Season 5

Episode 6

FAMILY: Breaking points

by Spring Summers -14-Mar-04

- Stories and lies - Manipulation and agendas – The Big O – Families and growth – Footwear – Riley, Buffy, and Spike – Spicy extras for James Marsters fans –

From Giles to Buffy, at the end of Lie to Me (ep 2.7), by Joss Whedon:

BUFFY: “Lie to me.”

GILES: “Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.”

BUFFY: “Liar.”

From Tara to Willow, at the beginning of Family (ep 5.6) by Joss Whedon:

WILLOW: “Tell me a story.”

TARA: “OK. Once upon a time, there was a kitty. She was very little, and she was all alone, and nobody wanted her . . .”

WILLOW (later in the story): “Did the kitty get chosen by some nice people?”

TARA: “Well, now you ruined the ending.”

From Joss, to us, in between the lines of Family:

VIEWERS (by tuning in): “Tell me a story.”

JOSS (as writer): “OK. Tara left an oppressive home life and now she has found true love, and a feeling of belonging, with some nice people. Note how it is all foreshadowed in the first scene of this episode. Just like Miss Kitty Fantastico, Tara now has a happy ending.”

VIEWERS: “Liar.”

This story begins with the words “Tell me a story.” It is full of images of glass surfaces that people gaze into, like a magnifying glass, a snow globe, and a crystal ball. It ends with Willow and Tara literally floating off the ground as they dance to a romantic song called I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. And here’s the rest of the story: The song writer, Melanie Doane, dedicated that love song to her TV set:

Nothing ever needs to be said - You send your message - Right into my head - You fill me up when I'm alone - So soothing is your monotone - I can't take my eyes off you - I can't take my eyes off you -

Joss is such a tricky fellow – he’s setting us up for the fall so very deliberately. Tara and Miss Kitty Fantastico aren’t going to have happy endings, are they? Both will fall victim to misfired ammo. But you can’t accuse Joss of not warning us:

XANDER (the perennial Viewer rep): “It’s right in front of us, we just can’t see it!”

Buffy’s father is “living the cliché”, Xander is spouting clichés, and we’re getting a clichéd happy ending to our story: “No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.” ‘Cept Tara. The real story we’re being told is far from a Cinderella cliché. Willow is not Prince Charming, and the MacLays are not evil the step-family. Here’s the rest of the story: For all his wrongheaded methods and ideas, Mr MacLay’s parental instincts are absolutely correct - Tara is not safe. Association with Willow and magic is going to kill his only daughter.

Like Giles with Buffy, Joss is telling us an idealized story. Like Buffy, we sometimes need to hear a story with a happy ending, just to keep going (to keep watching). But like Buffy, we’re meant to see through the clichés. This episode is full of images of people lying in order to try to control others. They want to keep them by their side, filling their needs:

• The lonely Tara lies to Willow about her nervous behavior. She also does a spell, hoping to hide her “demon side” from everyone. She does this hoping to preserve her relationship with Willow and the others.
• Spike lies to Harmony, telling her that he was thinking of her during lovemaking, when he was actually thinking of Buffy. He does this because he wants to continue to receiving the sex, love, and comfort Harmony provides (just watch him as he gratefully sinks his head onto her shoulder.)
• Buffy tells Giles they must keep the truth from Dawn because: “She’d freak, and that’s the last thing we need.” Buffy wants to stay in charge. She needs Dawn to remain clueless.
• Buffy lies to Riley, claiming he’s wrong to believe she is withholding important information from him. She wants to keep him by her side, to continue receiving the sex, love and comfort Riley provides.
• The MacLay men are lying to Tara about her demon, because they need her and want her back.
• Joss is “telling us a story.” We are meant to become invested, to care about the Tara & Willow relationship, even though Willow is going to ruin the ending. He needs us to keep watching.

Take a close look at the demon-of-the-week in this episode, the Lei-Ach demon. He sucks the bone marrow out of his victims, using a thick, forked tongue. Lies can certainly suck the life out of you, if you believe them. It’s all about how someone else can make you feel – if someone can make you feel a certain way, your behavior will follow suit:

• The monks made Buffy feel love and familial obligation toward Dawn.
• Tara’s Cousin Beth tries to make Tara feel as if she is abandoning her responsibility to her father and brother.
• Mr MacLay tries to make Tara afraid of being away from home, due to her “demon.”
• Brother Donny tries to make Tara feel badly about herself.
• Mr MacLay warns Tara that evil never feels evil.
• Spike tries to make Harmony feel loved (“All about you, baby.”)
• Willow tries to make Tara feel loved (“You’re essential.” Of course, unlike Spike, Willow is being sincere about her feelings here. But like Spike, she does use her declaration of love to lure Tara away from her book, and into bed. There is some foreshadowing, in this comparison, of the way Willow will one day put Spike’s manipulations of Harmony to shame. She will manipulate Tara’s memories and feelings in order to keep the relationship on her terms).

But in an episode full of books – books open in a huge pile, Giles reading a book, Xander reading a book, a Magic Shop customer looking through a book, Willow putting a book away on a shelf – we get the clear message that when it comes to information, we must consider the source, and the source’s motives. People with an agenda will tell you whatever you want or need to hear – whatever will allow them to further that agenda.

They tell you only half the story:

• TARA (telling a story to Willow): “There was a front of a camel – a half camel.”
• TARA: “That was funny if you studied Taglarin mythic rites – and are a complete dork.”

RILEY: “Oh, then how come Xander didn’t laugh?”

XANDER (picking up on the wrong half of Tara’s comment): “I don’t know that Taglarin stuff.”

• BUFFY (about Tara, to Xander); “That thing of not understanding . . .”

XANDER: “Half of what she says?”

We are looking closely at the differences between loving and needing, between being useful, and being used. And not coincidentally, there are many, many, many, uses of forms of the word “come.” The use of this word is highlighted in only one scene. Spike & Buffy are fighting:

SPIKE: “You want me, Slayer, come and get me.”

BUFFY: “Oh, I’m coming. I’m coming right now!”

Cut to Spike’s orgasm. He’s in bed, able to ejaculate by using Harmony’s body while imagining a violent fight with Buffy. Because – though Spike might like The Slayer to come AND to get him, the truth is, you don’t really have to get someone, to come:

WILLOW (about Tara’s birthday party): “You guys can all still come,

Right?”

XANDER (to Buffy, later, about Tara): “I don’t necessarily get her . . . but she’s really nice.”

So yes, Willow – Buffy and Xander don’t get Tara, but they can still come.

The use of the word “come” is constant. I counted 34 uses in an episode that lasts less than 50 minutes. Joss, I think, is having a little fun here, but he’s also hammering home the difference between going for the Big O (selfish motivations), and truly loving someone (selfless motivations). Some examples of the use of the word in the dialogue are below:

• GILES (about Glory): “I mean, if she comes after you—“

BUFFY: “She’ll come. She’ll come for us.”

Glory is all about her own gratification. She is figure of absolute, grasping selfishness.

• ANYA (to a Magic Box customer): “Thank you for coming. We value your patronage. Please come again for more purchases!”
• ANYA (later): “I’m just so excited. They come in, I help them . . . they give us money in exchange for goods.”
• XANDER (a little later still, to Anya): “ Gimme sugar. I’ve come to buy sugar.”

Everybody likes a place where the gratification is straightforward, and two-way.

• MR MACLAY (to Tara): “Well, I don’t mean to interrupt your plans. I know we’ve come on you kind of suddenly.”

Ugh. I hate when that happens.

• RILEY (to Buffy): “Yeah. Know you got a lot on your mind. You decide you wanna let me in on any of it, let me know. I’ll come running.”

OK. Wow. Apparently, Riley would really, really like it if Buffy confided more in him.

• BARTENDER: “You shouldn’t be coming in here. You got a rep with these monsters. But you come in here night after night. Are you lookin’ to get killed?”

RILEY: “I come for the ambiance. What can I say? This place just reeks of class.”

We expect to see Spike, but we see Riley – and a deliberate parallel is being drawn here. As we saw with Spike, if you imagine it as you would like it to be, you can come – night after night. (RILEY, to vampire Sandy, about Willie’s Place: ”It’s great. You just have to close your eyes, plug up your nostrils; it’s fine.”)

• BETH (to Tara): “You think you can just go around cursing people? Your dad’s gonna pop.”

Really? Like warm champagne? OK, so that’s the word “pop” not “come”, but it was interesting -that suggestion that excitement, anxiety, agitation (be it sexual or otherwise) seeks release.

• SPIKE (to Buffy): “You’re welcome!”
• SPIKE (later, to Tara): “You’re welcome!”

Spike has a way with the ladies.

• BUFFY: “You came.”

RILEY: “Of course I came.”

All it takes for Riley to come, after all, is the right ambiance. And Buffy, like Harmony, has got plenty of ambiance - all Riley has to do is close his eyes, and plug up his nose.

And you know what? It hits me, especially as I watch Spike’s masculine, muscular, naked, forward-moving torso, and the ecstasy on his face as he finishes his final thrust, that I am coming to like this episode. Then, when I press the reverse button to re-watch Spike and Harmony, it suddenly comes to me that Joss has made me an unwitting participant in all the self-involved action. I mean – geez, what am I doing? I’m supposed to be appreciating James and Mercedes as artists, not to using them as – well, I’ll be.

On the TV screen, later, I hear Willow and Giles (our main man when it comes to exposition) have this conversation:

WILLOW: “Hey. Am I late? Did I miss any exposition?”

GILES: “No, no, no - nothing earth-shattering to relate. I just have a few thoughts, and wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page.”

Well, Giles, I printed out the transcript, and I can tell you definitively that you are all on page 6 at this time. Watching this episode, and reading this script, I feel as if Joss is zapping his message, through the glasses on my nose, right into my brain.

So what is the message in Family? The message underneath it all is this: As we make our journeys through life, we always need Family – i.e. a primary source of love and nourishment, a safe place that supports our growth and allows us to make mistakes. But the type of Family we need changes as we grow, and if Family members don’t change along with our needs, we seek out others.

We are looking again, as we have been ever since Dracula sent Buffy on her mission to “discover herself,” at the process of defining ourselves and establishing a firm, independent, adult identity. This episode concentrates on the role Family plays in that journey.

La Famiglia. The Family. Good God, how our childhood families tug at us. They are the source of us, they are our foundation. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are, and they will forever be, a part of who we are. This episode emphasizes the need for family with many images of family-like interaction:

• Xander and Riley are acting like brothers.
• Giles is being fatherly.
• Because people in families are secure in their love for one another, “family” can get away with straight-talk: Giles tells Xander and Buffy that they are profoundly stupid, Willow tells Tara that she is dumb. We can show our families our true face.
• Some of Buffy’s CDs are Dawn’s CDs.
• Buffy and company are having a great time together at Tara’s party at The Bronze.
• Buffy stands up to Mr MacLay, and gives Tara the courage to do the same, by making it clear that Tara is family.
• References to what it means to be human remind us of our similarities and the familial relationship we all share: Xander mentions his opposable thumb, former demon Anya is so very pleased to be a regular working girl, and Spike proves that Tara is 100% human.

Familial relationships are complex and can be painfully interdependent. They make you “crazy,” as Willow says, and often, the family of your childhood has a hard, hard time letting go. Most of us deal, to one extent or another, with exactly what Tara does in this episode: Family members who try to “beat you down,” due to their own fears for you and for themselves. They fear permanently losing you and whatever you are providing to them and the family unit. There’s a feeling of possession involved, and it is very hard to let go, to lose control, of what you believe belongs to you. There are several mentions of ownership – here’s one example:

BARTENDER (to Riley, after telling him he shouldn’t be coming into Willie’s Place): “If Willie was here . . . “

RILEY: “Yeah, well – Willie’s not here.”

There’s no telling what the night manager might let into your place, when you’re not there.

MR MACLAY thinks of Tara as his responsibility: “Well, here’s my girl.” BUFFY thinks of Dawn as her responsibility: “They sent her to me, Giles. I think I have to take care of her. I want to”

Mr MacLay’s willingness to lie to Tara to keep her at home and under his control is as two-fold as Buffy’s willingness to lie to Dawn for the same reason. They both have selfish reasons: to stay in charge, and to avoid the pain of emotional confrontation and the deprivation of possible long-term separation. They both have selfless reasons: to keep their dependent safe.

But the MacLay family’s heavy-handed, manipulative methods are stifling Tara – they are (to use Riley’s sarcastic phrase to Buffy, about her harshness with Dawn) nipping her “in the bud.” Tara’s family has apparently served her - if not perfectly - at least well enough, during her childhood. We learn in this episode that Hank Summers has completely abandoned his family; Mr MacLay, at least, has been there for Tara – he’s not the type to run out on his family. (MR MACLAY: “Forgive me for running out. We’re double-parked.”)

But Tara can’t blossom into adulthood in the weed-choked and sun-deprived MacLay garden. Mr MacLay attempts to persuade Tara that she owes him for the security he provided her in her childhood: “Tara, for eighteen years your family has taken care of you and supported you. If you wanna turn your back –“

But the truth is, our children owe us nothing for raising them. When you make a choice to give another love or security or help, you shouldn’t do it for the gift basket or the appreciation (You’re welcome!). Loving is about doing for another selflessly, and it is often, also, about letting go.

And though he doesn’t do so gracefully, Mr MacLay does, at last, let go. And notice that when Beth says to Tara, at the end: “Are you happy now?” she does so in an attempt to make Tara feel guilty for her father’s hurt and disappointment. But Tara smiles.

• GILES (to Xander and Riley): Stop it, or you’ll break something.”

BUFFY: “Or I’m going to break something.”

• DONNY: “I swear by God I will beat you down.”

XANDER: “And I swear by your full and manly beard you’re going to break something trying.”

Tara has broken something: Her family’s hold over her. They can no longer “make her feel” a certain way. And Buffy, Giles, The Scoobies, and (though he would deny it) black-sheep Spike, have accepted Tara into the family. For Tara, it’s out with the Old, and in with the New. The need for continuous forward movement, for seeking out the soil with the proper pH for your growth, is symbolized in this episode with the frequent mention and display of shoes:

• Glory throws shoes at the Lei-Ach demon.
• Harmony pulls various pairs of shoes from her shopping bag.
• Buffy kills the Lei-Ach demon with her foot.
• The songs that play in this episode are:
• Tears Are In Your Eyes – a line from this song is: “Please tell me how you know tomorrow staring at your shoes.”
• Cemented Shoes – “I’m falling at your feet. I’m crawling at your feet.”
• American Shoes – “We wear American shoes, so we can speak for anything.”

Glory mentions that she lost her fight with Buffy because she broke a heel – she was wearing the wrong shoes. Wow. We are practically drowning in footwear in this episode, no? So what’s with the shoes? I think Joss’s fondness for shoes is about this series continuing theme: It’s all about the journey. Life must be lived step by step – take it on foot, because magical shortcuts are never the answer. So it is very important, if you want to get on with the journey, to wear the right shoes. The right shoes minimize pain and chance of accident, and they maximize your comfort and mileage (have you ever noticed how cars and Buffy are unmixy things?).

The shoes, of course, are standing in for everything and anything you surround yourself with as you walk your way through life. For Tara, it is time to change shoes.

And we see someone else on the verge of a shoe-change in this episode: Riley. We’ve had indications of Riley’s dissatisfaction in past episodes, and in this one, we see just how bad it has become. Riley is so depressed by Buffy’s lack of reciprocal passion for him, that he is hanging out in seedy bars, and flirting with vampires. Soon, he’ll be making a break for it, and wearing combat boots again.

And Spike – we’ve had indications in past episodes that Spike’s big-bad persona is cracking, and in this one, we see just how good he has become. The first time he had an instinct to do good for good’s sake was in Where The Wild Things Are, but he rejected it instantly. In this episode, when he feels an urge to help Buffy, he simply goes with it. And then, though he claims he doesn’t care, he recognizes Mr MacLay’s game, and he steps in to do the right thing and prove that Tara is human. He hits her in the nose, even though he knows it will cause him explosive pain. Wow. What’s up with Spike?

Spike’s direct pipeline to The Big Evil seems to have developed its first real break. But Evil is Evil (says Mr MacLay), and though this selfless do-gooding marks a true beginning to a very real, and very painful journey toward redemption, Spike has a long and rough road ahead. Foreshadowed in the scene of invisible Spike helping Buffy is Buffy’s Season 6 blindness to the real goodness growing inside Spike. She’ll invert her modus operandi with Angel, and refuse to see anything good in Spike.

Also foreshadowed in this tableau is the dark and obsessive nature of Spike’s Season 6 love for Buffy:

SPIKE (to Mr MacLay): “There’s no demon in there. That’s just a family legend, am I right? Just a bit of spin to keep the ladies in line. Oh – you’re a piece of work. I like you.”

“I like you.” He said this to Parker when Parker was using Buffy, much as Spike was using Harmony at the time. And now, he says it to Mr MacLay. And someday, Spike will try to use the MacLay technique to keep Buffy by his side. He’ll punch her – it will not hurt – and he’ll try to convince her that she came back wrong.

Spicy extras for James Marsters fans

• If you’ve ever wondered what James would look like at the moment of orgasm, wonder no more! What a scene between Spike & Harmony. It’s really very well done by both James and Mercedes. I imagine it would be very hard to relax about simulating your most intimate moments for the camera, but they are very convincing. I can almost feel the – the – the . . . the heat.
• Harmony calls Spike “my little lamb,” in another bit of foreshadowing of Spike’s upcoming role. Our boy is being led to the slaughter.
• This episode is a pivotal point in Spike’s transformation. He saves Buffy, and he helps Tara, and despite the snarky “you’re welcomes,” he seems satisfied with having done good for its own sake. He doesn’t demand either attention or reward for his acts. It’s a first, but it won’t be a last.