Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  The Replacement

  Three episodes into the season and as usual we’ve gotten the themes which will play out the rest of the year, as well as foreshadowing of the major plot lines. Fortunately, The Replacement gives us a theme I can discuss even now because it doesn’t require spoilers. It also sets up a plot point for later which I will hold off discussing until it comes up.

  This is an episode which appears to tell us a story about Xander but in fact tells us something that’s probably true for all of us. We all have good and bad aspects of our personalities, just as we see with Xander. One Xander is somewhat childish, one very mature :

  WILLOW: (turns back to him) Xander, you sound a little ... you have to help me figure this out, you know.

  ScruffyXANDER: But I never help. I get in trouble and Buffy saves me.

  WILLOW: That's not true! Sometimes we all help save you. (realizes that was unhelpful) And sometimes you're not in trouble.

  ScruffyXANDER: I'm just ... another great humiliation. (Willow looks sympathetic) But this time it's even worse. This demon, he's like taking my life, and everyone's treating him ... Everyone's treating him like a grown-up! Will, I'm starting to feel like...

  WILLOW: Like what?

  ScruffyXANDER: Like ... he's doing everything better. He's smarter, and ... (shakes head) I don't know, maybe I should just let him have it.

  But Toth began the episode intending to use his device on Buffy, and since I think the central metaphor of the series is that “we are Buffy”, the fact that Xander’s situation has universal application means that I think we should interpret the “split personality” idea as it applies to her. Both Buffy and others have long sensed that her Slayer half and her “real” half are separate and distinct. That’s been a persistent theme from the very beginning of the show. There are lots of examples; here’s one from Season 1, Never Kill A Boy On The First Date:

  Owen: It's weird.

  Buffy: What is?

  Owen: You! One minute you're right there. I've got you figured. The next, it's like you're two people.

  ***

  Owen: Buffy... (leads her away) What's the deal? Do you wanna bail on me?

  Buffy: No! No... no... uh... You remember when you said I was like two different people? Well, one of them has to go. But the other one is having a really, really good time, and will come back. I promise.”

  Or take this example from Surprise:

  Buffy: What am I supposed to do until then?

  Giles: Go to classes, do your homework, have supper...

  Buffy: Right. Be *that* Buffy.

  In this very episode, Buffy raises this sense of separation with Riley and he gives her an answer that’s at least partly true:

  BUFFY: Riley, do you wish-

  RILEY: No.

  BUFFY: No? You don't even know what I was gonna say.

  RILEY: Yes, I do. You wanted to know if I wished you got hit by the ferula-gemina, got split in two.

  BUFFY: Well, you have been kind of rankly about the whole slayer gig. Instead of having slayer Buffy, you could have Buffy Buffy.

  RILEY: Hey. I *have* Buffy Buffy. Being the slayer's part of who you are.

  Riley’s correct, of course, but Buffy has known this since at least What’s My Line:

  Kendra: You talk about slaying like it's a job. It's not. It's who you are.

  Buffy knows it, but she can’t accept that as the full answer. The fact that she told Giles that she wants to find out more about being a Slayer suggests that there’s a deeper issue here which Riley hasn’t understood but which Buffy is starting to grasp. Much of the rest of the season will be devoted to exploring that issue, and it’s going to do that in the context of split personalities.

  Speaking of Riley, his words to Xander at the end were obviously a shock to Xander and maybe to the audience as well. He has some good reasons to say it, though. He told her that he loved her in The Yoko Factor, but she didn’t respond in kind. Nor did she here when he said it again in the car.

  A couple of scenes foreshadowed it: Buffy’s dream in Restless, which I discussed in my post, suggested that she had reservations about Riley directly related to his view of her as the Slayer, and vice versa; and Riley showed his unhappiness with the brief look he gave Buffy in Real Me when she handed him the phone and told him to get Anya to the hospital while she rushed out to rescue Dawn. I shouldn’t read too much into a look, but when I re-watch that scene with the hindsight of Riley’s statement here, the look says to me that he’s annoyed at being left behind to clean up the kitchen instead of getting to go out with his team.

  One obvious response to Riley would be that love is a spectrum, not an “on/off” switch. I’d agree that Buffy doesn’t love him the way he loves her. The issue, one that’s been debated since we got contrasting views in Beauty and the Beasts and Lovers Walk, is just how all-consuming love should be. The episode opened with him telling her “Hey Buff, maybe you oughta leave the work behind sometimes. You're not always on slayer duty, you know?” Although Riley claimed that he “got” the whole Slayer package, it’s not clear that he really understands what that means. His belief that she can just put “Slayer duty” aside demonstrates that he doesn’t really get it. It is, as Kendra said, “who you are.”

  Riley’s life to-date has been very different from Buffy’s. He was on the conformity track; she has always gone her own way. He wants to rescue her (The Initiative), or to protect her as in this episode: “He mentioned Buffy? Where do we find him, and how hard can I kill him?” This demonstrates that he doesn’t understand key facts about the Slayer – she’s actually stronger and doesn’t need his protection. I think I’m safe in suspecting that there’s a feminist point being made here as well.

  Trivia notes: (1) Willow previously mentioned Xander doing the Snoopy dance in Passion. (2) Xander’s “take my life, please” seems to be a play on the old Henny Youngman joke “take my wife….please”. (3) Xander seems to have forgotten that Willow did handle her evil twin quite well in Doppelgangland. (4) When ScruffyXander told Anya “Look in my eyes. Can't you see it's me?”, he may have been thinking of Buffy and Giles in A New Man. (5) When Buffy refers sarcastically to Giles’s car as “ultimate driving maching my ass”, she’s referencing the old BMW slogan. (6) There’s a general resemblance between this episode and the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within. However, the “kill us both, Spock” line which both Xanders quote actually comes from the Star Trek episode Whom Gods Destroy. (7) Xander’s “fond” memories of the basement are all from previous episodes: Spike slept in his room in Hush; he and Anya drowned the Pargo demon in Something Blue; and he got his heart ripped out in Restless. (8) Xander’s “SuaveXander has left the building” plays off “Elvis has left the building”. (9) Toth’s magic device was called a “ferula-gemina”. A ferule is a stick or cane, and gemina is related to “Gemini”, which means “twins” in Latin. In short, it’s a “twin stick”. (10) I think this is fairly well known, but Nick Brendan’s twin brother played Xander in some scenes in this episode.

  Out Of My Mind

  If one theme of S5 is, as I said regarding The Replacement, “split personality”, then an episode entitled Out Of My Mind seems like an obvious sequel. There are 2 stories here of mental issues, those of Riley and Spike, both of whom go a bit crazy about Buffy (or because of Buffy, depending on how you see it). I guess I could include Joyce and her fainting spell as a mental issue, but I’ll leave her aside for now because that’s a bit unclear. I might also include Buffy, since her behavior in the teaser seemed to be another display of the “hunting” we saw in Buffy v. Dracula. And since I think every episode is about Buffy in some way, this might be a clue that what I’m about to say about Riley and Spike will eventually come back to her. Not necessarily in this post, though.

  At the end of S4, in Primeval, we saw Riley remove the chip from near his heart. That was metaphor, as I noted, and it’s carried over here in Out Of My Mind. The operation on his heart now is necessary because
his heart is metaphorically breaking – Buffy doesn’t love him. And the more his heart breaks, the less he believes that he can be the kind of man she would love. Xander, understanding what’s going on after what Riley told him at the end of The Replacement, too subtly tries to tell Buffy this: “Like, I had this friend once, who really liked this girl, and ... he got all worried that maybe she didn't like him back....” Nobody understands him.

  Riley’s concerned that the government will convert him into “Joe Normal”. But in The Initiative he described himself as “Joe Regular” and in Goodbye Iowa Buffy said that Riley was supposed to be “Mr. Joe Guy”. Riley now sees the real him (heh) as inadequate for Buffy. He now feels that he needs superpowers because he wants to join her in the workplace:

  RILEY: Hey, hope I didn't get in the way.

  He puts his arm around her. She gives a fake smile.

  BUFFY: Of course not. I-I was just ... startled. And, you know I don't ... love the idea of you patrolling alone.

  RILEY: Not much for bench-warming. …

  RILEY: (grinning) Hey, wanna go again? Come on, I bet this place is just teeming with aerodynamic vampires.

  He’s trying too hard to prove himself. “Afraid of a little competition?” he asks her later, projecting his own insecurities onto her. His heart broken, Riley loses his mind a bit. He thinks he needs to keep what the government artificially gave him in order to hold on to Buffy:

  RILEY: I go back ... let the government get whimsical with my innards again ... They could do anything that- Best-case scenario, they turn me into Joe Normal, just... (sighs) Just another guy.

  BUFFY: And that's not enough for you?

  RILEY: It's not enough for *you*.

  BUFFY: Why would you say that?

  RILEY: Come on. Your last boyfriend wasn't exactly a civilian.

  BUFFY: So that's what this is about? You're going to die, all over some macho pissing contest.

  RILEY: (shakes his head) It's not about him. It's about us. (Buffy shakes her head, not understanding) You're getting stronger every day, more powerful. I can't touch you. Every day, you're just ... a little further out of my reach.

  His government-issued power is a false source of strength, as we know from S4. Yet, at the same time, it’s hard to resist the feeling that he can’t stand the implicit comparison to Buffy and that he’s trying to prove something to himself. Graham gets right to this other half of Riley’s problem:

  GRAHAM: But you know you don't belong here, right? (Keeps walking and talking although Riley has stopped walking and is staring at his back) This town? I mean, you're nothin' here.

  RILEY: Hey. (Graham stops walking, turns to look at him) What are you saying?

  GRAHAM: Come on, man. You know it's true. There's nothing for you here.

  RILEY: There's her.

  GRAHAM: Okay, right, there's her. And? You used to have a mission, and now you're what? The mission's boyfriend? Mission's true love?

  Riley looks at the floor, then walks on, past Graham.

  GRAHAM: You belong with us.

  After the operation, Riley looks no more convinced than before that Buffy loves him. He’s obviously disappointed when she tells him she needs to go look after her mother, rather than staying with him. Whether he’s right to feel that way is arguable, but it’s pretty clear that he does.

  Spike’s also going crazy because of Buffy. At this point she’s his motivation for getting the chip out of his brain:

  SPIKE: [I’m gonna] bathe in the slayer's blood. Gonna dive in it. (with relish) Swim in it.

  When the doctor fakes the operation, Spike is driven nearly around the bend:

  SPIKE: Buffy, Buffy, Buffy! Everywhere I turn, she's there! That nasty little face, that ... bouncing shampoo-commercial hair, that whole sodding holier-than-thou attitude.

  HARMONY: Well, aren't we kinda unholy, by the-

  SPIKE: She follows me, you know, tracks me down. I'm her pet project. Drive Spike round the bend. Makes every day a fresh bout of torture.

  He stops running, picks up a headstone and throws it against another. Harmony cringes as the dust showers her.

  HARMONY: Spike!

  SPIKE: You don't understand. I can't get rid of her. She's everywhere. She's haunting me, Harmony!

  Spike’s dream at the end may seem like it came out of the blue, and perhaps it did: Something Blue. You never know what consequences might follow from magic spells. It could very well be that the marriage spell there had the ramifications we see here.

  Less speculatively, Spike’s been obsessed with Buffy for a long time now. In vampires it’s hard to separate obsession from affection.

  Trivia notes: (1) Explaining how Buffy’s conversation with Willow about the French Revolution connects to the episode requires a bit of background and some guesswork. Roughly, Jean Paul Marat was a radical journalist who helped turn the population of Paris away from the moderate Girondins and towards the more radical Jacobins. He was assassinated by a woman Girondist who stabbed him in the heart after pretending to admire him. It’s the stab in the heart which, I think, connects the story to Riley. To clarify, I’m not saying that Buffy is the assassin, though Riley might very well see it that way. (2) Willow’s “I feel like a witch in a magic shop” plays off the saying “I feel like a kid in a candy store.” (3) In the James Bond novels, Q is the person (or branch; it’s not entirely clear) who provided tools and equipment which Bond needed. Q from Star Trek is, well, more of a God-like character. The training room is obviously more like the former. (4) Spike’s line “Oh Pacey you blind idiot. Can't you see she doesn't love you?” refers to the TV show Dawson’s Creek which was on the same network at that time. (5) When Harmony says she’s “on the lam”, she means she’s running away from the law (in this case supposedly Buffy). (6) The doctor referred to Riley’s tachycardia, which is the technical term for rapid heartbeat (tachy = fast, cardia = heart). (7) Riley referred to the Initiative using chemical treatments on the soldiers, which we saw in Goodbye Iowa. (8) We saw Riley playing basketball because Marc Blucas played college basketball for Wake Forest and professionally in England.

  No Place Like Home

  No Place Like Home introduces the villain of S5. Her name is Glory and it shows up in the transcript, though nobody speaks it in this episode; we’ll learn it soon enough. In Real Me we were introduced to Dawn and I raised the question whether she served as a metaphor, at least for some purposes. The villains almost always serve a metaphorical role, so we now should be asking whether Glory does and, if so, what that role is. There is, I think, a small hint in The Replacement, but it’s pretty obscure except in hindsight. In addition, we’d expect the metaphor to fit within the season themes which I’ve previously identified. I’m hinting, but I don’t want to spoil, so as with Dawn I’ll discuss Glory’s metaphorical role in detail in the finale.

  For now, just as I did with Dawn, let’s keep track of what we do know about Glory. She’s almost impossibly self-centered. She’s super strong even though she appears to be human and no bigger than Buffy. She certainly kicked Buffy’s ass. She’s more than a little deranged, and whatever she did to the poor security guard (we’ll find out in a few episodes) involved his brain. I think all these characteristics are very meaningful.

  The craziness fits in perfectly with what we’ve seen so far: a crazy man confronted Dawn in Real Me; The Replacement showed us split personalities; Riley and Spike both went a bit crazy in Out Of My Mind. Now Glory shows up. She acts crazy and says to Buffy “Are you crazy?”. There has to be a connection here, and there is. That connection arises directly out of Glory’s metaphorical role in the season.

  Spike continues down the crazy path in this episode. He’s now lurking outside Buffy’s house, with one of my favorite lines in the series: “Out. For. A. Walk…. Bitch.” Vampires don’t fall in love with Slayers, so it’s understandable that Spike doesn’t know how to behave in that situation. Besides, it’s unclear if vampires know how to behave when in love any
way. Think Spike and Dru.

  I want to keep track of Riley even though we don’t see much of him in NPLH. He reassures Buffy that “I really am ok”, but if he is it’s not for lack of provocation. State of Siege added this in comments: “In this episode, a tendency of Buffy's—one that has been there since throughout S5, although in a less pronounced form: to use sex (well, kissing) to mask her lack of need for Riley or her general desire to have him be elsewhere. It is a small detail, but I have found it a telling gauge to their relationship.”

  I left open Joyce’s situation in my discussion of Out Of My Mind, but now we learn that she is indeed having a problem and that it’s, well, not necessarily “mental” but certainly in her head. This was actually signaled previously – it was easy to miss, but Joyce got a headache in The Replacement:

  JOYCE: (sighs, puts hand to her forehead) This must be my "two teenage girls in the house" headache. I thought it felt familiar.

  BUFFY: Good work, Dawn. You gave her a headache.

  DAWN: I did not! (to Joyce) Did I give you a headache, Mom? I'm sure part of it is Buffy's.

  Segueing from Dawn, Glory says the following in her deranged rant: “Not now, Mommy's talking! Wriggling, piling, prowling, crawling, clowning, cavorting, doing it over and over and over and over until someone's gonna sit down on their tuffet and make this birthing stop!” The highlighted phrase is another reference to the Faith/Buffy dream in Graduation Day which prophesied Dawn’s arrival (“Little Miss Muffet”), and what follows relates to the roles Glory and Dawn play in the season. This tells us that Glory and Dawn are connected in some way, as we learn when Buffy rescues the monk.