Season 5
Episode 18
INTERVENTION: The Price is Pain
by Spring Summers –
13-FEB-2005
- Value – All you need is love – Actions speak for themselves – Self-knowledge
– Spike – Season 6 foreshadowing
– Xander – Angel – The serpent in the garden – Spicy
extras for James Marsters fans –
S’cubies?
Come on down! It’s time to play The Price Is Right!! OK. Let’s see what’s behind that first
curtain. Oooooh! Ahhhhh!
Look at that pretty vampire, all hung up on display. But you can’t even brain-suck a vampire, you
know. So is he completely useless? Or is he precious? You be the judge! How much would you say he’s worth? Has he got any value, do you suppose? Is he a redeemable kinda coupon, or should we
just give him a dusty ending, right here and now? Guess right – and there just might be gifts
and prizes in it for you. Guess wrong –
and well - thanks for playing, try again.
The mention of Bob
Barker as The Key, and the constant mention of ratings, good vs. bad,
usefulness, helpfulness, and judges, clue us off on this episode: It’s about value. No, it’s not about figuring out how to spend
not your finite stack of dollars. It’s about understanding how to best expend
your boundless supply of love, in your finite supply of time:
THE
SLAYER GUIDE (to Buffy): “You are full
of love. You love with all your
soul. It’s brighter than the fire. Blinding.
That’s why you pull away from it.”
Some mentions of
value:
Some mentions of
judging, of discerning good from bad:
Some mentions of
love:
Love, love, love, love. It’s a necessity – all you need is love,
luv. Love is all you need:
There are two
mentions of life’s necessities – one from Buffy, and one from Spike - as Buffy
teases Giles about the fact that he didn’t bring her either food or water, and
Spike needs a drink of water from Glory before he’ll tell her where The Key
is. Love – it’s nutrition for the
heart. You must love, give, forgive,
risk the pain (i.e., pay the price).
That way, no one will find your starved and dried up little heart in the
desert two weeks later. OK, so it takes
more than two weeks to completely wither a heart. But deny your heart love for long enough, and
it’ll happen.
How do you recognize genuine love? How
do you know when to be open to receiving it and giving it? When to risk the pain? The dialogue in Intervention is strongly peppered with the word, and forms of the
word, “do.” Here are some examples among
many (many, many, many):
The message is
this: You can recognize love – whom you
love, who loves you – in your own actions, and in the actions of others. People can say anything, believe anything,
about others and about themselves. But
the truth is in what they do and in what they don’t do:
The truth can be
beneath the surface, difficult to access and lurking in our murky subconscious
(note the many instances of sleeping and waking and unconsciousness). But if you look at the actions of the persons
involved, you will see what is important to them; you will see who they
are.
I also note the
way constancy – being there (or not) for others – is being presented as a
measure of love (or of a lack thereof):
People are struggling to see clearly in
their constantly changing environments, where appearances can be deceiving (as
Glory mentions). There are several
mentions of what’s “real.” Buffy is not
really Buffy, and though it sure looked as if he was, Spike is not The Key. The
Scoobies knew immediately that April was a robot, why didn’t they know that The
Buffybot was a robot? Because she looked
like Buffy, that’s why. They were
deceived by her appearance and the expectations associated with that
appearance.
People are
struggling not only to clearly see and correctly judge others, but also to
clearly see and define themselves:
Spike and Buffy
take center stage in this episode on the self-knowledge quest. Buffy goes to the desert hoping The Slayer
Guide will reassure her that she’s not getting too hard because of the killing;
Spike uses The Buffybot to reassure himself that he’s not going too soft
because of the lack of killing. Over and
over, he makes the ‘bot profess her certainty that he’s The Big Bad. The BIG bad!!
As viewers, we’re getting the cleanest and
clearest view of Spike that we’ve ever had.
Through the actions of the Buffybot, we find out how he sees others and
what is important to him about Buffy:
The Buffybot is
not just a more pleasant Buffy, she’s also an incarnation of Spike’s own
long-lost innocence and goodness and William.
She’s everything he’s longing for.
But despite all the evidence to the contrary, Spike, as clueless to his
unconscious motivation as ever, continues to want to cling to his Big Bad
persona. It’s all he knows; he’s a
soulless vampire, what else is open to him?
It’s amusing and touching and pathetic and frustrating and hopeful and
hopeless. Spike doesn’t begin to
understand, he can’t begin to see, what we can see: At his core - allowed to be himself, if he
could just get past that demon and down to it, somehow - Dawn is badder than he
is.
Through Spike’s
actions with the Buffybot, we find out even more about Spike. We see that what he wants most is a
non-judgmental companion with whom he can be himself. He wants to be able to be show his gentle side
(notice how gently he “bites” the ‘bot’s neck) yet still be revered as The Big
Bad. He wants to be able to show his
callous side (notice how he smokes while the ‘bot is apparently, uh . . .
accessing the floppy drive) yet still be loved absolutely.
The Buffybot is
made not to notice the contradictions.
Spike’s conscious mind, and Buffy’s conscious mind, can’t really make
sense of it all, either, at this point.
But Spike is not a robot, and neither is Buffy. Eventually, they will notice the contradictions. And many surprising (and pleasant, and no so
pleasant) realities about their relationship and their feelings and their
desires and their underlying motives will come smashing through.
This episode foreshadows Season 6 in
several ways. Buffy is a robot and her friends don’t even
notice. Dawn steals earrings. We cut from scenes of Buffy worrying about
her lack of feelings and sitting by a fire in the cold desert night, to scenes
of Spike keeping her loving side all warm and satisfied and alive with
sex. And though Spike is still intent,
at the beginning of this episode, on convincing himself he’s as evil as he ever
was, he actually gets further in touch with his good side. We even watch him drop to his knees in front
of the elevator and say “Oh, God.” Intervention, indeed.
The ep also
projects the future partly by harkening back to the foreshadowy Season 4
episode, Restless – in the appearance
of The First Slayer in the desert, and in Anya’s suggestion that they should
slap Buffy. Anya makes a similar comment
in Xander’s Restless dream. But most noticeably to me, some scenes in
this episode remind me of this scene in Xander’s dream:
SPIKE
(to Xander, while on a swing set with Giles): “Giles here is gonna teach me to
be a Watcher. Says I got the stuff.”
Intervention features Giles temporarily transferring
his guardianship of Buffy to a big cat.
Later, Giles notes that Spike is apparently so dismissive of Giles’
presence in Buffy’s life that he “didn’t even bother to program my name
properly.”
BUFFYBOT: “I
really think we should be listening to the other Buffy, Guy-els. She’s very smart and she’s gonna help us save
Spike.”
GILES: “Guy-els? Spike didn’t even bother to
program my name properly.”
BUFFY: “Listen, skirt girl, we are not going to
save him. We’re going to kill him. He knows who The Key is, and there’s no way
he’s not telling Glory.”
BUFFYBOT: “You’re right. He’s evil. But you should see him naked. I mean really.”
BUFFY: “Okay, guys, split up and spread out. Check
the priciest-looking places first. Xander, you come with me.
Hmmm. I wonder what’s got Buffy so flustered she
doesn’t even manage to say Giles’ name properly?
As it did in
Xander’s dream, the Giles-Buffy-Spike
interaction in Intervention foreshadows
Giles’ upcoming departure, and Spike’s Season 6 role as her de-facto Watcher.
And speaking of Xander – how about his sympathy for Spike in this
episode? But it’s really no surprise
that Xander can relate:
BUFFYBOT:
“How is your money?”
ANYA: “Fine. Thank you for asking.”
BUFFYBOT: “Isn’t it a beautiful night for killing evil
things?”
XANDER: “I guess.”
ANYA: “You’re back very early.”
XANDER: “Yeah, how was the whole vision-quest
experience?”
BUFFYBOT: “I don’t understand that question. But thank
you for asking.”
The Buffybot and
Anya both use the phrase “Thank you for asking” within a minute of each other,
and several other parallels are drawn throughout the ep. Anya protects Xander during the vamp fight, while
the Buffybot protects Spike. The
Buffybot sits downstairs in the crypt waiting for Spike, while Anya sits up
waiting for Xander. So Xander
understands Spike. He isn’t nearly so
horrified by the Buffybot’s existence as Buffy is – and we know why. Xander understands why weird love is better
than no love at all. He understands the
need for a Buffy substitute. He
understands what it’s like to get thrashed for the love of Buffy, with no
reciprocal Buffy-love in sight. He’s in
a much different place in Season 6, when his anger and guilt and insecurities
overwhelm him. But here, in this
episode, he’s yet to knock himself unconscious; he’s yet to harrow the depths
of his own self-loathing. He not only
manages to sympathize with Spike, but with Buffy:
XANDER:
“No one is judging you. It’s understandable.
Spike is strong and mysterious and sort of compact but well muscled.”
BUFFY: “I am not having sex with Spike! But I’m starting to think that you might be.”
Hee. I confess, I just had to quote that, ‘cause
it’s so funny. I don’t really have any
more to say about it. Except- it does
fit in with the repeated theme that a focus on appearances can lead you astray
(note how Spike manages to escape Glory by goading her about her appearance.)
We’re deliberately reminded of Angel in this episode, several times:
Why all the Angel
reminders? Because we’re being told that
Buffy’s walled-off heart isn’t about her Slayerhood so much as it is about her
fear of love and the always accompanying pain, and of being hurt again. (“Love is pain and The Slayer forges strength
from pain.”) Because we’re being told
that The Key for Buffy is not in taking a break from slaying, but in unlocking
her heart. Because we’re being told that
Spike is The Key after all; that he will be intervening. And because we’re being told that Buffy is at
it again: She is beginning a love affair
with a vampire. Death is her gift –
she’ll be giving the gift of death at the end of Season 5, and accepting the
gift of death at the end of Season 7.
Death is her gift and Spike is Death and Death is Spike and every Slayer
has a Death wish.
At the end of Intervention,
having learned the Spike did not betray Dawn despite the torture, a grateful
Buffy gives Spike a kiss. It’s a bit of
a lingering kiss, on the lips. Why not
give him a light hug? Or a small kiss on
the cheek, say, coupled with one of her glowy, grateful looks? But no.
She opts for a real first kiss, right on the smackers. And you know what I think? I think Buffy sees that face, and that bod,
still sexy after all those blows, and she has an opportunity that she can’t
resist. She steals herself a little
something. Yep. She pockets herself a little kiss, while no
one is looking. The price, after all, is
right.
It’s no
coincidence that the episode that features Dawn’s first “shoplifting” incident,
also features Buffy & Spike’s first kiss.
Both Dawn and Buffy are attempting to feel better, and to mitigate loss,
to find a way to succor themselves in their newly harsh and motherless
world. Their sneaky MOs will become full-blown,
and eventually discovered, in Season 6.
Notice how we are reminded of The Snake-Monster, the monster that Buffy
killed before he could tell Glory that Dawn was The Key. She killed that Snake after straddling it and
going on quite a wild ride, before she pummeled it extra-extra-dead.
So, upon
contemplation, I think I have an answer to Glory’s riddle:
Q: How is a vampire who won’t talk (i.e., Spike)
like an apple?
A: Forbidden fruit, that’s how. Temptation from
the Big Bad Snake, that’s how. Take that
first, sweet and juicy bite - and you’re a goner.
Spicy extras for James Marsters fans:
***
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