Spike-centric Analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episodes

Season 2

Episode 9 - What’s My Line Part I

What’s My Line Part I: Adding it up

By Spring Summers – 08-Feb-03

Buffy & Angel: Foreboding –Seeing what you want to see - Names & Labels – Identity - Conclusion – Spicy extras for James Marsters’ fans

Brainy vampire Dalton is trying to decipher a text for Spike. He takes a guess that translates to "Debase, the beef, canoe." Why does that strike Spike as not right?? The hapless Dalton is backhanded hard across the face for his mistake. But Spike is being unreasonably harsh. The text is in code, and Dalton doesn’t yet have the key. You can’t expect someone to read the signs when they don’t have a clue.

Which brings us to Buffy. In the next scene, she spies Dalton searching a wall repository in a crypt. She tries to stop him, but he manages to steal a clue. If only Buffy could be so lucky!

Our next scene is Buffy & Angel in her bedroom. This scene and this episode highlight 16-year-old Buffy’s idealized view of Angel, and foreshadow the terrible cost that her love-blindness will exact from her.

In Buffy’s room, Angel & Buffy have this exchange:

Buffy: " . . . I wish we could be regular kids."

Angel: "Yeah, I’ll never be a kid."

Buffy: "Okay, then a regular kid and her cradle robbing creature-of-the-night boyfriend."

Buffy says this jokingly and Angel smiles. They seem so sweet together, we all smile. But we squirm a little in our seats as well, don’t we? Angel is, after all, exactly as described. And is that OK? Buffy plainly isn’t giving it a second thought. But I’m a little queasy. (An aside: Listen for the way humor that seems inappropriate to some - but not to others - is used several times in this episode to underscore the way individual attitudes affect perception, the way we are each peering out at the world from within our own shells, isolated like Buffy alone in the mirror, and later, alone on the ice).

Cut to school the next morning. Buffy is telling Willow about her plans to go ice-skating with Angel that evening:

Willow: "You and Angel are going ice-skating? Alone?"

Buffy: "Unless some unfortunate evil pops up. But I’m in full see-no-evil mode."

When it comes to Angel, Buffy has no other mode. When we next see our May-December couple, they are fighting a big ugly evil guy on the ice. He is an assassin, a member of the Order of Taraka. Spike has sent him to find and kill Buffy. Together, Buffy & Angel defeat him.

Angel is still in vamp-face when Buffy approaches him after the fight, concerned about a cut above his eye. She tries to touch it, but he backs off:

Angel: "You shouldn’t have to touch me when I’m like this."

Buffy: "Oh. I didn’t even notice."

All right Buffy. But what about that big cut right over the left eyebrow area? Fate has surely provided this extra clue in case you miss the message in the yellow eyes, fangs, and nasty-looking bumpy forehead. Your vile mortal enemy, Spike, has a scar in the exact same place. So did that assassin you just fought off. Buffy!! Wake-up! But the stars in her eyes are serving as very effective blinders. As predicted, she sees no evil. She kisses Angel.

Kendra, a Slayer newly arrived from the Caribbean, spots the lip-lock. And her folly is the exact opposite of Buffy’s - all she sees of Angel is the game-face, the evil.

Later, Kendra tracks Angel to Willy’s bar and fights him. She traps him in the back. What do we have here? Angel, caged. Sunlight is on its way. He tries to get out. He slams against the door. He pries at the cage. Take it easy, Angel(us) baby. Freedom from the cage you’ve been forced into is just around the corner.

And looky here – we cut immediately to a view of Buffy, sleeping in Angel’s bed. She’s gone to Angel’s place because the assassins are after her, and she feels safe there. What could be safer? I’m thinking maybe the top of Mount St Helens, May 1980. But to Buffy it seems a secure haven: so comfy, so warm. No unfortunate evil could ever pop-up in Angel’s bed . . . .YIKES!! Maybe not so safe after all. Buffy wakes up to Kendra swinging a hatchet at her head:

"Thanks for the wakeup," says Buffy, " but I’ll stick with my clock-radio."

OK Buffy. But the big wake-up call is only a few weeks away, and clock-radios are not involved.

Earlier in the episode, after Buffy tells Giles about seeing Dalton at the crypt, Giles says to her: "This could be very serious! I mean, if you’d made an effort to be more thorough in your observations . . ." Yes, as we can see in her interactions with Angel, Buffy could use a few lessons in being observant. But Buffy is not alone in being seduced into seeing what she wants to see.

Buffy’s neighbor, Mrs Kalish, and (later) Cordelia, both allow the dangerous Norman Pfister, bug-man salesman, into the house without hesitation because he is offering free cosmetics. They ignore any reluctance they might feel about letting in a stranger, and the oddity of anyone, much less a man (and one who looks like Norman Pfister), going door-to-door selling cosmetics. They miss all signs of danger in their eagerness for free goodies.

What’s My Line Part I is all about reading the signs and about our perceptions – of ourselves and of others. It opens with a shot of a large sign – a Career-Day banner at the High School. Buffy, Xander and Willow are discussing how a career placement test might cubbyhole them. This episode is jam-packed with references to names, signs, symbols and labels, and the stereotypes, perceptions and misperceptions that accompany them. It is so jam-packed in fact, that I would have to repeat almost every line of dialogue to list them all – here are a few:

NAMES: Even inanimate objects have names – Mr Gordo, Miss Edith, the Du Lac Cross. Xander comments on the importance names have on perception: "So why go to all the trouble of inventing something, and then give it a weak name like that? I mean, I’da gone with ‘The Cross-o-matic’ or ‘The Amazing Mr Cross’."

SIGNS: Giles & Buffy find the tomb they are looking for because the name Du Lac is clearly marked on the crypt. Norman Pfister knows he’s found the Summers’ home because the name hangs on a sign below the mailbox. Willy tells Angel: "We’re closed, can’t you read the sign?"

SYMBOLS: Dru successfully reads her Tarot Cards. Angel knows all he needs to know when he sees the ice-rink assassin’s ring. Assassin Patrice’s uniform gives Buffy, and the rest of us, a false sense of security about her.

LABELS: Xander tells Cordy a lot of guys say she’s "mass transportation." Spike calls Dalton a "big brain." Buffy makes a similar comment about Giles and the Scoobies while they do research.

STEREOTYPES: Watchers are long-winded and pompous. Cops like donuts.

As its title gives away, What’s My Line Part I is also about another, closely related concept: Identity – what defines us and makes each of us a unique individual – e.g., our jobs, our age, our abilities and interests, our choice of associates and friends. Again the episode is stuffed full of references. Here’s only a sampling:

JOB: Buffy’s Slayerhood is an important part of her identity (though her self-perception is shaken when she learns that she is NOT the one and only), Principal Snyder can get away with insulting Xander because of his position.

AGE: Buffy tells Giles she’s immature because she is a teenager. Xander tells Giles 16 year old girls never unplug their phones.

ABILITIES/INTERESTS: Buffy likes to ice-skate. Willow and Oz have outstanding technical abilities which help distinguish and define them. Giles and Dalton are both interested in words and books; this is a part of who they are.

ASSOCIATES & FRIENDS: We viewers misperceive Kendra as an assassin, because we see her arrive right after two members of the Order of Taraka. Cordelia doesn’t want to associate with "you tweakos" as she calls the Scoobies.

We are born with some aspects of our identity, with a fundamental nature that defies change (listen to the exchange between Willy & Angel, e.g.). Other aspects are thrust upon us by fate or by society. And some we choose for ourselves.

Buffy tells Angel that as a small child, she tried to "be Dorothy Hamill" by adopting Dorothy’s haircut and pursuing an interest ice-skating. But Buffy can only be Buffy. She couldn’t be Dorothy by picking and choosing isolated characteristics.

What Buffy didn’t understand back then, and at 16, still doesn’t fully understand, is that you don’t really know others unless you recognize all their characteristics, and further, unless you clearly see the unique result that is produced from the combination of all the ingredients. Is it harmonious? Does it all go together like, say . . . chicken and . . . another chicken? Or two chickens? Or something. You know what I mean.

Because every aspect of a person is important, but – it is also crucial to realize - the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. Just look at Norman Pfister.

Spicy extras for James Marsters’ fans

• First thing: Not enough Spike! But lots of foreshadowing of trouble for Buffy & Angel, which is fun too.
• Tight pants report: best shot for the slo-mo, pause and zoom features on your DVD occurs right after Spike rants and raves about Buffy being "the gnat" in his ear, etc. He walks back toward the bed where Dru is lying, and where a lamp is at belt level, providing extra illumination. As he approaches the lamp, it looks very much as if he’s developed a . . . muscle cramp in his pants. Eye-popping.
• Great kiss between Spike & Dru. She’s weak, so he’s very gentle. But they still manage to convey a feeling of strong and unbridled passion. Good show.