Season 5
Episode 15
I WAS MADE TO LOVE YOU: Handcrafted
by Spring Summers –
- Love stories – Looking for Love – Being yourself – Choices and the real
thing – Love and the lack thereof – Clear-eyed and open-minded - Foreshadowing
– Spicy extras for James Marsters
fans -
We are all made to love one another. Sometimes, unexpectedly, a fellow human being
will say something that well and truly floors me. In one of those rarest of rare moments – i.e.
the wholly unguarded moment - something pops to the surface. And suddenly, I’m looking through someone’s
eyes and right into that bright, pure, and perfect center. In that instant, my mouth opens in a
semi-smile. My own eyes sparkle with the
knowing. I can actually feel my heart
fill with joy. I feel it, I know it: Look! There
you are! And I love you. I love
you. And it just feels so good.
Yes. We were all made to love one another. This episode is full of simple scenes of
love. It opens with a moment much like
the one I mentioned above. Xander (dressed
in a puffy-punching bag suit) is at his simple, straightforward, and Xanderrific best, and he lets it all hang out:
BUFFY: “I could laugh at his jokes! I mean, men like that, right, the joke
laughing at?”
XANDER: “Or maybe you could just be Buffy, he’ll see
your amazing heart, and fall in love with you.”
Ah, Xander. If Xander is Buffy’s heart, well then yes, Buffy’s
heart is amazing. But, I notice, it’s also
so well padded that it’s extremely inflexible. (XANDER: ”I’m not that bendy.”) And in
its insulated, rigid state, pain is the only way it knows it’s alive:
BUFFY: “I’m sorry, I guess
I got carried away! Are you OK?”
XANDER:
“I’m alive. I can tell ‘cause of the
pain.”
Hmmm. But
despite the padding and the pain, Xander can still love. He shows Buffy his own amazing heart, and
look how love just spills out of Buffy in return. How can she help it? We also watch Joyce and her girls love one
another; we hear love in Giles’ voice when he teases Xander about research; we sense
the love between Buffy & Giles as they laugh about Dawn, and we note the
love they share for Dawn. We hear the
love between Buffy & Xander again, at the end of the episode.
BUFFY: “I don’t need a guy right now. I need me.
I need to get comfortable being alone with Buffy.”
XANDER: “Well, I’ll say this,
she’s a pretty cool person to be alone with.”
Love,
love, love. The episode is full of mentions of spring,
when our thoughts turn to love. Our
robot’s name is April. And there are
flowers, flowers, everywhere – those blossoming, breathtaking, short-lived
symbols of love, often sacrificed in the name of love. (“Thank you for a lovely evening. See you soon?
Brian.”) We see both ends of the Spectrum
of Love in this episode – from the warm, spontaneous, selfless, authentic
Xander-Buffy love to the cold, pre-programmed, self-centered, artificial
Warren-April love. And we look at some of
the crazy stuff in between.
The episode starts out creating a parallel
between April and Buffy’s concurrent searches for love.
Despite the warnings about Sunnydale’s unusual
ambiance, both April and Buffy are dead set on giving the search for true love
a try. April searches relentlessly,
bound and determined to find
BUFFY
(earlier, to Xander): “Maybe I could
change. You know, I could work harder; I
could spend less time slaying. I could
laugh at his jokes!”
But when Buffy hears her own words echoed
by poor little April (APRIL, to
But it works both
ways: If you aren’t being you, (or in
April’s case, if there is no independent you) then you can neither truly give,
nor receive, love. There’s a difference
between what comes freely from the heart and what is given by a person who, for
whatever reason, has no choice in the matter.
Even
BUFFY
(about April): “Are you saying – are you
in love with her?”
From
the
Q: Who made me?
A: God made me.
Q: Why did God make you?
A: To know Him, to love Him, and
to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
April the robot,
and constant references to technical innovations (in contrast to more personal
or hands-on methods), provide a metaphor for that which is forced and artificially
constructed, as opposed to that which is freely chosen and legitimately present, in our emotional
lives. It emphasizes the underlying theme
about the essential role of honesty and genuine emotion when it comes to
accepting and providing love:
Interesting,
huh, that the soon-to-be-jilted Anya isn’t very good at telling the difference
between something that is artificially conceived, and something that was
actually woven by hand. But Xander sets her straight.
Anya isn’t alone
in having trouble telling the difference between sincerity and deception. People are charming each other all over the
place:
Charm –it’s just
one of the many tools people use to get inside and tease something out of us - from
a one-time invite to lasting love. Xander’s
comment about the Hellmouth’s negative atmosphere
suggests the importance of the conditions of conception. You’re charmed by someone whose genuine
emotions are shining through? You may
find true love. You’re charmed by a
phony with an agenda? You may be
inviting a vampire into your home.
Love is a real,
hands-on type of risk. It’s messy, with
no fast or sure return. If you’re
looking for someone who will love you for yourself, and for no other reason
than because they truly want to, then you have to give up the security which
comes from going after the sure thing.
Like Anya with her on line investing, you have to be willing to take a
risk. Unlike Anya, you’re won’t find
yourself making that easy, tech-based money.
ANYA
(about letting Xander dance with Buffy):
“I’m expecting a big karmic reward any second now.”
In the real world,
“karmic reward” doesn’t come “any second now.”
Rewards come slowly, if ever. But
we are all drawn to each other, to love, like parched nomads to an oasis. Even if we have to walk through the dark streets
of Hellmouth Central at
Though I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels
But have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
And though I have
the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries
And all knowledge,
and though I have all faith,
So that I could
remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
And though I give
my body to be burned,
But have not love,
it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long
and is kind.
Love does not envy.
Love does not
parade itself, is not puffed up;
Does not behave
rudely, does not seek its own,
Is not provoked,
thinks no evil;
Does not rejoice
in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
Bears all things,
believes all things,
Hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never fails.
Be it with sincerity or snake oil,
with love or with animosity, we impact one another, we shape one another. We let each other into our lives; we endeavor
to be bendy enough to adjust to changes in ourselves and others (to the idea of
Lutherans, even.) For better or worse, we
invite others in - because without love, life profits us nothing. With
Our vulnerabilities to each other, and the related universal need for
love, are also noted in the parallels drawn between Spike and April, as Spike’s
humiliation at the hands of Buffy and the Scoobies is
juxtaposed against April’s similar experiences with an angry (sleepy!) man, the
boys who make fun of her, and Warren.
Spike, a vampire with a well-earned reputation for cruelty and
heartlessness, and April, a ruthlessly single-minded robot, both seem lonely
and hurt by their respective rejections.
There is a poignancy to their scenes; even The
Evil Dead Guy and The Soulless Machine need love. And regardless of how justified their
respective rejections may be, they seem negatively
impacted by the lack of love they encounter:
April becomes more and more desperate and eventually tries to kill
Buffy; Spike, in a desperate rage, turns to manufacturing.
If you want to truly love and be loved,
you must be willing to see, and to be seen, clearly - warts and all. Buffy can’t make herself into someone Ben will
love, and
·
You
can’t artificially turn yourself into the perfect mate for someone else, and
you can’t force someone else into being the perfect mate for you.
·
You
can’t blind another to your faults, or blind yourself to theirs.
Either way, whether
you are
Joyce has the
first date jitters and the normal accompanying desire to put her best foot
forward. But Joyce is simply
acknowledging a genuine attraction to Brian, and expressing a natural hope that
initial giddy feelings are pointing to something real. The relationship is new and fragile; she wants
to give it a chance to flower. But note that
she is hoping to get to know Brian better:
JOYCE: “Or maybe a movie isn’t a good idea at all,
because, well, you know, you can’t talk during, and then, you know, what’s the
point of any of it?”
In contrast to
Buffy’s and April’s goal, Joyce’s goal is to find out if she and Brian are
right for each other, not to persuade him, by whatever means necessary, that
she’s the gal for him.
The lesson about
the need for a lucid, open-minded approach to life and love is seen in the
images of how charm can obscure the truth, and in the clear-eyed way Buffy and the
Scoobies quickly deduce April’s actual nature. It is also delivered by a direct audience
participation method. Episode writer
Jane E. mentions, in her DVD commentary, that the episode has many misleads -
and it does:
Uh - on that last
one? Talk about your
misleads. I thought this episode
was about love. But it turns out to be
about death, about flowers cut down in their prime, about people slowing to
stop as if they were nothing but used equipment. Listen to
April’s Creator
lets her batteries run down, by design.
And so does ours. And so does
Joyce’s. And speaking of Joss, I’m
speechless here. I let him charm his way
into my home, but now look - look at what he’s done to me. I should have been paying closer
attention. Because in this episode, the
problem is not just that I let myself be sidetracked over and over by misleading
cues. It’s also a matter of letting the
surface signs distract me from noticing the actual revelations:
There’s some longer term foreshadowing in
the episode as well. The Warren-April-Katrina dynamics are meant
to parallel Buffy’s relationships, but the lines being drawn crisscross to
create quite a maze. Bear with me as I
try to navigate it, below:
ANYA: “Why
would anyone do that if they could have a real live person?”
BUFFY: “Oh,
come on. The guy’s just a big wedge of sleaze, don’t make excuses for him.”
This talk
foreshadows the upcoming Buffybot incident. It also speaks to Buffy and Riley’s
relationship, as Buffy seems to be realizing that she treated Riley a bit like
This also foreshadows the Buffybot
for Spike, and reminds us of Buffy’s attitude toward Riley. Also, here (and in their comparable jealous
attitudes toward their loved one), a parallel is being drawn between Katrina
and Spike, foreshadowing the Season 6 Spike & Buffy relationship. Who do we know who is always giving Buffy a
hard time, and is “real unpredictable?”
·
Buffy and Katrina are also being compared:
BUFFY (to Spike):
“Get away from me!”
KATRINA (to
Both women are dealing with men who have exhibited
questionable morality and outright misogyny.
In Season 6, we’ll see Buffy/Katrina, and Buffy/Warren, AND
Spike/Katrina, and Spike/Warren, parallels drawn again, in Dead Things. In this ep, and in that one, it’s unclear: Is Spike being compared to
APRIL: “But - I can be whatever you want. I love you. I’ll do whatever you want. Would you like a
neck rub?”
Some of the wording here is nearly exact, and it
foreshadows the way Buffy will use Spike in Season 6. But there’s a notable and deliberate
difference in the wording - Buffy tells Spike she can’t love him, but she never
adds, “I don’t love you.” And the
statements aren’t the same, they’re the difference between a diabetic saying “I
can’t eat cake,” and saying “I don’t eat cake.”
But then, Buffy & Spike aren’t really Warren & April – again, it’s
all much murkier and mutual, and they’re not going to end up the same way.
APRIL: “It’s getting dark. It’s so early to be dark. What if he comes back,
and he can’t find me in the dark?”
BUFFY: “I’m
here. I’ll make sure he finds you.”
APRIL: “Maybe
this is a girlfriend test. If I wait
here patiently this time, he’ll come back.”
BUFFY: “I’m
sure he will. And he’ll tell you how
sorry he is. You know, he told me how
proud he was of you, and how impressed he was with how much you loved him and
how you tried to help him. He didn’t
mean to hurt you.”
April is afraid;
she worries that Love won’t be able to find her, in the darkness. In terms of truly facing and accepting her Slayerhood, i.e. her own darkness, Buffy is scared of the
very same thing: loosing her illusions,
loosing her Angel, loosing what she sees as her one and only true love. But don’t worry, Buffy. Spike can hear the tiniest of sighs, issuing
from the darkest of coal bins. And
love? Love never fails.
Spicy Extras for James Marsters fans:
***
Discuss this
analysis: http://scubiefan.proboards18.com/index.cgi?board=analyses
Return to the
Spikecentricity listing: http://www.soulfulspike.com/reviews.htm
Return to the
Soulful Spike Society homepage: http://www.soulfulspike.com/indexholder.htm
Join the S’cubie
General Gabbery: http://scubiefan.proboards18.com/index.cgi