Season 4
Episode 3
Spike
& Harmony – Other pairings – Individual
histories –The big picture -Spike
& Buffy – Spicy extras for James Marsters fans
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Spike
gets an introduction whenever he first enters the scene in Sunnydale. In Season 2’s SchoolHard, Xander did
the honors with, “Maybe this time, it’ll be different.” Enter our strutting, and very different,
anti-hero. In Season 3’s Lovers Walk,
it was Cordelia: “What kind of moron
would want to come back here?” Enter
our drunken moron. In Season 4’s The
Harsh Light of Day, it is Buffy herself:
“A guy dating Harmony dead. Must
be, like, the most tolerant guy in the world.”
Enter the most tolerant guy in the world.
It’s not a
complete description, but it’s not an inaccurate one either. For though Spike has little short-term
patience, his long-term tolerance is truly extraordinary. He stayed with the batty Drusilla for over a
hundred years, he puts up with Harmony’s incessant whining for more than two
minutes, and, in the not too distant future, he’s going to tolerate more from
Buffy than anyone can begin to imagine.
But in the
beginning of Season 4, we find him with Harmony. Framed by images of Spike tunneling underground for his evil
purposes (while life merrily goes on in the sunlight above), The Harsh Light
of Day is all about surfaces, and what’s underneath them (Buffy mentions
the wood veneer on her dorm room door, Parker is seen in a reflection and
Harmony is in a picture, Harmony talks about being covered in blue veins,
etc).
So let’s start by
looking at the underlying structure of Spike & Harmony’s relationship:
Harmony appears,
on the surface, to be a helpless, dependent twit who is allowing herself to be
used and abused, just to be near someone like Spike. Spike is domineering and abusive, barely putting up with her in
order to use her for sex. But
everything is not quite as it seems.
Listen to this exchange:
Harmony “I want to go to a party!”
Spike has asked
her twice to leave him alone and let him work, so now he slams his fists into a
table in front of him, and angrily rounds the table to confront her. He grabs her, growling as he backs her
roughly against a wall.
Harmony
(smirking): “Oh. Right here, baby? In front of Brian?”
Spike (still
angry): “You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
Harmony
(coyly): “Maybe I would. After a party.”
Spike
(smiling): “Tonight. I’ll take you somewhere nice.”
Let’s see. Spike asks Harmony to leave him be, but she
totally ignores him, placing no importance whatsoever on his request. Then, despite Spike’s darkened face and
seriously menacing tone, she exhibits no fear when he threatens her. She doesn’t cower. She doesn’t even flinch.
In fact, she doesn’t behave at all like a victim of past abuse at
Spike’s hands. And she gets her
way. So who’s in charge here? Who’s abusing whom for his or her own
gain? The relationship, underneath its
surface, is seriously co-dependent.
Listen to this exchange as well:
Buffy: “What’s the matter, Spike? Dru dump you again?”
Spike: “Maybe I dumped her!”
Harmony: “She left him for a fungus demon. That’s all he talks about most days.”
Oh, poor
Harmony! It seems Spike is not the only
one who puts up with incessant whining.
Remembering the way Spike blubbered - on Willow’s shoulder, and in
Joyce’s kitchen - in Lovers Walk, it is not difficult for us to imagine
how Harmony has come to call him “Blondie Bear” and “Platinum Baby”, or why he
allows it. When we see them together in
the bedroom, we again see them playing their game. Harmony has successfully gotten a rise out of Spike by annoying
him to distraction with her completely self-involved prattle – a form of verbal
abuse if there ever was one. He is
furious with her, and looks as if he is seconds away from pummeling her. But again, she shows zero fear of contact. Instead, she tempts him closer. When he is on top of her, kissing her
shoulder, they have this exchange:
Spike: “I’ve got an extra set of chains.”
Harmony: “Ewww.
Just because Dorkus went in for that –“
Spike (tugging
roughly at her hair, and in a low, threatening tone): “Drusilla. Say her
name.”
Harmony: “Dorkus.”
Spike: “Bite your tongue.”
Harmony: “Do it for me.”
And snogging
ensues. How about that? Harmony has the attention she craves and she
hasn’t had to concede to even one of Spike’s requests. He shouted at her to shut up – but she just
kept right on talking. They don’t use
the chains he suggests, and she doesn’t give in to his demand that she say, “Drusilla.” True, Spike is getting some seriously steamy
and satisfying sex out of the deal. But
for these two, even providing orgasm is a two-way street. (How do I know that? Please.
Don’t ask silly questions.)
We wonder why
Spike puts up with the slow torture Harmony dishes out – surely, he could find
sex elsewhere? And Harmony wonders why
she lets him “be so mean” to her. “Love
hurts,” replies Spike. But is this
love, for either of them? Sort of. Harmony has the good-looking, alpha-male,
status-symbol boyfriend she’s always wanted.
She believes that she loves him, and she does - to extent that she’s
able. She’s also desperate to keep
him. And underneath it all, Spike is
the same old Spike. He’s trying to
please his mate, trying to be what she wants him to be, and choosing a woman
who is all about feelings.
But their
relationship ends (for Season 4) when, frustrated by his inability to find The
Gem of Amara, and infuriated by Harmony’s refusal to stop talking about France,
Spike stakes her. (Note to self: Always take an Englishman seriously when he
asks to hear “bugger all about sodding France!!”). We see that Harmony is shocked and hurt by his attempt to dust
her. And she will repay it in kind
shortly, when he comes knocking on her door at Thanksgiving – and learns that
Harmony keeps a stake under their mattress! They give as good – or as bad - as they get from one another. It isn’t pretty, but there it is.
It’s worth noting
that Buffy will stake Spike later in this episode, just as Spike stakes
Harmony. As the Seasons roll on, Spike
will become Buffy’s “Harmony.” And
we’ll ask ourselves these questions again:
Who’s really in charge? Who
really needs whom the most? Who’s
abusing whom? And what’s love got to do
with it?
It
isn’t just Harmony & Spike, though, whose
relationship is not quite what it seems on the surface. On the face of it, Anya appears to be all
business in proposing sexual intercourse to Xander – but she learns the next
morning that there are feelings involved.
She has things happening inside her that she doesn’t quite understand,
and she doesn’t know what to do about them.
Sex is, as Xander tries to warn her (and believes he is actually turning
into a woman as he says it), “about expressing something. And accepting consequences.”
In a bit of
foreshadowing about the “Veruca” troubles dead-ahead, we are also shown that
even Willow & Oz’s relationship involves a bit of pretense: In the very first scene, Oz’s band mate,
Devon, describes how he expects the band to do well in L.A. by saying, “We’re
gonna have them glued to their seats.”
Willow’s lack of musician/artistic sensibilities shows in her serious
response: “Uh, Devon, aren’t they
supposed to dance? “ Out of Willow’s
earshot, Oz commiserates briefly with Devon about Willow’s literal
interpretation.
But the King of
Pretense in this episode is Parker Abrams.
Every time he says the word “absolutely,” a former conquest should
appear behind him to shout “NOT!” But
that doesn’t happen, and the phoniest relationship of them all turns out to be
Buffy & Parker’s. It is the
relationship that looks most promising on the surface, the one that is
consummated while the lyrics “We are/We are the lucky ones,” from Bif Naked’s
song “Lucky,” play in the background.
Romantic
choices are influenced by our pasts. The Harsh Light
of Day is full of references to the passage of time, and to history. People talk frequently of their pasts, and
the word “time” is mentioned often.
Willow mentions museums to Harmony, Giles talks about vampires in the 10th
century searching for The Gem, Parker comments that the wild party scene is
like “the last days of Rome,” and when he talks about becoming a history major,
he says this to Buffy:
“There is
something amazing about these huge events that when you dig down into them,
they’re just about regular people trying to make choices. When you look back at it, it seems like
people were swept up in events they couldn’t control. But I don’t believe that.
I believe you have choice in everything you do.”
Parker has an
ulterior motive for making this statement:
He’s trying to coax Buffy into making a choice to have sex with
him. But his words put me in mind of a
quote that I’ve always remembered from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital:
“History is simply the actions of people in pursuit of their own ends.” We see a lot of that here.
Spike wants sex,
and Harmony wants a boyfriend. Xander
wants sex, and Anya wants to get over Xander.
Parker wants sex, and Buffy wants to get over Angel. As they each pursue their own ends, they add
to their own histories, to each other’s histories, and to history as a whole.
Karl Marx was not
Russian, but he always makes me think of Russia, given his link to
communism. And Russia makes me think of
Leo Tolstoy, which makes me think of War & Peace, which leads
me to look up another quote that expresses a theme in this episode better than
I can:
“Every action of
theirs [great men], that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in a
historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of
previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”
Our characters are
caught up in history even as they are making it. Everyone is making individual plans (e.g.): Spike makes plans to acquire The Gem of
Amara, Buffy & Parker make a date, and Anya presents Xander with her plan
for getting over him. Romantic
histories are also featured, and even as Buffy and the others “seem to act of
their own free will” they are “in bondage to the whole course” of their
previous histories:
FORMER LOVES:
PARENTS: Our parents influence and interfere with our
romantic lives:
But
individuals, though they pursue their own ends with individual acts,
are part of a larger whole. The history
that unfolds in the confluence of individual acts, and the fact that a “big
picture” is formed over both time and space, is emphasized by:
There isn’t just a
heady message about the construction and nature of human history to absorb
here. There’s also a clue about how to
view the episode itself. Let’s step
back and look at the big picture:
Spike comes into
town. He’s determined to find a Gem
that will free him from his vampiric limitations and vulnerabilities. He tells Harmony that “this gem is
everything” to him. He goes after it
with unwavering persistence. He finally
acquires it. He is so elated, and so
rash and brash with its use, that he quickly looses it when Buffy wrenches it
painfully away from him (“Take it off me this way, we both burn”). Buffy wants to give it to Angel, but over on
“Angel”, Buffy’s old boyfriend realizes The Gem causes more problems than it
solves for him, and destroys it.
It’s been
suggested before, in other forums that I can’t remember clearly enough to
credit, that The Gem of Amara represents love, and for Spike, Buffy’s love in
particular. The Harsh Light of Day,
therefore, when viewed from a distance, is more or less a blueprint of what
will happen between Spike & Buffy in Season 6. The scene that best supports this theory occurs when Buffy is
shown waiting for Parker’s call. We go
back and forth between images of Buffy waiting for love, and images of Spike
tunneling for The Gem. He’s lying on
his back with a big jackhammer no less, tunneling, tunneling, tunneling. He gets covered in rubble. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s been
at it for five hours straight.
Eventually, he slides up, head first, through a round, narrow passage,
and finds The Gem he’s worked so hard to possess.
A song called
“It’s Over, It’s Under,” by Doll’s Head, plays in the background during this
Spike & Buffy montage. Listen to
these lyrics in particular: “Lend me your fire, so I can burn. Save all my ashes, for my return.” Trying to use each other’s fire to feel
alive again is exactly what Spike and Buffy will do in the future. And they both are slated for “returns” –
Buffy will return from the dead, and in his own way, with the acquisition of
his soul, Spike will do the same.
More
parallels are drawn between Spike & Buffy in this episode -
not only are they both attempting to get over their former loves, but they both
try to do so by choosing pretty, shallow substitutes, that, on the surface,
remind them of their formers. Harmony
babbles frequently without making much sense.
She’s very in touch with her feelings, but not one to use her
intellect. Parker is darkly handsome,
seems protective and loving (wants to walk Buffy home from The Bronze for her
own safety) and acts like the thoughtful intellectual - the type that might,
like Angel, read Sartre. Also like
Angel, Parker has an inner demon – he’s a bloodsucker, of sorts.
And Spike &
Buffy are both so very cruel to each other – Buffy taunts Spike about his
hook-up with the ditzy Harmony, wondering if he “lost a bet.” She deliberately tries to hurt him by
snidely asking him if Dru “dumped him again.”
And later, in much cruder language, Spike returns the favor by laughing
at her for letting that “sensitive lad,” Parker, “take a poke.” And just as Buffy did to him earlier, he
drives the knife in a little deeper by mentioning Angel’s abandonment of her,
claiming that Angel told him she wasn’t “worth another go.”
Despite the nasty
expression it takes, the palpable chemistry between them still exists – enough
so that Parker, after witnessing the way Spike & Buffy interact, asks Buffy
about him:
Parker: “Did . . . uh . . . you and he used to go
out?”
Buffy (after a
burst of hysterical laughter): “Um
no. No. We really, really didn’t”
Parker: “Good.”
I can understand
why Parker would be relieved. No doubt
he was worrying about two things: 1)
Just what act he was going to have to follow, and 2) Just what type of
trouble he might be getting himself into if he dumps Buffy after a one-night
stand.
But Buffy’s
reaction is even more interesting than Parker’s. Not only does she over-react to Parker’s question by protesting
too much, but after talking about whether or not she dated Spike, she
immediately removes her jacket. Uh, is
it hot in here Buffy? ‘Cause I thought
it was just me. Hmmm. Buffy is still pining over Angel, but
methinks she dost have eyes after all.
But whether or not
you believe that The Harsh Light of Day provides an overview of what’s
to come, it does mark Spike’s debut as a permanent Sunnydale resident. This is the beginning of the beginning for
Spike & Buffy. So let’s stay tuned,
because these two have some history to make.