Season 4
Episode 13
THE “I” IN
TEAM: Give & Take
-Team Viewers – Gambling – Buffy, Maggie & The Initiative – Spike,
Giles & The Scoobies – Willow & Tara - Families & bag boys – Conclusion
– Spicy extras for James Marsters fans
There
is something funky going on in this episode. Much as in The Zeppo, we Viewers are
deliberately being drawn into active participation. Notice how the episode is layered, i.e., how often we watch
others watching others. Notice
particularly how often we watch, on our TVs, a character watching others on her
TV. E.g., Maggie Walsh voyeuristically
watches Buffy & Riley have sex in Riley’s room. She seems like a very disturbed person, doesn’t she? Of course, we’ve just been watching
the intimate details ourselves. But
unlike Maggie, we aren’t watching Sarah & Marc in an actual intimate
moment, without their knowledge or consent.
So it’s the same, but it’s also significantly different – right?
This sort of
reality-mingling will cause academic types to write volumes about the
transgressive nature of the pop-culture narrative, which manages to resonate
deeply within our unknowable, individual, yet often dissonant and coupled
selves, which reflects itself as continuously as a fun-house mirror, bouncing
light to illuminate the fractures that allow the telltale, invasive seepage, as
if through the cracked glass surface of the television itself. But what did I just say? I have no clue. So let’s try again: We’re
being reminded of some simple facts.
It’s not just Walsh who is being emotionally affected by watching Buffy
and Riley, or only Buffy who is being entranced by watching Riley choose his
lunch. It’s us. We’re being poked and prodded by Joss Whedon
and Company. They’ve reached out and
touched someone: YOU. US.
We’re letting the writers and cast and crew into our living rooms. We’re trusting them, we’re buying their
wares, and feeling fairly confident we won’t be sorry we took a chance. (Giles, to Xander, upon trying one of the
Boost Bars Xander is selling: “Please
leave my home now.”)
We’re
Team-Viewers. So . . . OK,Team!! Get your 3D glasses on, and let’s show Joss
that S’cubies know how to watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
This
episode opens with Xander, Anya & Willow playing poker. The scene sets us up nicely for what’s to
come:
When we open
ourselves up, when we offer ourselves up, we take a chance. When we allow ourselves to enter the
lives of others, when we accept others, we take a similar chance. We risk pain, in hope of joy. In this episode, various characters take
bold or baby steps toward forming or maintaining the ties that bind.
Xander and his
Boost Bars provide a literal representation of a just-business exchange between
people, and Buffy & Riley’s first sexual encounter provides a literal
representation of a wholly personal exchange.
But much more interesting are the exchanges that are not so
clear-cut. Nothing can make us feel
more vulnerable than allowing ourselves to trust and connect to others. Let’s take a look at how our various
characters handle the challenge of dealing with the possibility of intimacy
present in any personal exchange:
BUFFY,
MAGGIE, AND THE INTITIATIVE
Buffy is first
seen fighting The Initiative’s commandos, in what turns out to be a deliberate
test of her strength and resourcefulness.
Buffy does an impressive job, but only Graham Miller, who is the least
invested in his personal relationship with Riley, seems comfortable with
Buffy’s resounding victory. “Awesome,
Buffy,” he says to her. In contrast, Maggie
Walsh seems to be fuming under her restrained words of praise, and Forrest
Gates’ body language is openly resentful.
Forrest is Riley’s
best friend. He resents Buffy’s
intrusion into Riley’s life, and senses that she might draw Riley away from both
him and The Initiative. There’s an
interesting conversation between Graham and Forrest, when Forrest is angry
about being given his own patrol team, while Buffy has taken his spot as
second-in-command on Riley’s team.
Graham: “Maybe he just wanted to give you a chance
to get out from under his shadow.”
Forrest: “Hey, I’m not under anybody’s shadow.”
True. With a name like Forrest Gates, I believe he
IS Riley’s shadow, his dark side (we’ll see more on that in future
episodes). He needs to be near Riley
and he is feeling very threatened by Buffy’s light.
In an episode
where the word “threat” is used many times, we find that Walsh is also feeling
threatened by Buffy. Buffy’s curiosity
and knowledge give Walsh good reason to believe she may be a threat to her pet
project, Adam. But there is more to it
than that. Walsh seems to have a rather
too personal, and somewhat twisted, interest in her “boys,” especially
Riley. When talking to her colleague,
Dr Angleman, she switches from calling him “Riley,” to calling him “Agent
Finn,” obviously trying to hide her strong personal feelings for Riley.
We see that she
has monitors hooked up to cameras in Riley, Forrest, and Graham’s
bedrooms. And it is certainly no
coincidence that Buffy’s sexual encounter with Riley directly precedes Walsh’s
conviction that Buffy must die!
Though I don’t believe that Walsh has a conscious sexual interest in
Riley, or any intent to act on that interest, she considers Riley to be hers,
body, mind and soul – she owns him, and that’s all there is to it. Buffy is a threat. And unlike Forrest, Walsh has both the inclination and the power
to try to do something about it.
For her part,
Buffy seems, on the surface, to be very anxious to join up and be
accepted. She is plainly very proud of
her performance in the field test, but she holds back with Walsh, saying she
was just lucky. But she admits to Riley
later that she was “being modest with the whole lucky thing.”
Later, as Buffy
tours The Initiative’s underground facility, she is mightily impressed with it
size and complexity:
Buffy: “You said it was big. You told me, but you never said it was
huge!”
Riley: “I don’t like to brag.”
(FLASHBACK!! School Hard, Spike to the Annoying
One: “I love to brag!!”)
So we get another
image of withholding, with a claim of modesty.
And later, Buffy deliberately lies about her knowledge of The
Initiative’s behavior modification efforts.
She makes up a story about seeing examples on The Discovery Channel,
rather than give away the whereabouts of that notorious escapee, Hostile
17.
Buffy is getting
sucked into The Initiative due to her desire to be with normal-guy Riley, her
admiration for Professor Walsh, her desire to be less alone in her mission, and
her attraction to the technical expertise and back-up The Initiative can
offer. In typical teen-Buffy fashion,
she’s willing to dive in with her eyes closed and take a risk, because she
WANTS this to work out so badly. But
the fact that she is protecting both herself and Spike strongly suggests her
trust in Walsh & Co – and by association, in Riley - is less than
total. Buffy is growing up, and she is
no longer as “see-no-evil” in her approach as she once was. Underneath it all, she is already far more
suspicious than she is admitting to herself.
The entire tour
scene – with Riley proudly guiding Buffy around while Buffy tries her best to
say the right things to Walsh – is very reminiscent of any typical TV “boy
brings his new girlfriend home to meet the family” scene. The “outsider trying to gain acceptance into
the family” image is enforced later when Riley refers to Walsh as “mother,” and
Walsh calls Adam her “baby.”
Families are hard
to leave, and hard to enter. Buffy’s
partial initial acceptance into, and acceptance of, The Initiative, is
represented by the items she receives from Walsh – a security card, and a
beeper. She isn’t, however, allowed to
touch the $20,000 comm-cam. When she
worries that Walsh doesn’t like her, she says to Riley: “Maybe I should get her a present or
something?” Depending on its perceived
value, the offer and the acceptance of a gift signals an increase in the
intimacy of that relationship – it indicates some degree of acceptance not just
of the gift, but of the gift-giver herself.
Even the most selflessly offered, no-strings-attached gift creates a
connection between giver and recipient, once it is accepted.
So what’s up with
Spike? After being surprisingly kind
and solicitous to Giles during the Fyral demon incident, Spike opens their next
encounter with an immediate series of jabs:
Spike: “Hey, wipe your feet when enter a person’s
home!”
Giles: “Oh yes.
Careless of me. Tracking mud all
over your . . . mud.”
Spike: “I admit, it’s a bit of a fixer-upper. Needs a woman’s touch. Care to have a crack at it?”
Giles tries to
thank him for his help, but Spike tells him to “stuff the gratitude”; Giles
owes him money. Giles hands over the
cash, and Spike insists on counting it – no trust involved, see? This is Spike, overcompensating; this is
Spike, feeling threatened by the extent to which he became friendly with Giles
the evening before. This is Spike,
making it very, very, very clear that the help was not a gift - it was just
business, it didn’t mean anything. And
Giles better not think, even for a moment, that it does.
But it’s too
late. Spike is right to worry that
Giles has both noticed his soft side, and has been thinking about it:
Giles
(hesitantly): “Uhm, thinking about your
affliction and your newfound discovery that you can fight only demons . . . has
it occurred to you that there might be a higher purpose?”
Spike: “Ugh!
You made me lose count! (turns
to face him) What are you still doing here?”
Strange. Giles’ words have made Spike lose count and
he says so, but then he tries to behave as if he didn’t even hear them, and was
barely aware Giles was still around.
This is Spike, newly chipped and scared. This is Spike recently rejected by Dru and even by Harmony. After invoking many images of family
(teen-witch Willow, Xander cutting a new tooth), he tells Giles: “The honeymoon is over.” This is Spike, afraid of intimacy of any
sort.
Giles gives him a
look that manages to convey both disgust and disappointment, and leaves.
When we next see
Spike, the commandos have shot him, and he doesn’t know with what. But it hurts, and it is in his back, where
he can’t reach it. Despite his earlier
show of contempt and indifference, when things get desperate, he runs straight
to Giles and The Scoobies. The truth
is, they’re the closest thing to a family he’s got. He trusts them and he needs them. But when he bursts into Giles’ apartment, the posturing that goes
on before help will be offered or accepted is quite telling – both parties are
making sure that the terms are clear.
This is not gift; it’s strictly business:
Giles: “Why should I help you?”
Spike: “Because you do that. You’re the goody-good guys. You’re the bloody freakin’ cavalry.”
So at first, Spike
suggests that they should do it because it’s their job – nothing personal,
they’d do it for anyone. But that’s not
really solid enough to make everyone comfortable. A bit more is needed:
Giles: “No, you can come up with a better answer
than that. Why should I help you?”
Spike: “Oh!
Because I helped you!
When you turned into that Fyarl demon, I helped you, didn’t I?”
Giles: “And that was out of the
evilness of your heart?”
Spike: “Oh hell, no. I made you pay me. (Spike
realizes what Giles is after, and returns the cash Giles gave him
earlier.) You right bastard. That’s all that’s left. I spent it the rest on blood and smokes,
which I’ll never see again.”
So, Giles makes
Spike pay him. Now, everyone can relax
and ignore all the scary emotional complications inherent in the giving and
receiving of help - and proceed with the helping.
But despite the
business-transaction set-up, Giles’ operation on Spike is deliberately
contrasted with Dr Angleman’s operations on the HST’s, and it doesn’t look so
impersonal after all. Underneath the
snarking, Giles is trying to be careful, and though he casts it in terms of
something he himself needs, he cares enough to ask Anya to get Spike some
cognac to help anesthetize him. And
Spike, exhibiting the trust and comfort he’s been so loathe to openly
acknowledge, allows himself to become nearly unconscious in the presence of
Giles and the Scoobies. We just left
Angleman’s cold and sterile operating room, where a demon has been killed and
its arm harvested for use on Adam. The
scene in Giles living room is looking very homey and family-like indeed.
And when Giles
notices the illumination coming from the Spike’s wound, and Xander identifies
it as a homing beacon, Giles says:
“It’s in deep, and I’m no surgeon.”
So take a look at this snapshot, just for the fun of it: Giles, trying to locate a tiny flickering
light buried deep within Spike, and despairing of ever being able to do
so. Hmmmm.
Since they met in Hush,
Willow and Tara have been spending more and more time together. Tara offers her a gift – a doll’s eye
crystal. Willow refuses it, though she
has just said she’s always wanted one.
She’s not rejecting the crystal, she’s rejecting what it represents – a
willingness to accept an increase in intimacy in their relationship. We have images of family again, adding value
and significance to the offer:
Tara: “It was my grandma’s. I think.
I found it a long time ago in my attic.
I want you to have it.”
Willow: “Oh no, Tara. That’s really sweet. I
can’t. It’s like a family
heirloom. I just wouldn’t feel
comfortable.”
Tara seems hurt by
the rejection, and even more hurt when Willow tells her that she can’t visit
with her that evening, because she plans to be with other friends - with whom
Tara “wouldn’t fit in.” In Season 4, as
we watch the end of high school, and the advent of adulthood, make changes to
the tight-knit, “just us” dynamic between Giles, Buffy & The Scoobies, we
see Willow making a last ditch attempt to hang on to her childhood family.
But Buffy arrives
late for the just-Scoobies get-together at The Bronze, and when she does
arrive, she brings Riley and his commando buddies with her, saying, in another
example of give-and-take obligations:
“Riley and the guys were throwing a little impromptu celebration in my
honor and made it, like, impossible not to invite them.”
Instead of
increasing closeness, the encounter at The Bronze deepens the chasm forming
between Buffy and Willow. Not only does
Buffy exhibit little interest in the event, but Willow lies to Buffy when she
says that she could have brought someone else to The Bronze also, but claims
she is speaking hypothetically – there isn’t any REAL someone.
Willow ends up
visiting Tara after all – in fact, when we see her return to her room the next
morning, we realize she has spent the night at Tara’s. And look!
She has the doll’s eye crystal.
Hmmm.
In the meantime,
Buffy has made a beeline straight to her real family, to the folks she can
really trust, with whom she doesn’t have to be modest (notice how Buffy loves
to brag in this ep). She walks in on
Giles telling Spike: “Spike – Lord
knows why I’m telling you this, it’s for your own good. As long as the Initiative is in operation it’s
not safe for you here.” And Buffy
says: “It’s not safe for any of us.” She’s one of them, not a member of
The Initiative. Even new and barely
improved Spike is more of a colleague than Maggie and the commandos.
Buffy had been
letting her desire to get close to Riley, and her trust in him, blind her to
any problems with The Initiative. She
had sex with him, and now – oh no, not this again – suddenly she has to begin
wondering if he’s a good guy after all.
Because in this episode, Buffy has noticed, and commented, and been
disturbed, by soldier-boy Riley’s literally unquestioning loyalty to The
Initiative, which contrasts very sharply with halter-clad Buffy’s style of
constant questioning.
We get a message
that was only hinted at previously – The Initiative has a “higher purpose” also
- only it’s not so high at all. Their
questionable ethics are demonstrated again in their unwillingness to recognize
the sentience of the beings they kill and mutilate. This provides another sharp contrast with Buffy’s methods, which
include trying to understand the motivation of her foes. But what we learn in this episode is that
ethics have absolutely nothing to do with it.
The Initiative’s leaders aren’t above plotting Buffy’s death, and they
are literally creating monsters.
Earlier, Willow tells Buffy:
Willow: “What’s their ultimate agenda? I mean, OK, yeah, they neuter vampires and
demons. But then what? Are they gonna reintegrate them into
society? Get them jobs as bagboys at
WalMart?”
Two scenes later,
we’re watching Spike stroll home with – whaddaya know - a grocery bag. For the first time in over a century no
doubt, Spike has legitimately earned a few dollars, and he has purchased,
rather than pinched, what he needs.
Seems chipped-Spike is trying to reintegrate himself into
society, even if he isn’t taking a job a WalMart. Foreshadowing the very rough road to redemption ahead for our
favorite mass murderer, Spike’s novice assimilation effort gains him nothing –
he’s a demon, he’s being viewed and hunted as an animal, and his
healthily-gotten gain does not stand.
The Initiative’s assault leaves Spike without his blood, his smokes, or
ultimately, any of his hard-earned cash.
And the answer to Willow’s question, we see, is a resounding NO. The Initiative isn’t interested in
rehabilitation.
And in Spike’s
case, the big job rehabilitation will represent is seen in this exchange:
Giles: “It will be dark soon. I think it will be wise for you to leave
Sunnydale.”
Spike: “I’m not going anywhere. Not until those bastards undo whatever they
did to me. Put me back the way I was.”
Xander
(sarcastic): “Sure. Just explain to the nice scientist guys that
you really miss killing and torturing innocent people.”
Spike (asking with
sincere interest): “Do you think that
will work?”
Oh clueless,
clueless Spike. That tiny light really is
buried way down deep.
We
see something else here – the way our own self-image and limited vision, and the
opinions and related actions of outsiders, interfere with our journey toward
becoming who we are meant to be.
Spike’s crimes are egregious and many; we can’t expect he’ll have a
simple journey toward redemption, or that others will be anything other than
closed and suspicious of his actions and motives – which are so varied, and so
often accompanied by mixed messages, that he confuses even himself. But Spike is simply an extreme example of
what we see the other characters facing, and of what we all face, trying to
realize our potential, find ourselves, and emerge from our cocoons: the interference, even oppression - of
others and of our own fears.