Season 5
Episode 4
OUT OF MY MIND: A penny for your thoughts
By Spring Summers –
14-Feb-04
-The Eye in The Sky – More self
definition – Substitutes – Identifying
reality – Testing and hard work – Buffy & Riley – Buffy & Spike
– Spicy extras for James Marsters fans -
Listen in on Spike’s dream, at the end of
this episode:
BUFFY
(panting with desire): “Spike, I want
you.”
SPIKE
(also panting): “Buffy, I love you. God, I love you so much”
Then listen to him
as he wakes up from the dream:
SPIKE
(in true horror): “Oh, God no. Please, no.”
What’s that? Is that our Spike, saying a prayer? I hate to say it, Spikey, but . . . I think
those particular communication lines have been down for quite awhile. Still, I guess you never know when The Big Guy
might tune in. He’s everywhere, after
all. At least that’s what my Baltimore Catechism
says.
As Dawn says about
the Government: “If they’re really
spying on you all the time, just say something so you know they’ll hear you.” Or as a concerned doctor says to Riley about
agreeing to hospitalization: “I’d get on
my knees and beg you if I thought I could change your mind.” So pray away, Vampire. The soul you save may be your own.
I couldn’t help
thinking of The Almighty as I watched the episode. Maybe it was that reference to a Power that
listens in (and tries to make you go crazy by putting itching powder in your
beard!), or the doctor mentioning getting on her knees. Or maybe it was Graham’s introduction of
Agents Goodman and Brown to Riley – an unsubtle reference to Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, a
short story about a Puritan who fails a test of his faith. Or it could have been Buffy, talking about
“real martyrs” to
But most likely, it
was because the word “God” was used eleven times in this episode (as opposed to
three times in Episode 1, three times in Episode 2, and two times in Episode 3). That’s an average of once every 4.5 minutes
or so, isn’t it? And I know, of course,
that the godly Glorificus is on her way.
So there’s God, and
there’s The Government - but there’s also Buffy. She’s The Law, The Eye in The Sky, to Spike (“Everywhere
I turn, she’s there!”). And listen to
this:
XANDER
(to Buffy, about a straw man in her new workout room): “I made the dummy. The thing that you hit, that doesn’t hit
back.”
That’s sweet of
you Xander, but you shouldn’t have. I
think Buffy already has one of those.
And take a good look
at that opening shot: Buffy, peering
down at the cemetery (Spike’s world) from above – she’s the mistress of all she
surveys. She is watching, waiting. She sees all; she hears the smallest movement
in the ground. And she leaps - ready, at
a moment’s notice, to exact justice.
“Buffy,
I love you. God, I love you so
much.”
What’s that again,
Spike? Who do you love? And why?
What does Buffy represent to you, exactly? And what are you after, really? What’s happening inside? Is redemption accessible to such a cruelly prodigal
son? Is there even enough mercy, in the
entire Universe?
I mentioned God
and The Government and Buffy, but we also get a look at Mothers in this episode,
as figures of authority and power in our lives.
As children, we need our Mothers.
They are God and The Government and The Slayer in our little worlds. They are the dispensers of justice and mercy
and love. We idolize and idealize them,
we love them blindly, and we have faith and absolute trust in them, whether
they deserve it or not, whether we want to or not. We depend on them, whether they are
dependable or not. They are people who
can - positively or negatively - impact us profoundly:
·
BEN
(about Joyce): “It really doesn’t look
like anything too serious.” BUFFY: “Oh, thank God. I was freaking out.” Buffy
needs Mom. She really, really needs Mom.
·
GRAHAM
(to Riley): “Walsh pumped all those chemicals and crap into us. You got more than anyone. She messed us up bad.” Riley’s
trust in mother-figure Walsh has led to a literally life-threatening situation.
There was “poison in his aspirin” – as
there was in that aspirin Dawn claims the CIA tried to give Fidel Castro.
·
And
listen very carefully to Spike here – he’s talking to Harmony about Buffy
(on the surface of it) but he has just picked up a tombstone that is engraved:
“MAMA, 1881.” Hmmmm.
And he has smashed it smithereens against a larger stone:
“You
don’t understand. I can’t get rid of
her. She’s everywhere. She’s haunting me, Harmony!”
Really, William? Haunting you?
Are you still talking about Buffy?
Or is it some tiny remnant of all the love, that Mama once pumped into
you, that now gives your chipped, soulless and evil self no peace? That drives you reflexively toward salvation?
Or is all this about those nasty bits Mama
once said to you that messed you up bad? Bit of both?
As our Season-Fivers continue to struggle
with defining themselves, they must deal with outside pressures and
powers - and with whatever has been pumped into them, or shoved inside their
brains or hearts, by family, friends, and foes, in the past. And struggle they do. The “establishing an identity” theme
continues in this episode, as our characters make multiple references to “home”
– i.e., a place to belong, the place where you are meant to be:
Good advice, Buffy. And in telling Dr Overheiser that he’ll be
“up and killing again” once the chip is out, Spike is trying desperately to go
back to a familiar home - to Evil.
Little does he know that’s not where home really is for him, anymore.
Like Spike, Riley has been feeling
homeless. Graham will tell him, in so
many words, that home is where you find your true purpose. It’s interesting to note that Willow mentions
that Riley once felt at home in the ruins of Buffy’s high school (living in the
scorched and paltry remainders of her devastated past), and to note that this
time, he chooses to go to The Initiative caves instead. This also brings to mind what Spike calls
Riley in this episode: “The enormous
hall monitor.” Brilliant. With Buffy, Riley is doing just that: Standing, waiting out in the hallway, not
getting inside her heart.
Listen:
Joyce is going home, before too long.
Mama - 2001
There are also continual references not
just to home, but also to territory and what people own
or borrow – people are staking their claims (RILEY: “This is my deal Buffy, just back-off”),
drawing the lines that uniquely define and separate them from others.
When it comes to
self-image and the establishment of the self, we also have continuing
references to the importance of work and of being valued by others. For example, Buffy tells Riley that she’s
doing “her job,” Spike kills demons because he wants to do something more
useful than “knitting cunning sweater sets,” Giles is setting up his shop, Xander
is proud of his carpentry, and Graham obviously strikes a nerve with Riley when
he mentions Riley’s need to have a mission (rather than to be “mission’s true
love,” – and of course, we know Riley doesn’t think he’s even that).
It’s important to
eventually find your true home, and your true mission, and an identity that is
uniquely your own – not one that’s borrowed, like knitting needles or a
stethoscope or an Initiative doctor. You
must find out who you are, by definition:
·
Harmony
tells Spike that vampires are unholy, by definition.
·
·
If
it’s not smaller than a breadbox, and it’s not larger than a breadbox, then it
can’t be anything other than a sodding breadbox, now, can it? Draw
the lines that define.
Once you know who
you are, then you must be who you are, in order to be accepted for
yourself. You must find that true home,
because you know how it can be, if you’re the substitute in someone else’s home:
GILES: “No, too rich for my blood . . . they’re salamander
eyes . . .really equally effective, though.
It’s just a matter of overcoming snobberies.”
Or:
DAWN:
“Well, wouldn’t you? Every kid tries to make the substitute
cry. It’s like a rite of passage.”
JOYCE: “I certainly would not. Being a substitute is an extremely difficult
job.” Just ask Riley. Or Harmony.
References to
substitutes are frequent in this episode:
Riley isn’t a benchwarmer, he made the squad.
·
The
dummy is a Spike substitute.
·
Harmony
is a Buffy-substitute.
·
Harmony
is also a Spike-substitute, providing the muscle that his chip won’t allow him
to provide.
·
Spike
is a Harmony-substitute, providing the brainpower (“can you help with the
thinking?”) that she can’t seem to muster.
·
Riley
is, of course, a substitute for Ang - wait.
Hold the phone. And put that
earpiece right up to your ear. This time,
tune in on BUFFY as she speaks to Riley:
“Do you think I spent the last year with you because you had
superpowers? If that’s what I wanted,
I’d be dating Spike.” Spike?? No kidding? Well, you’re confusing me now, Buffster.
Stop,
look, and listen. As we watch people try to determine what’s
real, we note that the old road-crossing ditty is just the ticket: Stop, look, and listen. Get out the stethoscope. Tap the phones. (XANDER:
“Yes, blueprints not a bad idea.
That, and getting straight ‘measure twice, cut once.’ You know, for the longest time, I had it
backwards. Messy!”).
There
are many, many, references and images relating to the need to look and listen carefully. Spike “must have missed the memo.” Harmony smokes because she didn’t “see the
sign.” And there’s Spike, falling into
an empty grave because he’s not paying attention. I’ll let you look and listen for the rest.
Stop,
look, and listen: That’s good advice for
our characters – because they spend much of this episode, like Joyce’s doctors,
poking and prodding and testing for what’s real. The words “real” and “really” are used
continuously, as both the characters and the viewers try discern dreams from
reality. Harmony tells Spike that she
has a “real” emergency, but we can see she is wrong about that. Buffy believes Riley is in “real” danger, even
though Riley doesn’t agree. And we can
see that Buffy is right. Spike claims
that Buffy has a particular interest in him, he’s her “pet project,” but . . .
is he right, or wrong?
Then
we come to that startling ending. Is it
a dream, or is it reality? We know only
if we’ve picked up the clues. Look
carefully: Spike has no bandage on his
head, or any trace of surgery. Buffy
leaves the door to the crypt open, and sunlight streams in, but Spike is
unconcerned and seems to stand in the haze of sunlight it provides. What a dreamer.
There
are scenes of people playing games, and references to games and puzzles and
contests and competition – it’s all part of defining and knowing and
understanding yourself, others, and your surroundings. Riley wants to feel as strong as Buffy; he
wants to test himself against her.
Harmony wants to be as evil as Spike – she’s even taken up smoking.
You see it, you hear it, you touch it,
you test it in various ways, you compare it to what you know, you process it
all, and you decide what it is. And you
decide whether it is desirable, whether it can meet your needs, or not. You decide whether to use it, or not - and if
so, how. Spike, after giving Harmony the
most predatory once-over imaginable, decides her desperation can be used to meet
his need for sex. He tests out Dr
Overheiser, and quickly realizes he can successfully use the doc’s survival
instinct to coerce him into trying to remove the chip.
Reality – the
people and things in it - will test you and your resolve. If you don’t pass the test, you die miserably,
like Young Goodman Brown. Goodman Brown,
when he learns about the evil inside his aptly-named wife Faith, and inside his
fellow townspeople, looses all faith in God – he becomes, for the rest of his
days a “ stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate
man . . .” His death is described as
follows: “And when he had lived long,
and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman,
and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a
few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was
gloom.”
Sort your dreams
from reality. Then accept reality – not
because you see yourself as powerless, but because you realize you must know
the truth before you can effectively impact it.
As Buffy says to
Tara tries to tell
JOYCE (to
Dawn): “You want the cereal prize, but
you don’t want the cereal. You are
growing up.”
Dawn is learning
that it is possible to cheat your way to a prize. What she hasn’t noticed yet, is that along
with the prize, her method has also left her with an empty box, and wasted
cereal that has provided her with no nutrition whatsoever.
So real life is
slow and hard, but in truth, you can’t satisfactorily get to the prize any
other way. When you are blind to the
truth, either willfully or inadvertently - you lose (note the references to
blindness and glasses and cataracts). When
you don’t do the work, when you are motivated by hatred or selfishness instead
of love, when you don’t take the risks, when you haven’t tested yourself enough
- you don’t get the prize. Instead of
your chip, you find a penny in the jar. You
get sent home, for your tumor to grow larger.
You nearly die, because you won’t believe your heart is giving out. You get desperate, and find yourself
providing recreational sex to a randy Landlord in a moldy crypt (how many
OK. Turn
up the hearing aid, let’s go again, this time tuning
in on Buffy & Riley:
BUFFY
(to Riley): Nobody has ever known me the
way you do. I’ve opened up to you in
ways that I’ve never opened up to . . .
God, you’re just sitting back there thinking that none of this means anything
to me.”
Buffy’s words are
true:
There are many,
many images and references to the heart and the brain in this episode,
emphasizing the schism that can exist between the two. Riley wants both; he wants Buffy for her mind
and her heart. As he told her last week,
he wants it all. But Buffy has never
given it all, to anyone. She gave
one side to Angel, and another to Riley.
And her ravaged heart remains inaccessible to Riley. (RILEY:
“My heart’s different than yours.”).
What’s the answer
for Buffy, then? Let’s eavesdrop again:
BUFFY: “This stops now. I’m taking you to the doctor.”
RILEY: “The one from the government, you mean? Like the ones who did this to me in the first
place?”
BUFFY: “He’s the only one who understands what’s
wrong with you. He’s the only one who
can help!”
So Buffy’s suggesting that when you’ve got
heart problems, you need to find someone who is “like the
one” who messed with your heart in the first place. Because that someone would be the only one
who could understand, and be the only one who could help. Only unlike the one who hurt your
heart, he’ll heal your heart. OK,
Buffy. Gotchya.
HARMONY: “Didn’t you hear? I’m totally her arch-nemesis!”
SPIKE: “Is that right. I must’ve missed the memo.”
HARMONY: “There was a mem-? Spike! Oh my God!
This is like a real emergency!
I need a hideout so bad!”
But it is not a real
emergency. So what is real in the
Buffyverse to date? I’d say the real potential
for in-the-heart-AND-mind (rather than in-the-hallway, or in-the-clouds) love,
is with Buffy & Spike, not Buffy & Riley. Contrast the way Buffy & Spike talk to
each other, with the way they talk to Riley and Harmony, respectively. As nasty as it is, Buffy & Spike are absolutely
real and upfront with each other. In the
opening scene, Buffy tells Spike he’s “in the way,” in no uncertain terms. We can see she feels the same way about
Riley, but she won’t tell him so.
And Spike’s not
one for the hallway or the clouds. He’ll
slip into Buffy’s triple-locked room of a heart, even if those walls have to
tumble down, even if it’s a steep uphill climb from the blackest of pits. Once he starts something, I understand, he
doesn’t stop.
So the real
connection isn’t Buffy & Riley. It’s
Buffy & Spike.
And the real
emergency isn’t Harmony. It’s Joyce.
Spicy extras for James Marsters fans