of. For that purpose she might as well ask
Xander why Spike should be staked. She's faced this argument ever since the
episode Angel and settled it in her mind long ago. And Angel's past is a
lot nastier.
For much the same reason I don't think it's much of a ploy by The First.
Though I'm not convinced this particular speech by Spike is directed by The
First. Rather, I think it's residue of his effort to undermine Spike's
faith in himself.
However, I definitely agree that a key difference in this episode is that
Spike is much less insane. One might argue that he's not insane at all.
Buffy telling him last episode that someone is playing with them - that it's
really not all coming from Spike himself - seems to have been the anchor he
needed to pull himself out of the ongoing insanity. What we see in this
episode is pretty much limited to direct intervention by The First.
There are important reasons for this episode to exist apart from Sleeper.
Sleeper revealed what was happening to Spike, and in so doing gave him the
key to regaining his sanity. Never Leave Me displays the sanity and uses
him and Andrew and related events to reveal The First. And in so doing,
different qualities are allowed to come out in Buffy/Spike conversations.
So they are sequential steps in the broader story. That's not the problem.
The problem I see is that they wanted to deliver essentially the same
message in the Spike climax for both episodes. And went through essentially
the same logic path to get to it. Reinforcement is fine, but this seems a
bit much. Especially going for much the same emotional climax two episodes
in a row. At least the Amends parallel is four years old.
> 2. The fundamental link between having a soul and self-loathing (or, as
> someone upthread nicely pointed out: the show's prime link between love
> and pain) is now explicit, expressed once and for all.
>
> Aside from the profound existential grimness of that idea, what I think
> it means *here* is that Buffy and Spike are both right about what
> drives the Slayer and gives her her power: they're talking about the
> same thing. Spike calls it "hate," the Dark Side, and Buffy recoils at
> the word but doesn't entirely reject the underlying concept. The
> alternative word they are both dancing around without uttering is
> "love."
Yes, I agree. That's very good. This also leads us into the parallels to
Buffy's conversation with her spirit guide in Intervention. "Love is pain,
and the Slayer forges strength from pain."
But it's not just pain that the spirit guide is speaking of. That was
preceded by, "You are full of love. You love with all of your soul." And
followed by, "Love ... give ... forgive." Buffy doesn't say the word
they're dancing around, but I think she understands it, while Spike is still
working it out. Still needs the dose of faith he gets from Buffy - who's
kind of his spirit guide.
> 3. Buffy's power to rescue Spike (and, by extension, anyone with a
> soul) is now far more than just the physical rescue of a person in
> bodily peril. She has a power now to perform emotional or spiritual
> rescues, soul-rescues. When she says "I believe in you," those words
> have an extraordinary healing power, which the scene allows us to feel.
> Perhaps they mean so much to Spike because he's in lurve, but that's
> not the only reason they're powerful. The implication is that Buffy is
> now a visionary, a Truth-Speaker, one whose power to discern *and
> uphold* goodness and virtue is supernatural. She is, therefore, an
> immense threat to the First Evil. Since Buffyverse is pretty Manichean,
> we are now officially permitted to begin speculating on just what the
> *opposite* power of the First Evil might be. (The First Good? The Last
> Good?)
I don't think I'm ready yet to talk about what The First's about. (Will I
ever be? I honestly don't know.) But seeing what Buffy's doing here as an
extension of her own slayer power is interesting. Whether it quite reaches
the level of mystical truth-speaker with Spike as you suggest, I'm not sure.
(Where's the human Buffy in this?) But it may still very well be time to
think more about her super-powers other than the physical ones. They've
always been there. The dreams. The just knowing things commonly referred
to as slayer instincts. She's always had a mystical part of her in addition
to the physical. Wouldn't they have developed over time too?
I know this is a slightly different direction, but the thought makes me
wonder how that might fit into Buffy's sense of feeling superior and being
the law. Possibly to help feed that. But maybe also because that's what
those feelings really are about. Knowing truths others don't. One of the
questions floating out there now is why does she get to decide?
>> I don't know what actually went on, but again, it feels like something is
>> askew in the way stories were breaking at this point in the season.
>
> Nterrq, gubhtu guvf rcvfbqr qvqa'g ortva gb zngpu fbzr bs gur yngre
> barf sbe cher ubeevoyrarff bs zvfgvzvat.
Nynf, V nz njner bs gung. Naq V pbasrff, cneg bs gur ernfba sbe zr oevatvat
guvf hc abj vf xvaq bs va nagvpvcngvba bs gung.
OBS
Ken from Chicago
"Rowan Hawthorn" <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:jaSdnSBkboRzs4nY...@giganews.com...
That's NOT DESTROYING the world.
That's just MOVING the world--to a ... vacation ... spot.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
<lili...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158965619.3...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Even when evil, Spike was better than Angel(us).
-- Ken from Chicago
lili...@gmail.com
Well just for the record, even though I definitely agree*g*, that was
not the reason for posting that specific bit*g*, I just seem unable to
bolden a bit of the text here. Basic point was the line:' But then
someone comes along with a vision'
Angel didn't just go along with Acathla. He Chose to free Acathla and
wake him up with the specific purpose of sucking the entire world into
hell. (which is probably the stupidest thing any vampire could possibly
do, but that put aside...)
Lore
Malsperanza
One of Spike's best speeches. It's an odd mixture of making Angel look
grandly, enviably visionary and making Angel look like the world's
biggest idiot for wanting to saw off the branch he's sitting on. This
is Spike in his pre-Existentialist period, I suppose (before Angel lent
him his copy of Sartre's La Nausee).
OK, I stand corrected. I'm not really out to defend Angel (hardly), or
Angelus. Frankly, I don't quite understand the aim of the Big Bads who
want to destroy the world. The ones who make most sense are the ones
who, like Satan, want to steal people's souls and condemn them to
eternal torment. Now, that's entertainment. I guess demons like Acathla
exist in order to be used by whomever comes along with a real passion
for destruction.
~Mal
Malsperanza
One Bit Shy wrote:
> "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1158954729.7...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > One Bit Shy wrote:
>
> > 1. Spike is much less insane than last week.
> >
> > Aside from the moments when he is possessed by the FE, he's coherent
> > and even articulate, clever. This means (among other things) that when
> > he argues his case for deserving the death penalty, he's not just
> > pitiably raving; he's stating a rational position. In fact, it's so
> > reasonable that Buffy has to overcome some pretty strong historical
> > arguments of her own in order to defy it. Which means, I think, that
> > the First Evil is able to manipulate whole situations: Spike himself
> > (not Fake-Spike) is arguing the case that Fake-Spike would have argued:
> > I'm too evil, I'm too dangerous: kill me now. So we have to consider
> > that the FE may already be deep in the workings of the Summers
> > household and the relationships of its denizens.
>
> I'm considerably less impressed by Spike's argument and revelation of past
> transgressions than some others seem to be. The issue to Buffy can't just
> be what evil Spike is capable of.
No, I suspect that the main purpose of Spike's speech is to make it
quite clear to viewers exactly what evil Spike is capable of. This is
underscored by his insistence that he is speaking honestly. The speech
is as explicit as a primetime time slot allowed (before "Law & Order:
Special Rape Obsession Unit" raised the bar for voyeuristic dwelling on
the details of rape-torture).
> For that purpose she might as well ask
> Xander why Spike should be staked. She's faced this argument ever since the
> episode Angel and settled it in her mind long ago. And Angel's past is a
> lot nastier.
I guess the point is that Buffy has changed since her Angel days, when
she truly was in lurve and could ignore Angel's past by refusing to
consider it. Her ability to love Angel was due to her own wilful
blindness to the past and utter focus on his present self--plus, her
own rapt belief in a very simple kind of love as being something
perfect and apart.
Buffy's not in lurve with Spike, and she's also long since lost that
blind belief in love. This is exactly what makes her statement "I
believe in you" so powerful: because she says it with open eyes and no
delusions, and in spite of not having any of those romantic feelings
she had for Angel. It's therefore a very true statement, because it's
remarkably disinterested.
Which of course is what makes the Spuffy shippers among us (who, me?)
all the more ooey.
> For much the same reason I don't think it's much of a ploy by The First.
> Though I'm not convinced this particular speech by Spike is directed by The
> First. Rather, I think it's residue of his effort to undermine Spike's
> faith in himself.
Yes, that's more or less what I meant. I think we are hearing from
Real!Spike, not Fake!Spike in this scene, but I also think the First's
influence oozes beyond its actual appearances.
> However, I definitely agree that a key difference in this episode is that
> Spike is much less insane. One might argue that he's not insane at all.
> Buffy telling him last episode that someone is playing with them - that it's
> really not all coming from Spike himself - seems to have been the anchor he
> needed to pull himself out of the ongoing insanity. What we see in this
> episode is pretty much limited to direct intervention by The First.
>
> There are important reasons for this episode to exist apart from Sleeper.
> Sleeper revealed what was happening to Spike, and in so doing gave him the
> key to regaining his sanity. Never Leave Me displays the sanity and uses
> him and Andrew and related events to reveal The First. And in so doing,
> different qualities are allowed to come out in Buffy/Spike conversations.
>
> So they are sequential steps in the broader story. That's not the problem.
>
> The problem I see is that they wanted to deliver essentially the same
> message in the Spike climax for both episodes. And went through essentially
> the same logic path to get to it. Reinforcement is fine, but this seems a
> bit much. Especially going for much the same emotional climax two episodes
> in a row. At least the Amends parallel is four years old.
Yeah, well, as I say: a bit of pandering to the audience going on here.
Guvf vf gur cbvag jura gur fubj ortvaf gb npdhver qhny urebrf, bar
hygvzngryl gentvp-ebznagvp, gur bgure pbzvp (va gur frafr bs
unccl-raqvat-ureb). Va beqre sbe Jurqba gb unir obgu fbegf bs raqvat,
ur'f tbg gb znxr Fcvxr nyzbfg nf zhpu gur cebgntbavfg nf Ohssl, naq
ur'f tbg irel yvggyr gvzr yrsg gb qb vg. Fvapr V yvxrq gur qbhoyr-ureb
vqrn, V jrag nybat jvgu vg.
> > 2. The fundamental link between having a soul and self-loathing (or, as
> > someone upthread nicely pointed out: the show's prime link between love
> > and pain) is now explicit, expressed once and for all.
> >
> > Aside from the profound existential grimness of that idea, what I think
> > it means *here* is that Buffy and Spike are both right about what
> > drives the Slayer and gives her her power: they're talking about the
> > same thing. Spike calls it "hate," the Dark Side, and Buffy recoils at
> > the word but doesn't entirely reject the underlying concept. The
> > alternative word they are both dancing around without uttering is
> > "love."
>
> Yes, I agree. That's very good. This also leads us into the parallels to
> Buffy's conversation with her spirit guide in Intervention. "Love is pain,
> and the Slayer forges strength from pain."
>
> But it's not just pain that the spirit guide is speaking of. That was
> preceded by, "You are full of love. You love with all of your soul." And
> followed by, "Love ... give ... forgive." Buffy doesn't say the word
> they're dancing around, but I think she understands it, while Spike is still
> working it out. Still needs the dose of faith he gets from Buffy - who's
> kind of his spirit guide.
Which is quite an amazing journey for Buffy to have taken. The other
pertinent piece of the First Slayer's speech is the bit that comes just
after: "Death is your gift." Buffy doesn't understand it then (though
she does in "The Gift," when she interprets it as referring to her own
death). Now, she understands that if death is hers to give, then she
also has the power and insight to know when it's hers to withhold. So
whereas in s3 she knew it was right to slay Angel, now she knows it's
right not to slay Spike.
> > 3. Buffy's power to rescue Spike (and, by extension, anyone with a
> > soul) is now far more than just the physical rescue of a person in
> > bodily peril. She has a power now to perform emotional or spiritual
> > rescues, soul-rescues. When she says "I believe in you," those words
> > have an extraordinary healing power, which the scene allows us to feel.
> > Perhaps they mean so much to Spike because he's in lurve, but that's
> > not the only reason they're powerful. The implication is that Buffy is
> > now a visionary, a Truth-Speaker, one whose power to discern *and
> > uphold* goodness and virtue is supernatural. She is, therefore, an
> > immense threat to the First Evil. Since Buffyverse is pretty Manichean,
> > we are now officially permitted to begin speculating on just what the
> > *opposite* power of the First Evil might be. (The First Good? The Last
> > Good?)
>
> I don't think I'm ready yet to talk about what The First's about. (Will I
> ever be? I honestly don't know.)
Gah. True. I'm really only suggesting, at this stage, that if there is
a First Evil, and a First Slayer, there may also be Other First Things.
Exactly how Buffy fits into that idea, I don't know at this point.
> But seeing what Buffy's doing here as an
> extension of her own slayer power is interesting. Whether it quite reaches
> the level of mystical truth-speaker with Spike as you suggest, I'm not sure.
> (Where's the human Buffy in this?)
A question she has been asking since "Intervention," no?
> But it may still very well be time to
> think more about her super-powers other than the physical ones. They've
> always been there. The dreams. The just knowing things commonly referred
> to as slayer instincts. She's always had a mystical part of her in addition
> to the physical. Wouldn't they have developed over time too?
>
> I know this is a slightly different direction, but the thought makes me
> wonder how that might fit into Buffy's sense of feeling superior and being
> the law. Possibly to help feed that. But maybe also because that's what
> those feelings really are about. Knowing truths others don't. One of the
> questions floating out there now is why does she get to decide?
It may both feed and undermine it, as Holden suggests. Because one
question raised by "I am the law" is: Which law? There are two kinds in
Buffyverse, human and magical/mystical. Human law is handled by the
police and has jurisdiction over things like murder of human beings,
burglery, etc. Buffy never claims to have any authority over that--or
immunity from it (though Faith does, when she says, "We are the law").
But ever since Buffy fired the Watchers' Council back in s3, she's had
no higher authority to answer to--which means no restraints on her free
will and judgment, but also no one to pass the buck to. She's actually
been operating as The Law for several years, but since she died the
second time and came back "wrong"--that is, changed, not 100%
human--she's been developing the Insight thing rapidly.
Since s3 the Scoobies have had a habit of accusing her of elusiveness
or aloofness, when she's just being withdrawn and depressed. But now
she seems to be acting with a much greater sense of self-confidence
(which is another reason why her "I believe in you" statement has such
an authoritative quality). I wonder if that self-confidence comes in
part from the conversation with Holden, which has cleared up quite a
few things for her. But in doing so, it has also brought out all the
qualities in Buffy that separate her from her more normal human
friends, and draw her closer to the immortals and undeads. I still tend
to think that this indicates that Holden was not a mouthpiece for the
First Evil, but it could still swing either way.
~Mal
Mel
Two if you count Rack as a person.
>>
>>-- Ken from Chicago
>
>
> Although, to be fair, Angelus never mounted a plan to destroy the whole
> world either.
>
> ~Mal
>
Umm, Acathla??? Sucking the world into a hell dimension would pretty
much destroy it.
Mel
Mel
lili...@gmail.com wrote:
He told her what he did to Drusilla, his "worst." That's not exactly not
trusting her to know how bad he really was.
Mel
Ken from Chicago
<lili...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1158966817.3...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Ken from Chicago wrote:
>> <lili...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1158965619.3...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
<snip>
Buffyvamps ... not much on the long-term planning.
At best, humans would survive be tormented in hell dimension where vamps,
demons and things that go boogity boogity reign supreme, at medium, humans
survive like matrix-like batteries, or worst, humans die in the first few
moments.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
>
> lili...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Malsperanza wrote:
<snip>
>> Ah, but Acathla is not the active one, for all intents and purposes,
>> he's nothing more than a tool, a weapon. It's not up to what he wants,
>> he has no real say in it. Angel has to look for, find and carry out a
>> specific ritual just to awaken acathla.
>>
>> Angel's the active one, knowing exactly what he's planning to do and
>> how to carry it out.
>>
>>
>> SPIKE: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the
>> world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends
>> over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got...
>> dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of
>> people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here.
>> But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for
>> destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Picadilly. Farewell,
>> Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm saying?
>>
>>
>> Lore
>
> One of Spike's best speeches. It's an odd mixture of making Angel look
> grandly, enviably visionary and making Angel look like the world's
> biggest idiot for wanting to saw off the branch he's sitting on. This
> is Spike in his pre-Existentialist period, I suppose (before Angel lent
> him his copy of Sartre's La Nausee).
Agreed, and it's what made even pre-chipped Spike an edge on other Big Bads,
like Gollum, he was NOT pure evil. Then again, his intro had him caring for
Dru, thus he was more complex.
> OK, I stand corrected. I'm not really out to defend Angel (hardly), or
> Angelus. Frankly, I don't quite understand the aim of the Big Bads who
> want to destroy the world. The ones who make most sense are the ones
> who, like Satan, want to steal people's souls and condemn them to
> eternal torment. Now, that's entertainment. I guess demons like Acathla
> exist in order to be used by whomever comes along with a real passion
> for destruction.
>
> ~Mal
Ask the scorpion why it stung the frog carrying it mid-river and dooming
them both.
-- Aeso-er Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"Mel" <melb...@uci.net> wrote in message
news:XMSdnSatBrZHGInY...@uci.net...
Why? It would just make the environment ... challenging ... but not
necessarily lethal--much less destructive to the world (tho maybe to the
PEOPLE).
-- Ken from Chicago
George W Harris
wrote:
:George W Harris wrote:
:> On 22 Sep 2006 12:52:09 -0700, "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com>
:> wrote:
:>
:> :(If all Slayers have this quality of loving
:> :intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
:> :why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
:> :poach Buffy's turf.)
:>
:> It would explain it if there were any evidence that it were true.
:
:
::-) Well, there was a bit of shorthand in my post, to be sure. I mean,
:if you want to explain Faith's behavior with regard to Angel as purely
:trying to get Buffy's goat, go ahead.
Which behavior would that be? The only time
she ever displayed any attraction to Angel at all was
when she was working for the Mayor and trying to get
Angel to lose his soul.
--
Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* 50 states seem a little suspicious?
Don Sample
"Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> At best, humans would survive be tormented in hell dimension where vamps,
> demons and things that go boogity boogity reign supreme, at medium, humans
> survive like matrix-like batteries, or worst, humans die in the first few
> moments.
>
> -- Ken from Chicago
Then there's the "humans as cattle" option. Tended, fed, regularly
tapped for a pint or two.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
Ken from Chicago
"Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
news:dsample-BF27A5...@news.giganews.com...
> In article <KcKdnd8f8qyPEYnY...@comcast.com>,
> "Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> At best, humans would survive be tormented in hell dimension where vamps,
>> demons and things that go boogity boogity reign supreme, at medium,
>> humans
>> survive like matrix-like batteries, or worst, humans die in the first few
>> moments.
>>
>> -- Ken from Chicago
>
> Then there's the "humans as cattle" option. Tended, fed, regularly
> tapped for a pint or two.
That would be the matrix-like batteries option, farmed, harvested, etc.
> --
> Quando omni flunkus moritati
> Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
-- Ken from Chicago
Don Sample
"Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> "Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
> news:dsample-BF27A5...@news.giganews.com...
> > In article <KcKdnd8f8qyPEYnY...@comcast.com>,
> > "Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >> At best, humans would survive be tormented in hell dimension where vamps,
> >> demons and things that go boogity boogity reign supreme, at medium,
> >> humans
> >> survive like matrix-like batteries, or worst, humans die in the first few
> >> moments.
> >>
> >> -- Ken from Chicago
> >
> > Then there's the "humans as cattle" option. Tended, fed, regularly
> > tapped for a pint or two.
>
> That would be the matrix-like batteries option, farmed, harvested, etc.
But the Matrix humans are kept in a dream state separated from reality.
Cows are let loose to run around in the fields, eat the grass, and bask
in the sun between milkings. Cows know that they are being milked.
They get in line to take their turns in the milking barn.
(Harmony) Watcher
> In article <1158916953.3...@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> lili...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >
> > Once Angel moves over to LA, the First does seem to lose interest in
> > him, but how much of that is lack of slayer and how much of it is that
> > it just leaves the job to its minions, aka W&H
>
> The First has always acted through its minions. It really has very
> little power in its own right. What it accomplishes, it does through
> getting others to work in its behalf.
>
> I always figured that the First was one of the "senior partners."
>
N qhzo bar ng orfg. Creuncf n "whavbe" cnegare va gur ragver tebhc bs
cnegaref, be creuncf na bhgpnfr? Jul nz V ebg13vat guvf? Orpnhfr V qba'g
xabj vs V fubhyq zragvba "qhzo" ng nyy ng guvf cbvag.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Patrician
This has probably been answered before but I'll ask anyway. Who on the
writing team has had a lot of contact with England and English people?
Because the speech above could have come straight from an English show
rather than an American one.
Trev
Elisi
>
> > Anyway, then we get to the conversations, where both vampires try to
> > explain to Buffy just how bad they are and how they deserve death - and
> > Buffy's response:
> > ~~~~~~
> > AMENDS:
> > Angel: Am I a thing worth saving, huh? Am I a righteous man? The world
> > wants me gone!
> > Buffy: What about me? I love you so much... And I tried to make you go
> > away... I killed you and it didn't help.
> >
> > NEVER LEAVE ME:
> > Spike: I already did it. It's already done. You wanna know what I've
> > done to girls Dawn's age? This is me Buffy. You've got to kill me
> > before I get out.
> > <snip>
> > Buffy:You're alive because I saw you change. Because I saw your
> > penance.[...] Be easier, wouldn't it, it if were an act, but it's not.
> > You faced the monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked
> > everything to be a better man.
> > Spike: Buffy...
> > Buffy: And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I
> > believe in you, Spike.
> > ~~~~~~~~
> >
> > The key question is Angel's desperate "Am I a thing worth saing?" I
> > re-watched the ep recently and the pain behind those words just kills
> > me. And Buffy doesn't answer that question (she talks about being
> > strong later, and about fighting, but not about whether he's worth
> > saving). The main part of her argument is - if you die you'll hurt me
> > again. Angel asks if he's worth saving, and she says that _she_ needs
> > him. Stay because I love you.
>
> the inspiration for Angel to pull himself out of his 100 year funk and give
> his life purpose. So, playing on his love for her as a reason to live
> pretty much has to be attempted.
>
> But that's not the only argument she used, nor the first. It was a very
> long scene. There's also the point earlier on when Angel said it was the
> man in him that needed killing - a pretty big moment in itself. That led to
> this from Buffy:
>
> Buffy: Angel, you have the power to do real good, to make amends. But if
> you die now, then all that you ever were was a monster.
>
> I think the elements of that line compare very well to the line you quoted
> from Buffy to Spike. Different tonal qualities - the Amends line is more
> how dying would be a failure, while Never Leave Me's line tells Spike he's
> already succeeded. But both are about facing down the monster to be a
> better man.
I think one problem is that Angel was never exactly what you'd call a
'good man', except for S1 & 2. As human he was lazy and all about self
gratification, and even when he was really trying hard to be good, he
still slept with Buffy even though he knew it probably wasn't a good
idea... Buffy, who is is inspiration, is also his downfall, and I think
he just gets stuck in all of it and can't see a way out.
Spike in a way has it easier. He used to be 'a good man', and he has
fought his own way back ("This chip they did _to_ me, I couldn't help
it. The soul I got on my own. For you."). Angel had the soul done _to_
him, and I think he fears that all the good he does is because of that,
and not himself (as it were). The fact that he really has changed since
his time chasing rats in the sewers is not really apparent to him, and
it's not a change Buffy has witnessed, even tough she was the catalyst.
> So I think the effort is more comparable than you give it credit for. There
> is a narrower difference. Faith. (The concept, not the person.) Buffy
> tells Spike that she believes in him. She doesn't seem able to do that in
> Amends. Yet that message does get delivered in the end by the PTB. And
> both Angel and Spike are left in wonder at that message.
If I'd had better time, maybe I'd have been able to be as succinct as
you, because that's the point I was trying to put across, however
badly. :)
> (You know, sometime we probably do need to discuss how much S5-S7 parallels
> S1-S3.)
I did that once, but only looking at the B/A and B/S stories. I could
link you?
Elisi
Malsperanza wrote:
> One Bit Shy wrote:
>
> [much snippage]
>
> > There is some nice expression of a number of ideas in the [Buffy/Spike] conversations,
> > but the thing is, it also repeats an awful lot of the ideas from the prior
> > episode. We've got Buffy and Friends raising pretty much the same issues
> > about helping Spike, with the same even tone, and the same result. Buffy
> > interrogates Spike about the killings, but he doesn't remember things.
> > Fake-Spike provokes an attack on a human, while Buffy marvels at how he
> > seemed to instantly change. We're reminded that Spike is a vicious killer,
> > and he asks Buffy to kill him because of that, but Buffy sees something good
> > in him and offers hope to him instead.
> >
> > Yes, they do each of these things differently. Sometimes with major
> > differences in tone. Like bodies bursting through the floor to show Buffy
> > what Spike is capable of last episode. Here it's a smaller attack on Andrew
> > and a lot of words about how bad he really is from Spike. (Which,
> > incidentally, can't possibly impress Buffy. With the stuff she's seen - not
> > least of which being Angelus - Spike talking about knowing how much blood to
> > suck isn't really all that special.)
>
> I see 3 things that are new in this episode, all presented obliquely,
> but nonetheless important:
>
> 1. Spike is much less insane than last week.
>
> Aside from the moments when he is possessed by the FE, he's coherent
> and even articulate, clever. This means (among other things) that when
> he argues his case for deserving the death penalty, he's not just
> pitiably raving; he's stating a rational position. In fact, it's so
> reasonable that Buffy has to overcome some pretty strong historical
> arguments of her own in order to defy it. Which means, I think, that
> the First Evil is able to manipulate whole situations: Spike himself
> (not Fake-Spike) is arguing the case that Fake-Spike would have argued:
> I'm too evil, I'm too dangerous: kill me now. So we have to consider
> that the FE may already be deep in the workings of the Summers
> household and the relationships of its denizens.
>
> someone upthread nicely pointed out: the show's prime link between love
> and pain) is now explicit, expressed once and for all.
>
> Aside from the profound existential grimness of that idea, what I think
> it means *here* is that Buffy and Spike are both right about what
> drives the Slayer and gives her her power: they're talking about the
> same thing. Spike calls it "hate," the Dark Side, and Buffy recoils at
> the word but doesn't entirely reject the underlying concept. The
> alternative word they are both dancing around without uttering is
> experiment, love can work for both good and evil, sometimes both at
> once. (Spike comes close, in the earlier conversation, when he says, "I
> have come to redefine the words pain and suffering since I fell in love
> with you." When we hear that, it just sounds like a classic romancey
> statement--grand melodrama. Buffy also thinks so too. But Spike may
> also be speaking quite literally there.)
>
> I don't mean that Buffy lurves Spike, but that the dark, violent force
> that drives her, that makes her never give up, that turns her into such
> a formidable adversary, is clearly the same vital force that made her
> pledge herself 4-evah to Angel, made her give up her life for Dawn (who
> wasn't even really her sister), and has motivated her every sacrifice
> all along. As Dante says, love is the motive force that "drives the sun
> and the other stars." (If all Slayers have this quality of loving
> intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
> why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
> poach Buffy's turf.)
>
>
> soul) is now far more than just the physical rescue of a person in
> bodily peril. She has a power now to perform emotional or spiritual
> rescues, soul-rescues. When she says "I believe in you," those words
> have an extraordinary healing power, which the scene allows us to feel.
> Perhaps they mean so much to Spike because he's in lurve, but that's
> not the only reason they're powerful. The implication is that Buffy is
> now a visionary, a Truth-Speaker, one whose power to discern *and
> uphold* goodness and virtue is supernatural. She is, therefore, an
> immense threat to the First Evil. Since Buffyverse is pretty Manichean,
> we are now officially permitted to begin speculating on just what the
> *opposite* power of the First Evil might be. (The First Good? The Last
> Good?)
>
> least) why the writers wanted the Lastest Most Biggest Bad of the
> series to be one of the first Big Bads--one that was around from pretty
> early on. It can't be something new; it's got to be something that's
> been around long enough to know Buffy, to have seen her grow into the
> figure she now is. And perhaps to have grown along with her. Most of
> the other past Big Bads were just monsters; the First Evil is a
> concept. (Admittedly, in "Amends" he looks like a monster, but we'll
> just stick our fingers in our ears and go na-na-na regarding the
> continuity problems.)
>
> > Maybe it's just me, but it feels really weird to me - and somewhat deflates
> > this episode since important elements, including the big conclusion of
> > believing in Spike, aren't really news any more.
>
> Aside from the above revelations, 90% of the episode repeats stuff
> we've seen already. It's just audience pandering, but I have to say I
> enjoyed it enormously, because it hit all the marks I like best: angsty
> Spike/Buffy; Xander in non-irritating mode, Xander/Anya banter, comedic
> Willow, hardly any Dawn, lots of good one-liners. Also, I like the
> Andrew we're now seeing. He's less one-note than Warren and Jonathan,
> somehow. So the repetition didn't bug me.
>
>
> > I don't know what actually went on, but again, it feels like something is
> > askew in the way stories were breaking at this point in the season.
>
> Nterrq, gubhtu guvf rcvfbqr qvqa'g ortva gb zngpu fbzr bs gur yngre
> barf sbe cher ubeevoyrarff bs zvfgvzvat.
>
Wow. I really love this. I actually wrote an essay focussing on the
same issues:
http://elisi.livejournal.com/113107.html (SPOILERS! BEWARE!) in case
you're interested.
(I could re-post bits, but I'd have to rot-13 most of it, and I'm
getting very tired of encrypting.)
vague disclaimer
"Patrician" <ghj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > SPIKE: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the
> > world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends
> > over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got...
> > dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of
> > people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here.
> > But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for
> > destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Picadilly. Farewell,
> > Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm saying?
> >
> >
> > Lore
> >
>
>
> This has probably been answered before but I'll ask anyway. Who on the
> writing team has had a lot of contact with England and English people?
> Because the speech above could have come straight from an English show
> rather than an American one.
mmmm'kaaaay....
Well Whedon went to a posh school in England (Winchester?).
Aside from the reference to ManYoo, all of the other specifically
English references come from a single line of a song (It's a Long Way To
Tipperary).
Yup, coulda been written by an Englishman!
--
Wikipedia: like Usenet, moderated by trolls
hayes62
The other thing it does is make it quite clear to Buffy and to viewers
that Spike feels full responsibility for every thing he did. Really
feels it. This isn't him gibbering in the basement about hurting the
girl, this is him perfectly lucidly owning to horrors that, (to bring
up yet another parallel with the Amends dialogue) she doesn't know
about because he didn't do them to her. It's his penance.
> > However, I definitely agree that a key difference in this episode is that
> > Spike is much less insane. One might argue that he's not insane at all.
> > Buffy telling him last episode that someone is playing with them - that it's
> > really not all coming from Spike himself - seems to have been the anchor he
> > needed to pull himself out of the ongoing insanity. What we see in this
> > episode is pretty much limited to direct intervention by The First.
> >
> > There are important reasons for this episode to exist apart from Sleeper.
> > Sleeper revealed what was happening to Spike, and in so doing gave him the
> > key to regaining his sanity. Never Leave Me displays the sanity and uses
> > him and Andrew and related events to reveal The First. And in so doing,
> > different qualities are allowed to come out in Buffy/Spike conversations.
> >
> > So they are sequential steps in the broader story. That's not the problem.
> >
> > The problem I see is that they wanted to deliver essentially the same
> > message in the Spike climax for both episodes. And went through essentially
> > the same logic path to get to it. Reinforcement is fine, but this seems a
> > bit much. Especially going for much the same emotional climax two episodes
ÿ > in a row. At least the Amends parallel is four years old.
It's the same climax from Spike's point of view, Buffy is prepared
to help him and she can. OK so its slightly different for him,
potential versus actual. For Buffy though the difference is more
significant. At the end of Sleeper she had a new problem she had no
idea how to deal with, the ending was emotionally ambivalent at best.
The conclusion of the NLM scene is very different in terms of how Buffy
is feeling, now she knows what she has to do, at least as far as Spike
is concerned she has made a difference. And to bring up Cassie's
other prophecy is "I believe in you," the thing she was going to
tell him one day?
> > > 3. Buffy's power to rescue Spike (and, by extension, anyone with a
> > > soul) is now far more than just the physical rescue of a person in
> > > bodily peril. She has a power now to perform emotional or spiritual
> > > rescues, soul-rescues. When she says "I believe in you," those words
> > > have an extraordinary healing power, which the scene allows us to feel.
> > > Perhaps they mean so much to Spike because he's in lurve, but that's
> > > not the only reason they're powerful. The implication is that Buffy is
> > > now a visionary, a Truth-Speaker, one whose power to discern *and
> > > uphold* goodness and virtue is supernatural. She is, therefore, an
> > > immense threat to the First Evil. Since Buffyverse is pretty Manichean,
> > > we are now officially permitted to begin speculating on just what the
> > > *opposite* power of the First Evil might be. (The First Good? The Last
ÿ > > Good?)
Joss being an atheist I think good and evil in the verse' is more
like physics, a long futile battle against entropy. Well futile if all
that matters is how it ends. I doubt any unambiguous powers for good,
or even the ones that simply be, are going to turn up on BtVS.
> > But seeing what Buffy's doing here as an
> > extension of her own slayer power is interesting. Whether it quite reaches
> > the level of mystical truth-speaker with Spike as you suggest, I'm not sure.
> > (Where's the human Buffy in this?)
>
> A question she has been asking since "Intervention," no?
>
> > But it may still very well be time to
> > think more about her super-powers other than the physical ones. They've
> > always been there. The dreams. The just knowing things commonly referred
> > to as slayer instincts. She's always had a mystical part of her in addition
ÿ > to the physical. Wouldn't they have developed over time too?
Maybe. But I suspect the more important question is the one about human
Buffy. The series has become less and less about mythological metaphors
for the human condition, more literary and less genre, as it's
matured. Take the First. Unlike previous villains it has no physical
power, its only real power lies in its ability to bring out the evil
people already have. Clearly it finds this a little frustrating hence
Ubie (I think I must have Nosferatu-fear because he scared the
bejeebers out of me).
> > I know this is a slightly different direction, but the thought makes me
> > wonder how that might fit into Buffy's sense of feeling superior and being
> > the law. Possibly to help feed that. But maybe also because that's what
> > those feelings really are about. Knowing truths others don't. One of the
> questions floating out there now is why does she get to decide?
Well never forget how feeling superior also makes her feel inferior.
But I think the superiority comes from having experiences and
responsibilities the others don't, not because she has superpowers.
> It may both feed and undermine it, as Holden suggests. Because one
> question raised by "I am the law" is: Which law? There are two kinds in
> Buffyverse, human and magical/mystical. Human law is handled by the
> police and has jurisdiction over things like murder of human beings,
> burglery, etc. Buffy never claims to have any authority over that--or
> immunity from it (though Faith does, when she says, "We are the law").
> But ever since Buffy fired the Watchers' Council back in s3, she's had
> no higher authority to answer to--which means no restraints on her free
> will and judgment, but also no one to pass the buck to. She's actually
> been operating as The Law for several years, but since she died the
> second time and came back "wrong"--that is, changed, not 100%
ÿ human--she's been developing the Insight thing rapidly.
How was she supernaturally insightful in S6? In this season the only
supernatural insight she's had are a couple of dreams about girls
being killed. I f anything she's been a little supernaturally obtuse,
she had to have Spike tell her about the talisman, she couldn't ense
his soul, Dawn looked up how to kill Gnarl, she failed with Cassie,
Willow got d'Hoffryn on Anya's case, the jacket took her over just
as much as anyone, she lost Spike in the crowd and he had to call her
for her to find out what was going on with him. Her insights seem to
have come from quite human processes of deduction and self-examination.
People talk about Slayer intuition as if it were a mystical talent but
I think it's just like most intuition, Buffy's not dumb and she's
been in the biz a while, it's like a doctor being able to instantly
diagnose a disease.
I will buy that talking with Holden helped her work through some issues
with Spike, I think it's that and talking with Spike himself, which
has given her the confidence and authority she now shows with him. But
Spike aside she's been playing the leader for real ever since
Lessons, I'm not sure the Holden thing is the cause of that or even
paricularily relevant to it and I still think his final words (and he
made damm sure that " you're alone until you die," was the note
on which the conversation ended) are going to lead her down a wrong
path.
John Briggs
> In article <9D5Rg.23369$r61....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
> "Patrician" <ghj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> SPIKE: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the
>>> world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your
>>> friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world.
>>> You've got... dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people.
>>> Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's
>>> all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision. With a
>>> real... passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye,
>>> Picadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm
>>> saying?
>>>
>>>
>>> Lore
>>>
>>
>>
>> This has probably been answered before but I'll ask anyway. Who on
>> the writing team has had a lot of contact with England and English
>> people? Because the speech above could have come straight from an
>> English show rather than an American one.
>
> mmmm'kaaaay....
>
> Well Whedon went to a posh school in England (Winchester?).
Not just posh - it's fearsomely intellectual. (He claims to have been the
token stupid American.)
> Aside from the reference to ManYoo, all of the other specifically
> English references come from a single line of a song (It's a Long Way
> To Tipperary).
Dog racing?
It's a riff on London references - which is why Man U is a false note, but
Man U is a global brand.
> Yup, coulda been written by an Englishman!
--
John Briggs
Ken from Chicago
> Don Sample wrote:
>> In article <--6dnVj2QKWe147Yn...@giganews.com>,
>> Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>>>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>>>> threads.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>>>> Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
>>>> (or "Of human and inhuman bondage")
>>>> Writer: Drew Goddard
>>>> Director: David Solomon
>>>>
>>
>>>> first you have Andrew just being a geek trying to
>>>> imitate what he's seen others do better, which is funny enough. Then
>>>> you have the layered response in which Wil tries to fake the evil she
>>>> knows she can be capable of, and it has enough basis in reality to
>>>> work, at least on someone who's already scared of her. Even if she
>>>> can't resist a few Willow-isms like "a very powerful she-witch...
>>>> or 'witch,' as is more accurate," and the closing "okay?"
>>> Another little deja vu moment, this one a callback to "Doppelgangland":
>>> it's true that when Willow is really being bad, she's *Really Bad* - but
>>> she can't *play* bad to save her life...
>>
>> But we do get a flash that she can be really bad, when Andrew starts
>> trying to weasel out by saying that it was Warren who killed Tara, and he
>> was really aiming at Buffy anyway.
>
> Yes; she very nearly slipped. But then that would have been her *Really
> Bad* side coming out, not her "playing bad" side.
>
>>
>>
>>>> A little bit of continuity that I just noticed: Buffy's treating Dawn
>>>> as part of the team now, regularly "assigning" her research duty.
>>>> She handles herself pretty well in the nice chaotic fight towards the
>>>> end, as does Xander.
>>> Dawn is a scrapper. Maybe she *has* been paying attention to Buffy all
>>> this time.
>>
>> She needs to work on her killer instinct though. She shouldn't have
>> hesitated when going after that Bringer.
>>
>
> True. Rule number 1: split the other guy's skull first, *then* take time
> to feel bad about it.
We can work around it.
> --
> Rowan Hawthorn
>
> "Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
> Vampire Slayer"
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
Some batteries know it's an illusion and prefer it anyway.
Especially compared to the drab reality.
Then again look at the popularity of GUILD WARS, CITY OF HEROES, CITY OF
VILLAINS, SECOND LIFE, WORLD OF WARCRAFT, ULTIMA ONLINE, EVERQUEST, not to
mention the legion of "regular" online multiplayer role-playing, shooter or
sports games.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"Patrician" <ghj...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9D5Rg.23369$r61....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
Joss Whedon grew up attending a British (um, sheesh, Brits have different
meanings for "public", "private" and "state" when it comes to schools, cor,
which is it? crumbs) boarding school. He probably had his fill of fish and
chips or pie and chips.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"John Briggs" <john.b...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:NM8Rg.31823$cx.2...@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net...
> vague disclaimer wrote:
>> In article <9D5Rg.23369$r61....@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
>> "Patrician" <ghj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> SPIKE: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the
>>>> world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your
>>>> friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world.
>>>> You've got... dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people.
>>>> Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's
>>>> all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision. With a
>>>> real... passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye,
>>>> Picadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm
>>>> saying?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Lore
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This has probably been answered before but I'll ask anyway. Who on
>>> the writing team has had a lot of contact with England and English
>>> people? Because the speech above could have come straight from an
>>> English show rather than an American one.
>>
>> mmmm'kaaaay....
>>
>> Well Whedon went to a posh school in England (Winchester?).
>
> Not just posh - it's fearsomely intellectual. (He claims to have been the
> token stupid American.)
Well, you know how shy, modest and self-deprecating us yanks are.
>> Aside from the reference to ManYoo, all of the other specifically
>> English references come from a single line of a song (It's a Long Way
>> To Tipperary).
>
> Dog racing?
>
> It's a riff on London references - which is why Man U is a false note, but
> Man U is a global brand.
>
>> Yup, coulda been written by an Englishman!
> --
> John Briggs
-- Ken from Chicago (the most modest person alive)
vague disclaimer
"John Briggs" <john.b...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
It may be banned in many places in the US, but it is scarcely unknown.
Now, if he'd said *whippet* racing...
> It's a riff on London references - which is why Man U is a false note, but
> Man U is a global brand.
Er, one football reference, two London-for-tourists references. More
"places/ things Americans might have heard of" (the last two taken from
a very familiar song). Had they realised at this point that Spike was a
poet I imagine a Stratford reference would have crept in there.
Definitely *straight* from an English show.
vague disclaimer
"Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >> SPIKE: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the
> >> world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends
> >> over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got...
> >> dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of
> >> people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here.
> >> But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for
> >> destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Picadilly. Farewell,
> >> Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm saying?
> >>
> >>
> >> Lore
> >>
> >
> >
> > This has probably been answered before but I'll ask anyway. Who on the
> > writing team has had a lot of contact with England and English people?
> > Because the speech above could have come straight from an English show
> > rather than an American one.
> >
> > Trev
> >
> >
> >
>
> Joss Whedon grew up attending a British (um, sheesh, Brits have different
> meanings for "public", "private" and "state" when it comes to schools, cor,
> which is it? crumbs) boarding school. He probably had his fill of fish and
> chips or pie and chips.
*tsk*
Bangers 'n mash (and he's not even sure what that is).
hayes62
> is a narrower difference. Faith. (The concept, not the person.) Buffy
> tells Spike that she believes in him. She doesn't seem able to do that in
> Amends. Yet that message does get delivered in the end by the PTB. And
> both Angel and Spike are left in wonder at that message.
>
looks more as if Angel won't accept Buffy's word for things, it has to
come from a higher power. So it could be that Spike feels there is no
higher power than Buffy or that in S3 Angel justifiably thinks she
doesn't understand what he's dealing with because she hasn' t seen the
full depths of his depravity and is herself still a relative innocent.
Spike knows she's been there. Maybe not all the way but somewhere close.
Ken from Chicago
"vague disclaimer" <l64o...@dea.spamcon.org> wrote in message
news:l64o-1rj5-F3B4C...@europe.isp.giganews.com...
Bangers = sausages
Mash = (mashed) potatoes.
-- Ken from Chicagoshire (Britophile)
P.S. A specific explanation is everyone's friend.
Malsperanza
George W Harris wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2006 15:06:44 -0700, "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> :George W Harris wrote:
> :> On 22 Sep 2006 12:52:09 -0700, "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com>
> :> wrote:
> :>
> :> :(If all Slayers have this quality of loving
> :> :intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
> :> :why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
> :> :poach Buffy's turf.)
> :>
> :> It would explain it if there were any evidence that it were true.
> :
> :
> ::-) Well, there was a bit of shorthand in my post, to be sure. I mean,
> :if you want to explain Faith's behavior with regard to Angel as purely
> :trying to get Buffy's goat, go ahead.
>
> Which behavior would that be? The only time
> she ever displayed any attraction to Angel at all was
> when she was working for the Mayor and trying to get
> Angel to lose his soul.
Yes, those scenes. She may have been faking her attraction, or
motivated purely by a desire to irk Buffy (and do the Mayor's bidding),
but it's left open. In the scene with the Mayor, after she fails, and
in a number of her small reactions, I see Faith showing genuine
attraction to Angel, and a personal disappointment that she couldn't
attract him. It's part of Faith's desire not only to compete
with/destroy Buffy, but also to be like her. Faith is a very ambivalent
person.
~Mal
lpad...@voicenet.com
> >> Played by Camden Toy again.
> >
> >I remember reading somewhere that he showed up at the Wrap Party
> >without makeup and nobody (including SMG) knew who he was!
>
> The veracity of which is somewhat cast into doubt by the fact that SMG
> wasn't at the wrap party (she was up in Vancouver filming Scooby Doo 2).
You're right. I stand corrected. His showing up at the Wrap Party and
SMG not recognizing him had to have been two separate incidents. But he
did go unrecognized in both instances until he told them who he was. I
seem to recall reading an interview with Camden Toy in the "Buffy"
magazine to that effect.
Malsperanza
Or else, they have already turned up, perhaps often, but (fortunately)
do not look like some pink cloud of piety straight out of "Touched by
an Angel." Isn't that the point? An atheist would argue that religion
doesn't hold the exclusive patent on concepts such as forgiveness,
charity, morality, decency, sacrifice, or selflessness.
Joss is an atheist who is willing to tell a fictional story that
includes the concept of a pure fundamental *intelligent* Prime
Evil--one that is at the beginning of all things, and one that--above
all--has motive will. In Buffyverse, one needn't be a believer in
religion to embrace the concept of such a pure Power (or Intelligence).
So there's no reason why a Power for Good shouldn't also exist. I
suppose the opposite of a concept of entropy would be a concept of
life-force. Entropy tends toward decay and collapse; life tends toward
life.
One question being set up in s7 is whether the Big Ending will involve
a, er, Big Ending or not. (This show has invested a lot in the idea
that apocalyses come and go.)
Personally, I'm with the atheists: a long futile battle against entropy
about sums it up for me. But then, I also don't personally buy the idea
of a Big Bad, which is a key idea in Buffyverse. So Buffyverse seems to
be positing something else. So far it's been a lot of badguys each
serially claiming to be Big Bad, and each opposed by a lot of poorly
identified, scattered, small Goods, al running around at odds with one
another, who somehow manage to cohere just long enough to triumph.
Mostly because Buffy, their leader, steps in to do the extraordinary
thing no one else could do.
But now we have, apparently, a big, organized Pure Evil, not just
another Big Bad--evil Ascenscion Beast, evil Fashion Goddess, evil
Initiative, evil human trio. The FE says at the beginning of the
season: this time, it's about power itself. If you like the physics
model, then s7 seems to be pointing toward Archimedes: "Give me a place
to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world." The
question is, then: What place, what lever, and who's "me"?
> > > But seeing what Buffy's doing here as an
> > > extension of her own slayer power is interesting. Whether it quite reaches
> > > the level of mystical truth-speaker with Spike as you suggest, I'm not sure.
> > > (Where's the human Buffy in this?)
> >
> > A question she has been asking since "Intervention," no?
> >
> > > But it may still very well be time to
> > > think more about her super-powers other than the physical ones. They've
> > > always been there. The dreams. The just knowing things commonly referred
> > > to as slayer instincts. She's always had a mystical part of her in addition
> ÿ > to the physical. Wouldn't they have developed over time too?
>
> Maybe. But I suspect the more important question is the one about human
> Buffy. The series has become less and less about mythological metaphors
> for the human condition, more literary and less genre, as it's
> matured. Take the First. Unlike previous villains it has no physical
> power, its only real power lies in its ability to bring out the evil
> people already have. Clearly it finds this a little frustrating hence
> Ubie (I think I must have Nosferatu-fear because he scared the
> bejeebers out of me).
I like the Nosferatu reference (the First Dracula, as it were), but
Ubervamp looks like just one more actor in an Icky Suit. I much prefer
Disembodied!FE--now *that's* scary. Because it is, as you say, all
about a kind of Evil we can recognize: the evil things we do, as
ensouled human beings (i.e., people with consciences and
consciousness).
>
> > > I know this is a slightly different direction, but the thought makes me
> > > wonder how that might fit into Buffy's sense of feeling superior and being
> > > the law. Possibly to help feed that. But maybe also because that's what
> > > those feelings really are about. Knowing truths others don't. One of the
> > questions floating out there now is why does she get to decide?
>
> Well never forget how feeling superior also makes her feel inferior.
> But I think the superiority comes from having experiences and
> responsibilities the others don't, not because she has superpowers.
>
> > It may both feed and undermine it, as Holden suggests. Because one
> > question raised by "I am the law" is: Which law? There are two kinds in
> > Buffyverse, human and magical/mystical. Human law is handled by the
> > police and has jurisdiction over things like murder of human beings,
> > burglery, etc. Buffy never claims to have any authority over that--or
> > immunity from it (though Faith does, when she says, "We are the law").
> > But ever since Buffy fired the Watchers' Council back in s3, she's had
> > no higher authority to answer to--which means no restraints on her free
> > will and judgment, but also no one to pass the buck to. She's actually
> > been operating as The Law for several years, but since she died the
> > second time and came back "wrong"--that is, changed, not 100%
> ÿ human--she's been developing the Insight thing rapidly.
>
> How was she supernaturally insightful in S6?
She saw what Spike was: that he was potentially worthy. I didn't mean
"supernatural" in the sense of Giles's mumbo-jumbo, critturs, or
Wicca!Willow's green glowing clouds. I meant a way of seeing and
interpreting the world that has been deeply re-shaped by her experience
beyond life. It's mostly expressed by her in very negative terms ("I
touch the fire and it freezes me")--not helped by Spike also using very
negative terms ("You came back wrong"). But throughout s6 it leads
Buffy to reconsider her role in the world--especially after her
decision *not* to commit suicide.
After OMWF she actually has to fight her way back to a human level, a
human way of being in the world. I don't think, at the end of s6, that
she's exactly human in the same way her friends art. It's one reason
why she has an affinity with Spike, and why she recognizes something in
him both in s6 and when he returns in s7. Something that absolutely no
one else among her friends and associates can see. Not one of them has
the least inkling of it. The most they can do is trust her when she
says it's there. Not even ex-Key Dawn has any sense of it.
> In this season the only
> supernatural insight she's had are a couple of dreams about girls
> being killed. I f anything she's been a little supernaturally obtuse,
> she had to have Spike tell her about the talisman, she couldn't ense
> his soul, Dawn looked up how to kill Gnarl, she failed with Cassie,
> Willow got d'Hoffryn on Anya's case, the jacket took her over just
> as much as anyone, she lost Spike in the crowd and he had to call her
> for her to find out what was going on with him. Her insights seem to
> have come from quite human processes of deduction and self-examination.
> People talk about Slayer intuition as if it were a mystical talent but
> I think it's just like most intuition, Buffy's not dumb and she's
> been in the biz a while, it's like a doctor being able to instantly
> diagnose a disease.
She spent a long time in a heaven dimension. Surely that has some
effect on her? The fact that her buddies don't grasp that possibility
(though Spike does, right away) doesn't mean it's not there.
> I will buy that talking with Holden helped her work through some issues
> with Spike, I think it's that and talking with Spike himself, which
> has given her the confidence and authority she now shows with him. But
> Spike aside she's been playing the leader for real ever since
> Lessons, I'm not sure the Holden thing is the cause of that or even
> paricularily relevant to it and I still think his final words (and he
> made damm sure that " you're alone until you die," was the note
> on which the conversation ended) are going to lead her down a wrong
> path.
We shall see...
~Mal
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
"Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Joss is an atheist who is willing to tell a fictional story that
> includes the concept of a pure fundamental *intelligent* Prime
> Evil--one that is at the beginning of all things, and one that--above
> all--has motive will. In Buffyverse, one needn't be a believer in
actually we dont what fe is only what it claims
ooo im so bad im so evil all others fear me
is that anything different than what the master or adam or glory claimed?
and theyre all dust in the wind
does it date back to big bang or before or just the beginning our genus
a concept that comes from other stories is an aggregate entity
that exists only within the consciousness of the people around it
so that everybody but kryten passes out it disappears
it might be imprinted circuit that affects the evolution and actions
of other creatures that come near it like a fendahl pentagram
not conscious or alive or intelligent in and of itself
anymore than a cold wind has motive will
but which can nonetheless change the behavior of humans in its path
> religion to embrace the concept of such a pure Power (or Intelligence).
> So there's no reason why a Power for Good shouldn't also exist. I
theres something countering first evil
and powerful enough to send a snowstorm to california coastal city
in the midst of a winter heat wave
it snows at sea level here but very very very rarely
and never during a winter warm period
i once heard a comment about movies like the exorcist or friday 13th part n
that its real easy to get audiences to accept the premise
of hell and the devil
but its hard to get them to accept the premise of heaven and god
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
"Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> George W Harris wrote:
> > On 22 Sep 2006 15:06:44 -0700, "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > :George W Harris wrote:
> > :> On 22 Sep 2006 12:52:09 -0700, "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com>
> > :> wrote:
> > :>
> > :> :(If all Slayers have this quality of loving
> > :> :intensely--commanding the power of love as a weapon--that would explain
> > :> :why Faith had such a jones for Angel--it wasn't just her trying to
> > :> :poach Buffy's turf.)
> > :>
> > :> It would explain it if there were any evidence that it were true.
> > :
> > :
> > ::-) Well, there was a bit of shorthand in my post, to be sure. I mean,
> > :if you want to explain Faith's behavior with regard to Angel as purely
> > :trying to get Buffy's goat, go ahead.
> >
> > Which behavior would that be? The only time
> > she ever displayed any attraction to Angel at all was
> > when she was working for the Mayor and trying to get
> > Angel to lose his soul.
>
> Yes, those scenes. She may have been faking her attraction, or
faith has a habit of taking things from buffy
like angel and riley