Notes on Buffy 3.15: Consequences
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... )
As for your comment that we fail to deal with the Faith of it, I honestly thought we had. The problem with Faith in this episode is that she is in such a chaotic, full-on downward spiral, she's not even sure who she is anymore. She lets herself be defined by others here. She was predisposed to these reactions for the reasons Maggie laid out. Unfortunately, that is the Faith of it, as far as I can tell.
And for Faith's responsibility, notwithstanding her poor resources to deal with this crisis, in choosing the black hat, Mephistopheles has a pertinent comment above.
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I disagree. What I saw was the writers very carefully framing Bad Girls to make it make sense that it was Faith driving the stake into Finch's heart. That it wasn't just something that happened , it was something she did. Legally she may not be culpable for her friendly fire but BtVS was never about legalities. It's about emotionalities, how would Faith feel?
Why did Faith go back to the body, Why did she weight it and dump it and effectively try to erase it, make it as if the killing never happened? Faith may be able to rationalise away her feelings, say she doesn't care (which she says before saying it wasn't her fault) but she does. She was there. She knows how it felt as the stake hit muscle, she saw the man's final gasp, his look of peace. She also knew that up until that moment she wasn't just doing her job, she was having fun. She wanted to kill things. Faith's overall arc has her recognise that killing things, the war, is not her vocation or not one she can ultimately live with. She opts out of slaying to become a counsellor. So while Buffy and Angel are projecting their own responses to having made death, I think it diminishes Faith to treat her as a tabula rasa to be "defined by others". The things they say are things she recognises in herself, they hit home.
She does feel dirty, she does want to have killed and be clean, to not feel remorse. She wasn't intending to go to the mayor, she was just going to run away until she killed Trick. Trick didn't have to feel remorse or be shipped off to England for judgement. Aside from being a vampire he was just the hired gun. The protected hired gun. She goes to find someone who will never judge her so she can stop judging herself.
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As for the Faith of it, we can see Faith trying to work out her response to the killing, but she is doing it alone, and every time she comes in contact with someone else, it seems to throw her off and push her to adopt an attitude that we have reason to see is not true to her. Her feelings are complex, but her surface attitude is defiant. I agree that she is not simply a tabula rasa, but I think we have a pretty good view that she doesn't know who she is either, which makes these observations of others have such a strong effect on her.
As for the decision to join the mayor, we'll have better opportunities to look at this more closely in the next few episodes. What's interesting to me is that, at this juncture, Faith thinks the mayor is a pure black hat. It's a complete bonus that he turns into such a paternal figure for her. I think she thinks she is judging herself at this stage (basically, I'm a black hat, so screw it), and instead she'll find someone who gives her a measure of non-judgmental peace, even as he tries to seal her in her choice of the black hat.
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Where we also differ is that I don’t see the story setting up the bad Slayer/good Slayer dichotomy you and Maggie seem so determined to reverse. I fundamentally disagree that the story shies away from the the idea that “Buffy was lucky she wasn’t the one with human blood on her conscience.”. On the contrary it seems to me (and to Noxon) that the whole point of this storyline is to introduce the concept that killing a human could very easily happen to Buffy, that a Slayer is a trained killer. As Buffy will much later tell the Shadowmen
You made her kill for you because you're weak.
I think she thinks she is judging herself at this stage (basically, I'm a black hat, so screw it)
She jokingly calls the mayor a black hat at the beginning of the episode but by the end I think she believes she’s moved beyond good and evil and into amorality. The mayor can protect her as he protected Trick, it’s a business relationship, a job. He’ll be her boss not her Watcher.
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Look -- the problem that happens is that when people argue about something in which they both hold complex views they polarize and end up sounding like they believe something they don't. You come across to me as thinking Buffy walks on water and has never once farted. I assume your views are actually more nuanced. I assume that because I see that you are an intelligent woman. I wish you could offer me the same courtesy; I wish you and I could move to a conversational tone. You have a lot of interesting insights and I learn from you. I have enough hubris to think you could learn from me. But it always feels like a wrestling match. I've already fled from Slay Alive because I find it so unpleasant, and now it's to the point where I dread coming to my own comment section.
Re: Faith and Buffy in NFFY. The surface positions are inverted. At least I think they are obviously so, and I will not re-engage that topic with you here. But they've never been polar opposites which means that the layers are as nuanced as ever. I am not the simple-minded idiot you want to argue with (or if I am, I've fooled a hell of a lot of really smart people for years now).
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So, yes, they will pursue these complications later, but for now, they are steering the conversation, and I think it's worth wondering why.
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Moreover (and throughout the episode) Faith is described as unstable, out of control, out of reach not as bad. The surface story, repeatedly laid out for the viewer, is that Faith is a essentially a victim of circumstances and failed interventions. Most obviously Wesley's, as I think Angel is being written as beginning to get through to Faith (he will be her end game in Five by Five). Still it's Buffy's show and her final judgement here, with which Giles concurs, is that Faith can be reached. In the event it proves much more complicated than that but Faith, although she makes many bad choices, never becomes a Warren.
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