BtVS Episode Review: Helpless
The short? A phenomenal episode that forwards the season's theme as well as carrying a heavy feminist theme. Plus, Buffy kicks total ass without her powers. Full review below the cut.
Characters:
Buffy Angel Xander Willow Giles Cordelia Oz
Plot
Bad Guy
Arc
Overall (9/10)
Best Moment
Buffy:
There is a lot going on in this episode so I'll just jump right in.
This episode deals with the idea of Buffy losing her powers. I'll address the feminist issues first and foremost. Buffy does try to be a feminist show, and sometimes it very clearly is. I would argue, overall, that it isn't, though. Yes, it does have strong female characters and good relationships between those characters. In fact, I love BtVS partially because it is a fantasy show with strong women in it.
However, we find out in S7's Get it Done that the source of a Slayer's power is a demon (This had been speculated and hinted at throughout the series, but it's finally confirmed in this episode). Indeed, the most powerful women on the show have powers rooted in magic or demons. The women who are not magical are frighteningly ordinary and not strong (Dawn, for instance). The "feminist" message seems to be that a woman needs some supernatural help in order to be strong.
But that's just one of the issues I have against BtVS being feminist in philosophy. Let me just make a note that this isn't necessarily a criticism of the show and doesn't affect my enjoyment. I don't need TV shows to carry a social message for me to enjoy them or even for me to find them thought-provoking. I'll have opportunity in future episodes to discuss in more detail the parts of BtVS that I do find to carry a feminist message as well as the ones that do not.
Let's look at this episode. Buffy loses her power and becomes a regular girl. Indeed, when she's talking to Giles, she states that she throws knives like...
"A girl," he supplies.
She corrects him by saying she throws like she's not the Slayer. We see as she's walking home from Angel's that she gets the leering males harassing her. And, when threatened, she becomes the screaming female that Joss used as inspiration for the series.
This episode, though, does have a happily feminist ending. With her mother threatened, Buffy loads up on weapons and goes to Kralik alone. She defeats him not with Slayer-strength, and not with the help of any of the men in her life, but with her own survival skills and cunning.
This is a powerful message that I wish had extended throughout the series. But it didn't. So oh well.
Let's not forget that this episode fully introduces Buffy's fight against authority this season. The authority figures, in this case, are the Council. They have an archaic ritual (Which I'll go into in more detail in Giles' section) that they subject Buffy to.
The episode starts with Buffy's father's abandonment of her. She looks very excited at the beginning to spend time with him, but he, pretty much, blows her off for work.
So she turns to Giles, her surrogate father. He's preoccupied with his moral issues regarding the Cruciamentum, though, and doesn't realize what she's proposing. So Buffy gets turned down by her real father, and by her surrogate father. Then she gets betrayed by Giles. Not a good day for her.
The scene where Giles reveals that he was the one who is responsible for the loss of her powers is incredibly emotional and powerful. Up to this point, Buffy had developed a substantial trust and affection for Giles. She saw him in a paternal sense, while at the same time being her mentor and guide. Then she finds out that he used that trust to his advantage to poison her and take away what made her strong. It's no wonder she is so broken upon finding out what had happened.
In the end, though, she sees Giles turn against his employers. She hears Traver's comments that Giles has a father's love for her, and she starts to think she may be able to trust him again. It's not tidily resolved, and it shouldn't be. Giles will have to work from this point on in regaining that trust. But it's a start.
Angel:
And Angel and Buffy are now basking in the coupleness. When did this happen? Why did this happen? No one knows. It's one of the eternal mysteries of S3. I gave some half-hearted explanation for it in my review of Amends, but it still doesn't make much sense to me.
Anyway, they're together again. But, already, we can foresee some problems. Mainly of the sexual kind. They can't consummate their love. If they do, Angel turns evil. This is highlighted during the practice fight at the beginning. And this will escalate to the point where Angel will leave her at the end of the season.
For her birthday, Angel gets Buffy a book of poetry. Yeah, I thought it was funny, too. He does realize he's dating Buffy, right? Maybe he bought it for Spike, but then realized that he and Spike are on the outs right now cause of the whole Angel-banging-Dru thing last year, so he gave it to Buffy instead. (I'm actually not an Angel/Spike shipper. I'm just playing around, because I found his birthday present for Buffy to be very amusing).
He does do a good job of addressing her concerns regarding the loss of her powers, though. He assures her that he'd still love her, but he doesn't dismiss her feelings. We find out the rather squick knowledge that he fell in love with a 15-year-old Buffy while she was in her teeny-bopper phase (Ugh and ugh).
Xander:
This episode belongs to Buffy and Giles. As such, the others don't have much to do. I will mention something, though. At first, I wasn't sure why they had the final scene with the Scoobies in Buffy's kitchen in the episode, as I felt the ending with Giles and Buffy was perfect.
But I think it's notable that Xander, the man, tries to open the peanut butter jar for Buffy, the girl, and he can't and has to ask Willow, another girl, for help. This is going back to the feminist message of the episode.
Willow:
Willow doesn't get much to do in this episode besides wear bad hats. Seriously, she has two bad hats in this episode alone. Would someone please tell this girl "No more hats"???
Giles:
Giles is the other big player in this episode.
Let's start with the Council. They have a ritual that is 12 centuries old called the Cruciamentum wherein they rob a Slayer of her powers on her 18th birthday and send her to face a big bad vamp without them.
In theory, it's supposed to test their resourcefulness. In practice, it weeds out Slayers for the Council.
We get with the Council the ultimate in patriarchal authority. They wage a war against demons. But they, themselves, don't get their hands dirty. Instead, they have a young girl fighting for them. The girl is supposed to be Kendra-like, having no life outside the Slaying. And a Slayer that lives to be past 18 is probably very dangerous to the Council. As such, I'd argue that they expect most Slayers to die during this ritual. It kills off the girls while they're still young and impressionable. It effectively gets rids of them before they become old enough to start thinking for themselves and before situations arise like the one the Council finds themselves in during S5's Checkpoint.
I don't think Buffy was intended to survive the Cruciamentum. She's a wild card to the Council. They didn't get to her until she'd been called. She routinely goes against Giles' wishes and takes her own initiative. In short, she's very dangerous to their very existence.
So the Council, the patriarchal authority, acts through Giles to kill the upstart of a woman, Buffy. In fact, they do so by taking away what makes her strong.
Giles, for his part, is torn between his feelings for Buffy and his duty to the Council. Thinking about it, he's been with the Council for most of his life. It's unreasonable to think he'd push aside his obligations so easily. That's why he initially goes along with it, though he protests to Travers.
However, once Kralik gets loose, he quickly goes to help Buffy and tells her what he's done. Then he's in the unenviable position of trying to win her trust back.
In the Council's eyes, though, Giles has failed by becoming too attached to their weapon. Slayers are not to be thought of as humans, but Giles thinks of Buffy as that and more. He thinks of her as a daughter. It is this paternal relationship that causes the Council to fire Giles.
Cordelia:
They really try to give Cordy things to do. She does have a rather nice moment in the library where she agrees to give Buffy a ride home.
Oz:
And Oz, like everybody who's not Buffy or Giles, gets very little to do.
Plot:
A lot has been made about the Cruciamentum. If you think too hard about it, no it won't make much sense. But I tend to think that this episode is more about the metaphor of a young woman falling victim to the male authority and fighting back with her natural resources. As such, I'll let little things slide.
For example, yes, Buffy should have gone to Angel for help when her mom was captured. But that would not have fit with the theme of the episode. And I'm very glad she didn't. It shows that Buffy is strong, with or without her powers.
Bad Guy:
Kralik is the immediate foe. And I love this guy. He's insanely creepy and undeniably threatening. And with him, we come again to the debate of the humanity of vampires (See the review for S2's Lie to Me for the beginning of that debate). Not to say that Kralik is a humane guy. But we are told that he was an insane serial killer as a human. That translates over to when he becomes a vampire, which is interesting. In fact, even his dependence (Whether physical or psychological) on his pills transfers over.
The other baddie, though, is the Watcher's Council and the overpowering authority that they represent.
Arc:
Well, it doesn't have anything to do with the Mayor. But it does bring up the fight-against-authority theme of the season.
Overall:
I think when people criticize this episode, they focus a bit too much on the details. Yes, there are plenty of nitpicky things that you can debate about that may bring the episode down. But, at the end of the day, they don't matter. This episode is about Buffy as a Slayer and about Buffy as a girl. It's about a girl fighting against the threat of men and, more importantly, it's about her winning.
As such, it's one of my favorite episodes for what it does with Buffy's character and for what it does with the Buffy/Giles relationship. I've never seen Buffy as strong as she is in the final fight of this episode, solely because she's fighting without any Slayer strength.
Special performance award goes to Charisma Carpenter for her hilarious chest-pounding of the jerk that's getting mad at her.
9 out of 10.
( About my scoring system)
Best Moment:
I'm tempted to choose the final Buffy/Giles scene just because...well...I love Buffy/Giles scenes. But I have to actually go with Buffy's fight with Kralik at the end. It's inspiring to see a regular girl go into danger and come out the victor.