Season 5
Episode 22
THE GIFT: Stayin’ alive
by Spring Summers –
- It’s always gotta be blood – The
circle of life – Buffy – Spike
– Spicy extras for James Marsters fans -
DAWN:
“Buffy, it hurts.”
BUFFY:
“I got it. Come here. You’re
gonna be okay.”
DAWN:
“Buffy, it’s started.”
Loosen up like Jell-O and imagine this: You
are gazing down at the bare feet of your younger, 14 year old sister. She is wearing a dress. Blood begins to drip slowly on to her
feet. You look up at her. She looks a little frightened and she is
clutching her lower abdomen. “It hurts,”
she says. “You’re gonna be OK,” you
say. “It’s started!” she replies, still
sounding a little panicked.
So – what would you
say is going on here? Uh-huh. Little Sis
has gotten The Gift. “The Gift” is a
euphemism for menstruation in some places and cultures – did you know that? Yeah.
It’s The Big Day. Her life will
never be the same; true childhood is over, dead. Boys will start sniffing around, and she’ll
start giving them the tender eye. It had
to happen. The faster it all happens,
the better it is for our sorry species:
GLORY
(to Dawn): “Oh no, sweetie baby. I’m talking about the ritual. ’Cause you know I bleed you, the portals
open, but once you die they close. The faster you die, the better for your
sorry species.”
Got to get that
energy poured right down into the right spot at the right time, you know?
GILES: “It needed to be channeled, poured into a
specific place at a specific time. The
energy would flow into that spot, the walls between the dimensions break down. It stops, the energy’s used up, the walls
come back up.”
Joss plays with
words all the way through this episode; it’s a jumble. I don’t even know where
to start. But you gotta start, I
gotta start, all God’s Girls gotta start.
So, ouch, but here I go:
ANYA: “No, you see, usually when there’s an
apocalypse, I skedaddle. But now I love you so much that instead I have
inappropriately timed sex and try to think of ways to fight a god.”
So sex can be
timed appropriately, huh? I seem to
remember hearing something about that, back in Catholic school. There are many references to timing and
opportunity in this episode. A few
examples:
·
XANDER: “Smart girls are so hot!”
·
GILES
(to Buffy): “If we go in too early and
she takes us out, no chance of getting her to miss her window.”
The word “bitch”
is used several times in the dialogue:
Bitch – a word
redolent of feminine fertility. Not that
bitchiness has anything to do with anything.
And the word “hard” is repeated here:
And just as he did
in Family, Joss is playing around
with the word “come”:
XANDER
(to Anya, after sex): “So, are you more
relaxed? I mean, it sounded like you, uh
– arrived. Arrived. See there? We said “arrived instead of “came.” That’s ‘cause we’re saving the word “come” to
slip in here and there – some examples:
·
BUFFY: “Spike, shut your mouth, come with me.”
·
BUFFY:
“Come in, Spike.”
·
BUFFY:
“I’ll kill anyone who comes near Dawn.”
·
SPIKE:
“You don’t come near the girl, Doc.”
·
BUFFY (to
Ben): “She never, ever comes near me and mine again.”
So am I saying that The Gift, the heart wrenching episode in which our
beloved Buffster hits the pavement, is nothing more than a dramatization of
Dawn’s first visit from Aunt Flo, an hour-long metaphor for her transformation
into a nice ripe girl? Is the impending
release of all manner of hell-on-earth nothing more than snide commentary on
menstrual discomfort? Mai non, mon
petite cherries. I’m not suggesting that
the message is that PMS can cause every living creature, in this and every
other dimension imaginable, to suffer unbearable torment and death. This episode is all about the issue we’ve
been touching on all Season: The ebb and
flow of life; the circle of life; death-birth-death-birth . . . . life, life,
life – rebirth, a sun that never fails to come up, bloody new life beginning
atop the dry and buried bones of our mothers, a dewy new day arising from the
pale ashes of an old one. It’s about The
Gift: The Gift of Death, and The Gift of
Life – the sacrifices of those who came before us. Like Buffy atop the tower, they all – we all
- ultimately give The Gift of Death so that others might have Life.
In Forever:
ANYA
(about Joyce’s death): “Well she got me
thinking, about how people die all the time and how they get born too. And how you kinda need one so that you can
have the other.”
It’s about
fertility: Did you know Dagon, of the
Dagon Sphere, was a fertility God? Glory
is a symbol of absolute selfishness: She
exists only for herself. She is all
about her own needs. She intends to live
forever, and she places no value on the lives of others, or on life in
general. She is repelled by the Dagon
Sphere, and she is helpless against – a victim of, a slave to - the Troll’s
hammer (the instrument of the absolutely self-centered id).
Do you remember
the reference to fertility in The
Replacement? Giles hits Toth with
the fertility statue. And listen to
Anya, again, in Forever:
ANYA: “Life could come out of our love and our
smooshing and that's beautiful. It all
makes me feel we're a part of something bigger. Like I'm more awake somehow.”
And listen also to
this, from this episode:
ANYA: “Let’s think outside the box!”
SPIKE: “Why don’t you go think outside the
bleeding box?”
The bleeding box, huh? Well, yeah.
It’s really no wonder that Spike is disdainful of the idea that anyone
could possibly think clearly outside of a bleeding box. But we’re really not talking about dinner,
here. And Anya does manage to
think outside the bleeding box. Whaddaya
know. Smart girls are so hot!
Joss, you make my
stomach cramp:
BUFFY
(to Willow): “Don’t get a jelly belly on
me now.”
Have you ever had
anything gel in your belly? My head
spins and my stomach clutches, as I watch and listen to this episode. We get mention of “big guns” and “cudgels.” And look at that big, big tower, rising to
meet that swirling hole that forms in the sky.
The hole is a portal, a gate that finally opens for serious business
with the start of the flow of blood. The
energy must be poured in at just the right moment, during a specific window of
time. Yep. It must be appropriately timed. Did you notice how we begin the episode? It starts fairly slowly, but then things get
faster, faster, faster, faster – until we’re released into an alley way,
surrounded by red bricks; we race up the alley.
“Don’t hurt me!” says the cornered prey, turning around after he comes
to a dead end. Blood is pumping all
around. ACCKK!
I’m almost back in
my teen years, bewildered, trying to keep all those hands off, trying to keep
the boys from coming near me. Go
away! Get out, get out, get out!! Except that he doesn’t get out. He looks at you softly and sweetly - but he’s
hard as a brick and determined all the while.
And he asks you not to be so hard on him. And the day comes when you turn around and
you think that maybe you are being too hard on him, after all. So you stop being so hard on the boy and his
hard on. Come with me, you say. Come in.
I am open for business. Spill all
your energy right through here - right here, right now. Presto. No barrier. You want him to do it – faster,
faster, faster, faster.
Don’t hurt me.
Don’t hurt you? That’s kinda
funny. ‘Cause unscathed is not even an
option.
It’s The Gift and
it’s The Curse. It’s an end, and it’s a
beginning. Your innocence is lost and
your childhood is over and it’s hell and it’s heaven and everything breaks down
and chaos reigns - but everything also comes together. In the Universe’s most marvelous and
mysterious and miraculous feat of ordered construction, cells can pile up like
bricks, like jelly in your belly, like the moments of your life, like lives
themselves, stacked one on top of the other.
Bricks – those basic building components, are everywhere in this episode. Xander, always our on-screen Viewer
representative, acknowledges his identity as a glorified bricklayer:
XANDER: “I’m
looking for something in a broadsword.”
SPIKE: “Don’t
be swingin’ that thing near me.”
XANDER: “Hey, I happen to be —,”
SPIKE: “A
glorified bricklayer?”
XANDER: “I’m also a swell bowler.”
ANYA: “Has his
own shoes.”
SPIKE: “The
gods themselves do tremble.”
A good
bowler! Yep. Send that projectile right down the center of
that alley – hit the target just right, and STRIKE! Cigars all around. And his own shoes, even! That’s our
Xander: Everyman – plodding along on
foot, in shoes he bought himself, one step, one brick at a time. He seems the most inconsequential and
everyday guy in the show, yet he is often the most heroic. With his well-aimed, well-timed wrecking
ball, he becomes an essential player in Glory’s defeat:
XANDER: “The glorified bricklayer picks up a spare.”
And though we will
learn in Season 6 that he wasn’t really quite ready, Xander’s proposal to Anya
signifies that he, being a young man of a certain age, is beginning to think
seriously about his bowling. The
unfettered and infertile Spike, an agent of destruction who is proud of the
fact (as he mentioned in Crush) that,
for over a century, he “cut a swath through continents,” pooh-poohs the idea of
bricklaying. But later, I can’t help but
notice, a brick very briefly (but very literally) “crosses his mind.”
So it’s everything
all at once, and it’s all about what’s best for our sorry species – because it
is not about you. It was never about you. Be it by literal procreation, or by the
production of less bloody creations, we all spill our seed upon the good and
fertile Earth and we all make our contribution.
Then we cede our spot. We each
head toward death after a good run – we go out the same way we came in: Time speeds by faster and faster and faster
until it’s so fast, so infinitely fast, that we can no longer experience its
passage. And then it’s over. And then
we’re done.
We’re done, but
life goes on. There is a lot of
repetition in the episode – “Go through it again,” says Buffy to Giles. And people are repeating their own, and each
other’s, words. It seems to me, again,
to be about the cyclical nature of life:
it happens, over and over and over and over. One generation after the next is repeating
the good, repeating the bad, and staying alive.
After birth, we live for those who came before us, continuing their
lines and their legacies; after death we continue to live through those who
come after us.
ANYA: “Here to help. Wanna live.”
The episode begins with Buffy’s life is
flashing before our eyes. So
we’re put on notice about the heartbreak to come at the end of the episode, and
heartbreak it is. Oh, my God. Buffy dies!
She seems at peace, making that decision – and why shouldn’t she
be? When The First Slayer tells her, in Intervention, that “love will lead you
to your gift” Buffy asks: “I'm getting a
gift? Or do you mean that I have gift to
give to someone else?” And what we find
out in this episode is that it is both.
Death is her gift, and it is a gift she both gives and gets. Her death is a heroic self-sacrifice and it
is also a reward for same. She is
leaving a world whose reality, she has come to realize, is much harsher than
she knew:
·
BUFFY: “I don't know how to live in this world, if
these are the choices, if everything just gets stripped away. I don't see the
point.”
·
BUFFY: “You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest
thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.”
This episode full
of graphic physical imagery is also full of representations of that which is
purely intellectual – there are continuing images of welding and metallic
construction, we see the Buffybot, and we hear many mentions of “calculations”
and “factors.” Listen to Buffy describing
her decision to jump:
BUFFY
(to Dawn): “This is the work I have to
do. Tell Giles- tell Giles I figured it out.”
She figured it
out. She applied her intellect. I mentioned WB Yeats poem, Sailing to Byzantium, in my Spiral review, and its words come back
to haunt me as Buffy leaps off the tower:
Whatever
is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught
in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments
of unageing intellect.
And
Consume
my heart away; sick with desire
And
fastened to a dying animal
It
knows not what it is; and gather me
Into
the artifice of eternity.
Once
out of nature I shall never take
My
bodily form from any natural thing,
But
such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of
hammered gold and gold enameling
Buffy sacrifices
herself for the world. Her tombstone
reminds us: She saved the world. A lot. Her final act is one which proves, beyond a
shadow of a doubt, the inestimably high value that Buffy places on life and on
the world. But it is also an act of
rejection of the same. This is a
world where, eventually, everything just gets stripped away. She leaves Dawn to all the joys and the
sorrows; she leaves Dawn to do the hardest thing. She is selflessly giving a gift, but she is
also gratefully accepting her reward.
Buffy is no longer caught in the sensual music; she is sailing into the
artifice of eternity, out of nature, to Byzantium.
Before her death,
we see Buffy’s absolute control and power over that Troll’s Hammer, we see her
scale that tower with ease, and we see her flick Doc away like a flea. She’s got her hero on, so totally. Giles reminds us of her heroism, as he snuffs
out Ben’s life. Buffy won’t have to be
tainted by making this choice, by facing a world where these are the
choices. She won’t have to deal with the
ugly reality which forces Giles’ hand.
In this, there is a definite contrast set
up between Spike and Buffy. Spike
approaches Doc, but he can’t save Dawn – he’s not ready yet, I don’t think, to be up quite so high;
despite his desperate and genuine desire, and his best efforts, he is
ultimately helpless. He can’t pick up
that hammer, not yet. He’s as
ineffective as . . . say . . . his own sperm.
BUFFY: “We're not all gonna make it. You know that.”
SPIKE: “Yeah.
Hey, I always knew I'd go down fighting.”
BUFFY: “I'm counting on you. To protect her.”
SPIKE: “Till the end of the world -- even if that
happens to be tonight.”
But listen to
that. Unlike Glory, Spike exhibits an
ability and interest in self-sacrifice.
Still, though he’s expanded his circle of interest from himself to Buffy
and Dawn, he has a long way to go before he learns to value human life for its
own sake, before he truly learns right from wrong, before he is able and
willing to lay down his life not as a lover, but as a champion. With a frantic last look at Dawn, Spike fails
in the lofty role of guardian angel. He
falls from grace, making a long plunge to the ground, face first into a
disorderly pile of bricks. It will take
a lot more time, and a lot more work, to overcome his century-long fidelity to
the forces of chaos. But there is plenty
of foreshadowing that he is on his way toward redemption:
·
As
they all go out to fight Glory, Spike references the “St. Crispin’s Day
Speech,” from Shakespeare’s play, Henry V. Here is a complete version of the ending of
the speech – notice the prediction that the fighting this day will “gentle the
condition” of even the vilest of men:
From
this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were
not here,
And
hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's
day.
·
In
Buffy’s home, Spike tells her that he knows he’s “a monster.” Earlier, Dawn has mentioned that she prefers
Glory to Ben, because Glory doesn’t pretend to be anything but the monster that
she is. (“He’s a monster. At least
you’re upfront about it”.) It is a
significant step, that Spike has understood and acknowledged his “monsterhood.” It is impossible to overcome what you deny.
·
When
Spike sees Doc again, they have this exchange:
SPIKE: “Doesn’t a fellow stay dead when you kill
him?”
DOC: “Look who’s talking.”
Later,
when Spike tells Doc that he is protecting Dawn because he “made a promise to a
lady,” I think the same thing about William:
“Doesn’t a fellow stay dead when you kill him?”
·
Though
Spike makes a dramatic fall from the tower, he avoids falling deeper into the
earth, when a crack develops in the ground where he has fallen.
The Doc-Spike
exchange, about staying dead, also foreshadows Buffy’s return, as does our
glimpse earlier, of Willow’s determination to “bring Tara back.” But at the end of the episode, Buffy seems
gone forever. Willow & Tara, Anya
& Xander, Giles, Spike, and Dawn, all look tearfully at her motionless
body. Spike has to stay behind the
others, stopped by the sunlight. They
all continue to mourn their beloved’s passing, as the arrival of the sun begins
to flood the scene with light.
It’s a brand new
day.
Spicy extras for James Marsters fans:
·
Here
is the way I hear Spike’s words about blood during The Magic Box planning
session:
SPIKE:
“Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps
you going. Makes you warm, makes you
hard, weeeshul-woooful-vooosh-yeeee-oozelmod.”
No
matter how hard I try, I can never get past the “makes you hard.” Talk about blood. It’s not easy to make sense out of words when
all the blood has rushed out of your brain.
It makes your eyesight dim, and it’s darn hard to hear clearly. It would probably be really hard to talk too,
with my jaw so slack.
·
James
– he just blows me away, once again, with this performance in The Gift. He’s wonderful in all his scenes, but his
scene with Buffy at her door is just – well, it couldn’t be better. The guy is just soooo good. You know how Spike is feeling, every step of
the way. All his emotions show plainly
on his face, in his stance, and in his movements. Yet the performance is not at all overwrought
– it’s subtle and very believable.
·
There’s
plenty of foreshadowing in that threshold scene, as we note the extent to which
Buffy has come to trust Spike. She’ll be
drawn to him in Season 6, she’ll let him across her barrier, for the exact same
reason she invites him in here: Because
he’s not pushing (at first), he’s just listening and making himself
available. Of course, things don’t –
they can’t – stay that way in Season 6.
Like Xander & Anya, Buffy & Spike, when they move away from the
high romance of the crisis situation and find themselves facing the daily nit
& grit, are going to have a hard time recapturing this evening’s sweetness
and beauty, genuine as it is.
·
Buffy’s
“I love you all” reminds me very much of her “I’m not losing anybody” from the
week before. She’s including Spike
casually, without a lot of drama or denials.
There really isn’t any time for that.
But the love Buffy is expressing here, for all of them, is limited by
her own “unbaked cookie” abilities – listen to her as she talks about Dawn:
BUFFY:
“It’s not just the memories they built. It’s physical. Dawn is a part of me. The only part that
I—”
She
stops herself. But I think the ending is
this: “Dawn is a part of me. The only
part that I really love.” Dawn is Buffy’s purity, her innocence, her
long-gone innocence that she tried to go back to last week, as Little Buffy.
(“I like it here.”) But Buffy’s
Innocence is something that just gets farther and farther out of reach with
each passing day – until she halts that forward movement with her jump off the
tower. But she’ll be back, and
eventually, she’ll learn to truly love all parts of herself, even her “Spike.”
***
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