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tori_reviewsBuffy the Vampire Slayer: 3x15 – Consequences
I like this episode a fair amount, but I also want to like this episode more than I do. And I think my main stumbling block is something that is a fairly common issue for me, that being timing and pacing.
When I watch closely to the way the sequence of events happens, the opening scene with Buffy’s nightmare must happen before the scene between her and Faith at the close of last episode. Emotionally that almost works; practically, it doesn’t. It would mean that the body has already been found by the time Faith tells Buffy that she got rid of it, and Buffy knows that. It also almost works emotionally that Buffy can’t keep the secret more than 24 hours because it’s eating her up inside; but they’re all kind of acting like this is several days later that Buffy and Faith have been trying to keep this hidden.
Everything spirals too quickly, and not in a way that feels like events are out of control, but rather are written to check off a lot of boxes that need to be checked before the decided end point of the episode. And I think within that is a lot of…need to bring Buffy back to being the hero while pushing Faith toward the dark side as quickly as possible (hmm, it is basically a season’s worth of episodes since Angel flipped teams, are they just redoing the formula?). After this episode, Buffy is more or less able to shrug off the killing, but because she was so disturbed this episode you can’t say she’s still acting like Faith.
I’m less sure if the show wants Faith’s turn to be sympathetic or not. And that’s partly on how quickly she goes out control. Sometimes it seems like the story is going for a presentation of her being repeatedly screwed over and switching teams because she feels like she’s been driven to it. But so many times, the episode puts her as in the wrong without a sympathetic motivation for it. Not content to say she just doesn’t care about Alan and she’s finding ways to justify it to herself, the episode has to very quickly escalate her behavior to psychotic levels so that Angel can get to the perspective of seeing Faith as a full blown killer in the making.
In that regard, the story kind of gets away from Buffy midway through. Because Buffy is sticking to a more optimistic view of Faith, that Faith just needs help and she’ll be okay. But that moves away from being the perspective of the show about the time Faith sells Buffy out.
And I must say, that was a bad move on Faith’s perspective. In fact, it’s such a bad move that I’m not sure that her making it doesn’t indicate that she didn’t want it to work (that might be too many negatives, I mean that maybe on some level she wanted to get caught). Buffy has the truth on her side, and Giles’ first act was always going to be getting Buffy’s side of events; and Giles is going to believe Buffy’s version. Not just because it is true, and he’ll know that her actions after the fact make more sense in her version than in Faith’s; but, not to put too fine a point on it, Giles would take Buffy’s side even if Buffy was the more guilty party. He would absolutely believe that Buffy stayed quiet out of guilt and fear, rather than seeing it as a potentially dangerous action like he does with Faith (though I suppose Faith doesn’t help matters by trying to turn him against Buffy, that’s…in theory a cold and calculated move on top of what was an understandable and unfortunate mistake). And again, it’s in many ways played like they stayed quiet for a week or longer, more akin to the Angel secret earlier in the season, rather the next day when the truth comes out within the trust circle.
Now, if Faith had been thinking clearly enough, and gone to Wesley first, this could have gone a very different direction. Mainly because Wesley doesn’t have the same Buffy-bias that Giles obviously has; and because Wes doesn’t know either them as well as Giles does, especially as well as Giles knows Buffy. Faith’s story would have a better chance of sounding true to Wesley, and it would give him some doubt when he heard Buffy’s account. And Wes isn’t exactly going to be convinced by Giles completely buying Buffy’s version of events; especially when Giles probably gets a little worked up coming to Buffy’s defense. Wesley’s likely to assume that Buffy lied to Giles to keep him on her side, without realizing that Faith is actually doing that to him.
(I…may have ideas of using this scenario in a larger fic idea. It didn’t just come to me as I wrote it here.)
An odd thing I thought this time is that I think if this was my first watch, I’d probably think Wesley was done on the show. That his point was to make a mess of things with Faith and then we’d basically have Giles reinstated as Watcher. Wesley doesn’t currently seem like a character that there’s a lot to do with, and he’s already come in and shaken up some character dynamics, he can be done now. Buffy even gives him the kiss-off to just go back to England in his last moment of the episode.
I think before I get to my big but meandering point, I want to discuss where I stand on the crime here. Because it doesn’t quite sit right with me that Alan’s death ultimately gets swept aside so easily. The show sort of implicitly takes Faith’s side is that Alan isn’t someone that the world will miss, and that bugs me a bit. It would be one thing if this got ignored because of the Mayor keeping quiet, but what we get is the Mayor not keeping quiet being the only reason the case was looked into at all.
Okay, so the thing is, I think criminally the worst you could call this case was manslaughter, so when the writing treats it as murder, I think they’re overstating it. And if, say, the Council were trying the case, with full knowledge of the circumstances, there’s probably no more than a slap on the wrist and some closer supervision for a while. Giles has the right of it, that in the heat of battles, mistakes happen and that’s how this should be viewed. I’m not quite agreeing with Faith that as long as on the balance they do more good than harm they’re fine; or saying that the regular laws don’t apply to Slayers; I’m far too pro Sokovia Accords for that. But sometimes a person wanders into a field of battle and the child soldier makes a mistake telling bystander from enemy. If they were judged to have been too reckless about using their powers, maybe they should be fired from their jobs (if that was possible), but this isn’t a capital crime, it’s a need for help.
On the other hand, to be coldly practical about it; if the Council does think a Slayer is too dangerous, they should probably kill her instead of locking her up. It’s not fair, it’s even cruel, but if the Slayer is the one big weapon against the forces of darkness, you can’t wait for them to waste away in prison. Ironically, they’d end up with a much longer life expectancy that way.
Once more I find myself thinking ‘I wonder if that’s the same cop from Ted and/or Becoming.’ Yes I could look it up, but that wouldn’t make it more meaningful if it was. All of this suspicion that circles around Buffy doesn’t escalate to anything, it’s not like the cops are gradually putting together Buffy’s secrets, or that she might fall under suspicion of other crimes easily considering her reputation. Snyder doesn’t even take the opportunity to threaten her that being suspected of more murder puts her back on super thin ice.
That said, I do have several thoughts that do reference back to Ted in a way I do find worth considering.
First, I want to ask what Joyce’s reaction to all this was. It seems pretty clear that Buffy didn’t tell anyone before she broke down with Willow, so what did Joyce think about having the cops come around accusing Buffy of murder *again*? Yes, Joyce knows the big secrets now, but she’s not in the loop all that much.
But more importantly, I noted back in Ted that when Buffy needed to feels supported after what happened, she didn’t go to Angel at all. I suspect part of why I noticed that was because I had this lurking in my mind, that helping Faith ends up landing on Angel. On one hand, Buffy and Faith are quite different people; on the other, Buffy loves Angel and Faith barely knows him. Yes Buffy had tried to talk to her, and Xander tried against the advice of counsel. I’m not sure if Giles is still in a position to help once Faith knows that the truth has come out, so the whole charade might have been for nothing if Faith doesn’t think he’s even a little on her side. Willow and Faith aren’t super close, though I wonder if Oz might have been able to say something…then again Oz doesn’t say a lot and Faith might try and seduce him, so I wouldn’t bet on him being the right choice.
I kind of think Wesley might have been the right choice from that side too. Assuming Giles and Buffy could convince him that Faith shouldn’t be locked up, and she needs help (admittedly there’s no guarantee he’d agree to it), he can be seen as a more neutral party. It would also show him that there’s more to being a Watcher than he currently realizes, demonstrate why Giles has grown so attached to Buffy, let Wes become Faith’s Watcher for real, and therefore been quite good for my Watcher/Slayer shipping tendencies.
But back to Angel. Drawing comparisons between Faith and Angelus isn’t really a good place to start from for getting her to open up. Again, this was manslaughter and a frightened teenager not knowing how to respond to Xander. Maybe Angel’s right that Faith has a bloodlust, or maybe she needs someone to tell her that what happened doesn’t make her a villain. Comparing her to Angelus is just going to push her further into thinking she is the bad girl who might as well get what she can before someone tries to take her out.
The fact that the Ted incident doesn’t get brought up seems like a flaw to me. Also the fact that the Council’s stance on these sorts of incidents wasn’t brought up in Ted it a retroactive oversight. But it is a bit as if Buffy doesn’t remember the she basically was in Faith’s position not much more than a year ago. It’s not entirely OOC that Buffy doesn’t make the connection, I can accept that because of what the situation with Ted turned out to be, in her mind the whole experience has been filed as an acceptable reaction. But at the time she did think that she had lost control and killed someone; manslaughter again, and actually more questionable than the in the heat of battle mistake Faith made.
I could also read it the other direction, that because to her it was so obviously something to feel guilty about, she’s especially concerned that Faith apparently doesn’t. I suspect the truth is the writers either forgot or just didn’t want to bring it up.
I will grant that Buffy may be preaching a guilty conscience punishment, but she is trying to help Faith work through what she isn’t quite feeling. Even when Faith tries to sell her out, Buffy’s goal is how they can help Faith without making the situation worse (although she also cosigns the option for chaining Faith up and making her talk to Angel). That sympathy could be seen as a carryover from when the shoe was on Buffy’s foot, but it mostly just reads as Buffy being compassionate in spite of also thinking they’re guilty here.
Once more I think I’ve kind of lost the plot of this review. I seem to be doing that more as my average length gets longer.
What am I shipping?
A small taste for my Xander/Willow inclinations. A much larger piece for my Buffy/Giles heart.
I like this episode a fair amount, but I also want to like this episode more than I do. And I think my main stumbling block is something that is a fairly common issue for me, that being timing and pacing.
When I watch closely to the way the sequence of events happens, the opening scene with Buffy’s nightmare must happen before the scene between her and Faith at the close of last episode. Emotionally that almost works; practically, it doesn’t. It would mean that the body has already been found by the time Faith tells Buffy that she got rid of it, and Buffy knows that. It also almost works emotionally that Buffy can’t keep the secret more than 24 hours because it’s eating her up inside; but they’re all kind of acting like this is several days later that Buffy and Faith have been trying to keep this hidden.
Everything spirals too quickly, and not in a way that feels like events are out of control, but rather are written to check off a lot of boxes that need to be checked before the decided end point of the episode. And I think within that is a lot of…need to bring Buffy back to being the hero while pushing Faith toward the dark side as quickly as possible (hmm, it is basically a season’s worth of episodes since Angel flipped teams, are they just redoing the formula?). After this episode, Buffy is more or less able to shrug off the killing, but because she was so disturbed this episode you can’t say she’s still acting like Faith.
I’m less sure if the show wants Faith’s turn to be sympathetic or not. And that’s partly on how quickly she goes out control. Sometimes it seems like the story is going for a presentation of her being repeatedly screwed over and switching teams because she feels like she’s been driven to it. But so many times, the episode puts her as in the wrong without a sympathetic motivation for it. Not content to say she just doesn’t care about Alan and she’s finding ways to justify it to herself, the episode has to very quickly escalate her behavior to psychotic levels so that Angel can get to the perspective of seeing Faith as a full blown killer in the making.
In that regard, the story kind of gets away from Buffy midway through. Because Buffy is sticking to a more optimistic view of Faith, that Faith just needs help and she’ll be okay. But that moves away from being the perspective of the show about the time Faith sells Buffy out.
And I must say, that was a bad move on Faith’s perspective. In fact, it’s such a bad move that I’m not sure that her making it doesn’t indicate that she didn’t want it to work (that might be too many negatives, I mean that maybe on some level she wanted to get caught). Buffy has the truth on her side, and Giles’ first act was always going to be getting Buffy’s side of events; and Giles is going to believe Buffy’s version. Not just because it is true, and he’ll know that her actions after the fact make more sense in her version than in Faith’s; but, not to put too fine a point on it, Giles would take Buffy’s side even if Buffy was the more guilty party. He would absolutely believe that Buffy stayed quiet out of guilt and fear, rather than seeing it as a potentially dangerous action like he does with Faith (though I suppose Faith doesn’t help matters by trying to turn him against Buffy, that’s…in theory a cold and calculated move on top of what was an understandable and unfortunate mistake). And again, it’s in many ways played like they stayed quiet for a week or longer, more akin to the Angel secret earlier in the season, rather the next day when the truth comes out within the trust circle.
Now, if Faith had been thinking clearly enough, and gone to Wesley first, this could have gone a very different direction. Mainly because Wesley doesn’t have the same Buffy-bias that Giles obviously has; and because Wes doesn’t know either them as well as Giles does, especially as well as Giles knows Buffy. Faith’s story would have a better chance of sounding true to Wesley, and it would give him some doubt when he heard Buffy’s account. And Wes isn’t exactly going to be convinced by Giles completely buying Buffy’s version of events; especially when Giles probably gets a little worked up coming to Buffy’s defense. Wesley’s likely to assume that Buffy lied to Giles to keep him on her side, without realizing that Faith is actually doing that to him.
(I…may have ideas of using this scenario in a larger fic idea. It didn’t just come to me as I wrote it here.)
An odd thing I thought this time is that I think if this was my first watch, I’d probably think Wesley was done on the show. That his point was to make a mess of things with Faith and then we’d basically have Giles reinstated as Watcher. Wesley doesn’t currently seem like a character that there’s a lot to do with, and he’s already come in and shaken up some character dynamics, he can be done now. Buffy even gives him the kiss-off to just go back to England in his last moment of the episode.
I think before I get to my big but meandering point, I want to discuss where I stand on the crime here. Because it doesn’t quite sit right with me that Alan’s death ultimately gets swept aside so easily. The show sort of implicitly takes Faith’s side is that Alan isn’t someone that the world will miss, and that bugs me a bit. It would be one thing if this got ignored because of the Mayor keeping quiet, but what we get is the Mayor not keeping quiet being the only reason the case was looked into at all.
Okay, so the thing is, I think criminally the worst you could call this case was manslaughter, so when the writing treats it as murder, I think they’re overstating it. And if, say, the Council were trying the case, with full knowledge of the circumstances, there’s probably no more than a slap on the wrist and some closer supervision for a while. Giles has the right of it, that in the heat of battles, mistakes happen and that’s how this should be viewed. I’m not quite agreeing with Faith that as long as on the balance they do more good than harm they’re fine; or saying that the regular laws don’t apply to Slayers; I’m far too pro Sokovia Accords for that. But sometimes a person wanders into a field of battle and the child soldier makes a mistake telling bystander from enemy. If they were judged to have been too reckless about using their powers, maybe they should be fired from their jobs (if that was possible), but this isn’t a capital crime, it’s a need for help.
On the other hand, to be coldly practical about it; if the Council does think a Slayer is too dangerous, they should probably kill her instead of locking her up. It’s not fair, it’s even cruel, but if the Slayer is the one big weapon against the forces of darkness, you can’t wait for them to waste away in prison. Ironically, they’d end up with a much longer life expectancy that way.
Once more I find myself thinking ‘I wonder if that’s the same cop from Ted and/or Becoming.’ Yes I could look it up, but that wouldn’t make it more meaningful if it was. All of this suspicion that circles around Buffy doesn’t escalate to anything, it’s not like the cops are gradually putting together Buffy’s secrets, or that she might fall under suspicion of other crimes easily considering her reputation. Snyder doesn’t even take the opportunity to threaten her that being suspected of more murder puts her back on super thin ice.
That said, I do have several thoughts that do reference back to Ted in a way I do find worth considering.
First, I want to ask what Joyce’s reaction to all this was. It seems pretty clear that Buffy didn’t tell anyone before she broke down with Willow, so what did Joyce think about having the cops come around accusing Buffy of murder *again*? Yes, Joyce knows the big secrets now, but she’s not in the loop all that much.
But more importantly, I noted back in Ted that when Buffy needed to feels supported after what happened, she didn’t go to Angel at all. I suspect part of why I noticed that was because I had this lurking in my mind, that helping Faith ends up landing on Angel. On one hand, Buffy and Faith are quite different people; on the other, Buffy loves Angel and Faith barely knows him. Yes Buffy had tried to talk to her, and Xander tried against the advice of counsel. I’m not sure if Giles is still in a position to help once Faith knows that the truth has come out, so the whole charade might have been for nothing if Faith doesn’t think he’s even a little on her side. Willow and Faith aren’t super close, though I wonder if Oz might have been able to say something…then again Oz doesn’t say a lot and Faith might try and seduce him, so I wouldn’t bet on him being the right choice.
I kind of think Wesley might have been the right choice from that side too. Assuming Giles and Buffy could convince him that Faith shouldn’t be locked up, and she needs help (admittedly there’s no guarantee he’d agree to it), he can be seen as a more neutral party. It would also show him that there’s more to being a Watcher than he currently realizes, demonstrate why Giles has grown so attached to Buffy, let Wes become Faith’s Watcher for real, and therefore been quite good for my Watcher/Slayer shipping tendencies.
But back to Angel. Drawing comparisons between Faith and Angelus isn’t really a good place to start from for getting her to open up. Again, this was manslaughter and a frightened teenager not knowing how to respond to Xander. Maybe Angel’s right that Faith has a bloodlust, or maybe she needs someone to tell her that what happened doesn’t make her a villain. Comparing her to Angelus is just going to push her further into thinking she is the bad girl who might as well get what she can before someone tries to take her out.
The fact that the Ted incident doesn’t get brought up seems like a flaw to me. Also the fact that the Council’s stance on these sorts of incidents wasn’t brought up in Ted it a retroactive oversight. But it is a bit as if Buffy doesn’t remember the she basically was in Faith’s position not much more than a year ago. It’s not entirely OOC that Buffy doesn’t make the connection, I can accept that because of what the situation with Ted turned out to be, in her mind the whole experience has been filed as an acceptable reaction. But at the time she did think that she had lost control and killed someone; manslaughter again, and actually more questionable than the in the heat of battle mistake Faith made.
I could also read it the other direction, that because to her it was so obviously something to feel guilty about, she’s especially concerned that Faith apparently doesn’t. I suspect the truth is the writers either forgot or just didn’t want to bring it up.
I will grant that Buffy may be preaching a guilty conscience punishment, but she is trying to help Faith work through what she isn’t quite feeling. Even when Faith tries to sell her out, Buffy’s goal is how they can help Faith without making the situation worse (although she also cosigns the option for chaining Faith up and making her talk to Angel). That sympathy could be seen as a carryover from when the shoe was on Buffy’s foot, but it mostly just reads as Buffy being compassionate in spite of also thinking they’re guilty here.
Once more I think I’ve kind of lost the plot of this review. I seem to be doing that more as my average length gets longer.
What am I shipping?
A small taste for my Xander/Willow inclinations. A much larger piece for my Buffy/Giles heart.
