Essay: Metaphors in Season 6.
S6 metaphors
There are some lessons that can’t be taught.
rahirah is forever coming up with interesting posts. I don’t always agree with them, but they never fail in making me think. The latest one that really caught my attention was this one, about perceived truth - and how we all see the show. And - in passing - she also said this:
In season six the writers abandoned metaphor. Or tried to. Buffy and Spike were supposed to be just Buffy and Spike; naughty wrong sex was just supposed to be naughty wrong sex.[...] In the end, the writers were forced to scramble back and embrace metaphor (Spike getting a soul) in order to regain control of their story. Whether the attempt was entirely successful is still debated.
And that made me think. Did the show really abandon metaphor? Did we just get a few 'rubbish' ones (magic=crack) and then a couple tacked on at the end - Buffy crawling of of another ‘grave’ into happiness, Spike getting his soul? (I don’t think Spike’s soul was ‘a metaphor for becoming good’ btw - but I’ll explain later.)
As I see it, the show didn’t abandon metaphors, but changed them greatly. In the early seasons (including 4 and 5), the monster of the week would often be a physical manifestation of the character’s struggles. To pick two examples: Buffy and Angel getting possessed by the ghosts in ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ (2.19) and Buffy fighting April the GirlfriendBot in ‘I Was Made To Love You’ (5.15). Both experiences teach Buffy something and help her deal with her life.
But in S6 the nature of the metaphors changed. We didn’t get MOTW metaphors, instead we got something else:
1) Other characters as metaphors.
2) The characters themselves became their own metaphor! (As in: internal battles shown externally)
3) Restless (4.22) showed the characters struggles in S6 through metaphor.
I guess I’d better explain all that... but first I need to get in a few thank you’s:
First to kathyh for making the beautiful illustrations. I feel terribly spoiled.
Secondly to the_royal_anna for reading through it all and giving me some excellent pointers.
Also I am indepted to avrelia and frenchani, both of whom inspired me with their essays.
I was going to try to avoid bringing in The Trio, but I don’t think I can let them go. The Trio are shadows or mirrors of the Scoobies. This is most obvious in ‘Dead Things’ of course, but in a slightly different way - we have Buffy/Warren and Buffy/Katrina and also Spike/Warren and Spike/Katrina. It’s fascinatingly complex, but I won’t begin to dissect that episode here. It’d take too long, and I think most of you are familiar with it anyway. But it perfectly illustrates my point - the demons Andrew summons are nothing but a tool. They say nothing about the characters - it’s the reflections and opposites within the people that we watch that are the main point.
But - that episode is so convoluted that people often miss the other (season long) parallels. For a start The Trio actively avoid *any* responsibility! The Scoobies try and fail, but The Trio...
ANDREW: I mean, here we got all the stuff we ever wanted... and we didn't even have to...
WARREN: Earn it?
ANDREW: Exactamundo.
Flooded (6.04)
The fact is, that The Trio is an inverted Scoobie gang. I’ll try to be as brief as I can in these comparisons, and please skip altogether if you like - I know I’m treading ground that has already been covered, but I didn’t feel I could leave it out completely.
1) Willow is obviously Warren, a fact vrya has dealt with superbly in this vid and accompanying essay: Killer. The differences are few and the similarities many.
2) Xander and Andrew have some shared characteristics, but are mostly opposites. They come from the same place - a geeky outlook on the world, with a shared sense of humour f.ex - but where they go is utterly different. Andrew is gay; Xander straight. Andrew is cerebral, summoning demons and learning languages and living in a fantasy world where everything can be neatly explained away by a story; Xander is very physical, becoming a carpenter and very much a part of the real world - sometimes too judgmental for his own good. Andrew has no will of his own, and folds when Warren puts pressure on him, Xander stands up for himself, and is the only one able to stop Willow, never backing down. Andrew kills Jonathan, Xander brings Buffy back to life.
3) Buffy and Jonathan are polar opposites. Buffy is the hero, Jonathan the perpetual victim (has anyone counted how often Buffy saves his life? He keeps popping up - particularly in the early seasons). He is the most normal of normal boys, and unpopular to boot; Buffy’s life is a whirlwind of the strange and bizarre, and rather notorious. We see how much he longs to have her life in ‘Superstar’ (and not to date her, he wants to *become* her). He runs away from responsibility most of the time, but has a good heart underneath it all, because he does want to be the good guy (which is the point where they touch) - or maybe the noble villain. And when he is betrayed and killed... his blood cannot even open the seal it was supposed to. A direct contrast to Buffy’s beautiful sacrifice in The Gift.
So - I think that’s most of it. There’s probably a lot more that could be said, but this was only the secondary metaphor. Which brings me to:
The Scoobies
Now the theme of S6 was ‘Life is the Big Bad’ or ‘Grow Up Already’. What is the biggest part of growing up? Taking responsibility for one’s actions. When you’re an adult you can do what you want, but you have to face up to the consequences. No one will be able to bail you out. This season the Scoobies do their very best to run away from what they do, and from themselves - from where their choices have brought them. And if you’re not ready to face yourself, there’s no lesson that can impart that knowledge. A metaphor won’t do. As the_royal_anna says in this brilliant essay about Buffy and Spike:
You cannot generalise the Buffy/Spike relationship. It is a story about a reformed vampire legend with a chip in his head and a newly resurrected Slayer. It is a story about *a* relationship, not a statement about relationships in general. You can't pull abstract ideas out of it, and apply them to any other situation, and judge it on that basis. Even the tidiest analogy in the world will never prove a point, only illustrate it.
And I love that. The characters broke out of whatever ‘story’ was assigned them and just went their own way. So yes, in one sense there was no metaphor. Or rather - no message, and maybe that’s why I love the pairing so much. But - I don’t think that’s the whole story. I’ve been pondering this for a while, and I think that the *are* metaphors - but they’re inherent in the characters. The characters have to face *themselves*, not someone else. Willow f.ex. could have met with the baddest, most magic abusing MOTW *ever*, she still wouldn’t have stopped behaving the way she did. Not until she herself became that monster...
See it all ties in with a theory that I’ve had for a while - in S6 the Scoobies all fall. And they don’t fall because of their weaknesses, but because of their strength. Or rather - their strength *becomes* their weakness. That’s why they fall so badly.
I’m going to go back to the end of S4 for this. In ‘Primeval’ the Scoobies all join forces - each contributing their greatest strength. But in ‘Restless’ the consequences are dire. Each has their strength taken away, and I think this is exactly what we see happening in S6. But literally rather than in a dream. I’ll use the Tarot cards from ‘Primeval’ and do one character at a time, trying to tie in the dreams from ‘Restless’ also.
To begin with, there are some very interesting lines from Giles’ dream that I think matter here:
WILLOW: Something's after us. It's, uh, like some primal ... some animal force.
GILES: That used to be us.
We all have something primal in us, and it’s very, very hard to fight. To very briefly jump over to AtS: It’s Cavemen Vs. Astraunauts. And in S6 - the cavemen won.
TAROT CARD: A picture of an ethereally striking woman, flowing hair, billowing robe… floating inches above the ground. Imprinted on the bottom is the word "Spiritus."
WILLOW
Spiritus… The Spirit…
See I’m not sure exactly what ‘spiritus’ means in the Tarot, but I think I can make some sort of educated guess as to what it means as regards Willow - partly her ‘spiritual side’ (as in magical), partly her ‘spirit’, that she thinks is fine (“I’m very seldom naughty”), but that is actually getting darker without her noticing.
Willow spends almost all of S6 running away from the truth about herself. She gets addicted to dark magic, but fails to see that it’s not the magic that’s the problem - it’s how she was using it. Before the addiction. Look at these quotes:
“What's the matter, Amy? You lonely? Oh, we need to get you a nice companion rat that you can love ... play with ... and grow attached to, until one day they leave you for no good reason.”
Smashed 6.09
“It won't happen again, I promise. No more spells. I'm finished. [...] It's not worth it. Not if it messes with the people I love.”
Wrecked 6.10
Here we have the point I was trying to make above - external lessons are no good. There was the whole ‘Tabula Rasa’ fiasco, and even then Willow could not understand that she’d hurt Tara. In ‘Wrecked’ Willow got hurt herself, and finally understood the danger she was playing with. She came face to face with herself (or at least one side of herself) - Addict!Willow - and tried to change. But of course it wasn’t enough. (I’m going with the straight ‘magic=drugs’ here. And for all we know Rack did have something addictive in his ‘special brand’. Also she was *incredibly* irresponsible with magic before that.)
So Willow spent the whole season trying to ‘get better’, only looking at a couple of nights of recklessness as the main problem. Refusing to take responsibility for her actions the last many years! Fighting a foe that was largely made up. Until Tara was killed. And then... then there was no sign of Addict!Willow anywhere. What emerged was Dark!Willow - and Dark!Willow was much harder to fight. Because all the hardest battles are internal - and since this was BtVS we got to see the battle play out before us. (Like Angel and Angelus in ‘Orpheus’ to some extent.) And Willow lost. Dark!Willow took over completely (“Willow doesn’t live here anymore”), just like we’d seen previously in ‘The Wish’ and ‘Doppelgangland’. But this time it wasn’t a ‘different’ Willow - this time we only had the one. If it hadn’t been for Xander, she would have ended the world. He was somehow able to find ‘Willow’ underneath the darkness and bring her out again.
But that was after she lost: She was ravaged and torn to pieces, just like in ‘Restless’, but she was the one who tore herself apart...
Going back to ‘Restless’:
Willow’s dream is all about who she is. And that there is some dark secret:
TARA: They will find out, you know. About you.
Find out what? It’s mentioned the whole way through:
TARA: Everyone's starting to wonder about you. The real you. If they find out, they'll punish you, I ... I can't help you with that.
Who *is* the real Willow? The sweet little nerdy girl we met so long ago or the immensely powerful witch she grew up to be? Or maybe... maybe that strength was always there? It just found an outlet.
Willow was of course a very good girl back then, but...
Giles: So, all the city plans are just, uh, open to the public?
Willow: Um, well, i-in a way. I sort of stumbled onto them when I
accidentally decrypted the city council's security system.
Xander: Someone's been naughty.
The Harvest (1.02)
It was only ‘an accident’, apparently. And for someone so very honest, she sure did decrypt a lot of stuff over the next few years. And it never registered as something to be worried about:
“I’m very seldom naughty.” (Restless)
Who Willow was, and who she became, is all part of the same thing.
Now in ‘Restless’ Tara symbolised her inner peace:
WILLOW: I never worry here. I'm safe here.
And when that inner peace was shattered and taken away, Willow lost it:
BUFFY: Willow, I know what you want to do, but you have to listen to me. The forces inside you are incredibly powerful. They're strong ... but you're stronger. You have to remember you're still Willow.
WILLOW: (scoffs) Let me tell you something about Willow. She's a loser. And she always has been. People picked on Willow in junior high school, high school, up until college. With her stupid mousy ways. And now? Willow's a junkie.
BUFFY: I can help.
WILLOW: The only thing Willow was ever good for...
She pauses, drops the bitter sarcasm and grows pensive.
WILLOW: ...the only thing I had going for me ... were the moments - just moments - when Tara would look at me and I was wonderful. (grimly) And that will never happen again.
Two To Go (6.21)
Another repeated feature of Willow’s dream is the way everyone keeps commenting that she’s in costume. We saw in the conversation above how scornful Willow was of her past self - literally viewing her as a different person. The thing is, she isn’t. In ‘Restless’ Buffy rips off her ‘new’ clothes and reveals ‘Old Willow’ underneath. This is directly referenced in ‘Two To Go’:
JONATHAN: I still can't believe that was Willow. I mean, I've known her almost as long as you guys. Willow was ... you know. She packed her own lunches and wore floods and was always... just Willow.
JONATHAN: Geez it!
ANDREW: What was that?
Reveal a large truck behind the car, with Willow standing on top of the truck's cab. Her eyes are all-black again. She holds her hands in front of her, elbows extended, palms facing out.
XANDER: Just Willow.
In S7 we saw her slowly try to find out who she actually is. No longer denying any of her less admirable traits and finally understanding what Tara was talking about in ‘Restless’:
WILLOW: Will they always be afraid of me?
GILES: Maybe. Can you handle it?
WILLOW: I deserve a lot worse. I killed people, Giles.
[...]
GILES: Do you want to be punished?
WILLOW: I wanna be Willow.
GILES: You are. In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed.
TAROT CARD: The picture is of a valiant knight in bloodied tunic emblazoned with a heart. At the bottom, it reads, "Animus".
XANDER
Animus… Heart…
Xander was always the heart. The one who saw things. (Not always, because he was also a character on the show and had problems like everyone else.) And yet come S6 he utterly ignored what was right in front of his nose. “I’ll never tell!” he sang in OMWF, and he didn’t. Instead of dealing with his fear marriage, he first hid it completely (until ‘All The Way’), and then tried to ‘fix things’ by summoning Sweet. In ‘Tabula Rasa’ it’s interesting to note that Xander and Anya get split up, and never realise that they were a couple. After that Anya frets, and Xander eats a lot. They both fixate on the practical, but apart from a brief talk in ‘As You Were’ (6.15), they do not discuss their relationship at all. Remember Xander in ‘The Replacement’, getting self confidence from being split in half and knowing exactly what to say to Anya? Or in ‘Into The Woods’ (5.10) when he took the lesson he’d learned from Buffy/Riley and applied it to himself? There’s no sign of that in S6. He took a big step in “the Gift’ when he asked Anya to marry him, but in the end he is unable to take responsibility for that step.
In ‘Hell’s Bells’ he came face to face with himself - and it might just have been a demon, but to Xander it was real:
ANYA: But it wa - it wasn't real. What he showed you, it wasn't real.
XANDER: I know it wasn't real. But it could be.
ANYA: What was it? Was it about me? 'Cause he wanted you to hate me, Xander.
XANDER: It wasn't you. It wasn't you I was hating. I had these thoughts, and ... fears before this.
Xander was brought face to face with himself - with what he could become. And he lost. Then he proceeded to run away from the consequences his decision had. From ‘Entropy’:
ANYA: No, the mature solution is for you to spend your whole life telling stupid, pointless jokes, so that no one will notice that you are just a scared, insecure little boy!
XANDER: I'm not joking now. You let that evil, soulless thing touch you. (pointing at Spike) You wanted me to feel something? Congratulations, it worked.
But what is Anya at this point? From what we’ve seen, Vengeance Demons appear to be ‘evil, soulless things’. Xander destroyed who Anya had become and turned her into the thing he despised the most. (Now that’s a metaphor for you!) And it was all the work of his heart. Which then got torn out...
Xander: Well, there was this one guy-there was this one guy, he, uh, he hurt her real bad, so she paid him back. She killed him, but she did it real slow. See first she stopped his heart, then she replaced it with darkness, then she made him live his life like that. But he still had to go do his job and see his friends and wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, but he had to do it all empty. Without anything to look forward to. Ever.
Never Leave Me (7.10)
He understands a little when Anya later explains that her tryst with Spike was solace, but Xander doesn’t begin to take responsibility until he goes off to stop Willow. This time he stands by his love, and doesn’t move, even in the face of death. It’s the first step to show that he’s taken a new turn. Because that’s the other thing about growing up... it takes time.
Going back to ‘Restless’, Xander’s dream is all about ‘the journey’:
XANDER: You gotta have something. Gotta be with movin' forward.
But - he always ends up back in his parents’ basement. But it’s the fear of what’s at the top of those basement stairs that keeps him trapped. “That’s not the way out.” he says. Oh Xander - but it was. Walking down that aisle would have been the way out. But he was too frightened by what he’d seen himself do, what he could become, and he couldn’t leave:
DAD: You won't come upstairs? What are you ... ashamed of us? Your mother's crying her guts out!
XANDER: You don't understand.
DAD: No. You don't understand. The line ends here with us, and you're not gonna change that. You haven't got the heart.
TAROT CARD: A wizened scholar, surrounded by scrolls, and Old World globe. The word at the bottom: "Sophus."
GILES
Sophus… Mind…
Giles was always the mind - the teacher, the Watcher, the father figure. The adult. The one who took responsibility. So of course he had to leave. It’s something that didn’t work very well in a story sense, because it was so obvious that he was needed - Buffy could barely function, Willow was dabbling in dangerous magic - but from a metaphorical POV it’s absolutely necessary. The children can’t grow up if they don’t live on their own, so the father had to leave. But - it might not have been the right time for them to grow up. Maybe they weren’t ready?
The thing is - Giles had left already. He had been getting himself ready to go for a long time, preparing to have a life of his own, as far back as the end of S4. And we see how distant he is in this exchange after his return:
GILES: Otherwise, there's, uh, nothing really to report. I, um, I keep a flat in Bath. I, I, uh, met with a few old friends. Almost made a new one, which I think is ... statistically impossible for a man of my age.
[...]
I can't lie to you, Buffy. Um ... leaving Sunnydale was, uh, was difficult. And, uh, coming back was...
BUFFY: I'm guessing the word is "inconvenient"?
GILES: No. Bewildering.
Flooded (6.04)
He’s confused - and he makes the choice to leave again, thinking and thinking if this was the right thing. And then - then Giles also comes face to face with himself, but in a different way. He made choices long ago that affected what life he has had, and in ‘Tabula Rasa’ he sees who he might have been - a man grounded in reality, with a family (a son and a young, pretty fiancée) and it must have hurt a great deal to realise that it was all unreal. So he leaves, maybe attempting to somehow become that other Giles he glimpsed. Falling, just like the rest of them, although in a different way. Shirking his responsibilities, and generally acting as though someone had cut his brain out.
Giles’ dream in ‘Restless’ is about making choices. What life does he choose?
- The Watcher’s life of duty?
GILES: This is my business. Blood of the lamb and all that.
- Or a life of his own? Which interestingly is represented by Spike (=Ripper, who Giles used to be. The non-conformist.)
SPIKE: Come on! You're gonna miss everything!
Spike is urging Giles to choose, to think, to hurry:
GILES: What am I supposed to do with all of this?
SPIKE: You gotta make up your mind, Rupes.What are you wasting your time for? Haven't you figured it all out yet, with your enormous squishy frontal lobes?
And he tries, but not with much success.
GILES: Buffy, I've thought this over ... and over. I believe it's the right thing to do.
BUFFY: You're wrong.
Tabula Rasa (6.08)
In ‘Restless’ he leaves Buffy to follow Spike and gets lost, finally finding Willow and Xander:
WILLOW: Do you know this is your fault?
GILES: We have to think of the facts, Willow. I'm very busy. I have a gig myself, you know.
And then finally he meets his fate, his mind unable to vanquish his foe (too busy focussing on that gig?), even as he thinks he’s winning:
GILES: And I can defeat you ... with my intellect.
(We see the First Slayer approaching from behind)
I ... can cripple you with my thoughts.
(It grabs his hair, puts a weapon against his forehead)
Of course, you underestimate me. You couldn't know.
(Closeup of Giles' face with blood dripping down from his forehead. We hear
his voice but his lips don't move.)
GILES: You never had a Watcher.
But in S6 it’s Buffy who will be Watcher-less, and it is she who in time will go on to show that it is the Watchers who underestimated the Slayers. But that is still to come. As for Giles in S6, then of course he *does* return in the end - when one of the ‘children’ has gone off the rails, not to punish, but to help. Because - as Willow told him in ‘Restless’ - it was his fault. So he came back to help set things straight - stopped being the man of leisure and stepped back into his Watcher role, that would soon be all there was left to him.
WILLOW: Well, you should get going. Don't you have a life or something?
GILES: Um, well, I suppose that's the question really.
Bargaining I
TAROT CARD: It's a picture of two hands intersecting each other - one open and outstretched, the other clenched into a tight fist. It reads "Manus."
BUFFY
Manus. The Hand
I love the images of the hands on the card. One open, one closed. Because it ties on so well with how Buffy is presented metaphorically on the show in the later seasons: In two halves. Both part of her, both important - and needing to be balanced.
Dawn - her light side, her humanity.
Buffy: “She's more than that. She's me. The monks made her out of me. I hold her ... and I feel closer to her than ... It's not just the memories they built. It's physical. Dawn ... is a part of me. The only part that I-”
The Gift (5.22)
Spike - her dark side, her demon.
Buffy: “That's okay. I can be alone with you here.”
Afterlife (6.03)
We see this already in S5 of course, and in S5 Buffy is in control of both. She’s caring for Dawn and (although mostly indirectly) teaching Spike how to grow. By season’s end Spike is ready to die for Dawn and in the summer that follows he watches over her carefully. Buffy’s darkness and light working together in harmony.
But it doesn’t end there - that is just the beginning. Because the Scoobies bring Buffy back to life and everything changes. Going back to what I said at the beginning - growing up is about responsibility. “But!” I can hear you say - “Buffy is *very* responsible! She’s the epitome of responsibility!” Which is true in a general sense - she does her Slayer duties, she works and pays the bills, makes sure Dawn is fed, and even that Willow is OK. But these are all external things. The one thing Buffy doesn’t take care of in S6 is - herself! And we see the effects of this directly in the behaviour of Dawn and Spike. People complain that Dawn is too childlike in S6. Now this almost only makes sense when viewed metaphorically. Buffy quite simply does not let herself mature - she clings to her childish outlook on life. And she very carefully separates Spike from Dawn - she does not want him to taint that part of her. The darkness should be beaten down and hidden, because it is ‘wrong’.
Also note that both the dark and the light side of her is immature, but in different ways. Her human side is childish, needing protection and care. Her demon side is unable to understand the difference between right and wrong, and needs guidance.
But let me try to do this episode by episode, because we can see how it is these two who continually influence Buffy’s behaviour - the two impulses in her life that fight over her, so she gets pulled this way and that.
At first though, things are OK. In ‘Bargaining’ Dawn is the one that stops Buffy from killing herself again. Then in ‘Afterlife’ she and Spike both care for Buffy, and although she is hurt and confused, she seems comfortable with them - the Scoobies are an intrusion. Later she offloads her secret on Spike - because she knows the darkness is strong and can carry it. At the very end of the ep. she brings Dawn her lunch and it would seem that balance is restored.
But Buffy is far more damaged than that. In ‘Flooded’ she repeatedly makes Dawn nervous by not caring what her sister does. And when Spike jokes about killing her friends, she smiles. She is unable to be a proper guide to either side anymore.
Dawn is barely seen in ‘Life Serial’. Buffy neglects her human side to follow her demon side to ‘try out’ the darkness. This is a stark contrast to what has gone before when her darkness would try to see how well he could cope in the light. And in the very next ep., ‘All The Way’, we see her human side follow into the darkness, with near disastrous results. Buffy and her dark side work together again, saving the light, but it’s a close call. She shouldn’t have been there at all...
Then comes OMWF. “I can’t even see, if this is really me...” Buffy sings, showing just how lost she is. And we see how strong the darkness has become when Spike sings his song to Buffy, luring her his way under the influence of the spell - and Dawn’s lament is cut short. When she sings to Sweet it is to empathise how young she is, how she needs protecting. And Buffy comes to her rescue - but when Buffy nearly dies, it is only her dark side who has the strength to stop her. Her light tries to remind her of her connection to life, but in the end Buffy follows the dark. And falls properly for the first time.
‘Tabula Rasa’ is interesting - under the spell Buffy manages to connect to her light and dark instinctively, and easily provides a guide for both. Her light feels loved and her darkness noble.
And then it all falls to pieces. In the end, Buffy yet again turns to the dark, seeking oblivion.
‘Smashed’ is one of the major turning points. The dark has been getting stronger, and Buffy gets worried. She tries to beat it down in the crude fashion she did before, because she is not capable of guiding anymore. But - the darkness can suddenly fight back! She cannot control it anymore, because she’s not the same. And she falls... leaving her light alone at home.
In ‘Wrecked’ she tries to get back on top. Tries to get back the control she lost. It only works when her human side gets hurt - her demon jumps in like he always does, to help because Dawn is part of her. But it’s a temporary respite only.
As ‘Gone’ shows, her light won’t easily forgive the neglect, although Buffy tries her best to stay away from the dark. Until the dark comes to her - and proves just how much power it’s beginning to have over her. But... when she turns invisible - neither dark nor light will let her get away with disappearing. They both depend on her:
SPIKE: The only reason you're here, is that you're not here. [...] You need to go. [...] Cause if I can't have all of you, I'd rather-
DAWN: I can't talk to you like this. I can't see you! How can I talk to you if I can't see you?
‘Double Meat Palace’ - Dawn tries to support Buffy, Spike tries to make her quit - but even when he comes up with something true: “You’re better than this!” she does not listen. She also rejects his offer of money, but is unable to say no to him in another way... the darkness is beginning to truly seep in.
‘Dead Things’... and we begin to see the consequences of Buffy’s fall. We see how comfortable she has become with the darkness, and although now and again jolted into awareness of what she’s doing, she’s unable to stop Spike for long. Dawn feels lost and alone and tries to find comfort with her friends - she does not count on Buffy being there anymore. And then comes Katrina’s death. And because Buffy has split up her darkness and light, they cannot argue in her favour as they should. For a moment imagine if Dawn and Spike together had been able to talk to Buffy that night. One rational, one emotional, each supporting the other to help Buffy make the right decision. The outcome would have been very different I think. But - they couldn’t. And so both confrontations ended with anger and hopelessness. Buffy was terrified at what she had done - what she had let Spike do for her - and what Dawn was thinking of it all.
In ‘Older And Far Away’ we see that Buffy’s human side has been suppressed so far that it’s fighting back. Forcing Buffy to confront it and reconnect on some level.
‘As You Were’ probably only works on a metaphorical level, since it sucks on any other (*g*). In Riley and Sam we get the perfect image of what Buffy wants but can’t get from Spike. And then she finds out that he has been doing things he shouldn’t - hiding demon eggs is something he knows she would not approve of, but she has given him such free reign that he has done it anyway. At the end of the ep. she tells her dark side that it is finished. She went too far, and has to step back. The problem is - Spike does not understand why.
At first though it seems like things are back on track. ‘Hell’s Bells’ is good from a Buffy POV - Spike behaves very nicely, as does Dawn. And Buffy learns that you shouldn’t pin your dreams on someone else.
But the thing is - things aren’t OK for Buffy. Not at all. Because now we get to ‘Normal Again’.
This episode is pivotal - crucial - to Buffy’s development in S6. People focus on the Alt!Buffy and ask if maybe this is ‘The Real Buffy’ and the show is just all the lunatic imaginations of a sick girl. This misses the point. As does the talk about the ret-con. My take is, that this is the Buffy we never see - the Buffy underneath everything else. Remember ‘Afterlife’ and what Buffy said?
“Everything here is ... hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch ... this is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that ... (softly) knowing what I've lost...”
I think the Buffy we see in the asylum is that Buffy. Everything is hard and bright and violent to her. The world makes no sense. As she sings in OMWF:
“I can’t even see, if this is really me...”
And it goes further back than this even. Remember ‘The Gift’?
“I don't understand. I don't know how to live in this world, if these are the choices, if everything's just stripped away then I don't see the point. I just wish... I wish my mom was here.”
This is the girl who finds it so hard to look after her sister, the girl who turns to Spike, because pain is at least something she understands. Try to watch Alt!Buffy and compare her to the Buffy who’s just crawled out of her grave. There’s the same lost, scared expression on her face, the same inability to deal with the world. This is what I meant when I said that Buffy didn’t take responsibility for herself - she’s been stuck in that same place all season, scared and unable to cope. And Spike is right to some extent:
SPIKE: You're addicted to the misery. It's why you won't tell your pals about us. Might actually have to be happy if you did. They'd either understand and help you, god forbid ... or drive you out ... where you can finally be at peace, in the dark. With me. Either way, you'd be better off for it, but you're too twisted for that. Let yourself live, already. And stop with the bloody hero trip for a sec. We'd all be the better for it.
She *is* addicted to the misery. Or rather, she’s been stuck with it, not knowing how to get out. And we’ve seen this before, if slightly differently, in ‘Weight of the World’ (5.21) - Buffy going in circles in her own head, unable to leave.
In S6 she has wanted (needed) *someone* to make it better. But Giles left, and Spike was unable to do what she hoped, and there was no one who could fix everything for her. So she’s been stuck in the same spot - until this episode, when she finally makes a choice. But notice - first she makes the wrong choice. Like in WOTW when she kept smothering her sister - only this time reversed: Attacking her friends, even Dawn, in real life. Tries to *eradicate* everything that is hard to deal with, rather than just ignore it as she has done all season. She doesn’t lose completely, but it’s a battle, just like she battled The First Slayer in ‘Restless’ - and eventually won. But this time it’s much harder - it’s not a dream anymore. And she’s battling for her very self. The self where she has tried to hold onto the things she lost (literally and metaphorically) when she grew up - her parents. But when everything looks darkest, we get this beautiful speech from Joyce (“I just wish my mom was here...”):
JOYCE: Buffy? Buffy! Buffy, fight it. You're too good to give in, you can beat this thing. Be strong, baby, ok? I know you're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you've got people who love you. Your dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We'll always be with you. You've got ... a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself.
And she does. She finally takes a step forward and leaves the old her behind, choosing to live. She takes responsibility for herself again. Takes control. And leaves Alt!Buffy, who’s now nothing more than an empty shell.
Then comes ‘Entropy’ - and we can see Buffy finally beginning to deal with things properly. Trying to get back to where she was in S5. She finally seems to be on top of the Spike situation:
BUFFY: You wanna tell them so badly? Go ahead.
[...]
SPIKE: In that case, why won't you sleep with me again?
BUFFY: (quietly as she walks away) Because I don't love you.
There’s also bonding with Dawn, while still firmly keeping her in the ‘child’ box.
Later at Spike’s crypt, she tries to acknowledge and then set anew the parameters of their relationship, but with mixed success:
Spike: (quietly) I don't hurt you.
Buffy: I know.
[...]
Spike: Something happened to me. The way I feel ... about you ... it's different. And no matter how hard you try to convince yourself it isn't, it's real.
Buffy: I think it is.
Beat. He looks at her.
Buffy: For you.
The problem is - things have progressed a lot since S5. And Spike can’t go back to being who he was before, can’t undo what has happened. So he ends up seeking a spell, and then the solace of Anya. And then the two sides of Buffy collide - Dawn sees the tryst at the Magic Box, and Buffy’s reaction, and Buffy finally has to explain:
DAWN: So. This is it? This is the stuff you've been protecting me from? You and Spike?
BUFFY: And a lot of monsters.
Dawn is very understanding here - a lot more so than Buffy was expecting I think.
But then in the next episode (Seeing Red) we see the consequences of everything pile up. First Dawn visits Spike - their first interaction for quite a while. And here we see what happens when the light and the dark get together:
DAWN: I don't know what happened between you two. But what you did last night... If you wanted to really hurt Buffy - congratulations. It worked.
And that hits home. Spike has been feeling sorry for himself until now, and then suddenly someone shows that he did wrong - which makes him decide to try yo make it better, with disastrous consequences.
Because the dark got very strong while Buffy was letting it set the pace, and it thinks it can do it still - can re-claim that lost territory, make her understand that it’s OK. And then... then it all goes to hell.
The darkness finally sees the truth, grasps momentarily what it could never fathom before, understands all those lessons Buffy tried to impart, understands far too much... and decides that it has to change. Which again ties into what I’ve been saying about this season - everyone falls, and learns something about themselves. Something that could only be learned, not taught.
The last few episodes are all one long story - and in it we see Spike go through the challenges that are required of him, and Dawn continually trying to *do* something. She’s more pro-active than she’s been most of the season, getting in danger and having to deal with a lot in one go - Willow almost turns her back into a ball of energy, Xander lets slip about the AR. And yet when Dawn and Buffy are stuck in the ground, she readily picks up a sword to help.
And this is when Buffy has an epiphany of sorts: she can’t keep her human side childish. She needs to let it grow up. Needs to let that part of her mature and help it do so:
BUFFY: But it's gonna be [OK], though. I see it.
DAWN: See what?
BUFFY: You.
[...]
BUFFY: Things have really sucked lately, but it's all gonna change. And I wanna be there when it does. I want to see my friends happy again. And I want to see you grow up. The woman you're gonna become. Because she's gonna be beautiful. And she's going to be powerful. [...] I got it so wrong. I don't want to protect you from the world. I want to show it to you. [..] There's so much that I want to show you.
It’s the final piece of the puzzle - the last step towards taking full responsibility for herself.
And ‘at the same time’, her dark side regains his soul. Learns how to distinguish right from wrong, gets ready to grow and learn by himself, needing no one to ‘be responsible for him’.
Of course Buffy will need all the help she can get in the next year...
I’ll only touch very briefly upon Buffy’s dream in ‘Restless’, because it is just so much denser than the others. The others all have *one* unifying theme - Buffy has many. Who is she? *What* is she? Where is she going? What's going to happen in the future?
"You think you know. Who you are. What's to come. You haven't even begun."
Buffy's dream includes so much of what's going to happen in the last three seasons, and it’s so tighly woven together, that it’s hard to bring out anything specific. But a few points:
- Buffy has lost her friends.
- Buffy is called ‘killer’ and a demon.
- Spike never appears.
- Buffy finally defeats The First Slayer.
A lot of these things come into play in S6. Buffy is isolated, and lonely. She thinks she ‘came back wrong’:
ADAM: She's uncomfortable with certain concepts. It's understandable. Aggression is a natural human tendency. Though you and me come by it another way.
BUFFY: We're not demons.
ADAM: Is that a fact?
In S6 Buffy gives in to her ‘inner demon’, listens to that voice that says that violence is all she is...
The First Slayer: I have no speech. No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction. Absolute ... alone. No ... friends! Just the kill. We ... are ... alone!
These words are echoed by Spike in ‘Dead Things’:
SPIKE: You see ... you try to be with them... but you always end up in the dark ... with me. What would they think of you ... if they found out ... all the things you've done? If they knew ... who you really were?
But in the end, Buffy rejects that darkness:
BUFFY: You're *not* the source of me.
That doesn’t mean that the darkness isn’t a part of her. But it’s Buffy who needs to be in charge. Not the other way round. And that - in a nut shell - is Buffy’s story in S6.
Dawn: If you hurt my sister at all... touch her... you're gonna wake up on fire.
Spike: The spark. I wanted to give you what you deserve, and I got it. They put the spark in me and now all it does is burn.
~~~~~~~
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.”
Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 13:12
The End
There are some lessons that can’t be taught.
rahirah is forever coming up with interesting posts. I don’t always agree with them, but they never fail in making me think. The latest one that really caught my attention was this one, about perceived truth - and how we all see the show. And - in passing - she also said this:
In season six the writers abandoned metaphor. Or tried to. Buffy and Spike were supposed to be just Buffy and Spike; naughty wrong sex was just supposed to be naughty wrong sex.[...] In the end, the writers were forced to scramble back and embrace metaphor (Spike getting a soul) in order to regain control of their story. Whether the attempt was entirely successful is still debated.
And that made me think. Did the show really abandon metaphor? Did we just get a few 'rubbish' ones (magic=crack) and then a couple tacked on at the end - Buffy crawling of of another ‘grave’ into happiness, Spike getting his soul? (I don’t think Spike’s soul was ‘a metaphor for becoming good’ btw - but I’ll explain later.)
As I see it, the show didn’t abandon metaphors, but changed them greatly. In the early seasons (including 4 and 5), the monster of the week would often be a physical manifestation of the character’s struggles. To pick two examples: Buffy and Angel getting possessed by the ghosts in ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ (2.19) and Buffy fighting April the GirlfriendBot in ‘I Was Made To Love You’ (5.15). Both experiences teach Buffy something and help her deal with her life.
But in S6 the nature of the metaphors changed. We didn’t get MOTW metaphors, instead we got something else:
1) Other characters as metaphors.
2) The characters themselves became their own metaphor! (As in: internal battles shown externally)
3) Restless (4.22) showed the characters struggles in S6 through metaphor.
I guess I’d better explain all that... but first I need to get in a few thank you’s:
First to kathyh for making the beautiful illustrations. I feel terribly spoiled.
Secondly to the_royal_anna for reading through it all and giving me some excellent pointers.
Also I am indepted to avrelia and frenchani, both of whom inspired me with their essays.
I was going to try to avoid bringing in The Trio, but I don’t think I can let them go. The Trio are shadows or mirrors of the Scoobies. This is most obvious in ‘Dead Things’ of course, but in a slightly different way - we have Buffy/Warren and Buffy/Katrina and also Spike/Warren and Spike/Katrina. It’s fascinatingly complex, but I won’t begin to dissect that episode here. It’d take too long, and I think most of you are familiar with it anyway. But it perfectly illustrates my point - the demons Andrew summons are nothing but a tool. They say nothing about the characters - it’s the reflections and opposites within the people that we watch that are the main point.
But - that episode is so convoluted that people often miss the other (season long) parallels. For a start The Trio actively avoid *any* responsibility! The Scoobies try and fail, but The Trio...
ANDREW: I mean, here we got all the stuff we ever wanted... and we didn't even have to...
WARREN: Earn it?
ANDREW: Exactamundo.
Flooded (6.04)
The fact is, that The Trio is an inverted Scoobie gang. I’ll try to be as brief as I can in these comparisons, and please skip altogether if you like - I know I’m treading ground that has already been covered, but I didn’t feel I could leave it out completely.
1) Willow is obviously Warren, a fact vrya has dealt with superbly in this vid and accompanying essay: Killer. The differences are few and the similarities many.
2) Xander and Andrew have some shared characteristics, but are mostly opposites. They come from the same place - a geeky outlook on the world, with a shared sense of humour f.ex - but where they go is utterly different. Andrew is gay; Xander straight. Andrew is cerebral, summoning demons and learning languages and living in a fantasy world where everything can be neatly explained away by a story; Xander is very physical, becoming a carpenter and very much a part of the real world - sometimes too judgmental for his own good. Andrew has no will of his own, and folds when Warren puts pressure on him, Xander stands up for himself, and is the only one able to stop Willow, never backing down. Andrew kills Jonathan, Xander brings Buffy back to life.
3) Buffy and Jonathan are polar opposites. Buffy is the hero, Jonathan the perpetual victim (has anyone counted how often Buffy saves his life? He keeps popping up - particularly in the early seasons). He is the most normal of normal boys, and unpopular to boot; Buffy’s life is a whirlwind of the strange and bizarre, and rather notorious. We see how much he longs to have her life in ‘Superstar’ (and not to date her, he wants to *become* her). He runs away from responsibility most of the time, but has a good heart underneath it all, because he does want to be the good guy (which is the point where they touch) - or maybe the noble villain. And when he is betrayed and killed... his blood cannot even open the seal it was supposed to. A direct contrast to Buffy’s beautiful sacrifice in The Gift.
So - I think that’s most of it. There’s probably a lot more that could be said, but this was only the secondary metaphor. Which brings me to:
The Scoobies
Now the theme of S6 was ‘Life is the Big Bad’ or ‘Grow Up Already’. What is the biggest part of growing up? Taking responsibility for one’s actions. When you’re an adult you can do what you want, but you have to face up to the consequences. No one will be able to bail you out. This season the Scoobies do their very best to run away from what they do, and from themselves - from where their choices have brought them. And if you’re not ready to face yourself, there’s no lesson that can impart that knowledge. A metaphor won’t do. As the_royal_anna says in this brilliant essay about Buffy and Spike:
You cannot generalise the Buffy/Spike relationship. It is a story about a reformed vampire legend with a chip in his head and a newly resurrected Slayer. It is a story about *a* relationship, not a statement about relationships in general. You can't pull abstract ideas out of it, and apply them to any other situation, and judge it on that basis. Even the tidiest analogy in the world will never prove a point, only illustrate it.
And I love that. The characters broke out of whatever ‘story’ was assigned them and just went their own way. So yes, in one sense there was no metaphor. Or rather - no message, and maybe that’s why I love the pairing so much. But - I don’t think that’s the whole story. I’ve been pondering this for a while, and I think that the *are* metaphors - but they’re inherent in the characters. The characters have to face *themselves*, not someone else. Willow f.ex. could have met with the baddest, most magic abusing MOTW *ever*, she still wouldn’t have stopped behaving the way she did. Not until she herself became that monster...
See it all ties in with a theory that I’ve had for a while - in S6 the Scoobies all fall. And they don’t fall because of their weaknesses, but because of their strength. Or rather - their strength *becomes* their weakness. That’s why they fall so badly.
I’m going to go back to the end of S4 for this. In ‘Primeval’ the Scoobies all join forces - each contributing their greatest strength. But in ‘Restless’ the consequences are dire. Each has their strength taken away, and I think this is exactly what we see happening in S6. But literally rather than in a dream. I’ll use the Tarot cards from ‘Primeval’ and do one character at a time, trying to tie in the dreams from ‘Restless’ also.
To begin with, there are some very interesting lines from Giles’ dream that I think matter here:
WILLOW: Something's after us. It's, uh, like some primal ... some animal force.
GILES: That used to be us.
We all have something primal in us, and it’s very, very hard to fight. To very briefly jump over to AtS: It’s Cavemen Vs. Astraunauts. And in S6 - the cavemen won.
TAROT CARD: A picture of an ethereally striking woman, flowing hair, billowing robe… floating inches above the ground. Imprinted on the bottom is the word "Spiritus."
WILLOW
Spiritus… The Spirit…
See I’m not sure exactly what ‘spiritus’ means in the Tarot, but I think I can make some sort of educated guess as to what it means as regards Willow - partly her ‘spiritual side’ (as in magical), partly her ‘spirit’, that she thinks is fine (“I’m very seldom naughty”), but that is actually getting darker without her noticing.
Willow spends almost all of S6 running away from the truth about herself. She gets addicted to dark magic, but fails to see that it’s not the magic that’s the problem - it’s how she was using it. Before the addiction. Look at these quotes:
“What's the matter, Amy? You lonely? Oh, we need to get you a nice companion rat that you can love ... play with ... and grow attached to, until one day they leave you for no good reason.”
Smashed 6.09
“It won't happen again, I promise. No more spells. I'm finished. [...] It's not worth it. Not if it messes with the people I love.”
Wrecked 6.10
Here we have the point I was trying to make above - external lessons are no good. There was the whole ‘Tabula Rasa’ fiasco, and even then Willow could not understand that she’d hurt Tara. In ‘Wrecked’ Willow got hurt herself, and finally understood the danger she was playing with. She came face to face with herself (or at least one side of herself) - Addict!Willow - and tried to change. But of course it wasn’t enough. (I’m going with the straight ‘magic=drugs’ here. And for all we know Rack did have something addictive in his ‘special brand’. Also she was *incredibly* irresponsible with magic before that.)
So Willow spent the whole season trying to ‘get better’, only looking at a couple of nights of recklessness as the main problem. Refusing to take responsibility for her actions the last many years! Fighting a foe that was largely made up. Until Tara was killed. And then... then there was no sign of Addict!Willow anywhere. What emerged was Dark!Willow - and Dark!Willow was much harder to fight. Because all the hardest battles are internal - and since this was BtVS we got to see the battle play out before us. (Like Angel and Angelus in ‘Orpheus’ to some extent.) And Willow lost. Dark!Willow took over completely (“Willow doesn’t live here anymore”), just like we’d seen previously in ‘The Wish’ and ‘Doppelgangland’. But this time it wasn’t a ‘different’ Willow - this time we only had the one. If it hadn’t been for Xander, she would have ended the world. He was somehow able to find ‘Willow’ underneath the darkness and bring her out again.
But that was after she lost: She was ravaged and torn to pieces, just like in ‘Restless’, but she was the one who tore herself apart...
Going back to ‘Restless’:
Willow’s dream is all about who she is. And that there is some dark secret:
TARA: They will find out, you know. About you.
Find out what? It’s mentioned the whole way through:
TARA: Everyone's starting to wonder about you. The real you. If they find out, they'll punish you, I ... I can't help you with that.
Who *is* the real Willow? The sweet little nerdy girl we met so long ago or the immensely powerful witch she grew up to be? Or maybe... maybe that strength was always there? It just found an outlet.
Willow was of course a very good girl back then, but...
Giles: So, all the city plans are just, uh, open to the public?
Willow: Um, well, i-in a way. I sort of stumbled onto them when I
accidentally decrypted the city council's security system.
Xander: Someone's been naughty.
The Harvest (1.02)
It was only ‘an accident’, apparently. And for someone so very honest, she sure did decrypt a lot of stuff over the next few years. And it never registered as something to be worried about:
“I’m very seldom naughty.” (Restless)
Who Willow was, and who she became, is all part of the same thing.
Now in ‘Restless’ Tara symbolised her inner peace:
WILLOW: I never worry here. I'm safe here.
And when that inner peace was shattered and taken away, Willow lost it:
BUFFY: Willow, I know what you want to do, but you have to listen to me. The forces inside you are incredibly powerful. They're strong ... but you're stronger. You have to remember you're still Willow.
WILLOW: (scoffs) Let me tell you something about Willow. She's a loser. And she always has been. People picked on Willow in junior high school, high school, up until college. With her stupid mousy ways. And now? Willow's a junkie.
BUFFY: I can help.
WILLOW: The only thing Willow was ever good for...
She pauses, drops the bitter sarcasm and grows pensive.
WILLOW: ...the only thing I had going for me ... were the moments - just moments - when Tara would look at me and I was wonderful. (grimly) And that will never happen again.
Two To Go (6.21)
Another repeated feature of Willow’s dream is the way everyone keeps commenting that she’s in costume. We saw in the conversation above how scornful Willow was of her past self - literally viewing her as a different person. The thing is, she isn’t. In ‘Restless’ Buffy rips off her ‘new’ clothes and reveals ‘Old Willow’ underneath. This is directly referenced in ‘Two To Go’:
JONATHAN: I still can't believe that was Willow. I mean, I've known her almost as long as you guys. Willow was ... you know. She packed her own lunches and wore floods and was always... just Willow.
JONATHAN: Geez it!
ANDREW: What was that?
Reveal a large truck behind the car, with Willow standing on top of the truck's cab. Her eyes are all-black again. She holds her hands in front of her, elbows extended, palms facing out.
XANDER: Just Willow.
In S7 we saw her slowly try to find out who she actually is. No longer denying any of her less admirable traits and finally understanding what Tara was talking about in ‘Restless’:
WILLOW: Will they always be afraid of me?
GILES: Maybe. Can you handle it?
WILLOW: I deserve a lot worse. I killed people, Giles.
[...]
GILES: Do you want to be punished?
WILLOW: I wanna be Willow.
GILES: You are. In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed.
TAROT CARD: The picture is of a valiant knight in bloodied tunic emblazoned with a heart. At the bottom, it reads, "Animus".
XANDER
Animus… Heart…
Xander was always the heart. The one who saw things. (Not always, because he was also a character on the show and had problems like everyone else.) And yet come S6 he utterly ignored what was right in front of his nose. “I’ll never tell!” he sang in OMWF, and he didn’t. Instead of dealing with his fear marriage, he first hid it completely (until ‘All The Way’), and then tried to ‘fix things’ by summoning Sweet. In ‘Tabula Rasa’ it’s interesting to note that Xander and Anya get split up, and never realise that they were a couple. After that Anya frets, and Xander eats a lot. They both fixate on the practical, but apart from a brief talk in ‘As You Were’ (6.15), they do not discuss their relationship at all. Remember Xander in ‘The Replacement’, getting self confidence from being split in half and knowing exactly what to say to Anya? Or in ‘Into The Woods’ (5.10) when he took the lesson he’d learned from Buffy/Riley and applied it to himself? There’s no sign of that in S6. He took a big step in “the Gift’ when he asked Anya to marry him, but in the end he is unable to take responsibility for that step.
In ‘Hell’s Bells’ he came face to face with himself - and it might just have been a demon, but to Xander it was real:
ANYA: But it wa - it wasn't real. What he showed you, it wasn't real.
XANDER: I know it wasn't real. But it could be.
ANYA: What was it? Was it about me? 'Cause he wanted you to hate me, Xander.
XANDER: It wasn't you. It wasn't you I was hating. I had these thoughts, and ... fears before this.
Xander was brought face to face with himself - with what he could become. And he lost. Then he proceeded to run away from the consequences his decision had. From ‘Entropy’:
ANYA: No, the mature solution is for you to spend your whole life telling stupid, pointless jokes, so that no one will notice that you are just a scared, insecure little boy!
XANDER: I'm not joking now. You let that evil, soulless thing touch you. (pointing at Spike) You wanted me to feel something? Congratulations, it worked.
But what is Anya at this point? From what we’ve seen, Vengeance Demons appear to be ‘evil, soulless things’. Xander destroyed who Anya had become and turned her into the thing he despised the most. (Now that’s a metaphor for you!) And it was all the work of his heart. Which then got torn out...
Xander: Well, there was this one guy-there was this one guy, he, uh, he hurt her real bad, so she paid him back. She killed him, but she did it real slow. See first she stopped his heart, then she replaced it with darkness, then she made him live his life like that. But he still had to go do his job and see his friends and wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, but he had to do it all empty. Without anything to look forward to. Ever.
Never Leave Me (7.10)
He understands a little when Anya later explains that her tryst with Spike was solace, but Xander doesn’t begin to take responsibility until he goes off to stop Willow. This time he stands by his love, and doesn’t move, even in the face of death. It’s the first step to show that he’s taken a new turn. Because that’s the other thing about growing up... it takes time.
Going back to ‘Restless’, Xander’s dream is all about ‘the journey’:
XANDER: You gotta have something. Gotta be with movin' forward.
But - he always ends up back in his parents’ basement. But it’s the fear of what’s at the top of those basement stairs that keeps him trapped. “That’s not the way out.” he says. Oh Xander - but it was. Walking down that aisle would have been the way out. But he was too frightened by what he’d seen himself do, what he could become, and he couldn’t leave:
DAD: You won't come upstairs? What are you ... ashamed of us? Your mother's crying her guts out!
XANDER: You don't understand.
DAD: No. You don't understand. The line ends here with us, and you're not gonna change that. You haven't got the heart.
TAROT CARD: A wizened scholar, surrounded by scrolls, and Old World globe. The word at the bottom: "Sophus."
GILES
Sophus… Mind…
Giles was always the mind - the teacher, the Watcher, the father figure. The adult. The one who took responsibility. So of course he had to leave. It’s something that didn’t work very well in a story sense, because it was so obvious that he was needed - Buffy could barely function, Willow was dabbling in dangerous magic - but from a metaphorical POV it’s absolutely necessary. The children can’t grow up if they don’t live on their own, so the father had to leave. But - it might not have been the right time for them to grow up. Maybe they weren’t ready?
The thing is - Giles had left already. He had been getting himself ready to go for a long time, preparing to have a life of his own, as far back as the end of S4. And we see how distant he is in this exchange after his return:
GILES: Otherwise, there's, uh, nothing really to report. I, um, I keep a flat in Bath. I, I, uh, met with a few old friends. Almost made a new one, which I think is ... statistically impossible for a man of my age.
[...]
I can't lie to you, Buffy. Um ... leaving Sunnydale was, uh, was difficult. And, uh, coming back was...
BUFFY: I'm guessing the word is "inconvenient"?
GILES: No. Bewildering.
Flooded (6.04)
He’s confused - and he makes the choice to leave again, thinking and thinking if this was the right thing. And then - then Giles also comes face to face with himself, but in a different way. He made choices long ago that affected what life he has had, and in ‘Tabula Rasa’ he sees who he might have been - a man grounded in reality, with a family (a son and a young, pretty fiancée) and it must have hurt a great deal to realise that it was all unreal. So he leaves, maybe attempting to somehow become that other Giles he glimpsed. Falling, just like the rest of them, although in a different way. Shirking his responsibilities, and generally acting as though someone had cut his brain out.
Giles’ dream in ‘Restless’ is about making choices. What life does he choose?
- The Watcher’s life of duty?
GILES: This is my business. Blood of the lamb and all that.
- Or a life of his own? Which interestingly is represented by Spike (=Ripper, who Giles used to be. The non-conformist.)
SPIKE: Come on! You're gonna miss everything!
Spike is urging Giles to choose, to think, to hurry:
GILES: What am I supposed to do with all of this?
SPIKE: You gotta make up your mind, Rupes.What are you wasting your time for? Haven't you figured it all out yet, with your enormous squishy frontal lobes?
And he tries, but not with much success.
GILES: Buffy, I've thought this over ... and over. I believe it's the right thing to do.
BUFFY: You're wrong.
Tabula Rasa (6.08)
In ‘Restless’ he leaves Buffy to follow Spike and gets lost, finally finding Willow and Xander:
WILLOW: Do you know this is your fault?
GILES: We have to think of the facts, Willow. I'm very busy. I have a gig myself, you know.
And then finally he meets his fate, his mind unable to vanquish his foe (too busy focussing on that gig?), even as he thinks he’s winning:
GILES: And I can defeat you ... with my intellect.
(We see the First Slayer approaching from behind)
I ... can cripple you with my thoughts.
(It grabs his hair, puts a weapon against his forehead)
Of course, you underestimate me. You couldn't know.
(Closeup of Giles' face with blood dripping down from his forehead. We hear
his voice but his lips don't move.)
GILES: You never had a Watcher.
But in S6 it’s Buffy who will be Watcher-less, and it is she who in time will go on to show that it is the Watchers who underestimated the Slayers. But that is still to come. As for Giles in S6, then of course he *does* return in the end - when one of the ‘children’ has gone off the rails, not to punish, but to help. Because - as Willow told him in ‘Restless’ - it was his fault. So he came back to help set things straight - stopped being the man of leisure and stepped back into his Watcher role, that would soon be all there was left to him.
WILLOW: Well, you should get going. Don't you have a life or something?
GILES: Um, well, I suppose that's the question really.
Bargaining I
TAROT CARD: It's a picture of two hands intersecting each other - one open and outstretched, the other clenched into a tight fist. It reads "Manus."
BUFFY
Manus. The Hand
I love the images of the hands on the card. One open, one closed. Because it ties on so well with how Buffy is presented metaphorically on the show in the later seasons: In two halves. Both part of her, both important - and needing to be balanced.
Dawn - her light side, her humanity.
Buffy: “She's more than that. She's me. The monks made her out of me. I hold her ... and I feel closer to her than ... It's not just the memories they built. It's physical. Dawn ... is a part of me. The only part that I-”
The Gift (5.22)
Spike - her dark side, her demon.
Buffy: “That's okay. I can be alone with you here.”
Afterlife (6.03)
We see this already in S5 of course, and in S5 Buffy is in control of both. She’s caring for Dawn and (although mostly indirectly) teaching Spike how to grow. By season’s end Spike is ready to die for Dawn and in the summer that follows he watches over her carefully. Buffy’s darkness and light working together in harmony.
But it doesn’t end there - that is just the beginning. Because the Scoobies bring Buffy back to life and everything changes. Going back to what I said at the beginning - growing up is about responsibility. “But!” I can hear you say - “Buffy is *very* responsible! She’s the epitome of responsibility!” Which is true in a general sense - she does her Slayer duties, she works and pays the bills, makes sure Dawn is fed, and even that Willow is OK. But these are all external things. The one thing Buffy doesn’t take care of in S6 is - herself! And we see the effects of this directly in the behaviour of Dawn and Spike. People complain that Dawn is too childlike in S6. Now this almost only makes sense when viewed metaphorically. Buffy quite simply does not let herself mature - she clings to her childish outlook on life. And she very carefully separates Spike from Dawn - she does not want him to taint that part of her. The darkness should be beaten down and hidden, because it is ‘wrong’.
Also note that both the dark and the light side of her is immature, but in different ways. Her human side is childish, needing protection and care. Her demon side is unable to understand the difference between right and wrong, and needs guidance.
But let me try to do this episode by episode, because we can see how it is these two who continually influence Buffy’s behaviour - the two impulses in her life that fight over her, so she gets pulled this way and that.
At first though, things are OK. In ‘Bargaining’ Dawn is the one that stops Buffy from killing herself again. Then in ‘Afterlife’ she and Spike both care for Buffy, and although she is hurt and confused, she seems comfortable with them - the Scoobies are an intrusion. Later she offloads her secret on Spike - because she knows the darkness is strong and can carry it. At the very end of the ep. she brings Dawn her lunch and it would seem that balance is restored.
But Buffy is far more damaged than that. In ‘Flooded’ she repeatedly makes Dawn nervous by not caring what her sister does. And when Spike jokes about killing her friends, she smiles. She is unable to be a proper guide to either side anymore.
Dawn is barely seen in ‘Life Serial’. Buffy neglects her human side to follow her demon side to ‘try out’ the darkness. This is a stark contrast to what has gone before when her darkness would try to see how well he could cope in the light. And in the very next ep., ‘All The Way’, we see her human side follow into the darkness, with near disastrous results. Buffy and her dark side work together again, saving the light, but it’s a close call. She shouldn’t have been there at all...
Then comes OMWF. “I can’t even see, if this is really me...” Buffy sings, showing just how lost she is. And we see how strong the darkness has become when Spike sings his song to Buffy, luring her his way under the influence of the spell - and Dawn’s lament is cut short. When she sings to Sweet it is to empathise how young she is, how she needs protecting. And Buffy comes to her rescue - but when Buffy nearly dies, it is only her dark side who has the strength to stop her. Her light tries to remind her of her connection to life, but in the end Buffy follows the dark. And falls properly for the first time.
‘Tabula Rasa’ is interesting - under the spell Buffy manages to connect to her light and dark instinctively, and easily provides a guide for both. Her light feels loved and her darkness noble.
And then it all falls to pieces. In the end, Buffy yet again turns to the dark, seeking oblivion.
‘Smashed’ is one of the major turning points. The dark has been getting stronger, and Buffy gets worried. She tries to beat it down in the crude fashion she did before, because she is not capable of guiding anymore. But - the darkness can suddenly fight back! She cannot control it anymore, because she’s not the same. And she falls... leaving her light alone at home.
In ‘Wrecked’ she tries to get back on top. Tries to get back the control she lost. It only works when her human side gets hurt - her demon jumps in like he always does, to help because Dawn is part of her. But it’s a temporary respite only.
As ‘Gone’ shows, her light won’t easily forgive the neglect, although Buffy tries her best to stay away from the dark. Until the dark comes to her - and proves just how much power it’s beginning to have over her. But... when she turns invisible - neither dark nor light will let her get away with disappearing. They both depend on her:
SPIKE: The only reason you're here, is that you're not here. [...] You need to go. [...] Cause if I can't have all of you, I'd rather-
DAWN: I can't talk to you like this. I can't see you! How can I talk to you if I can't see you?
‘Double Meat Palace’ - Dawn tries to support Buffy, Spike tries to make her quit - but even when he comes up with something true: “You’re better than this!” she does not listen. She also rejects his offer of money, but is unable to say no to him in another way... the darkness is beginning to truly seep in.
‘Dead Things’... and we begin to see the consequences of Buffy’s fall. We see how comfortable she has become with the darkness, and although now and again jolted into awareness of what she’s doing, she’s unable to stop Spike for long. Dawn feels lost and alone and tries to find comfort with her friends - she does not count on Buffy being there anymore. And then comes Katrina’s death. And because Buffy has split up her darkness and light, they cannot argue in her favour as they should. For a moment imagine if Dawn and Spike together had been able to talk to Buffy that night. One rational, one emotional, each supporting the other to help Buffy make the right decision. The outcome would have been very different I think. But - they couldn’t. And so both confrontations ended with anger and hopelessness. Buffy was terrified at what she had done - what she had let Spike do for her - and what Dawn was thinking of it all.
In ‘Older And Far Away’ we see that Buffy’s human side has been suppressed so far that it’s fighting back. Forcing Buffy to confront it and reconnect on some level.
‘As You Were’ probably only works on a metaphorical level, since it sucks on any other (*g*). In Riley and Sam we get the perfect image of what Buffy wants but can’t get from Spike. And then she finds out that he has been doing things he shouldn’t - hiding demon eggs is something he knows she would not approve of, but she has given him such free reign that he has done it anyway. At the end of the ep. she tells her dark side that it is finished. She went too far, and has to step back. The problem is - Spike does not understand why.
At first though it seems like things are back on track. ‘Hell’s Bells’ is good from a Buffy POV - Spike behaves very nicely, as does Dawn. And Buffy learns that you shouldn’t pin your dreams on someone else.
But the thing is - things aren’t OK for Buffy. Not at all. Because now we get to ‘Normal Again’.
This episode is pivotal - crucial - to Buffy’s development in S6. People focus on the Alt!Buffy and ask if maybe this is ‘The Real Buffy’ and the show is just all the lunatic imaginations of a sick girl. This misses the point. As does the talk about the ret-con. My take is, that this is the Buffy we never see - the Buffy underneath everything else. Remember ‘Afterlife’ and what Buffy said?
“Everything here is ... hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch ... this is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that ... (softly) knowing what I've lost...”
I think the Buffy we see in the asylum is that Buffy. Everything is hard and bright and violent to her. The world makes no sense. As she sings in OMWF:
“I can’t even see, if this is really me...”
And it goes further back than this even. Remember ‘The Gift’?
“I don't understand. I don't know how to live in this world, if these are the choices, if everything's just stripped away then I don't see the point. I just wish... I wish my mom was here.”
This is the girl who finds it so hard to look after her sister, the girl who turns to Spike, because pain is at least something she understands. Try to watch Alt!Buffy and compare her to the Buffy who’s just crawled out of her grave. There’s the same lost, scared expression on her face, the same inability to deal with the world. This is what I meant when I said that Buffy didn’t take responsibility for herself - she’s been stuck in that same place all season, scared and unable to cope. And Spike is right to some extent:
SPIKE: You're addicted to the misery. It's why you won't tell your pals about us. Might actually have to be happy if you did. They'd either understand and help you, god forbid ... or drive you out ... where you can finally be at peace, in the dark. With me. Either way, you'd be better off for it, but you're too twisted for that. Let yourself live, already. And stop with the bloody hero trip for a sec. We'd all be the better for it.
She *is* addicted to the misery. Or rather, she’s been stuck with it, not knowing how to get out. And we’ve seen this before, if slightly differently, in ‘Weight of the World’ (5.21) - Buffy going in circles in her own head, unable to leave.
In S6 she has wanted (needed) *someone* to make it better. But Giles left, and Spike was unable to do what she hoped, and there was no one who could fix everything for her. So she’s been stuck in the same spot - until this episode, when she finally makes a choice. But notice - first she makes the wrong choice. Like in WOTW when she kept smothering her sister - only this time reversed: Attacking her friends, even Dawn, in real life. Tries to *eradicate* everything that is hard to deal with, rather than just ignore it as she has done all season. She doesn’t lose completely, but it’s a battle, just like she battled The First Slayer in ‘Restless’ - and eventually won. But this time it’s much harder - it’s not a dream anymore. And she’s battling for her very self. The self where she has tried to hold onto the things she lost (literally and metaphorically) when she grew up - her parents. But when everything looks darkest, we get this beautiful speech from Joyce (“I just wish my mom was here...”):
JOYCE: Buffy? Buffy! Buffy, fight it. You're too good to give in, you can beat this thing. Be strong, baby, ok? I know you're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you've got people who love you. Your dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We'll always be with you. You've got ... a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself.
And she does. She finally takes a step forward and leaves the old her behind, choosing to live. She takes responsibility for herself again. Takes control. And leaves Alt!Buffy, who’s now nothing more than an empty shell.
Then comes ‘Entropy’ - and we can see Buffy finally beginning to deal with things properly. Trying to get back to where she was in S5. She finally seems to be on top of the Spike situation:
BUFFY: You wanna tell them so badly? Go ahead.
[...]
SPIKE: In that case, why won't you sleep with me again?
BUFFY: (quietly as she walks away) Because I don't love you.
There’s also bonding with Dawn, while still firmly keeping her in the ‘child’ box.
Later at Spike’s crypt, she tries to acknowledge and then set anew the parameters of their relationship, but with mixed success:
Spike: (quietly) I don't hurt you.
Buffy: I know.
[...]
Spike: Something happened to me. The way I feel ... about you ... it's different. And no matter how hard you try to convince yourself it isn't, it's real.
Buffy: I think it is.
Beat. He looks at her.
Buffy: For you.
The problem is - things have progressed a lot since S5. And Spike can’t go back to being who he was before, can’t undo what has happened. So he ends up seeking a spell, and then the solace of Anya. And then the two sides of Buffy collide - Dawn sees the tryst at the Magic Box, and Buffy’s reaction, and Buffy finally has to explain:
DAWN: So. This is it? This is the stuff you've been protecting me from? You and Spike?
BUFFY: And a lot of monsters.
Dawn is very understanding here - a lot more so than Buffy was expecting I think.
But then in the next episode (Seeing Red) we see the consequences of everything pile up. First Dawn visits Spike - their first interaction for quite a while. And here we see what happens when the light and the dark get together:
DAWN: I don't know what happened between you two. But what you did last night... If you wanted to really hurt Buffy - congratulations. It worked.
And that hits home. Spike has been feeling sorry for himself until now, and then suddenly someone shows that he did wrong - which makes him decide to try yo make it better, with disastrous consequences.
Because the dark got very strong while Buffy was letting it set the pace, and it thinks it can do it still - can re-claim that lost territory, make her understand that it’s OK. And then... then it all goes to hell.
The darkness finally sees the truth, grasps momentarily what it could never fathom before, understands all those lessons Buffy tried to impart, understands far too much... and decides that it has to change. Which again ties into what I’ve been saying about this season - everyone falls, and learns something about themselves. Something that could only be learned, not taught.
The last few episodes are all one long story - and in it we see Spike go through the challenges that are required of him, and Dawn continually trying to *do* something. She’s more pro-active than she’s been most of the season, getting in danger and having to deal with a lot in one go - Willow almost turns her back into a ball of energy, Xander lets slip about the AR. And yet when Dawn and Buffy are stuck in the ground, she readily picks up a sword to help.
And this is when Buffy has an epiphany of sorts: she can’t keep her human side childish. She needs to let it grow up. Needs to let that part of her mature and help it do so:
BUFFY: But it's gonna be [OK], though. I see it.
DAWN: See what?
BUFFY: You.
[...]
BUFFY: Things have really sucked lately, but it's all gonna change. And I wanna be there when it does. I want to see my friends happy again. And I want to see you grow up. The woman you're gonna become. Because she's gonna be beautiful. And she's going to be powerful. [...] I got it so wrong. I don't want to protect you from the world. I want to show it to you. [..] There's so much that I want to show you.
It’s the final piece of the puzzle - the last step towards taking full responsibility for herself.
And ‘at the same time’, her dark side regains his soul. Learns how to distinguish right from wrong, gets ready to grow and learn by himself, needing no one to ‘be responsible for him’.
Of course Buffy will need all the help she can get in the next year...
I’ll only touch very briefly upon Buffy’s dream in ‘Restless’, because it is just so much denser than the others. The others all have *one* unifying theme - Buffy has many. Who is she? *What* is she? Where is she going? What's going to happen in the future?
"You think you know. Who you are. What's to come. You haven't even begun."
Buffy's dream includes so much of what's going to happen in the last three seasons, and it’s so tighly woven together, that it’s hard to bring out anything specific. But a few points:
- Buffy has lost her friends.
- Buffy is called ‘killer’ and a demon.
- Spike never appears.
- Buffy finally defeats The First Slayer.
A lot of these things come into play in S6. Buffy is isolated, and lonely. She thinks she ‘came back wrong’:
ADAM: She's uncomfortable with certain concepts. It's understandable. Aggression is a natural human tendency. Though you and me come by it another way.
BUFFY: We're not demons.
ADAM: Is that a fact?
In S6 Buffy gives in to her ‘inner demon’, listens to that voice that says that violence is all she is...
The First Slayer: I have no speech. No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction. Absolute ... alone. No ... friends! Just the kill. We ... are ... alone!
These words are echoed by Spike in ‘Dead Things’:
SPIKE: You see ... you try to be with them... but you always end up in the dark ... with me. What would they think of you ... if they found out ... all the things you've done? If they knew ... who you really were?
But in the end, Buffy rejects that darkness:
BUFFY: You're *not* the source of me.
That doesn’t mean that the darkness isn’t a part of her. But it’s Buffy who needs to be in charge. Not the other way round. And that - in a nut shell - is Buffy’s story in S6.
Dawn: If you hurt my sister at all... touch her... you're gonna wake up on fire.
Spike: The spark. I wanted to give you what you deserve, and I got it. They put the spark in me and now all it does is burn.
~~~~~~~
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.”
Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 13:12
The End