- Interacting with the external – Time passages – Blood and pain – Awakenings - Conclusion – Spicy extras for James Marsters fans (double edition!) -

In Becoming Part 1, under the looming shadow of world-sucking demon Acathla, our characters watch and learn – absorbing the world through their senses to create their own distinctive internal worlds.

In Becoming Part 2, it is Angel and his quest to awaken Acathla that overshadow the episode; Angel learns it is his own blood he must spill to reach his goal. And we watch as Buffy and the others spill their blood as well, deliberately and accidentally causing each other pain as they try to reach out from their internal worlds to communicate and interact with, and act upon, the external world. With varying degrees of success, they attempt to break through the personal armor and individual perspectives that complicate human relations.

The episode opens with a misunderstanding. The Sunnydale Police find Buffy leaning over Kendra’s dead body and immediately consider her a suspect. The images and dialogue in this episode are crammed with references to communication and miscommunication. Among other things, listen for the constant use of the words "tell" and "talk". Angel’s entire plan hinges on Giles "telling him what to do." Some examples of communication:

THERE IS MINDLESS COMMUNICATION: The person acts solely as an instrument through which a ritual message is conveyed. A police officer reads Buffy her rights, Willow does the soul-restoration spell that has both her and Oz speaking a language they don’t understand, and Angel reads the ritual words to awaken Acathla.

THERE IS WORDLESS COMMUNICATION: Dru uses her psychic abilities to understand Giles. Spike and Joyce say it all with body language as they sit in Joyce’s living room.

THERE IS DELIBERATE LYING AND TRICKERY: Xander hides Buffy from the police with a pretend-hug, and Spike & Buffy lie to Joyce about their relationship to one another. Later, Spike pretends to be looking out for Angel’s interests, while Dru tricks Giles into revealing the secret of Acathla’s ritual. And last but far from least, Xander lies to Buffy when he tells her that Willow’s message about Angel is "kick his ass." The message from Willow is wildly altered by its filtration through Xander’s world, on its way to Buffy’s.

THERE IS SUCCESSFUL, STRAIGHTFORWARD COMMUNICATION: This happens for the most part between Spike & Buffy. The scenes between them are packed with interesting dialogue and foreshadowing, but for now, let’s stick with looking at the communication aspects. The season-long parallels drawn between the dynamic duo are reinforced when Whistler tells Buffy: "You’re all you’ve got" and the very next scene features Spike telling Buffy, "I’m all you’ve got." They are each other’s counterparts, and that pays off in the clinch:

• Spike knows exactly how to get past Buffy’s initial reluctance to listen: "He’s got your Watcher. Right now, he’s probably torturing him."
• Buffy has Spike’s number immediately: "You want my help because your girlfriend’s a big ‘ho’?" They literally pull no punches.
• All Buffy has to do is clear her throat, and Spike realizes he shouldn’t kill the cop if he wants Buffy’s help. Later, all she has to do is look at him, and he understands that Kendra’s death was not a good thing "from her perspective."
• Spike catches on instantly to what is happening between Buffy and Joyce ("What? Your mother doesn’t know?"), and they lie to Joyce in tandem.
• Though they have never fought as a team before, they confront and dispatch Angel’s vampire lackey like a well-oiled machine. Wham, bam - I’ll be damned. They’ve got rhythm.
• In a style we’ll see repeated, they quickly negotiate the terms of their agreement, reaching simultaneous satisfaction in no time flat. No need for any fancy pre-show, they just smack each other around a few times, and then get right down to the nuts and bolts.

We see similar "instant-communication" between long-time friends Xander & Willow, when she expects him to see her "resolve face" and "know what it means." (An aside: Willow wears the Spike-inspired left eyebrow cut-of-evil in this episode, which also features her "messing with powerful magic" and "feeling something go through her.")

THERE ARE COMPLETE COMMUNICATION BREAK-DOWNS: Joyce’s attempt at polite small talk with Spike fails spectacularly because with Spike – well - there is only rude big talk. Spike & Buffy’s strong and fast connection, and Spike & Joyce’s complete inability to establish a connection, emphasize the disconnect between Buffy & Joyce. Right before she tells her mother, "I’m a vampire slayer," she looks to Spike, her mortal enemy, for support. He is a soulless vampire, but he is much, much more a part of her world than her own mother is. Joyce & Buffy’s inability to understand one another is absolute in this episode. It hurts them both, but their worlds are so very far apart.

People impart or receive information (and misinformation) from others throughout the episode, all in their attempts to exert some measure of control over the external world. Whistler ends Part 1 by telling us: "No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does." In Part 2, we see what he means. Our characters are struggling to keep their worlds stable:

• Spike
wants his Dru back: "I want it like it was before he came back. The way she acts around him . . ."
• Xander
wants his Willow back: "I need you, Will . . . who am I gonna call every night, and talk about what we did all day? You’re my best friend. You’ve always . . . I love you."
• Buffy
wants her Angel back: "I know I’m never gonna get him back the way he was."
• Giles
wants his Jenny back: "Jenny! I thought I’d lost you."

But Jenny is dead and Angel & Buffy will never again be the way they were. Willow comes back - but to Oz, not to Xander. And though Spike makes off with Dru, it’s the beginning of the end of their 100+ year relationship. It is simply too late in the day.

Despite everyone’s wishes and efforts to turn back the clock, time marches forward very definitely in this episode. The passage of time is the one thing totally beyond anyone’s control. There are many mentions of events in the past, and of time itself – a few examples:

Spike: "Now, you hold on for a second!"

Buffy: "We’re mortal enemies – we don’t get time outs."

Buffy: "I don’t have time for this."

Joyce: "I am your mother, and you will make time."

Snyder (to Buffy): "These are the moments you want to savor. You wish time would stop so you could live them over and over again. You’re expelled."

Angel: "I don’t have time for you."

Buffy: "You don’t have a lot of time left."

Images and mention of "stopping" and "waiting" animate Time as a nearly tangible character in this episode (interesting casting note: It plays itself). Listen to the clock ticking as Spike and Joyce sit awkwardly in the Summers’ living room. To quote Edmund Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, "The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one." Moments and people and chances slip by and cannot be retrieved. Let me quote The Rubaiyat again:

The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubaiyat tells us something else relevant to this episode: "Yesterday, this day’s madness did prepare." We can only live in the Now, and we can only act in the Now, but the unchanging and unchangeable Past affects the Now, and what we do in the Now will affect the Future – three examples among several:

• THE PAST: Snyder is apparently a "stupid little troll" in part because he "never ever got a single date in High School."
• THE FUTURE: If Angel cuts up Giles with a chainsaw, Spike will have to get Librarian out the carpet for the next month! Not fun. But let’s take a look at a more serious example of how our actions in the Now can affect what’s to come: Xander is forced to make an on-the-spot decision about whether to tell Buffy about Willow’s attempt to re-ensoul Angel. He is a man-child caught in a moment not of his making. As Buffy tells Joyce about being a Slayer: "Do you think I chose to be like this? I would love to be upstairs watching TV . . . but I have to save the world - again." Xander would no doubt rather be at home watching TV, too. But instead he must make a decision no 17 year old should have to make. He does the only thing he can do – he does what he, from his perspective, thinks is best. Does the good-hearted Xander save the world by ensuring Buffy won’t hesitate (as he knows she’s done in the past) when fighting Angel? Or does he doom Angel because of petty jealousies? Well . . . Xander is both good-hearted and jealous, and Xander can only be Xander; like Spike and Frank Sinatra, he can only do it "his way." Was he right? Was he wrong? How can he ever be sure enough? It doesn’t matter. He’s made his decision. This day’s madness is prepared. And it’s gonna hurt.

Hello to the pain. It isn’t only Angel who finds that he must spill his own blood – not someone else’s – to achieve his goals. No pain, no gain. You want something from this world? Then, as Whistler asks Buffy: "What are you prepared to give up?" Because the world? It asks for blood. Your blood. Willow, Spike, Giles and Buffy literally bleed in this episode. Figuratively, they all do. They save the world, but it costs them.

And it costs no one more than it costs Buffy. In the end, with Spike gone, she is, indeed, all she’s got. And she faces an emotionally excruciating decision: Should she send her beloved boyfriend to hell alone, or should she let us all go along for the ride? True, it’s a no-brainer. But she’s not struggling with her brain; it’s her heart that is crying out for mercy.

But our hero does the right thing. Sounding exactly as Darla did before she sired him, Buffy tells Angel: "Close your eyes." And Angel does as he’s told (if I may quote Angelus from Part 1, he "falls for it every time!"). With wince-worthy sexual imagery swirling behind him, Buffy skewers Angel, and sends him right through the pinkish-gold donut hole to hell. It swallows him whole like some obscene Freudian nightmare. (Here’s another Angelus quote, earlier in Part 2, to Giles: "I performed the rituals . . . got nothing. Big donut hole for my troubles." When is this guy gonna learn to stay away from dangerous donut holes?)

Buffy has lost everything. We are never in more danger than when we let ourselves exist wholly in another – Kendra loses her life when she allows herself to "be" in Dru, and Giles essentially signs his own death warrant, and the death warrant of everyone else in the world, when he does the same. And when Buffy, a teenage girl with an idealized love in whom she invested all of her identity – loses Angel, she loses the one thing she had left in the end: herself.

Becoming Part 2 features many images of awakenings:

• Xander tells Buffy that when the police chased her out of the library, he was "just coming out of it."
• Giles stirs and Angel tells him: "Hi Rupert. I wasn’t sure you were gonna wake up."
• The police officer, lying on the hood of his police car courtesy of Spike, begins to come to.
• Willow wakes up when Xander says, "I love you."
• "Open your eyes, Mom," Buffy says to Joyce about accepting her Slayerhood.
• Angel groans and wakes up after Spike has savagely beaten him into unconsciousness.
• Acathla awakens.
• Angel’s soul returns, and a new improved Angel wakes up confused.

Our lives proceed in sections; moments make up larger blocks of time. Whether we want them to or not, the phases of our lives each come to an end, and we wake to new ones.

In the end, you’re all you’ve got. But Life is not a series of endings, one right after the other. During the long stretches of time between, we’ve got each other. There’s love to give and to receive. There’s joy to be had. Yes, like Acathla, Buffy is dormant at the end of this episode. She is isolated and empty, turned to stone. But Buffy’s friends and her mother are waiting for her. Buffy will awaken, return to their arms, and begin anew.

The only way to truly live is to emerge from our shells, to struggle, however imperfectly within our hazard-given abilities, to communicate - to touch our shared external reality, and in so doing, to touch each other. Alone, there is death, but more than that, there is only death. We can’t live without each other - literally. We die alone, do we? Yes, there’s no getting around that. But, my darling, precious readers - we must live together, because we are alive only in the exchange.

So – many thanks for listening.

Spicy extras for James Marsters fans – Special, season-ending double edition!

• For the first time since What’s My Line Part 2, we see Spike on his feet for longer than a minute. And what a sight for eager eyes he is. Pass the smelling salts, because when he and Buffy end their in-your-face encounter, my head is spinning. And I think I’m in love.
• Let’s take a look at some of that dialogue:

• More dialogue:

Spike: "I can’t fight them both alone, and neither can you!"

Buffy: "I hate you."

• A little more:

• I would worry you’ve all had enough of this dialogue dissection, except, well, you’re S’cubies – you understand there is no such thing as too much James:

• Now that the wheelchair is gone, it’s time again (at long last!!) for another Tight Pants report: There’s a nice belt-level shot right after Buffy & Spike kill the vampire, and Spike comes down the steps to say, "He won’t get a chance to tattle on us now." Oh – and how does he make this line sound so sexy? How does Buffy keep her pants on? I really admire that girl.
• Spike and Joyce are priceless. They are both trying so hard, but it’s hopeless. Listen to Spike – he’s responding to Joyce in a polite tone, remembering his manners, but he just doesn’t always understand what these souled creatures expect: "Uhm . . . you hit me with an axe one time. Remember? Get the hell away from my daughter." Good golly, Miss Molly – how come that horrible sentence sounds sexy too? Forget the teatime chatter, Joyce – invite the guy upstairs, and live a little.
• Well, this doesn’t have anything to do with James, but it affected my viewing of the episode’s most climactic moment, so I want to mention it here. David Boreanaz does a fine job throughout the episode. He has some great scenes with Giles and Spike. The swordplay with Buffy is truly impressive, and he does a nice job portraying Angel’s confusion when he suddenly regains his soul. Yes, he’s wonderful until the very, very, end. That look on his face as he gets sucked into hell – a look I believe is meant to be painful, imploring and touching – is so badly done, it literally startles me. It pulls me right out of the moment every time; the acting is that visible. And what’s worse? It makes me laugh. I kid you not; I just can’t get past it. I don’t cry until I see Kristine Southerland portray a mother’s anguish, when Joyce finds Buffy’s goodbye note on the bed. I suppose it’s sacrilege to admit I laugh out loud at the most angsty BtVS moment ever, but well – the VHISN has Legal Council now, so what can I say? Sue me.