Restless Review: Giles' Dream
Characters:
Giles Buffy Spike Willow Xander Anya
Giles:
"I'm sorry I'm so late. There's a great deal going on, all at once."
We open Giles' dream with him as a Watcher. He has Buffy, his pupil, before him, and he's indoctrinating her.
Giles: This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning, before time.
This was Giles at the very beginning of the series. Traditional, by the book, rigid with the rules. However, as we see with Buffy in this scene, she just laughs at him.
Buffy: Don't you think it's a little old-fashioned?
Buffy is the force in his life that changes his entire world. When we next see Giles in his dream, he's no longer a Watcher. Instead, he's a father, taking Buffy, his daughter, to the fair. Giles' paternal feelings toward Buffy have taken over because of Buffy's influence.
Giles also has a pregnant Olivia with him, pushing a stroller. This is as close to a family as Giles will get.
He's taking Buffy out to train, but it's not like he did in the early seasons. Here, he's much more like a father, trying to rein in an impatient, pigtailed Buffy.
Giles is obviously worried about how his close relationship with Buffy is affecting her training. He thinks he's losing sight of his original calling, and of Buffy's Slaying. After all, he dreams that they're at a fair, a pretty non-threatening environment.
We see this in the next moment when Buffy turns to him with the mud mask on her face. In that moment, Giles is reminded of who this girl really is.
Giles: I know you...
She's the Slayer. But he loves her like a daughter so he forgets that sometimes.
Then we get the disorienting (for Giles) scene in Spike's crypt. Spike's getting photographed by a group of tourists while Olivia is crying over the strolling to the side. Giles is, literally, at a loss as to what to do. He even asks Spike what he's supposed to be doing.
This season has seen Giles struggling to find his place now that he doesn't have a job as a librarian. Buffy appears to be needing him less and less. He's even turned to singing in a coffee shop. His dream is all about his confusion in that regard.
Once Giles leaves Spike's crypt, we start getting into the actual plot of the episode. It's natural that this should happen during Giles' dream.
Both Willow and Xander appear in Giles' dream. However, they're at least partially appearing as their "real" selves as they both carry their wounds from the First Slayer. This is the first dream where we get an awareness of what's going on.
Willow and Xander are researching on Giles' couch in the Bronze while waiting for Anya to do her stand-up.
There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this scene.
With the loss of his job as a librarian, Giles has also lost a lot of his authority over the Scoobies. Instead of being a teacher (school staff member), he's just an older friend. This season has seen him trying to join the Scoobies at the Bronze (It was awkward). It's also seen them become more familiar with him, spending more time at his apartment (as opposed to in the school library). There's no way around it. Giles' social life revolves around a bunch of kids.
It's no wonder he dreams that his couch is in the Bronze. He probably feels as if his life has been opened up and exposed to the Scoobies. He's expressed annoyance at their tendency to enter his apartment without knocking or calling ahead.
In this scene, Willow even calls him "Rupert". While none of the Scoobies have done this outside of a dream, it shows Giles' concern that the Scoobies have lost the respect that they once had for him.
It's also notable that Giles shows up late. He has to apologize to Willow and Xander, explaining that there's a great deal going on. His conflict over where he wants his life to go is interfering with the Slaying in his dream.
In fact, Willow blames him for what's happened to her and Xander.
Willow: Do you know this is your fault?
And Giles just replies that he's very busy. Willow's the one trying to stay on-topic and fix the problem while Giles is making excuses.
It's only when Willow mentions that the thing trying to kill them is a primal, animal force that Giles actually lends something of a hand.
Giles: That used to be us.
Yes, it did. The spell they did in Primeval is what prompted this to happen, after all.
Giles then has to be prodded by Willow, again, before he finally has an idea.
Instead of just saying it, though, he sings it. Thank you, Joss Whedon.
As he's singing The Exposition Song, the mic goes dead. It's ironic that the First Slayer would sabotage him as he's singing and lead him to the pocketwatch. It's only with a crisis that Giles finds his path again.
The tangled wires lead Giles back to the "obvious" conclusion that he's a Watcher. Not a rock star or a father or an adolescent kid.
However, by the time Giles takes back the mantle of "Watcher", it's too late. Note what he says:
Giles: I know who you are. And I can defeat you. With my intellect. I can cripple you with my thoughts.
Giles very well could do that in his dream. However, he spent his entire dream bouncing from possibility to possibility and ignoring the issue at hand, that he missed his opportunity to take any action against the First Slayer. This leaves it all up to Buffy.
Buffy:
Buffy is shown to be a fairly life-changing person for Giles. She is the impetus for his straying from the strict life of a Watcher, enticing him to explore other options. And she's also loved like a daughter, which causes a great deal of conflict for Giles. We'll see this conflict throughout the rest of the series as Giles is torn between his devotion to Buffy as a paternal figure and his duty as a Watcher.
We also catch our first glimpse of primal!Buffy. For a brief moment, she wears a mud mask similar to what we see the First Slayer wearing. That's the primal side of the Slayer, and it's what all the Scoobies shared for a short while during the enjoining spell in the previous episode.
And this is a side that will be explored more through the rest of the series (And in Buffy's dream).
Spike:
As I've mentioned in previous reviews, Spike and Giles have a lot of similarities this season.
It's appropriate, then, that Spike should find his "place" in Giles' dream. While Giles is still wandering around, trying to figure out what to do, Spike has hired himself out as an attraction (At least it's showbiz). It's also appropriate that Spike taunt Giles about not making up his mind.
Willow:
With Giles out of commission as a Watcher, Willow's the natural one to take charge. During the scene in the Bronze, Willow tries to keep Giles on track and figuring out what's going on.
Xander:
Xander is also present, though he's there primarily to support Anya on her "big night".
Anya:
Anya's "big night" is actually interesting. She's doing a comedy routine. Stand-up comedy can be very difficult for a literal person and it's a very "human" activity. One might say that this is Anya's human debut with her attempting to tell a joke.
She's not very good at it. She obviously doesn't see the humor in the joke, herself, and her delivery is, well, bad. However, at the end, everybody still laughs at her.