Angel & Faith #2 - "Live Through This", part 2

[boot_the_grime]

My belated thoughts about Angel & Faith #2 (that I didn't post before for no other reason than that I didn't find time for it).

I'm more ambivalent about this issue than about #1, because there are things I really loved, and some things I was bothered by - in the sense that they show how the series might go wrong. However, it all depends on

Comments

[stormwreath]

Maybe we're talking at cross purposes? I'm not saying Giles would go out of his way to hunt down and kill people proactively, just because they were in some way "bad" - but he also doesn't show the slightest hesitation to kill bad people if they're a threat. Or might be a threat someday. And part of the definition of being 'bad' is that you're likely to be a threat someday, so where does that leave us? :)

Giles's reaction to the death of the Deputy Mayor can be summed up in one sentence: "It's tragic, but accidents have happened." He very noticeably didn't offer any moral condemnation. And for that matter the DM was certainly not unambiguously a "bad person"; he may have been an innocent bystander.

Omn the other hand, when the Mayor visited the library to gloat about the Ascension - and threatened to kill Buffy - Giles stabbed him through the heart without a moment's hesitation. It didn't do any good because the Mayor was already invulnerable, which is probably why the incident tends to be forgotten by fans; but it shows Giles as being quite ready to kill a human for being 'bad'.

Another example: Gigi. Giles sent Faith to kill her in cold blood.

Another example: Spike, in 'Lies My Parents Told Me'. Giles plotted to kill him because he was merely a potential threat, and a distraction to Buffy.

I've already mentioned Ben.

Ultimately, Giles might be wise and compassionate, but he's also pragmatic and, when he needs to be, thoroughly ruthless. He was trained as a Watcher, after all.

[boot_the_grime]

All those examples (apart from the Mayor, which was just impulsive and pointless) were about Giles being pragmatic and removing a threat (or trying to). Whether it was about a good or a bad person is beside the point. I see no reason to think that, for instance, Giles thought that souled!Spike was still a bad person, and he knew that Spike had no control over the trigger, so Spike's moral credentials were beside the point.

Faith, IIRC, wasn't removing any threat when she killed the Deputy Mayor. In Consequences, Giles said that "accidents happen" but didn't add that it was OK since the DM was "consorting with demons" and "was accessory to murder" anyway, as he does in Angel & Faith #2.

I don't recall Giles ever supporting vigilantism and saying "when you go to slay vampires, it's OK if you just go and kill a few criminals while you're at it". If he did, it would have been really odd for him to be Buffy's Watcher for so many years, since Buffy's moral stance on killing humans is completely opposite.

Buffy was tormented by guilt in "Ted" when she accidentally killed what she thought was a human being. But Ted wasn't a nice guy, and had attacked her first. Surely if Giles believed that it's OK to kill humans if they aren't nice, that was the time to tell it to Buffy? But he did none of that.

Giles: Whatever the authorities have planned for her, it can't be much worse than what she's doing to herself. She's taken a human life. The guilt, it's pretty hard to bear, and it won't go away soon.