Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality
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NLM gives us lots of information as well as themes. The identity of the Big Bad allows us to recognize the robed figures as the Harbingers (at least it does if we remember Amends). We also now learn at least in part why the robed figures are killing off the girls. We can also look back on the end of Lessons and ask ourselves again the meaning of what the phantoms told Spike. In particular, we now know it was the First, not Buffy, who used the phrase “it’s about power”, so we can recognize going forward that our understanding of that phrase, and its meaning for the season, might change.
We also know that the First can’t be touched, leaving open the question of how Buffy can fight it. That, in turn, is a clue to the First’s metaphorical role, which I’ll discuss later.
Spike’s “recovering addict” metaphor gets reinforced in this episode with blatant references to withdrawal. The parallel between Spike and Andrew is pretty clear, even down to Andrew’s black coat and boots. Andrew isn’t recovering yet – he’s still buying blood and listening to The First. He wants to be bad, but he isn’t very good at it. Neither one wants to kill again, but they’re susceptible in different ways. The danger presented by Andrew is relatively straightforward, but Spike’s potential as a “Manchurian Candidate” (or the movie Telefon if you prefer) adds to the complexity.
Xander tells Andrew that Anya removed his heart and replaced it with darkness. I see this as a reference to Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, which was the basis for the movie Apocalypse Now. That movie, remember, formed part of Xander’s dream in Restless. Of course, Xander is being typically childish here in blaming Anya for what was really his own fault. Contrast this with the forthright way Buffy accepts some of the blame for her relationship with Spike in S6 (see below). Andrew’s inability to take responsibility for his own actions – indeed, even to separate fantasy from reality – is what makes him potentially dangerous.
Both Andrew and Spike pose moral challenges for Buffy, which Anya articulates in the teaser: “Shouldn't we stab him through the chest? Isn't that what we do when these things happen?” At least since Innocence, Buffy has faced the problem of deciding whom to hold responsible. In NLM Buffy clearly distinguishes between Anya – who, she said in Selfless, “chose to become a demon” – and Spike, whose attempt to accept responsibility she rejected:
BUFFY Was that you who killed those people in the cellar? Was that you who waited for those girls?
SPIKE There's no one else.
BUFFY That's not true.
If you think back to the post on Amends, this is the same view Buffy took of Angel in that episode. For her, the soul is primary. If you are capable of exercising free will, then you can’t be held responsible if, for some involuntary reason, you are deprived of that free will. The consequence is that neither is responsible for the actions of their vampire selves, not Angel for Jenny’s murder and not Spike for the attempted rape or the recent murders. Mind you, this is Buffy’s view; as we’ll see, it isn’t necessarily the view of other characters.
Buffy knows much less about Andrew at this stage, not even that he killed Jonathan, so she’s keeping him from doing harm.
In my view Buffy has been consistent about this issue and I’ll defend her decisions past and future alike, but the issue will arise again over the course of the season and there’ll be plenty of room for argument about who belongs on which side of the line.
Spike’s dialogue with Buffy about the consequences of his soul was taken amiss by some viewers at the time. There were two areas of controversy. One was whether Spike was blaming Buffy for their relationship in S6. The other was whether he overstated his prior evil behavior, with implications of rape and torture. I’ll give a brief sample of each debate (all quotes from AtPO).
The argument that Spike was blaming Buffy went like this:
Malandanza: “We still see Spike blaming Buffy for all his problems. Nice to know some things never change. Apparently free will applies only when he does good (albeit for selfish reasons) and when he does evil, it is someone else's fault. Buffy used him. She mistreated him. He tried to change for her. It's all about Buffy. So, really, when you think about it, Spike's sufferings are all Buffy's fault.”
Spike’s phrasing is ambiguous, and could certainly be seen as criticizing Buffy (she herself took it that way at first). That would be a bit much under the circumstances, but I interpret him as talking only about himself. Here’s the dialogue:
SPIKE … There was a price. There were trials, torture, pain and suffering... of sorts.
BUFFY Of sorts?
SPIKE Well, it's all relative, isn't it?
BUFFY Meaning?
SPIKE Meaning I have come to redefine the words pain and suffering since I fell in love with you.
BUFFY (sighs) How can you say that?
It’s possible to interpret this as saying that Buffy directly caused his suffering. While she did mistreat him in S6, the way I read it is that the presence of the soul – which he got for her – has caused a self-loathing for his previous deeds. IOW, the soul has given him a new understanding of what pain and suffering are about, something he now recognizes because Buffy was the one who inspired him to get his soul:
SPIKE I'm feeling honest with myself. You used me.
BUFFY Yes.
SPIKE You told me that, of course. I never understood it though. Not until now. You hated yourself, and you took it out on me.
BUFFY You figured that out just now?
SPIKE Soul's not all about moonbeams and pennywhistles, luv. It's about self-loathing. I get it.
The extent of Spike’s previous evil was much more controversial:
KdS: “I think that if ME intended not to downplay Spike's evil [previously] they did a very bad job. I think there was plenty of evidence for people to consider Spike's past as being about relatively innocent battle killing and not sadistic torture - there's the speed of most of his kills in early S2, the oft-quoted "Not one for the pre-show" line in WML2, and the whole argument between him and Angelus in FFL. Also note that his worst threats against Willow in Lover's Walk were in a context where they could be explained by him wanting her to do something for him and not by motiveless cruelty.”
Ponygirl: “There was simply no way to have Spike as a regular, sympathetic (at least grant him a semi-sympathetic) character if his past crimes had been graphically depicted. It would have made Scooby interactions with him that much more implausible, and given unwanted weight to his every scene. Since we now have a clear line between Spike of seasons past and current Spike - that being the soul-- it is no longer necessary to hold back on his past crimes.”
Slain: “Spike has rarely had the opportunity to be Spike. In a handful of episodes in Season 2 he's dangerous, but after that he becomes disabled, then lovelorn, then chipped, then souled. Spike has rarely had the opportunity to be himself, to do what he's truly capable of; he's always been in the power of others (Dru, Angel, The Initiative, Buffy, The First).
So in this way, Spike's lines are a retcon, a way of reminding us that what Spike has to atone for is not just what we've seen him do by far, but everything that happened before he ever came to Sunnydale. The question is of course, Should we have been told about Spike before, should we have always looked at him and thought of him as a rapist and a sadist (rather than simply a masochist)? I don't think so. I think, up until Season 6, that kind of real evil wasn't part of BtVS. We've had glimpses of it, but until recently [the writers] haven't gone that far for fear of compromising the lightness of the show.”
There’s another possibility too, namely that Spike’s overstating things deliberately in order to convince Buffy to kill him. Spike might have wanted to die for lots of reasons, including all his wrongs done as a vampire. However, I think what bothers him the most is that the First got him to kill again after he got his soul. He insisted to Buffy in Sleeper that it was “not the chip! Not the chip, dammit” which kept him from killing. Learning that the soul didn’t save him made him feel helpless,
made him feel that he might commit a whole new series of horrors (as, in fact, he just did).
Buffy’s reaction can be read as interpreting his description of his past wrongs as part and parcel of his plea for her to kill him: “It's not your fault. You're not the one doing this…. Was that you who killed those people in the cellar? Was that you who waited for those girls?” She’s rejecting his culpability and is too smart to give him an easy way out. Instead she tells him that she believes in him, putting the onus back on him to prove her right. When she tells him that, it’s one possible fulfillment of Cassie’s prophecy to Spike in Help (“Someday she’ll tell you”). The look on his face in response shows that this is the incentive he needs to continue the fight.
The destruction of the WC was a shock to everyone. It’s been a symbol of patriarchal authority since S3, so is it good, bad, or neutral that it’s gone?
Principal Wood’s status is deliberately ambiguous at this point, so I’ll leave it that way.
Trivia notes: (1) When Andrew tells Warren that he’s like Patrick Swayze, the reference is to the movie Ghost. (2) Warren told Andrew that Andrew was his “iron fist”, a reference to the comic book character of that name. (3) Andrew’s “that’ll do pig” is a quote from the movie Babe. (4) The butcher called Andrew “Neo”, a reference to The Matrix. (5) Andrew’s butcher shop order resembles the condom-buying scene from The Summer of ’42. (6) Andrew told Xander that he was “barking up the wrong asparagus”. That’s a garbled version of the American expression “barking up the wrong tree”, which means looking in the wrong place. (7) Spike’s “saw a man about a girl” plays off the expression “saw a man about a horse”. It’s a way of refusing to say what you spoke to someone about. (8) Spike remembered that Buffy told him she was using him. That came at the end of As You Were. (9) Anya mentioned a horse named Trigger. That was the name of Roy Rogers’s horse. (10) Xander was “in the army” in the episode Halloween. (11) We last saw the First and its harbingers in Amends. (12) Quentin Travers’ reassuring words to Lydia are a quote from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus”. That poem was chosen by Timothy McVeigh as his final statement before his execution for blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Building much as the Watchers’ Council building was destroyed (with some pretty bad special effects). (13) When First/Spike tells Spike that “You're the one who had to … learn something about himself”, the reference is to The Master’s words to Spike in Lessons. (14) In an online discussion after the episode aired, Drew Goddard suggested that they had to use leather straps for the crucifixion scene rather than nails because of network censorship. Given that it was intended as a crucifixion, you should recall Spike’s crucifixion pose in Restless.
Bring on the Night
As should be obvious by now, the writers depended on the viewers having an obsessive memory for the details of previous episodes. By S7 there are numerous references to earlier seasons in each episode, and the whole plot line of S7 depends on everyone remembering the events of Amends. Bring on the Night contains a number of scenes which follow from Amends, and if you haven’t re-watched Amends in some time it’s probably helpful to do that now.
In Amends the First tried to get Angel kill himself (among other things). Here we see it work on both Willow and Spike, in addition to using the Ubervamp against Buffy. I’ll talk first about Willow and Spike, because what happens with them reminds us of what happened to Angel and thus what the First is. With that in mind, I’ll turn to the main plot of Buffy and the Potentials.
When the First takes over Willow’s spell, her fear afterwards – “It's still in me. I feel it!” – can be read both as metaphor and as consequence. Willow still fears the potential evil inside her and that fear prevents her from using her full abilities.
In storyline terms, Spike’s torture in BotN seems odd. Why not just dust him? As I see it, the physical torture is designed to weaken his mental resistance so that the seductions of the First can take hold again.
Metaphorically, Spike’s torment, like Willow’s fear from her spell, represents his punishment of himself for his recent “binge”. The punishment is mental as well as physical. The First tells Spike how awful he is, how worthless, just as Jenny’s ghost told Angel in Amends. That’s what the First is – it’s your own fears, insecurities, isolation, and existential despair telling you that you will fail, that you’re worthless, that you should murder your best friend, that Annabelle should run away, that you can’t win the game.
It’s Buffy’s faith in Spike – the belief that he is not alone – which gives him the strength to overcome the torments of the First (storyline) and his own recriminations (metaphor):
DRUSILLA/FIRST
Do you know why you're alive?
SPIKE
(weakly) Never figured you for existential thought, luv. I mean, you hated Paris.
DRUSILLA/FIRST
You're alive for one reason, and one reason only. Because I wish it. Do you know why I wish it? (holds her hands to her heart) Because I'm not done with you.
SPIKE
(scoffs) Give it up. (Drusilla/First rolls her eyes and turns away) Whatever you are, whatever you get away with, I'm out. You can't pull this puppet's strings anymore.
DRUSILLA/FIRST
(snaps back to face Spike) And what makes you think you have a choice? What makes you think you will ever be any good at all in this world?
SPIKE
She does. Because she believes in me.
Spike can believe in himself because Buffy believes in him. “I mean, the whole show in a way, the whole show ping pongs between the darkest night of the soul and this whole yearning for belief.” Marti Noxon
I doubt Spike’s mention of existentialism is accidental.
I think Juliet Landau did a great job. She had to play someone else playing Drusilla. That meant she had to be similar to Drusilla without actually being her (Spike: “You’re not Drusilla.”). That’s hard to do and she did it very well.
While Willow and Spike are important for showing us how the First works, they are secondary to the plot of this episode. BotN introduces us to the first Potentials, or “slayers in training” as they’re sometimes called. Their presence explains the young women we saw murdered in Lessons, Beneath You, and Sleeper. We’ll see more Potentials as we go along. The Potentials were widely unpopular as a group and often individually unpopular as well. I personally don’t have any problem with them per se, though individuals among them will sometimes annoy me.
Regardless of your own reaction, the important point to remember is that the Potentials play a crucial metaphorical role in the season. We’ll be told that metaphor two episodes hence, so I’ll hold off discussing it until then. For now I’ll just say that what they’re crucial for is the solution to the problem pointed out to Buffy by “Joyce” (it’s really the First; Jane Espenson had to assure everyone because viewers were so confused – see trivia note 2) in her second appearance:
JOYCE
Buffy, evil isn't coming, it's already here. Evil is always here. Don't you know? It's everywhere.
BUFFY
And I have to stop it.
JOYCE
How are you gonna do that?
BUFFY
I-I don't know yet, but—
JOYCE
Buffy, no matter what your friends expect of you, evil is a part of us. All of us. It's natural. And no one can stop that. No one can stop nature, not even—
Note that this is essentially the same problem the real Joyce pointed out to Buffy in Gingerbread. There’s a very good reason for all these S3 references, which I’ll explain in the finale.
Right now, all we know is that the Potentials are in danger. The First intends to terminate the Slayer line:
GILES
…We always feared that this day would come, when there'd be an attack against not just an individual slayer, but against the whole line….
BUFFY
The First. That's what it wants.
GILES
Yes, to erase all the slayers in training and their watchers along with their methods.
BUFFY
And then Faith, and then me. And with all the potentials gone and no way of making another, it's the end. No more slayer. Ever.
Buffy describes the slayer line as running through the Potentials, then Faith, then her. That’s wrong in light of Joss’s official explanation after S5 that the Slayer line now runs through Faith, and it bothers a lot of viewers. I don’t really see it as much of a problem, just a case of Buffy being wrong. As we saw in CWDP, Buffy’s own life has been dramatically affected by her role as “the” Slayer, so it’s understandable that she’d see it that way. Her view is consistent with the season theme, but I’ll leave it there to avoid spoilers.
The scene where she escapes the Ubervamp in the first encounter nicely recapitulates the scene in which she and Xander escaped the vamps in The Harvest. It’s another “back to the beginning” reference, but I also see it as a “starting over” theme. She faced the challenge once when she was young, now she faces a similar but more difficult challenge as an adult. We’re supposed to compare and contrast how she deals with the new challenge.
Giles is the one who sets her that challenge. Since Giles’ role in S7 gets a lot of criticism, I might as well say up front that I think the writers perfectly capture a parent whose daughter has grown up but who still wants to pressure her to act like the parent thinks she should. Giles, it’s clear, remains Ripper at heart, willing to do what he believes is necessary regardless of moral concerns, as we see from him stealing the Council’s books because “there wasn't time for-for bureaucracy or debate”.
Giles is seriously frightened by the destruction of an institution which has dominated his life, and we can see that fright in his words to Buffy: “If the slayer line is eliminated, then the hellmouth has no guardian. The balance is destroyed. I'm afraid it falls to you, Buffy. Sorry. I mean, we'll do what we can, but you're the only one who has the strength to protect these girls—and the world—against what's coming.”