Season 5
Episode 13
BLOOD TIES:
The theory of relativity
by Spring Summers –
- Being real – Past & Future - Family ties – More flies with
sugar – Evil Spike and Good Dawn - Buffy & Spike and Glory & Ben – Spicy
extras for James Marsters fans -
Remember how, in Fool For Love, we sat in the observation deck as Spike
put himself together piece by piece? But
he didn’t exactly put himself together, did he? He was as much created as creative; he was as
much shaped by Mum’s love, by Cecily’s rejection, by Dru’s bite, by
happenstance and serendipity and climate, as he was by his own hand. How different is Dawn then, really, from any
of us, just because her past was wholly created by others?
Enforced by the
Giles’ mention of demon dimensions that are “all pushing in on the edges of our
reality, trying to find a way in” is the image of Dawn’s past as an illusion
woven by forces beyond her control. Her
past is unchangeable, and not too much unlike any 14 year old, she had nothing
to do with its form or direction. So
now she has to face the new dawn, knowing that her past was completely
manufactured by the monks (her de facto parents) and that there is nothing she
can do to alter a moment of it.
DAWN
(about a homework assignment): “We all
have to imagine what we’ll be like ten years from now, and write a letter to
our future selves.”
She has to wake up
tomorrow, and live with the knowledge that all she can affect is the present
and the future. We all have to do that,
though, don’t we? None of us can send
that self-addressed envelope backward in time.
This episode examines the way our past, no matter how we have acquired it, shapes
us, and how we both mold and submit to our futures. There are many references to the past and to
both the malleability and predetermined nature of our futures. Some examples among many are below:
PAST:
·
XANDER
(about The Key): “So where should we
start looking? Do we know where it used
to be kept? Who saw it last? (Where it was is a clue to where it is.)
·
BUFFY: “I just didn’t want to put you guys in that
kind of danger.” XANDER: “As opposed to the kind we’re always
in?” (Buffy’s
reasoning doesn’t jive with past experience.)
·
BUFFY: “How was school?” DAWN:
“The usual. Big square building
filled with boredom and despair.”
BUFFY: “Just how I remember it.” (The past has continued into the present.)
FUTURE:
·
BUFFY: “Maybe it’s time to start a new tradition. Birthdays without boyfriends. It could be just as much fun.” (Buffy
attempts to direct her future birthday celebrations.)
·
JOYCE: “We thought it would be better if we waited
until you were older.” (Joyce made plans for a future she’ll never
have.)
·
SPIKE: “You’ll find her.” BUFFY:
“And then what?” (Spike attempts to predict the future with
certainty; Buffy notes the limits on her control).
·
There
are continual references in this episode to building tension (e.g., Xander’s
perched and ready for action, Buffy asks if her gift from Dawn is going to
explode, a mental patient says his skin is too tight, and Dawn is referred to
as a bomb.) We hear many references to
relentless action (e.g., candles that won’t blow out, fun that won’t stop
leaving, armies that won’t stop coming, and ants that finally ruin a picnic.) We watch Tara & Willow put an “early
warning system” in place, and we hear both a fire alarm and an emergency squad
siren go off. These images reinforce the
picture of the future as something we can attempt to affect by trying to be
forewarned and prepared, but they also suggest that change and surprise are
inevitable. Buffy hears the alarm and
runs upstairs to put out that fire, but in her casual kindness to Spike, we
note that she’s been totally missing the alarms that signal Spike’s upcoming Crush combustion (not that his candles
ever go out, which is kinda scary, as Willow notes.)
So Dawn must face her future with
a history as fictional as a dime store novel.
And this is Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, so she is going through a “14 year old hormone bomb” identity
crisis in histrionic and classic Buffyverse style. Her feeling of alienation is based on a
literal disconnect, rather the usual figurative nature of the angsty adolescent
struggle for autonomy. Who is she? She’s feeling moorless and suddenly adrift. Her ties, her blood ties in particular, have
been severed.
SPIKE
(to Buffy, in Fool For Love): “The only reason you’ve lasted as long as you have
is you’ve got ties to the world - your mum, your brat kid sister, the Scoobies.
They all tie you here, but you’re just putting off the inevitable.”
THE
KNIGHTS (chanting, in this ep): “The Key
is the link. The link must be
severed. Such is the will of God.”
Cut off from loved
ones and miles from home, human beings, like Glory, find that their power and
ability to maintain the “energies that bind the human mind into a cohesive
whole,” become severely limited. There are
echoes, in this episode, of Who Are You?,
the Season 4 episode in which we watched Faith deal with the profound negative effects
of long-term social and familial deprivation.
JINX
(to a Knight): “I fear your faith is
gravely misplaced.”
As we did in Who Are You?, we watch Xander and Giles
searching for our misplaced teen, while Xander does a bit of bragging about his
manly charm in regard to the girl in question.
We again get many mentions of family members and groups, emphasizing the
importance of family and loved ones, and of belonging. The ties that bind are essential when it
comes to establishing a firm and satisfying identity, when it comes to finding
your true self and your niche in the world.
Even Ben, who has every reason to detest Glory, sounds as if he feels a
familial attachment to his distaff side.
She is literally a part of who
he is, and the fact that he feels that bond is conclusively reflected here:
BEN
(to Dawn): “You two have a fight? It’s OK.
I know how that goes. I’ve got a
sister too. They can be a real pain
sometimes. I tell you, there’ve been a
lot of nights I wish she didn’t exist either.”
Our family members
– be they biologically or otherwise constructed – are a part of who we
are. I don’t experience the sort of transformation
that Ben and Glory do, but sometimes, I’m told, I do turn into my mother. Our associations anchor us to reality, and
provide the framework within which we define ourselves and our worlds. Further emphasizing the way others help delineate
our perimeters is the way our characters make frequent comparisons:
·
ANYA: “I know way more about demon dimensions than
Giles does.”
·
BUFFY: “[Glory is] in no way prettier than me.”
·
DAWN
(to Spike): “I’m badder than
you.”).
They also make suggestions
that what YOU do affects ME:
·
Buffy
accuses Spike of helping Dawn as away to address his hatred of her.
·
Spike
accuses Buffy of attempting to make herself feel better with a “round of Kick
the Spike.”
·
Joyce
thinks she can help Dawn feel better with chicken soup.
And there are many
images of exchange (e.g., the birthday presents.) These images in particular emphasize the way
we all are “pushing in on the edges” of each other’s realities, trying to get
to what’s inside, trying to make those binding connections:
·
DAWN: “I don’t want the book. Just what’s inside.”
·
GLORY: “I’m in a bit of a crunch here, so let’s cut
right to the ooey-gooey center.”
·
Note
that Dawn and Glory are in a room covered with X-rays showing various shots of
human interiors.
With Glory and her “big girl-god jones” for The Key as the central image, the
episode is all about how much we humans want and need each other. We need love and friendship and support and
connections. We seek contact. We seek invited entry to everyone’s delicious
“ooey-gooey center” by offering sugar, or we attempt to make a coerced entry, using
the more vinegary method of pushing our way in through brute and/or persistent force:
SUGAR – offering
to meet needs and cravings:
·
The
word “need” is used repeatedly in this episode.
·
Mention
of sugar and sugary treats is continual:
Cake, candy, ice-cream, hot chocolate, marshmallows. Spike also mentions fruit flies - a great example
of an organism attracted by sugary content.
·
Buffy
tells both the Scoobies and Spike that they are right, and that she’s been
wrong to withhold information. She
realizes that if she wants their friendship and help and loyalty and trust, she
has to offer the same.
·
Dawn
tries to act nice to get information out of Glory: GLORY:
“Is that why you’ve been playing sugar and spice with old Uncle
Ben? Trying to get a peek at Glory’s
unmentionables??”
VINEGAR – using relentless
force and igniting fears:
·
Glory
tries to torture information out of the Knight.
·
Glory
tries to threaten Ben through Jinx, but like Spike with Buffy in the crypt, Ben
turns the tables on her.
·
Spike
keeps trying to break into The Magic Box until he finally succeeds, though he
mentions he usually just “bursts through” doors.
But whether it’s
by invitation, by picking the lock, or by bursting through the door, it’s all
about getting inside. It’s all about
establishing those blood ties, and establishing our own identities in part
through our associations with others (note how often group characteristics are
mentioned – e.g., religious types, brown-robe types, hero types. We also see people literally forming circles.)
Further, we’re certainly looking at the
ambiguity and definition of evil in this episode. Among other things, vampire Spike protects the Vampire Slayer’s sister, and Dawn
attempts to find out if the Key is evil.
“I guess it depends on your point of view,” says Glory.
Spike asks
Dawn: “Who’s bad now?” Good question. It’s getting hazy, isn’t it? The lines are blurring, the integration is
beginning. Spike lightens up around
Dawn; Dawn darkens a bit around the edges in Spike’s presence. But at this point, it’s still Spike who’s
clearly the bad one, who’s the representation of Buffy’s dark side. Dawn is the light side. In this ep, her innocence and purity are
reinforced with three images of unicorns in association with Dawn: She burns a unicorn candle in The Magic Box,
she has a stuffed unicorn on her bed, and she stands in front of a framed print
of a unicorn as she eavesdrops on Buffy and Joyce. Spike’s darkness is emphasized with the shadows
Dawn notices right before running into Spike, and in the five-fingered discount
to which helps himself, off the store counter.
In the context of
what each represents about Buffy, take a look at this: Dawn is beginning to experiment with being
bad, with making contact with the dark side.
She immediately runs into Spike, and she ends up needing him in order to
successfully complete her surreptitious mission. He agrees to help, and he provides her safe passage
through the darkness, to learn the truth about herself. It is Spike who is reading to her, in the candlelit
Magic Box, when Dawn experiences a stunning revelation: She is both much more, and much less, than
she has previously believed.
BUFFY
(to Xander): “This isn’t about her [Glory]. It’s about Dawn. She deserves to know where she came
from. She needs to know, or it’s just
gonna eat away at her.”
BUFFY
(to Joyce): “It’s not that simple! We’re not gonna be able to fix this with a
hug and kiss and a bowl of soup! Dawn
needs to know where she came from, she needs real answers.”
We heard Buffy
make similar comments about herself, and her own need for answers, in the
Season 5 opener, Buffy vs. Dracula. And we’re soon going to see her attempt to
make contact with the First Slayer, looking for real answers about where she
came from and who she is. Dawn’s short
walk, through the dark streets of Sunnydale with Spike, foreshadows Buffy’s (Season
6) much longer night-time journey with that same tireless escort. And it indicates the revelations, about her
true and complex nature, that Buffy’s surreptitious liaison with Spike will
bring.
Note that in this episode, we learn that
Ben, like Spike in Lovers
Walk, is apparently fond of those little marshmallows. We saw Spike stealing a trinket from the
Magic Box earlier, and we hear Ben mention that he has stolen the hot chocolate
that he offers to Dawn. I think the Ben
and Spike parallels are about this:
Spike is a part of Buffy, and Buffy is a part of Spike, much like Ben is
a part of Glory, and vice-versa. Reflecting
what Ben says about Glory’s threats, for all their bluster and bristling at
each other, Buffy & Spike can’t seem to actually hurt each other. Ben mentions that Glory can be a pain, and
Buffy and Dawn later have this exchange:
DAWN: “Why do you care?”
BUFFY: “Because I love you. You’re my sister.”
DAWN: “No, I’m not.”
BUFFY: “Yes, you are. (She shows Dawn her bloody hand.) Look, it’s blood, it's Summers’
blood. It’s just like mine. It doesn’t matter where you came from, or how
you got here. You are my sister. There’s no way you could annoy me so much if
you weren’t.”
And if there is
one thing Spike can manage almost effortlessly, it’s annoying Buffy. Their argument in the crypt sounds very much
like the upfront, in-your-face bickering of spouses or family members who
forgive and forget one hour later. We
see Buffy’s immediate fury when she realizes how Dawn gained entry: It must have been Spike who broke into
The Magic Box. She puts two and two
together after Anya says this:
ANYA: “Eeew.
Who’s been using the urn of Ishtar as an ashtray?”
The urn of
Ishtar? Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess
of sex and war, known for rescuing her brother-son-lover Tammuz, from the
Underworld? The idol infamous for temple
prostitutes who, in her name, redeemed men through literally divine sex? (Those
must have been some powerfully magic boxes!)
So what are
Spike’s ashes doing in there?
Spicy extras for James Marsters fans
·
I did
a little web-searching for reactions to this episode when it first aired. When it comes to Buffy & Spike, there was
a common theme: Something beyond the
ordinary is going on between them. Whether
a viewer was fervently wishing for a Spuffy union or was violently against it,
everyone had noticed the building tension.
In this episode, even the entirely self-absorbed Glory is picking up the
vibrations: GLORY: “He wakes up, tell your boyfriend to watch
his mouth.” BUFFY: “He is not my boyfriend!” Something like this happened to Buffy once
before, when even the entirely self-absorbed Parker mistook Spike for someone
Buffy “used to date.” She over-reacted
that time, also.
·
Spike
& Dawn: I love both James and
Michelle in this episode. Their scenes
are so wonderfully done. Dawn sees
straight through to “what’s inside” Spike.
She sees right through his big-bad persona to that growing goodness
inside - he can’t even get a “little tremble” out of her.
·
Gack,
Spike looks really good when he stands up, flings that stone slab away as if it
were made of balsa wood, stalks toward Buffy and slashes into her theory that
he’s the one responsible for Dawn’s upset.
I don’t know how she resists putting her hands on him. But in this case, not even Buffy can come up
with an excuse to smack him.
·
Notice
that in this “right before Crush“ episode, we get a reminder of Spike’s powerlessness
against Olaf, when he can’t lift Olaf’s hammer.
Buffy will manage to wield the hammer fairly easily when she uses it to
pound Glory at season-end. And I seem to
remember that some viewers cried foul, because Spike and Buffy’s physical
strength has always been closely matched.
But Spike’s lack of power against Olaf and his heavy weapon isn’t about
Spike’s physical strength. It’s about
his psychological strength – of which he has nearly none, when it comes to
governing his id.
***
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