Addendum to Notes on Helpless: Slayer Mythology (by Max)
Addendum to the notes for Helpless
The Slayer Mythology. This episode follows Gingerbread, which dealt with fairy tales. This is another episode that is in a big part, I think, about stories. It refers to Little Red Riding Hood, of course, but I think the biggest story at this episode’s centre is the fundamental concept of the slayer. There are three major players there: the slayer, the vampire(s), and the watcher(s). The roles of the slayer and vampire are obvious on the surface: they are the hero and the villain. The watcher is a little bit trickier. The watcher is in principle on the slayer’s side, but his even more important purpose is to lay out the mythology and to state the purpose of the story: to lay out what being a slayer means. It’s Giles who gives the “she is the slayer” opening narration in season two, and who first stated it in Welcome to the Hellmouth, and it’s Giles who takes the role of the storyteller who lies to Buffy in Lie to Me (called back in this episode, when Buffy, tearstruck, screams at him, “Liar!”). The teaser has Buffy and Angel rolling around reenacting the slayer/vampire narrative, followed by Giles pretending to teach Buffy but mostly drugging her, followed by Buffy fighting a vampire who nearly kills her with her own stake. So thematically, the episode deals with people playing their designated roles in the slayer/vampire myth, and the complex relationship between predator and prey.
Eventually, we’ll learn that the proto-Watchers Council, the Shadowmen, not only control the narrative of the slayer, but ‘created’ her by chaining down a girl and giving her demon power against her will. This revelation is foreshadowed in the way that Buffy is treated here, her bodily autonomy is violated as she is drugged and sent in to fight a vampire and nearly certainly die. What’s interesting is that we see follow not just Buffy being positioned by the Council for the archetypical slayer/vampire clash, but Kralik, too. There are strong parallels between Buffy and Kralik throughout the episode, including the way they both, hurt by their parents, try to find substitutes (Kralik in Joyce, Buffy more sympathetically in Giles). Mostly, we see Giles’ and the Council’s treatment of Buffy as a tool and as a player in the overarching slayer vs. vampire drama reflected the way they treat Kralik, who is, like Buffy, fed drugs by the Council to prepare him for the face-off. And rather like the way slayers are usually treated, he is kept constrained, in isolation, in pain, tightly controlled, and not very well understood.
Like Buffy, Kralik escapes from the role the Council have placed him in. He sires ‘his’ Watcher, Blair, in parallel with Buffy’s eventually bringing Giles to her way of thinking. He sees that the Cruciamentum is a game. But in the end he still wants to play the vampire, the Big Bad Wolf. And it gets him killed. (To underline the metaphor, Buffy dusts him when he takes another dose of the drugs the Council men were feeding him.) The question is whether Buffy, too, will ultimately let herself be killed running through the Council’s narrative, or if she’ll write her own story. Within this episode, the Council’s narrative has real power. Buffy is clearly uncertain what to do with herself if she’s not the slayer. And like Kralik, she ends up walking in and acting out the Cruciamentum. She does it wonderfully, and for the right reasons (saving her mother’s life). But she is still enacting a role chosen for her by someone else, which lends the episode a rather downbeat ending. Back in Prophecy Girl, she told the Master proudly that she’d flunked the written. Here, Quentin informs her with a condescending smile that she passed the test.
The Slayer Mythology. This episode follows Gingerbread, which dealt with fairy tales. This is another episode that is in a big part, I think, about stories. It refers to Little Red Riding Hood, of course, but I think the biggest story at this episode’s centre is the fundamental concept of the slayer. There are three major players there: the slayer, the vampire(s), and the watcher(s). The roles of the slayer and vampire are obvious on the surface: they are the hero and the villain. The watcher is a little bit trickier. The watcher is in principle on the slayer’s side, but his even more important purpose is to lay out the mythology and to state the purpose of the story: to lay out what being a slayer means. It’s Giles who gives the “she is the slayer” opening narration in season two, and who first stated it in Welcome to the Hellmouth, and it’s Giles who takes the role of the storyteller who lies to Buffy in Lie to Me (called back in this episode, when Buffy, tearstruck, screams at him, “Liar!”). The teaser has Buffy and Angel rolling around reenacting the slayer/vampire narrative, followed by Giles pretending to teach Buffy but mostly drugging her, followed by Buffy fighting a vampire who nearly kills her with her own stake. So thematically, the episode deals with people playing their designated roles in the slayer/vampire myth, and the complex relationship between predator and prey.
Eventually, we’ll learn that the proto-Watchers Council, the Shadowmen, not only control the narrative of the slayer, but ‘created’ her by chaining down a girl and giving her demon power against her will. This revelation is foreshadowed in the way that Buffy is treated here, her bodily autonomy is violated as she is drugged and sent in to fight a vampire and nearly certainly die. What’s interesting is that we see follow not just Buffy being positioned by the Council for the archetypical slayer/vampire clash, but Kralik, too. There are strong parallels between Buffy and Kralik throughout the episode, including the way they both, hurt by their parents, try to find substitutes (Kralik in Joyce, Buffy more sympathetically in Giles). Mostly, we see Giles’ and the Council’s treatment of Buffy as a tool and as a player in the overarching slayer vs. vampire drama reflected the way they treat Kralik, who is, like Buffy, fed drugs by the Council to prepare him for the face-off. And rather like the way slayers are usually treated, he is kept constrained, in isolation, in pain, tightly controlled, and not very well understood.
Like Buffy, Kralik escapes from the role the Council have placed him in. He sires ‘his’ Watcher, Blair, in parallel with Buffy’s eventually bringing Giles to her way of thinking. He sees that the Cruciamentum is a game. But in the end he still wants to play the vampire, the Big Bad Wolf. And it gets him killed. (To underline the metaphor, Buffy dusts him when he takes another dose of the drugs the Council men were feeding him.) The question is whether Buffy, too, will ultimately let herself be killed running through the Council’s narrative, or if she’ll write her own story. Within this episode, the Council’s narrative has real power. Buffy is clearly uncertain what to do with herself if she’s not the slayer. And like Kralik, she ends up walking in and acting out the Cruciamentum. She does it wonderfully, and for the right reasons (saving her mother’s life). But she is still enacting a role chosen for her by someone else, which lends the episode a rather downbeat ending. Back in Prophecy Girl, she told the Master proudly that she’d flunked the written. Here, Quentin informs her with a condescending smile that she passed the test.