Covering
from “Sleeper” to “Showtime,” in which the wall I face is twenty feet thick,
four hundred times harder than diamond.
Very
recently, there was a brilliant Doctor
Who episode, where the Doctor spent four and a half billion years refusing
to give in and give up, punching his way through a wall rather than surrender,
dying horribly and summoning a new copy to repeat the process all over again.
Every time, however, he does have a moment of doubt, when he falters and wants
to give up. But he can’t, it’s not in his nature however much he wishes it
were.
I know the feeling.
I don’t even know where to begin
with all this, so I might as well start with the First, the ultimate in Buffy villains. Adam was dull. Glory was
shrill. The Trio was lame. Willow was miscalculated. And yet the First
dominates over them all by combining elements of each into an overwhelming
singularity from which no drama can escape. Yes, it is the Worst Buffy Villain, and I know the Great One
himself said he thought Adam was the worst, but he is wrong, so very wrong. At
least with Adam, there was other stuff going on.
Spinning right out of the last few
minutes of “Conversations with Dead People,” “Sleeper” has Buffy and Spike
realizing the still unnamed First has been manipulating him into killing
people. To what end? Really, to no end, except I guess it’s an Evil thing to
do. It’s not to build an army, it’s not conditioning Spike to eventually kill
Buffy, it’s not manipulating Buffy into killing Spike, and it’s not trying to
recruit Spike to its side, so what the hell is the point of this? Deny Spike’s
use as an asset? Then just kill him.
And “Sleeper” is by far the best of
these, because as cluttered as it is by the First’s non-plans, at least other
things are happening. Buffy and Spike’s independent investigations into what is
going on with Spike are…well, I’m not generous enough to call them compelling,
but that’s the best term compared to what comes next. The attempt to connect
all the dots of Spike’s madness doesn’t work at all (he’s incoherent when under
the First’s thrall!…except for when he is deadly focused under the First’s
thrall), and Buffy’s motivation for not staking Spike seems to mostly be that
he is a fan-favorite character on her show, but still. Still what? At least it
seems like there’s an idea that will come to fruition here.
“Never Leave Me” features all the
thrilling action of our brave heroes researching and failing to discover anything
for 45 minutes of episode, while Spike is tied to a chair. Then Andrew gets
tied to a chair, too. Andrew enters the picture again because apparently his
murder of Jonathan failed to produce enough CG blood for whatever the First had
planned with the evil manhole cover. So the new plan is to slaughter a piglet,
which, I know Jonathan is short and all, but he is larger than a 15 pound
piglet, and undiagnosed anemia or not, he has more blood in him than the couple
of bags he gets from the butcher shop that brings him across Willow’s path.
Yes, that his the elegant manner he is folded into the main tale—he bumps into
one of our main characters while he’s at the store on an illogical errand. There’s
some interrogation, and then the First gets Spike to attack Andrew, so everyone
assumes the First wants Andrew, all a deception so that no one is the wiser
when it’s Bringers snatch away Spike, because it’s going to use Spike’s blood
on the evil manhole, which summons the Ultravamp.
Come. The Fuck. On!
You had Spike for weeks before Buffy even knew he was in the basement!
And, once you no longer had him, and instead of any one or any thing else,
because, apparently, the evil manhole isn’t picky on blood, you use someone
Buffy is highly likely to come looking for? Giles tells us next episode that
the First has “unimaginable resources” and “eternity to act,” as this bullshit
is his intricate master plan. Granted, the Ultravamp, or Turok-Han if you
prefer, is a very impressive henchman, if by “very impressive” I mean “pretty
dull.”
The real frustrating thing about
this run is, obviously, how sloppy it is. Events are haphazard and dumb, and
the characters, which used to make up for story failings, are mostly treading
water, just doing things. Xander spends most of these episodes fixing windows,
for Christ’s sake. Buffy’s fervent faith in Spike is based around some vague
moment that escaped my notice. Willow quivers and quakes at the thought of even
the simplest spell, and yet the big twist of “Showtime” needs her to already
have a spell up for no reason. Spike is tortured with drowning despite not
needing to breathe. And into this, Giles arrives bringing the infamous
Potentials with him, a whole gaggle of ill-defined characters, but this time
with poor accents. Of these, the most memorably is Kennedy, who oozes so much
forced coolness she’s almost instantly the most obnoxious and hateful character
on the show. Then there’s the other two, chavy Mollie and estuary Annabelle
(both of whom seemed to have come by the accents by way of SoCal)—Mollie quakes
and worries, while Annabelle insists on respect for Mr. Giles, and chides
others for expecting weapons before the Slayer thinks they’re ready.
And yet Annabelle is the one who
runs away from the Summers Manse and gets killed by the Turok-Han. While you
might be tempted to call this a twist, there is nowhere near the depth of character
required to justify that—“We must respect Mr. Giles” and “We’ll have weapons
when the Slayer decides” constitute about 50% of her lines. I’m not just saying
this because of the two I much preferred Annabelle’s intermittent, half-assed
accent to Mollie’s aggressively terrible accent. That is to say, it bovvered
me.
What also stands out is how much of
what transpires here is for us, and not in a good way. In quite illogical or
irritatingly manipulative ways. We’re meant to wonder if Giles is Giles or the
First through these episodes, but maintaining that ambiguity limits Giles to
doing nothing but standing and talking, delivering exposition, and it seems
silly that the characters never notice that Giles doesn’t, like, open doors or
sit down or, you know, eat, or change out of his heavy coat indoors. Unlike in
days past, in these episodes Giles only exists when we’re watching him, to keep
the ambiguity going. Similarly, up until the grand reveal that Buffy, Willow,
and Xander have orchestrated the final fight against the Ultravamp, they all
act like there isn’t an orchestration, even when there are no Potentials around
to see what they are doing, because we’re still around, and they need to trick
us, too. Of course, the entire plan comes together in a mental only
teleconference we aren’t privy to (and again, Willow is supposed to not be
doing magic), which is just plain a cheap trick. Anyway, the grand learning
moment for the Potentials is also undercut by the fact that Buffy doesn’t
actually teach them anything. She beats the Ultravamp because she…fights?
Harder? Buffy changes up nothing in her strategy or style, and the Potentials
are stopped from interfering, so obviously they weren’t supposed to get fired
up and fight themselves. No, Buffy wins because as we’ve discussed before, she
can win when she decides to do so. She’s the protagonist, which is fine until
she tries to impart that as a stratagem to others.
The sloppiest thing of all though, I
bet, is something that rarely gets noticed. When Buffy tells Spike he attacked
Andrew, she clarifies to his quizzical expression “Tucker’s brother.” Tucker.
Villain of “The Prom.” Which happened while Spike was probably in Mexico. But
then, the point wasn’t to remind Spike of “The Prom,” it was to remind us of “The
Prom.”
That’s definitely not a comparison
that does these episodes any favors.
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