![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsBuffy the Vampire Slayer: 2x22 – Becoming 2
And so at last (well, I’ve only been working on this season for…about three weeks…damn that was a race) we come to what my memory classifies as one of the high point of the series, if not the best on its own. Does it hold up…mostly.
My issues with Whistler continue (and hey he was in one more episode at least). He’s filling in for Giles through a lot of this episode, basically literally since he’s doing it in Giles’ apartment. He’s just there to give exposition that could have been handled by other people in this story (either Giles or Kendra in part 1; hell, Spike could do it in part 2); the main difference I think it makes on the story is that Whistler kind of loves Angel but Giles kind of loves Buffy so they look at it slightly differently.
Falling under the same umbrella as ‘a plot point introduced to solve a plot problem with no intention of doing anything deeper with it,’ is how Willow was able to cast the spell. I remember that there were all kind of theories about what was up with that, but I’m pretty sure it was just something Joss thought would be cool and hadn’t thought beyond it. Fanfic writers and theory crafters would come up with dozens of things to do with it as a plot point or tie it into Willow’s struggles with magic down the line, but I don’t think it’s ever expanded on in the story. Kind of my favorite theory is that Jenny’s ghost was there and gave Willow the power to cast the spell, but I’m not sure it holds a lot of water.
Do any two people pronounce Acathla the same way? That’s a weird thing to nag at me.
So where do we start with the rest of it? Spike, Joyce, the Scoobies, the Lie (tm), Giles, the ending?
Let’s try the Lie (tm), everybody has to talk about the Lie in this episode. Here’s the awkward place I’m in; thing is that I agree with what Xander did, but I don’t know if I think he did it for the right reasons. And I’m finding an odd take on his wrong reasons. Buffy had said in this same episode that knowing they couldn’t bring Angel back made it easier for her to go up against Angelus. To me, that’s enough reason to not tell her; when a moment’s hesitation could mean the difference at the end of the world, giving her a reason to hesitate is not the right move.
However, it largely comes across as if Xander hadn’t made the decision so rationally. He starts to tell her and then quickly pivots to not telling her the truth. I don’t actually think it’s because of his feelings for Buffy; I think it may be the moment he lets them go without realizing it. Because he doesn’t trust her in that moment. He doesn’t trust that she will put the world over Angel, even the possibility of Angel. He doesn’t think she cares about everything Angelus has done, or the fact that he’s trying to end the world. He doesn’t trust Buffy to be the hero he’s always seen her as.
And that is why I can partially agree that the Lie looks bad on him. Because he did it out of fear and distrust, not because it was the wrong choice. I think Willow was probably the only one who thought telling Buffy was the right choice and Will was suffering from a head wound. It was already a last minute thing being able to turn Angel back; in fact, it was *after* the last minute by several minutes. As soon as he pulled the sword out it was either the end of the world or the end of Angel, and Buffy knowing wouldn’t have changed that.
I suppose when they were outside they didn’t know how close Angel was to completing the ritual; but by the same token, they didn’t know it wasn’t already too late and stopping to discuss it would be burning time they didn’t have. Xander also didn’t know if Willow could pull off the spell (and by the look of it, I’m not sure she could have without something extra going on), and definitely didn’t know if she could pull it off in time; so again, giving Buffy any reason to think ‘if I just give Willow a couple more minutes maybe she can do it,’ is not good for the fate of the world.
For the record and comparison, I think Giles would have functionally made much the same call as Xander, but I think his heart would be in a different place. Because the compassionate reason for the same choice is still that they don’t have time; that Buffy has to kill Angelus, and she doesn’t need to know how close they may have been to restoring Angel (especially when, again, they actually weren’t ready on time). I just don’t think Xander in the moment made the call for the compassionate reason either.
Moving on from the Lie, I will say that the end of this episode is still really powerful. I don’t even ship Buffy/Angel, or particularly like Angel as a character to this point, but I still got teared up at the kiss goodbye scene. Angel is so out of it, that it seems unfair even to me that he gets killed like that for Angelus’ actions; and Buffy didn’t deserve that kind of pain. That’s part of the tragedy of everything around the spell, it would probably have been better if Willow hadn’t actually done it.
It seems I remember enough of the later seasons to be really bothered by the ‘I hate you.’ / ‘And I’m all you’ve got.’ exchange. Because as I remember it, that’s kind of Spike and Buffy in a nutshell, and it’s a major reason why I never shipped it. Buffy does hate him, she hates him when she’s sleeping with him, and Spike makes it so that (she believes) he’s all she’s got. He doesn’t care about her, he doesn’t care about her world, he doesn’t even care about *the* world. For all his speech makes a lot of sense, in the end, he doesn’t do it to stop the end of the world. He knows he can use it to motivate Buffy to take the deal (throw in Giles and she’s hooked), but at the end, he walks. For all he knows, Acathla is about to swallow the world, and he doesn’t care.
Not wanting to end the world, and wanting to save it are not the same thing.
If I had to guess, this is probably Spike’s best episode of the series. I love the speech, I love how he interacts with Joyce, I can even get behind the temporary alliance. He’s an interesting person when the situation is whether the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but there’s already nothing redeemable about him, and he’s going to do a lot worse in the seasons to come.
I’m actually surprised how much I don’t care about Spike in this season, so that all that’s left is my hatred of him in later seasons. In my memory he was at least good in this one. Also, is it just me or does his accent wander all over the world?
A related benefit of the rewatch was to remind me how much I love Dru. I mean, she’s an evil bitch, but I could watch her work for ages. Although she is molesting Giles for a really long time and I don’t know why she gets so into it. Still, easily the best part of the Fang Gang.
The Scooby Gang however, is setting up the love quadrangle. It always kind of was, given Willow’s feelings for Xander, but this does shift the dynamic. Willow was on her way to getting past her feelings for Xander and focusing on being with Oz; but Xander is all over the place with what he wants here. He and Cordy are actually in a really good place most of this story, but he has confusing feelings for Willow now. And as she was not actually over her feelings for him, just broadening her view of options, giving Xander confusing feelings can only set the tinder alight.
Joyce makes pretty much the worst mistake she will ever make in this episode. And while I remember that we will get resolution to it next season; I can’t remember if it’s real resolution or typical TV ‘resolution’ where they just get over it and get back to regular types of stories.
I don’t particularly like that she ever thinks Buffy is guilty of what people are accusing her of, but I also can’t quite blame her. It’s not that she jumped straight to thinking Buffy definitely was guilty, she just didn’t immediately right it odd either. And this is where subtextually the Ted incident comes back to haunt Buffy (is one of the cops from Ted? That would have been a good idea but I didn’t commit cop faces to memory). Because Joyce has been repressing a lot of suspicions about what Buffy gets up to, willfully not seeing a lot of signs that Buffy is into something darker than normal teenage hijinks. And this hits her in a place where the denial has already been weakened.
And Joyce has no idea how to be accepting of Buffy being a vampire Slayer. As much as the writing is playing on coming out type lines, it’s not that much of the same thing (and I say this as someone who kind of thinks Buffy isn’t completely straight). Vampires are real; the world can end at any time; and your daughter is the one person who’s supposed to do something about it. Joyce does just about everything wrong, and she ought to blame herself for Buffy running away; but I get where she’s coming from.
And besides that, in spite of the Scoobies optimism at the end, Buffy is still wanted for murder at the moment. She might not know what to do with that. And that’s just the part they know. With the possible exception of Giles (since he’s faculty) they don’t know Buffy was expelled. They don’t know what went down between Buffy and Joyce. They definitely don’t know what went down between Buffy and Angel. I don’t know if any of them realize how much their various injuries are things she feels guilty for (I suspect on some level they do -maybe not Cordelia- but I’m not sure how aware they are of it), not to mention still reeling from Kendra’s death even if she wasn’t wanted for the murder. I suspect within a couple days they’re going to find out more of what happened (if not between Buffy and Angel) they’re going to lose a lot of the current optimism.
Also I kind of want to read/write Joyce looking for information. I’m sure there are a dozen versions of it, but as it is definitely going to include Giles, I kind of need a version that handles Giles the way I see his character. Not necessarily in love with Buffy, I’m still putting that at the acorns stage, but with a Watcher/Slayer twin souls angle. That treats their relationship as complicated rather than revert to parent and child ideas as a way to classify it.
Look, when I said I needed to talk about Giles, do you think that means going into detail about how cruel what they do to him is (Joss, Angel, and Dru); or do I mean all the Buffy/Giles acorns Buffy is putting out there?
As far as how cruel it is; it just plainly is, I don’t need to go into it. What we see is a little…mild in terms of torture, and it’s unclear if a lot more is being implied beyond what we see. Considering Giles is up and around the next day, but I also kind of remember he's the only one to have serious Angel PTSD next season, so I can go either way. But I’ve already rediscovered a lot of fic that says a lot more was going down, and there’s a lot of good drama to be milked by taking that side.
I do kind of wonder what Buffy’s plan was for getting Giles out of there if Xander hadn’t shown up. But that could also be an interesting AU, where she maybe gets Giles untied but has to focus on fighting Angel, and then Giles is there to see how it ends. So many plot bunnies that I didn’t really need right now; hence putting them out there as free to a good home. If I don’t like the result I’ll just have to answer by filling my own desires.
A part of me really want to get into the B/G acorns. But another part says that you either see them or you don’t, and I’ve already babbled about this episode a lot. Let’s just say there are a lot of my brand of acorns being flung around in the talks between Buffy and Spike; from Buffy only starting to listen to Spike after he brings up Giles, to Buffy kind of implying that Giles means to her what Dru means to Spike. For the fact that Buffy and Giles don’t interact a bit in this episode, there is a lot to work with.
What am I shipping?
I want Spike and Dru to run away and never come back. I don’t know whether to say that’s because I want those crazy evil kids to work it out or I just really don’t want to see Spike again, but it’s a little of column a and little of column b.
Bring on the love quad; I like Xander/Cordy here; Willow/Oz is still pretty adorable; and Willow/Xander just does it for me.
And so at last (well, I’ve only been working on this season for…about three weeks…damn that was a race) we come to what my memory classifies as one of the high point of the series, if not the best on its own. Does it hold up…mostly.
My issues with Whistler continue (and hey he was in one more episode at least). He’s filling in for Giles through a lot of this episode, basically literally since he’s doing it in Giles’ apartment. He’s just there to give exposition that could have been handled by other people in this story (either Giles or Kendra in part 1; hell, Spike could do it in part 2); the main difference I think it makes on the story is that Whistler kind of loves Angel but Giles kind of loves Buffy so they look at it slightly differently.
Falling under the same umbrella as ‘a plot point introduced to solve a plot problem with no intention of doing anything deeper with it,’ is how Willow was able to cast the spell. I remember that there were all kind of theories about what was up with that, but I’m pretty sure it was just something Joss thought would be cool and hadn’t thought beyond it. Fanfic writers and theory crafters would come up with dozens of things to do with it as a plot point or tie it into Willow’s struggles with magic down the line, but I don’t think it’s ever expanded on in the story. Kind of my favorite theory is that Jenny’s ghost was there and gave Willow the power to cast the spell, but I’m not sure it holds a lot of water.
Do any two people pronounce Acathla the same way? That’s a weird thing to nag at me.
So where do we start with the rest of it? Spike, Joyce, the Scoobies, the Lie (tm), Giles, the ending?
Let’s try the Lie (tm), everybody has to talk about the Lie in this episode. Here’s the awkward place I’m in; thing is that I agree with what Xander did, but I don’t know if I think he did it for the right reasons. And I’m finding an odd take on his wrong reasons. Buffy had said in this same episode that knowing they couldn’t bring Angel back made it easier for her to go up against Angelus. To me, that’s enough reason to not tell her; when a moment’s hesitation could mean the difference at the end of the world, giving her a reason to hesitate is not the right move.
However, it largely comes across as if Xander hadn’t made the decision so rationally. He starts to tell her and then quickly pivots to not telling her the truth. I don’t actually think it’s because of his feelings for Buffy; I think it may be the moment he lets them go without realizing it. Because he doesn’t trust her in that moment. He doesn’t trust that she will put the world over Angel, even the possibility of Angel. He doesn’t think she cares about everything Angelus has done, or the fact that he’s trying to end the world. He doesn’t trust Buffy to be the hero he’s always seen her as.
And that is why I can partially agree that the Lie looks bad on him. Because he did it out of fear and distrust, not because it was the wrong choice. I think Willow was probably the only one who thought telling Buffy was the right choice and Will was suffering from a head wound. It was already a last minute thing being able to turn Angel back; in fact, it was *after* the last minute by several minutes. As soon as he pulled the sword out it was either the end of the world or the end of Angel, and Buffy knowing wouldn’t have changed that.
I suppose when they were outside they didn’t know how close Angel was to completing the ritual; but by the same token, they didn’t know it wasn’t already too late and stopping to discuss it would be burning time they didn’t have. Xander also didn’t know if Willow could pull off the spell (and by the look of it, I’m not sure she could have without something extra going on), and definitely didn’t know if she could pull it off in time; so again, giving Buffy any reason to think ‘if I just give Willow a couple more minutes maybe she can do it,’ is not good for the fate of the world.
For the record and comparison, I think Giles would have functionally made much the same call as Xander, but I think his heart would be in a different place. Because the compassionate reason for the same choice is still that they don’t have time; that Buffy has to kill Angelus, and she doesn’t need to know how close they may have been to restoring Angel (especially when, again, they actually weren’t ready on time). I just don’t think Xander in the moment made the call for the compassionate reason either.
Moving on from the Lie, I will say that the end of this episode is still really powerful. I don’t even ship Buffy/Angel, or particularly like Angel as a character to this point, but I still got teared up at the kiss goodbye scene. Angel is so out of it, that it seems unfair even to me that he gets killed like that for Angelus’ actions; and Buffy didn’t deserve that kind of pain. That’s part of the tragedy of everything around the spell, it would probably have been better if Willow hadn’t actually done it.
It seems I remember enough of the later seasons to be really bothered by the ‘I hate you.’ / ‘And I’m all you’ve got.’ exchange. Because as I remember it, that’s kind of Spike and Buffy in a nutshell, and it’s a major reason why I never shipped it. Buffy does hate him, she hates him when she’s sleeping with him, and Spike makes it so that (she believes) he’s all she’s got. He doesn’t care about her, he doesn’t care about her world, he doesn’t even care about *the* world. For all his speech makes a lot of sense, in the end, he doesn’t do it to stop the end of the world. He knows he can use it to motivate Buffy to take the deal (throw in Giles and she’s hooked), but at the end, he walks. For all he knows, Acathla is about to swallow the world, and he doesn’t care.
Not wanting to end the world, and wanting to save it are not the same thing.
If I had to guess, this is probably Spike’s best episode of the series. I love the speech, I love how he interacts with Joyce, I can even get behind the temporary alliance. He’s an interesting person when the situation is whether the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but there’s already nothing redeemable about him, and he’s going to do a lot worse in the seasons to come.
I’m actually surprised how much I don’t care about Spike in this season, so that all that’s left is my hatred of him in later seasons. In my memory he was at least good in this one. Also, is it just me or does his accent wander all over the world?
A related benefit of the rewatch was to remind me how much I love Dru. I mean, she’s an evil bitch, but I could watch her work for ages. Although she is molesting Giles for a really long time and I don’t know why she gets so into it. Still, easily the best part of the Fang Gang.
The Scooby Gang however, is setting up the love quadrangle. It always kind of was, given Willow’s feelings for Xander, but this does shift the dynamic. Willow was on her way to getting past her feelings for Xander and focusing on being with Oz; but Xander is all over the place with what he wants here. He and Cordy are actually in a really good place most of this story, but he has confusing feelings for Willow now. And as she was not actually over her feelings for him, just broadening her view of options, giving Xander confusing feelings can only set the tinder alight.
Joyce makes pretty much the worst mistake she will ever make in this episode. And while I remember that we will get resolution to it next season; I can’t remember if it’s real resolution or typical TV ‘resolution’ where they just get over it and get back to regular types of stories.
I don’t particularly like that she ever thinks Buffy is guilty of what people are accusing her of, but I also can’t quite blame her. It’s not that she jumped straight to thinking Buffy definitely was guilty, she just didn’t immediately right it odd either. And this is where subtextually the Ted incident comes back to haunt Buffy (is one of the cops from Ted? That would have been a good idea but I didn’t commit cop faces to memory). Because Joyce has been repressing a lot of suspicions about what Buffy gets up to, willfully not seeing a lot of signs that Buffy is into something darker than normal teenage hijinks. And this hits her in a place where the denial has already been weakened.
And Joyce has no idea how to be accepting of Buffy being a vampire Slayer. As much as the writing is playing on coming out type lines, it’s not that much of the same thing (and I say this as someone who kind of thinks Buffy isn’t completely straight). Vampires are real; the world can end at any time; and your daughter is the one person who’s supposed to do something about it. Joyce does just about everything wrong, and she ought to blame herself for Buffy running away; but I get where she’s coming from.
And besides that, in spite of the Scoobies optimism at the end, Buffy is still wanted for murder at the moment. She might not know what to do with that. And that’s just the part they know. With the possible exception of Giles (since he’s faculty) they don’t know Buffy was expelled. They don’t know what went down between Buffy and Joyce. They definitely don’t know what went down between Buffy and Angel. I don’t know if any of them realize how much their various injuries are things she feels guilty for (I suspect on some level they do -maybe not Cordelia- but I’m not sure how aware they are of it), not to mention still reeling from Kendra’s death even if she wasn’t wanted for the murder. I suspect within a couple days they’re going to find out more of what happened (if not between Buffy and Angel) they’re going to lose a lot of the current optimism.
Also I kind of want to read/write Joyce looking for information. I’m sure there are a dozen versions of it, but as it is definitely going to include Giles, I kind of need a version that handles Giles the way I see his character. Not necessarily in love with Buffy, I’m still putting that at the acorns stage, but with a Watcher/Slayer twin souls angle. That treats their relationship as complicated rather than revert to parent and child ideas as a way to classify it.
Look, when I said I needed to talk about Giles, do you think that means going into detail about how cruel what they do to him is (Joss, Angel, and Dru); or do I mean all the Buffy/Giles acorns Buffy is putting out there?
As far as how cruel it is; it just plainly is, I don’t need to go into it. What we see is a little…mild in terms of torture, and it’s unclear if a lot more is being implied beyond what we see. Considering Giles is up and around the next day, but I also kind of remember he's the only one to have serious Angel PTSD next season, so I can go either way. But I’ve already rediscovered a lot of fic that says a lot more was going down, and there’s a lot of good drama to be milked by taking that side.
I do kind of wonder what Buffy’s plan was for getting Giles out of there if Xander hadn’t shown up. But that could also be an interesting AU, where she maybe gets Giles untied but has to focus on fighting Angel, and then Giles is there to see how it ends. So many plot bunnies that I didn’t really need right now; hence putting them out there as free to a good home. If I don’t like the result I’ll just have to answer by filling my own desires.
A part of me really want to get into the B/G acorns. But another part says that you either see them or you don’t, and I’ve already babbled about this episode a lot. Let’s just say there are a lot of my brand of acorns being flung around in the talks between Buffy and Spike; from Buffy only starting to listen to Spike after he brings up Giles, to Buffy kind of implying that Giles means to her what Dru means to Spike. For the fact that Buffy and Giles don’t interact a bit in this episode, there is a lot to work with.
What am I shipping?
I want Spike and Dru to run away and never come back. I don’t know whether to say that’s because I want those crazy evil kids to work it out or I just really don’t want to see Spike again, but it’s a little of column a and little of column b.
Bring on the love quad; I like Xander/Cordy here; Willow/Oz is still pretty adorable; and Willow/Xander just does it for me.
