Notes on Buffy 3.10: Amends

[2maggie2]

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.

Comments

Re: cont'd

[local_max]

I make a distinction here between Buffy's "feelings" (love) for Angel and her "needs" (her psychological structure). She takes the risks because of her needs (and less of her feelings ). To make the pain of season 2 go away, to make sense of falling in love with Angel in the first place, she needs Angel to do something worthwhile with his life, fighting the good fight, redeeming himself. If Angel just goes away/commits suicide/turns evil again, then indeed she did fall in love with nothing more than a monster (as is textual in this episode: "...then all you've ever been is a monster"). Then all he ever gave her was pain. Buffy needs healing from season 2. This is how she's trying to heal (if she succeeds is open for interpretation).

Perhaps. And yet she was kissing him in Revelations. I accept that this may be her desire here, by Amends--to make him be right again. But I don't think that's all that's motivating her. We are too close to her kissing him, and realizing that she can't trust herself to be around him because she is too attracted to him, for me to feel comfortable arguing that this is more about her needs (for his redemption) than her feelings. Certainly, she talks about the needs you mention, and that is important. I believe they're there. I'm just unconvinced that they're all of what's there. Perhaps you're not arguing that her feelings aren't there--but I think the feelings are more important to the story than I believe you are arguing. (I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth too much! I hope you understand that it's done with respect, and hoping to come to a greater understanding.)

Pray tell, who else of his victims is alive to claim agency? We do watch BtVS mostly through Buffy's eyes, she is the one victim we know intimately. The dead, you say? They don't care about revenge or redemption.

There's Giles. There's Theresa's family. There's the Scoobies, even--whom Angel didn't torment emotionally in the same way he tormented Buffy (and so hurt less), but whom he threatened to kill and who don't have the same emotional reasons for wanting to help him. You can say that Giles and the Scoobies offer to help Buffy. Yes, they do--but I'm not so sure Buffy is speaking for him.

I didn't see a drama about a teenage girl loving too much in "Amends" - i did see the drama of the age old question whether we pay "an eye for an eye" or try to resocialize people into our society even if they have fallen by the wayside. And how much we are able to help these people and how much these people do have to work on their own. Whedon clearly comes down on the side of "rehabilitation" - but also says the "criminal" has to work for it and ultimately needs to want to change. That help and understanding canot be there always (Buffy isn't able to understand Angel here).

I agree with this. But again, Buffy is not just a victim of Angel's. I don't think it's that she loves him too much per se. But she does love him. Her reasons for not wanting him dead are not, I think, about a belief in rehabilitation. That may be part of it. But asking the one person who seems to love him the most--even if she is not overtaken by love, she still cares for him more than most other people do--to stand in for all his victims to decide on/comment on the question of whether revenge or rehabilitation should be worthwhile doesn't seem like the best way to examine this theme--if that is the sole purpose. I think it's a more complex case, where Buffy's love, and thus Angel blinders, do enter into the situation.

All that said--I do agree that Buffy does have some real authority in this situation as one of Angel's victims. I think she oversells that authority, and that is part of my issue/problem. BUT--I agree that that authority is there.

Re: cont'd

[angearia]

I do agree that Buffy does have some real authority in this situation as one of Angel's victims. I think she oversells that authority, and that is part of my issue/problem.

And why does she do that? She's trying to convince Angel to listen to her, to not kill himself.

It would've been wrong to co-opt another person's suffering to use it as an argument. It's tactless, cruel manipulation when Xander co-opts Giles' grief for Jenny to 'win' an argument with Buffy.

The only way to use the other people's suffering would be to have Giles march up on that hill with her, to have Willow and Xander and Cordy stand there as a community and tell him in "I" statements how he's wronged them and that by killing himself, he's doubling down on that wrong. That's how you do an intervention. People own their own suffering, others don't get to co-opt it to make a point.

But again, the situation is rigged. Buffy's the only one really interested in fighting for Angel here, in not giving up on him. I think Giles and the Scoobies are mostly helping research for Buffy's sake and because letting an evil being manipulate Angel isn't a good idea. But who cares about Angel? The only person is Buffy.

So in desperation, as the only one there, she inflates her authority and he still doesn't listen/care. It'll take God and a miracle before Angel will believe he has a purpose in this world, because only God/PTBs can forgive him now. (Without a soul, he can't look away from the victims. With a soul, he can't stand to look at them. And really, how does a person own up to that level of wrongdoing?)

Buffy couldn't even get Angel to care about the ways he hurt her and he 'loves' her. I guess I'm wondering -- what else was she supposed to do? What else could she do?

Re: cont'd

[norwie2010]

I'm gushing with Emmie-love!

Word, word, word to all of that. Every. Single. Sentence.

(Gah, this inspires me into another Angelic rant. But, not now, not here. That douchebag!)