Notes on Buffy 2.21: Becoming, Part I
Standard disclaimer: I'll often speak of foreshadowing, but that doesn't mean I'm at all committing to the idea that there was some fixed design from the word go -- it's a short hand for talking about the resonances that end up in the text as it unspools.
Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS. ( Read more... )
Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS. ( Read more... )
Mmmm. Becoming, indeed; this sets the stage exactly for NFA.
Somewhat interesting to compare this vampiric form of birthing -- blood, not milk, flows from her breast
It's exactly the spot where Dru re-vamps her, too. And Dru makes the mommying thing a lot more explicit, telling everyone who will listen about her daughter.
Also funny, how Liam offers Darla protection, thinking of her as a girl and not a woman
Yes! It's almost exactly the same thing as the first Buffy/Angel encounter, even. He follows her into an alley, holds himself out as the big strong man, and then expects her to show him his way.
Drusilla was made by himOH DRU. I actually think she was already a bit off given the emotional abuse she received because of her visions. It's about power. Dru had power her world stepped on until it stunted her; Angel let it loose on the world ( ... )
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I really like this! The way Kendra's watcher dealt with her, isolating her from friends and family, honing her into a weapon, always struck me as very abusive - and similar, in a way, to how Angel isolated Drusilla and turned her into his vicious child/pet. And both Drusilla and Kendra embrace what's been done to them and live in that role, and continue to see their abusers/controllers as people to be obeyed and looked up to.
The show has a lot of fairly conscious Slayer/vampire parallels - Faith and Angel, Spike and Buffy, why not Kendra and Drusilla?
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I think I agree. There's a real scorch-the-Earth sense from Angel, always.
Yes! It's almost exactly the same thing as the first Buffy/Angel encounter, even. He follows her into an alley, holds himself out as the big strong man, and then expects her to show him his way.
Yes. And yes to the alley imagery. So much of it.
OH DRU. I actually think she was already a bit off given the emotional abuse she received because of her visions. It's about power. Dru had power her world stepped on until it stunted her; Angel let it loose on the world.
In a lot of ways, Dru is at least as much Kendra's opposite number as Buffy's. Kendra had power that meant she was isolated from polite society, and some force beyond her control let it rip. But Kendra's chained to the earth where Dru communes with the stars, and so she's totally unprepared for be in me.
I really like the Kendra/Dru parallel here. It makes more sense of Dru being the one to kill Kendra, doesn't it?
I'm also really ( ... )
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It really does. She's the only vampire who can actually plan to defeat a Slayer, if you think about it. It's about that one good day. Which is fine for survival, or for glory, but not tactically. Dru, though, with her sight from her human self and her madness from his months of torture; Angelus made her into a rare, ornate weapon and left her on his shelf until he wanted to play. (Shades of Dollhouse: things that make me happy.)
Angel makes lot of snide comments in the fight in Reunion.
Very good point. There's no one to turn to. This is true of all of them, I think, which leads to a lot of the unhealthiness and dysfunction.
I wonder if it's not the group manifesting that same stunting someone mentioned in the review last week, that Buffy has to grow up so fast in some ways that she doesn't quite get to grow up right in others ( ... )
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Ooooh. This puts a spin on his LMPTM attitude. When he accuses Buffy of being unable to make the decisions she needs to make, he's saying it because he's already intimately aware of failing in his duty to "protect this sorry world" because he's too attached and emotional.
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Max has taken up most of it. I really do love seeing the seeds of NFA in Becoming. Angel really is always the same guy.
About the moral reasoning -- I actually think it's true to life. Rationalization clouds a heck of a lot of what we think is important morally. I love the show for documenting that problem so clearly.
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Even when the silence is broken (in season 3, the witch episode) - the end result is still turning against each other.
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