Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  This is not the behavior of someone “painfully, powerfully” in love. In light of these comments, it’s not surprising that Willow expressed skepticism that he loved Anya (The Replacement), nor that Buffy called him on it here when he was telling her how much she should love Riley. As a result, I see Xander’s speech to Anya much the same way I see his advice to Buffy – perhaps with good intentions, but more likely to create greater heartache.

  One final point about Buffy’s behavior here as it reflects on her and on Riley’s staking of Sandy. The vamp “whorehouse” offered for pay the same thing Riley got from Sandy in return for a few drinks. I think we’re supposed to be disturbed by Buffy’s reaction to learning that such places exist. It’s not just her determination to shut it down when there were greater evils she could deal with, it was her anger in setting the place on fire. More to the point, it was her decision to slay the female vamp who ran at the end of the fight in the alley. As Xander tells her, “you’re acting like a crazy person.” (Note the mention of “crazy” yet again.) Xander’s wrong a lot, but he’s right about this.

  Now, obviously, these were vampires and Buffy always has a plausible reason to slay them. The problem here is that she acted out of anger at Riley, not out of any real sense of duty. It’s morally problematic. And that brings us back to Riley staking Sandy. Any moral qualms we felt (and should feel) at Buffy staking the last vamp apply with extra force to Riley’s situation in Shadow. After all, he either solicited Sandy to bite him or he consented; Buffy did nothing of the sort. I see Buffy’s reaction here as a post hoc commentary on Riley.

  Trivia notes: (1) The failure of Buffy and Riley to communicate was signaled from the very beginning of their relationship in Hush. (2) Dawn played the game of Life with Anya in Real Me. (3) The movie Anya wanted to see about a chimp playing hockey was Most Valuable Primate. (4) The part of Giles’s banner that was blocked by his head reads “Gurnenthar’s Ascendance”. I have no idea who or what Gurnenthar is; it’s probably just made up. (5) Riley’s demand that Buffy hit him reminds me of Spike’s reaction to Dru in Lover’s Walk: “She didn't even care enough to cut off my head or set me on fire.”

  Triangle

  I love Triangle, partly because I think it’s hilarious, but mostly because of Xander’s response to Olaf’s offer of a “Sophie’s Choice”: “that’s insane troll logic”. The only right answer is to refuse to choose. Well, that and have Buffy come in and save the day.

  Triangle occupies the same relative point in the season that Ted, Gingerbread and The I in Team did, and it serves a similar role: it gives us the problem Buffy will face in the season finale, but doesn’t quite give us the answer. It’s also setting up some plot points regarding Willow’s magic for S6 which I can’t spoil.

  Unfortunately, the combination of a mostly humorous episode with important spoilers means I don’t have much to talk about. I’ll just note a few items of interest and let this be the least controversial Buffy post on the internet today. [That last sentence referred to an explosion of controversy regarding the discussion on another site about an episode from S6.]

  The demon – in this case Olaf – always tells us something important about Buffy. The point of Triangle is to move Buffy past Riley, at least for the present. The episode accomplishes this using Willow and Anya. They argued about who was at fault for Olaf, but in my view Willow’s magic spell was a conduit for Anya’s internal feelings. Prefiguring the role she’ll play in the penultimate episode of S5, Willow’s magic served to release Anya’s pent-up resentments:

  WILLOW: Hey Anya, whatever really has you mad, why don't you just say it, like you do every other thought that stomps through your brain?

  ANYA: (stands up) I believe I have said it.

  WILLOW: No. You haven't. Come on. Let it out! (My emphasis.)

  And out pops Olaf, the guy who made Anya really mad when he cheated on her. We can see this metaphorically: Olaf cheated on Anya, as Riley had with Buffy. By defeating Olaf, Buffy becomes able to put her sense of betrayal behind her. She also reinforces her faith in romance:

  OLAF: What are you fighting for, minuscule blonde one? Your friends? (gestures to Anya comforting Xander) These two? (chuckles) They will never last….

  BUFFY: (OS) Their love... (punching noise, Olaf grunts) will last ... (punch, grunt) forever! (punch, sound of Olaf falling to the floor)

  Speaking of Buffy, Xander and Anya open the episode with a discussion of Buffy’s relationship debris, but it seems to me that they get it very wrong. Anya’s statement is the key mistake, though Xander validates it when he doesn’t disagree: “She couldn't make it work with Angel, and then she let Riley go away.”

  It was hardly Buffy’s fault that the relationship with Angel didn’t work. The curse was outside of her control. And as I’ve argued over the last several posts, she didn’t “let Riley go away”. He left on his own.

  Spike continues to fail to understand humanity, providing a counterpoint to Anya, who’s just beginning to. Willow isn’t entirely wrong about Anya, but she is a bit unfair. Anya’s making some progress – frustratingly slow progress, perhaps, but progress nonetheless. Spike truly doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t get credit for not feeding off of bleeding disaster victims, nor that he’s not likely to win points with Buffy by feeling her up when she’s thrown on top of him. Perhaps if we were grading on a curve….

  I haven’t mentioned this before, but the comparison of Anya to Spike is instructive on several levels. Anya spent 1000-odd years as a demon, and she’s now in recovery. I assume we’re supposed to see Anya as having a soul, though this hasn’t been stated explicitly. This leaves Xander in an odd position when it comes to Angel and to Spike. He hates both of them, but it’s pretty hard to distinguish Angelus’s crimes from Anyanka’s. If anything, she had lots more time to commit them, and she had the aid of magic to inflict whatever vengeance her “client” wanted. By falling in love with Anya, Xander has seriously undermined his judgmental stance vis-à-vis Bangel.

  Anya also serves as a reminder that Spike is chipped. Just as she’s learning to be human; just as Angel spent 100 years brooding his way to human; so Spike is now trying to understand what’s involved. The question for the viewer is whether he can do this without a soul. If you haven’t seen beyond this episode yet, I’ll say that there will be an answer to this question, so keep it in mind going forward.

  Trivia notes: (1) I’m just going to assume that everyone who’s not Anya knows The Cat in the Hat. (2) Willow did a spell to create light in Out of My Mind. The spell she mentions here seems to be an enhancement of that one. (3) As Buffy says, there actually is a sign at SeaWorld which says "The first five rows will get wet." (4) Willow’s reference to Olaf as “Lord of the Hammers” seems like a direct tribute to Lord of the Rings. (5) D’Hoffryn offered Willow Anya’s old job in Something Blue. (6) It’s possible there’s another reference to Something Blue when Willow wishes Buffy was there and then wishes for a million dollars. (7) Willow’s lips broke up Xander and Cordelia in Lover’s Walk. (8) Anya’s mention of a world without shrimp harks back to Superstar. (9) They rebuilt the Bronze after this episode. It’ll be new and different in future episodes. (10) Joss was reportedly very upset that a particular word was left out of the episode. He needed it for the finale.

  Checkpoint

  Checkpoint is the feel good episode of S5. Who among us can resist a good smackdown of the Watcher’s Council? Better yet, Buffy does that by raising an issue which will be crucial for the series henceforth: “Power. I have it. They don't. This bothers them.” Yes, it’s about power. That word gets used 9 times in the episode. But exactly what “power” consists of or what it might mean is subject to lots of interpretation; we get one here, but there will be others.

  Why is the episode called Checkpoint? In my view, it’s because Buffy has nearly reached adulthood. The purpose of the “review” is to confirm that she’s ready for it. That’s the challenge Quentin puts to her: “you're dealing wit
h grownups now”. Quentin demands proof that Buffy’s “prepared for it”, referring to information about Glory, but also, I think, meaning the challenges of adulthood more generally. That was the point of the Cruciamentum in Helpless, to which there are several references here, and it’s the same tactic the Council still employs.

  There’s a clear feminist point being made here as well. All those telling Buffy how weak and powerless she is – that is, how unready she is to be treated as an adult – are men (except for Glory; as a God, she doesn’t count). If you notice, one of the women of the WC (sounds like a calendar, I know) makes coffee for Quentin when he sits down to give Giles his ultimatum at the Magic Shop.

  The physical test is actually a metaphor for Buffy’s situation this season:

  TRAVERS: Philip will attack the dummy. The Slayer's job is to protect it. Do you understand?

  BUFFY: Protect the dummy.

  TRAVERS: As if it were precious.

  His use of the word “precious” takes us back to Joyce in Listening to Fear:

  JOYCE: And she's important. To the world. Precious. (Buffy nods) As precious as you are to me.

  Buffy smiles and nods again. Joyce nods back.

  JOYCE: Then we have to take care of her. Buffy, promise me.

  Quentin forced Buffy to defend the dummy while blindfolded. So far this season, she’s had to protect Dawn, blindfolded by her lack of knowledge of what she’s fighting against in the form of Glory.

  Ultimately, though, this isn’t a test of Buffy’s physical prowess or her knowledge, it’s a test of Buffy’s confidence in her readiness. When she talks to Giles in the Magic Shop she’s uncertain: “Am I gonna be able to get through this review? … They're gonna expect me to ... to be like a Slayer and, and know stuff, but I'm just me and I don't know anything….” What she discovers in her confrontations with Glory and the Knights is her confidence in her own power.

  Buffy gives the WC proof of that confidence when she calls their bluff. She’s the one holding all the cards, and she knows it. When she first encountered Quentin she called him “Mr. Travers”. In her speech at the end she and he were on a first name basis. She’s ready to be an adult.

  Buffy learns a lesson too. No sooner does she tell Spike that “I never need you” than she needs him to protect Dawn and Joyce.

  I’m deliberately leaving discussion of the Knights until we learn more about them.

  Trivia notes: (1) Note yet again the parallel between the school subject/lesson and the events of the episode: Buffy realizes that the Council is trying to play the same power game as her professor. (2) Buffy has her dates wrong on the Vikings. It was roughly 1000, not 1400. (3) On the TV show Forever Knight, Rasputin actually was a vampire as Buffy implied to the professor. That would also be implied in the AtS episode Why We Fight. (4) Metaphor check when Xander references Primeval: “I was the heart part of a super-Buffy.” (5) Joyce asked Spike about the character of Timothy Lenox from the soap opera Passions. We know from several previous episodes that Spike loves that show. (6) Bangers and mash, for the non-Brits out there, is sausages and mashed potatoes. Blood sausage is actually made with blood. (7) Buffy’s reference to the “Everyone Thinks We're Insane-O's Home Journal” is presumably a play on the Ladies Home Journal. (8) At the end of the episode, Quentin reveals that Glory isn’t a demon, she’s a God. There was a big clue to that earlier in the episode: “GLORY: (to Buffy) … You should get down on your knees and worship me!”

  Blood Ties

  Blood Ties sets up crucial plot and thematic points for the finale. Like the show generally, it uses the real life experiences of teenagers via metaphor. Thus Dawn, like many 14 year olds, perhaps particularly those who are adopted, feels alienated from her family and “not real”. She cuts herself because she’s come to doubt her own reality: “Am I real?”. In this case, the “real” experiences become a metaphor for the “reality” of the plot line – Dawn’s sense of alienation upon learning that she’s the Key. In my view, Dawn’s role as metaphor as well as character means that her sense that she’s “not real” is telling us something important about Buffy. I’ll leave that cryptic for now, but this dialogue seems relevant to me:

  BUFFY: It's not that simple! We're not gonna be able to fix this with a hug and a kiss and a bowl of soup! Dawn needs to know where she came from, she needs real answers.

  JOYCE: (sits) What she needs is her sister, Buffy, not the Slayer.

  In the end, Buffy assures Dawn that she is indeed real, and again it’s metaphorical: “It’s Summers’ blood.”

  The Knights were chanting “The Key is the link. The link must be severed.” Well, we know that Dawn is the Key, so she’s the reference here, although the Knights don’t seem to know she is. Since she’s the Key, she must therefore be the link. The question is, what two things does she link? And why, from the perspective of the Knights, must that link be severed? The answers to these questions are related to Dawn’s reality and metaphorical role.

  The obvious question to ask is whether the Knights of Byzantium themselves serve a metaphorical purpose. I’m not entirely certain, but my best guess is that they’re simply a fairly obvious reference to the militant Christian orders of the Middle Ages like the Knights Templar. Their determination to “sever” the Key is, in this reading, a reference to the way religion demands sacrifices of those things which are most precious, as well as a reminder of the paternalism of that worldview.

  In my post on The Replacement, I said that the themes of the season had been established. Blood Ties is the first episode to reveal a part of one theme. Prior to this episode we knew there was some connection between Ben and Glory. We now learn that they morph into each other. This explains Ben’s confidence in Listening to Fear, that Glory can’t harm him. But it also brings us back to The Replacement, which, it now becomes clear, was telling us something important about the season arc. In that episode, Xander learned that he needed all aspects of his personality in order to “be” Xander. We now see that Buffy’s foe for the season is someone who seems to have separate and distinct personalities also – one’s a normal human being, the other’s super powerful and not entirely sane. I’ll have more to say on this topic when we get to Intervention and The Gift.

  Trivia notes: (1) There’s a very subtle moment in the teaser which sets up what will happen in the episode Tough Love. (2) Spike’s candy box was wrecked because he used it to hit the Buffy mannequin in Triangle. (3) Spike suggested that Dawn watch Teletubbies, which was a children’s TV show. (4) Spike compared Dawn to Little Red Riding Hood because a big bad wolf might get her on her way to the Magic Shop. (5) Dawn’s flashbacks in the Magic Shop are, in order, to Listening to Fear, Real Me, and Shadow. (6) Xander described Glory has having a “jones” for the Key. “Jones” is a slang term meaning strong desire or craving. (7) Glory described Ben as “gentle Ben” which was the title of a TV show and movie about a bear. There was a previous reference to the show in Pangs. (8) Buffy suggested looking at the carousel because that’s where Riley and Dawn went in Shadow. Also, Buffy presumably has the false memories of Dawn’s birthday party there which Dawn described to Riley. (9) Glory wanted Dawn to “start singin”, which is American slang for “start talking”. (10) Glory used the expression “fox in my henhouse”, a slang expression which means that the wrong person has been allowed into something (foxes obviously being bad news for chickens). (11) The Latin word Willow used for her spell, “discede”, means “disperse” or “separate”. (12) Buffy’s mention of Dawn having a get-out-of-jail-free card comes from the game Monopoly.

  Crush

  At some point in time between Fool For Love and Crush, Spike began to acquire a very strong following among fans. He’d always been a popular, but secondary, character. Now many fans became fascinated by his story such that he became as important to them as, say, Willow and Xander were. Some fans were beginning to ship him with Buffy (Spuffy). Writer David Fury pissed off a lot of Spike’s fans by ridiculing the idea of Spuffy i
n public and with Buffy’s line in Crush about Spike being a “serial killer in prison”. Since Crush is so Spike-centric, it’s a good episode to examine in order to see what it tells us about him. I’ll start by discussing his role as the (other) vampire in love with a Slayer.

  It’s an interesting dynamic. Buffy told Spike she never needed him in Checkpoint, only to take Joyce and Dawn to his crypt because, it turned out, she did need him to protect them from Glory. In Blood Ties we saw (1) Spike protect Dawn; but (2) help her break into the Magic Shop; for which (3) Buffy blamed him; only to realize that (4) it was really her fault that she hadn’t told Dawn; and (5) she then asked Spike to help her look for Dawn. Now, at the start of Crush, Buffy tells him to get lost again:

  BUFFY: (frowns) What are you doing?

  SPIKE: (frowns) Wha, what do you mean what am ... I ...

  BUFFY: Here? At this table? Talking to me. Like we're some kind of talking buddies.

  SPIKE: Well, I saw you ... sitting here alone. Thought, I don't know, you could, maybe do with a bit of, uh, you know, company.

  Buffy raises her eyebrows at him. Spike frowns.

  SPIKE: Suit yourself!

  Given these apparent mixed signals, it’s not surprising that Spike’s confused. He’s incapable of understanding the context, namely that when Buffy asks for his help she’s not expressing romantic interest, she’s doing her job. If you want to say she’s using him, I probably wouldn’t argue. But because he’s a vampire, Buffy doesn’t see him as a suitable partner regardless of how her behavior might appear to him (see dialogue with Dawn quoted below).

  He doesn’t help matters by his actions in Crush. While there’s no denying the chemistry between JM and SMG, Spike’s behavior is hardly the stuff of romance. Although Buffy doesn’t know it, Spike was treating Harmony like crap. Well, ok, it’s just Harmony, but still. More significantly, and equally unknown to Buffy, he also went along with Dru when she killed the 2 people in the Bronze and he fed from one victim himself. This seems to have been part of his plan to make Dru trust him in order to get to Buffy, but letting 2 people be killed for that purpose further emphasizes to the viewers the difference between soul and chip. Spike can’t act on his demon instincts, but that doesn’t mean he can understand human ones.