Supernatural Rewatch, S1: E8 – E12

Continuing with my Dean-oriented Supernatural rewatch, the next five episodes in S1 – ‘Bugs’ (E8), ‘Home’ (E9), ‘Asylum’ (E10), ‘Scarecrow’ (E11) and ‘Faith’ (E12) – play an important role in establishing the Winchester family dynamic. Up until this point, we’ve mainly dealt with Sam and Dean operating on their own, the wider arc of their father’s disappearance and their mother’s death taking a back seat to Monster of the Week hunts, the better to introduce us to the premise of the show. Now, though, we start to get a better sense of Sam and Dean as siblings with a complicated history, not just in terms of how they relate to each other, but regarding their very different relationships with John.

In ‘Bugs’, when Sam openly identifies with a teenager, Matt, who doesn’t get along with his father, it results in the following exchange with Dean:

DEAN: Dad never treated us like that.

SAM: Well, Dad never treated you like that. You were perfect. He was all over my case. You don’t remember?

DEAN: Well, maybe he had to raise his voice, but sometimes, you were out of line.

They continue to bicker intermittently about their childhood throughout the episode, until – in the closing scene – they circle back to the topic of John, but from a different angle:

SAM: I wanna find Dad.

DEAN: Yeah, me too.

SAM: Yeah, but I just… I want to apologize to him.

DEAN: For what?

SAM: All the things I said to him. He was just doin’ the best he could.

DEAN: Well, don’t worry, we’ll find him. And then you’ll apologize. And then within five minutes, you guys will be at each other’s throats.

SAM: Yeah, probably.

Later, in ‘Asylum’, Sam angrily questions why they always have to “follow dad’s orders” – a disagreement that reappears at the finale, when Sam, controlled by a malevolent spirit, attacks Dean:

SAM: I am normal. I’m just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? ’Cause you’re following Dad’s orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?

DEAN: This isn’t you talking, Sam.

SAM: That’s the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I’m not pathetic, like you.

By the end of the episode, it’s clear that the tension between them has escalated rather than resolved, and in ‘Scarecrow’, the two are divided enough to go their separate ways, albeit temporarily. Prior to this, Sam states that he doesn’t understand the “blind faith” Dean has in their father, and Dean replies that “it’s called being a good son” – a comeback that accepts, rather than disputes, the accusation of blind faith. When they finally reconcile, it’s because Dean apologises:

DEAN: Sam. You were right. You gotta do your own thing. You gotta live your own life.

SAM: Are you serious?

DEAN: You’ve always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I—anyway….I admire that about you. I’m proud of you, Sammy.

 

What further contextualises these conversations – and what makes them even more fascinating – are the events of ‘Home’ and ‘Faith’. In ‘Home’, which sees the Winchesters return to their childhood house in Kansas, Dean phones John in secret, crying as he begs his help; but though it’s ultimately revealed that John has been in town the whole time, he never replies or shows himself to his children. This absence is subsequently mirrored in ‘Faith’, when Dean is dying and Sam, again in private, phones their father – but whereas Dean’s call was a request for aid, Sam attempts to reassure John that he doesn’t need any. Again, John neither replies nor appears, and given the line about “blind faith” in the previous episode, it doesn’t seem irrelevant that this episode is not only titled ‘Faith’, but explicitly concerns Dean’s lack of it, religiously speaking. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that their conversation about John in ‘Scarecrow’ throws Dean’s denial of God in ‘Faith’ into an even starker light:

DEAN: You know what I’ve got faith in? Reality. Knowing what’s really going on.

SAM: How can you be a skeptic? With the things we see everyday?

DEAN: Exactly. We see them, we know there real.

SAM: But if you know evil’s out there, how can you not believe good’s out there, too?

DEAN: Because I’ve seen what evil does to good people.

Dean has faith in reality, and in evil as a truth of reality, but he doesn’t have faith in good. But he does have faith in John Winchester – not because his father is good, but because his father is real, which (under this system) doesn’t preclude him being evil, too. Given this fact and the subsequent revelations of Sam’s demon blood, it’s doubly significant that, in ‘Home’, we’re given the first concrete evidence that, of the brothers, Sam is more similar to John: in rescuing two children from their childhood house, Sam’s instruction to the little girl, Sari, to “take your brother outside as fast as you can, and don’t look back” is, word for word, the same thing John once said to Dean.

In ‘Skin’, the shapeshifter used his access to Dean’s memories to express Dean’s fear that “sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave me”, stating that both John and Sam have already done exactly that. It’s a fear that harks back to the pilot episode, when Dean explains why he’s come to get Sam in the first place:

DEAN: I can’t do this alone.

SAM: Yes you can.

DEAN: Yeah, well, I don’t want to.

Dean Winchester is afraid, not just of being alone in general, but of being abandoned by his family in particular. He feels that his father and brother are stronger than him, capable of leaving both Dean and each other to live independent lives in a way that he isn’t; he admires Sam’s ability to go off on his own, but not enough to deviate from his own loyalty to their father. Sam and John fight as they do precisely because they’re so similar; yet even then, it’s notable that neither Dean’s obedient faith nor Sam’s capable autonomy is sufficient to call John back to them in their respective moments of distress.

In addition to cementing the Winchester dynamic, these episodes also help to establish a fundamental aspect of Dean’s personality: the ongoing conflict between his more feminine interests and his desire to present as stereotypically masculine. In addition to the more overt jokes and statements made in support of Dean’s broader characterisation, this is also the point at which the narrative begins to subtly feminise him; or at least, to deliberately compare and contrast him with female characters, such as by paralleling his role with Sari’s in ‘Home’. ‘Bugs’ in particular is a great example of this. Early in the episode, Dean mentions having heard about mad cow disease on Oprah, to which Sam, astonished, replies, “You watch Oprah?”. In keeping with his established reluctance to appear feminine in front of his brother, Dean is visibly flustered, and after several awkward seconds, he changes the subject rather than addressing it. This is an overt instance of Dean’s hypermasculine front being challenged; more subtle, however, is the way in which the story compares him to the real estate agent, Lynda. When the Winchesters first arrive at the housing estate, Lynda gives her pitch to Sam, saying, “Who can say ‘no’ to a steam shower? I use mine everyday.” Sam is visibly disinterested, but when the brothers borrow an empty house for the night, Dean not only expresses his enthusiasm to “try the steam shower”, but is seen happily emerging from it the next morning, a towel wrapped around his head.

To be clear: there’s nothing inherently feminine about liking good showers or wrapping a towel around your head. But in the context of ‘Bugs’, Lynda’s praise and Sam’s disinterest in the steam shower situate it as a feminine thing, while visually, the fact that Dean is shown wearing an elaborate towel-wrap – even though his short hair makes such a style both difficult and redundant – is meant to hammer home the comparison. It’s something the audience is meant to notice, even if the brothers don’t, and contributes to the complexity of Dean’s character.

‘Bugs’ also marks the first time – but by no means the last time – that the Winchesters are mistaken for a gay couple. When Larry initially makes the error, a horrified Dean is quick to correct him; but when, minutes later, Lynda makes the same mistake, Dean has a brief moment of awkwardness, then plays along with it, calling Sam “honey” before smacking him on the ass and walking off. The fact that he leaves is crucial to understanding his reaction: as per volunteering Sam to paint the fratboy Murph in ‘Hook Man’, Dean doesn’t correct Lynda because playing along enables him to embarrass his brother; yet at the same time, he still takes steps to absent himself, leaving Sam to cope with the awkward aftermath of his actions alone.

From this point of the show onwards, Dean starts to make more jokes about Sam being feminine or girly, expanding his habit of projecting his own insecurities onto his brother. In ‘Asylum’, he pokes fun at Sam’s strange dreams by asking “Who do you think is the hotter psychic – Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt or you?” – a reference which, while ostensibly insulting Sam by feminising him, also demonstrates that Dean is familiar with the shows Medium and Ghost Whisperer, neither of which is exactly stereotypically masculine fare. (Which is, perhaps, why he follows this up with two references to The Shining in quick succession.) Similarly, Dean responds to Sam’s heartfelt words at the end of ‘Scarecrow’ by deadpanning, “Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful,” making the both of them laugh. Yet at the same time, Dean’s habit of affirming his interest in women to Sam is still alive and well, as per his insistence in ‘Faith’ that “I’m not gonna die in a hospital where the nurses aren’t even hot.”

Interestingly, and also in ‘Faith’, we see the first recurrence of Dean’s flirtatious braggadocio since his interaction with Jess in the pilot. When Layla overhears Dean express his lack of faith to Sam, she suggests that “Maybe God works in mysterious ways” – at which point, Dean’s response is to visibly check her out, smiling as he replies with, “Maybe he does. I think you just turned me around on the subject.” They chat briefly, and once she’s gone, he remarks to Sam that “Well, I bet you she can work in some mysterious ways.” What’s significant here – and especially when writing with the benefit of hindsight – is the fact that Dean is dying; and unlike Sam, he doesn’t believe he’s about to get better. It’s a gallows flirtation: Dean is resigned to death, and so sees no point in restraining himself, an attitude that crops up again in Season 3, when Dean refuses to try and change his crossroads deal despite Sam’s determination to save him. But once Dean is healed – once he knows he’s going to live, and that Layla is going to die – his subsequent interactions with her never replicate this initial swagger. Instead, as with Haley in ‘Wendigo’ and Andrea in ‘Dead in the Water’, he connects with her, offering to pray for her at the end of the episode, making their exchanges bittersweet rather than sexual.

That being so, there’s really only a flash of Bi!Dean throughout these episodes; specifically, in ‘Scarecrow’. After Sam’s departure, Dean attempts to track down the missing couple, which endeavour sees him stymied by Scotty, an unhelpful mechanic. Throughout their exchange, Dean tries to be polite despite Scotty’s refusal to talk. Yet there’s also an interesting undercurrent to the conversation: having recognised Dean’s false alias, John Bonham, as a member of Led Zeppelin – “Classic rock fan!” Dean says, approvingly – Scotty finally tells him, with a very small smile, “We don’t get many strangers around here.” Dean’s response is to grin and duck his head, nodding – and then to say, “Scotty, you’ve got a smile that lights up a room, anybody ever tell you that?”

And the thing is, it’s not really sarcasm; or at least, Dean’s smile as he says it is genuine. Seemingly, it’s a remark pitched to be taken one of two ways – as a friendly joke, or as a flirtation. Dean is, after all, trying to get information out of the man, and given that “We don’t get many strangers around here” is a variant on a common pick-up line (other permutations being “I’ve never seen you here before” and “You must be new in town,” both of which are evocative of “Do you come here often?” and “What’s a guy/girl like you doing in a place like this?”), it’s not unreasonable to think that he’s hedging his bets, looking for an inroads into Scotty’s good graces. (And of course, it doesn’t hurt that the guy likes Zeppelin.) But the gambit fails on both counts, and Dean is left hanging awkwardly, muttering, “Never mind. See you around,” before finally walking off.

It was fun to see these episodes again – this is my third watchthrough of the show, and it’s fascinating to see how much there is in Season 1 that’s pivotal later on, or which sets a pattern for subsequent seasons. These episodes in particular are full of firsts: ‘Asylum’ marks the first time the brothers turn on each other due to supernatural meddling, as well as the first time a Winchester ends up in therapy as cover for a hunt, highlighting the fact that it’s something they actually need. ‘Scarecrow’ is both the first time the brothers part ways due to an argument and the first time they kill a god, while ‘Faith’ involves the first of Dean’s many, many deaths. I’m keen to keep up my analysis – and to see what else I might have missed on previous viewings.

Buffy Rewatch: Relationships

Trigger warning: some talk of rape.

“You’re not friends. You’ll never be friends. You’ll be in love ’till it kills you both. You’ll fight, and you’ll shag, and you’ll hate each other ’till it makes you quiver, but you’ll never be friends. Love isn’t brains, children, it’s blood – blood screaming inside of you to work its will. I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.”

– Spike,  Lover’s Walk (S3E8)

To me, the above quote is one of the single best speeches in all of Buffy – it might even be my personal favourite. In his lone appearance in S3, Spike is forced into a brief alliance with Buffy and the newly-returned Angel, and instantly sees through their claims to be “just friends”. Superficially, then, his response is not only the emotional denouement of the episode, but a comment on their relationship.

Only, here’s the thing: Buffy and Angel do become friends. Their love has already reached its big romantic climax. Buffy has fought with Angelus, not Angel; they’ve only had sex once (the events of I Will Remember You are reversed, and therefore don’t count); and though they argue down the line, they don’t ever hate each other. The relationship Spike is describing doesn’t exist.

Or rather, it does – but not between Buffy and Angel. This entire speech is a neat foreshadowing of everything that happens between Buffy and Spike. They’re not friends; they never were. Buffy dies being loved by Spike – he collapses in grief at the loss – and then later, after she says she loves him, Spike dies for Buffy in turn. They fight and shag constantly through S6 – sometimes simultaneously – and frequently state their hatred for one another before then: in fact, this is the exact progression of events in Smashed and Wrecked, when they first have sex. In Dead Things, we even see them stand on opposite sides of the same door, reaching for each other, each one yearning against their better judgement – blood screaming inside them to work its will, while Out Of This World by Bush plays eerily in the background. When it comes to Buffy, Spike is unashamedly love’s bitch. This speech will never not be about them.

Buffy and Spike is my crackship. Not because they’re impossible together, but because they should be – and because, like crack, they’re unhealthily addictive.

Their relationship is every possible flavour of fucked up. From the moment Spike first shows up in S2, they’re enemies – but when Angelus tries to end the world, it’s Spike who helps Buffy defeat him. In S4, despite their mutual loathing, we go down the rabbit hole of their relationship twice – once in Something Blue, when Willow’s magic forces them together, and then again in Who Are You, where Faith flirts with Spike while wearing Buffy’s body, and we realise he’s equal parts angry and aroused at the prospect. In Goodbye Iowa, he even refers to Buffy as Goldilocks – a term of endearment he uses again in S6’s Gone, when the usage prompts Buffy to cut her hair short. But it’s not until S5’s Out of My Mind that he realises he loves her: a dream-revelation that throws him awake with a whispered, “Oh god, no. Please, no.” (Love isn’t brains, children.)

Some of what Spike does is deeply gross (the Buffybot) or outright indefensible (his abortive rape attempt) – and yet, I keep coming back to their relationship; as broken and dysfunctional as it is, it’s nonetheless compelling. Even now, I still can’t decide whether every loving, useful thing Spike does while unsouled – withstanding torture to protect Dawn, fighting on Buffy’s side, comforting her when nobody else even knows what’s wrong – either outweighs or is outweighed by those two awful, terrible things. Because, here’s the thing: we don’t blame Angel for the crimes he commits as Angelus. His soulless personality is so different to his human one that it’s easy to view them as a flipswitch binary: he’s either one or the other. Angel has a romantic relationship with Buffy; Angelus wants to torture, abuse and kill her. But Spike is much more ambiguous. His emotional evolution starts while he’s still unsouled, to the point where loving Buffy prompts him to get his soul back. He’s so horrified by his actions in Seeing Red – the rape attempt – that, in his own words, he makes himself into the man she deserves: someone whose conscience would render him incapable of sexual violence.

And I just… OK. It’s impossible, literally impossible, to get away from the rape attempt (though apparently the fact that Xander did the same thing in S1’s The Pack is both forgiven and forgotten). You can’t ignore or downplay it, and while you can try and contextualise it for the purposes of discussing both Spike’s character and his relationship with Buffy, that still doesn’t change what he did. Thematically, though, there’s something significant in the fact that Spike stops himself – that he regains himself mid-assault, realises what he’s doing, and goes immediately to get his soul back. Because when Angel turns into Angelus after he and Buffy sleep together, the whole narrative becomes a metaphor for the fact that sometimes, men change once they’ve slept with you – they turn into monsters, and you’re left to pick up the pieces. It’s a theme that’s reiterated when Parker turns out to be a colossal douche, and to a lesser extent, when Riley starts seeing vampire gals on the side. Men turn into monsters, but overwhelmingly in the Buffyverse, they refuse to acknowledge it – except for Spike, who not only admits what he is, but actively tries to change.

See, the problem with Angel/Angelus being two extremes of a binary personality is that Angel is never held accountable (or at least, not by Buffy) for the things he does as Angelus. We never see him apologise: not for the way he treats her while evil, not for Miss Calendar’s death, none of it. Despite the fact that Angel’s whole redemptive arc is predicated on actively atoning for his vampire crimes, he still behaves as though it was all beyond his control. He doesn’t apologise for what he does to Buffy, because he’s not the one who did it – yet even if we consider that to be technically true, it still seems reasonable to expect him to seek forgiveness. Parker, however, has no such excuse: he’s a classic user, a weasel who avoids responsibility for his actions by claiming his motives were always obvious – that Buffy, or whichever girl he’s left broken-hearted, has simply misunderstood him. And then there’s Riley, whose response to being caught cheating is to issue an unbelievably selfish ultimatum: either Buffy can decide immediately that she still wants him around, in which case he’ll make an effort to earn back her trust, or she can stay angry and lose him forever. The speech that Xander gives Buffy at this point to convince her that Riley ought to stay is infuriating. He’s 1% right, in the sense that fairness doesn’t enter into it – Riley has given her an ultimatum, and as sucky as that is, she can’t abstain from making a decision – but given how incredibly shitty a thing Riley’s done by putting her in that position, he really doesn’t deserve Xander’s understanding; he certainly doesn’t deserve Buffy’s. And despite his denials, it’s clear his real issue with Buffy is her greater strength: she didn’t need his protection, he felt insecure as a result, and when presented with an easy out – flying away to the Amazon if his demands weren’t met, instead of staying to make things right – he takes it.

And then there’s Spike.

He apologises for the Buffybot; he openly admits that he’s a monster. After his assault on Buffy, the first thing he does is try to redeem himself, because unlike every other man she’s ever slept with, he admits he’s done something wrong, and that he, Spike, is the culprit. And it’s not silent redemption, either: the guilt drives him mad, and when he comes back at the start of S7, not only the audience, but Buffy herself is left in no doubt that what he’s done – regaining his soul – has been an act of atonement: that he’s given himself a conscience, punished himself physically and mentally, and returned with no expectation of forgiveness to offer what help he can. And that, I think, despite everything, is at the core of why I keep coming back to Buffy and Spike’s relationship, why I can’t let go of it: as brutally fucked up as their history is, and despite the fact that Spike’s assault is arguably* the worst thing any partner has ever done to her, he’s also the only parter to accept responsibility for his actions, and to try and directly atone for them. Spike learns because of Buffy; he becomes a better man – or a better monster – through loving her, and I don’t think that’s true of any of the others; even Angel.

And speaking of Angel: sit down and think for a moment about the basis for their relationship. S1 is only twelve episodes long. Angel doesn’t appear in all of them, and most of the time, his presence is fleeting. He and Buffy don’t even kiss until episode 7, and two episodes later, we’re meant to believe he’s in love with her – and while we later learn he’s been watching her quietly ever since she was called (which is incredibly creepy and stalkerish), the short timeframe strongly implies that her love of him is a youthful infatuation, at least initially. They’re together for a while, but a bit more than halfway through S2, he turns evil, and Buffy sends him to hell. When he returns in S3, he isn’t back on the field (so to speak) until about episode 7 – prior to that, he’s recovering. Though they get back together soon afterwards, when Joyce speaks to Angel about the “hard choices” he and Buffy have ahead of them, he breaks it off with her – and as sensible as that decision ultimately is, the way he goes about it doesn’t sit well with me. However immature Buffy was at the start of their relationship, she’s grown up enormously by that point, and instead of treating her like an adult – someone capable of knowing her own mind and making her own decisions – he takes the choice away from her, effectively dumping her for her own good. This is something he does again by returning in S4 without letting her know he’s there, and it’s also something we later see Riley do, too: indulging in paternalistic, overprotective behaviour despite her superior strength and emotional autonomy.

A sidenote here about Xander: I cannot even begin to express how much it bothers me that his rape attempt from S1’s The Pack is never addressed in the narrative. Despite remembering everything he did while under the influence of the hyena spirit, Xander feigns amnesia in order to dodge the consequences of his actions, putting him on the same page as Angel, Parker and Riley. Never mind the fact that, at this point – which is to say, four episodes into the first season – he and Buffy have known each other for all of a month or so, and that realistically, if a guy you’d known for such a short amount of time sexually assaulted you while in an altered state,  it ought to make you wary of him afterwards at the very least. But this doesn’t happen, which I take to be an enormous failure on the part of the writers. The fact that Spike’s assault is more forceful then Xander’s doesn’t detract from the vileness of the sentiment – nor, indeed, from the fact that, whereas Spike regains his senses mid-struggle and stops himself, Xander has to be physically incapacitated by Buffy. But despite the difference in their demonic aspects – Xander is possessed by a hyena spirit, while Spike is soulless – the two states nonetheless appear to be rather similar, in that both are guided by primal urges while still retaining their base personalities. It therefore seems a telling sign of Xander’s status as a Nice Guy that, whereas Spike seeks redemption for what he’s done while still soulless, Xander doesn’t so much as apologise even when back to normal. Xander, it seems, has less decency at times than someone who physically lacks a conscience.

Which is, I think, the best definition for vampirehood in the Buffyverse. Becoming a vampire invests you with bloodlust and demonic strength while stripping you of your conscience: what’s left is who you were before, but influenced by power and hunger and unfettered by consequences, which is the perfect explanation for Spike. In S5’s Crush, he’s implicitly likened to Quasimodo – a troubled outsider whose love for Esmerelda (that is, Buffy) can never be reciprocated, because his motivations in pursuing her are purely selfish – and yet, in the same conversation, we’re also invited to sympathise with him, for the sake of the effort he makes. Spike’s soullessness means that he’s without conscience, but unlike Quasimodo, he tries to grow one, and eventually succeeds by regaining his soul – but this being something of a chicken and egg dilemma, his attempts prior to that are equal parts creepy, misguided and genuinely touching. He makes a shrine to Buffy, furnished with clothes and photos stolen from her house. He tells her about Riley out of a mix of self-interest and real concern, but when he realises how deeply she’s been hurt by it, we see him express contrition and empathy. In S5’s Triangle, we even see him rehearsing apologies, complete with a dented box of chocolates. In Crush, he threatens her with death at Drusilla’s hands unless she confesses being attracted to him, but at the same time acknowledges how wrong his own feelings are. And when Glory captures and tortures him, he withholds the secret of Dawn’s identity at great personal cost, because he knows how much her loss would hurt Buffy. Without recourse to a conscience, he’s pulled in different directions at once, trying to do the right thing but failing at least as often as he succeeds. The demon in him is selfish, lustful and possessive, but the good man, the poet, so long dormant, is fighting for control.

And then there’s the issue of the Buffybot. More than once in the course of the show, a character spurned or crossed in love resorts to magic or science as a way to regain control: Xander once, with his wildly destructive love spell in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered; Warren twice, first with his own robot, April, and then with the enslavement, attempted rape and actual manslaughter of Katrina; Willow twice, first with her abortive attempt to curse Oz and Veruca, and then with her erasure of Tara’s memory; and Spike twice, once with his abortive plan to cast a love spell on Drusilla, and then again with the Buffybot. (And that’s before you count Anya’s work as a vengeance demon.) As skeevy and gross as the two sexbots are, for my part, I find them vastly less disturbing than Xander’s attempt to actually put Cordelia in his power – at least the robots aren’t real people. (We see from the Buffybot’s point of view in one episode, which was mechanical enough to convince me it lacks true sentience.) In fact, Xander’s spell is uncomfortably close to Warren’s plans for Katrina, in that both men actually used magic to try and control their ex-girlfriends; the fact that Xander never killed or raped anyone doesn’t put him that much ahead of the game when you consider not only how narrow his escape was, but the fact that he’s never really penalised for it. By contrast, Spike abandons his plan to curse Drusilla when he realises their split is his fault, not hers, an epiphany that Xander never has, and which stands as yet another instance of Spike admitting his faults and learning from his behaviour when other, ostensibly more moral characters fail to do so under similar circumstances.

There is, I suspect, a rather awful reason for this – and, indeed, for why Spike alone of all Buffy’s lovers and love interests accepts responsibility for his actions. It’s all down to narrative impetus: we, the viewers, are meant to sympathise with Xander, just as we’re meant to sympathise with Angel and Riley. At base, we “know” they’re all good guys, and as such, their contrition is implied. We don’t need to see them apologise, because the surrounding story is structured to suggest that they’ve already been forgiven off-camera. But Spike, by contrast, begins as a villain. His developmental arc is the most dramatic and varied in the whole show, culminating in a  radical heel face turn at the end of S6. We need to see his redemption, because otherwise, there’s no reason to believe that it’s taken place – and to an extent, this makes sense: if the audience can reasonably infer that something has happened, then it’s a waste of script and wordage to insert it. The problem is that, if the good guys never apologise on screen, then their goodness is called into question – which is why  the most fucked up relationship in the whole show is simultaneously the most equitable. Neither Buffy nor the audience can assume anything about Spike’s intentions that we aren’t actually shown, and as a result, he has to work the hardest out of anyone to be seen as good.

Thus: when Angelus is trying to end the world, Spike is trying to save it. When Xander is busy making threats and lying, Spike is saving Giles and keeping his promises. When Riley is out paying lady vamps to bite him, or sulking because Buffy’s had the temerity to put her own need to be strong ahead of his need to feel manly and protective, Spike is telling her the truth and offering quiet, undemanding support. When Willow and the others are smothering the newly resurrected Buffy, Spike gives her an out. And when absolutely everyone betrays her at the end of S7, it’s Spike alone who keeps faith with her. From villain to invalid to lovelorn drunk; from glowering menace to chaotic, defanged outsider; from frenemy to lover to ex; from assailant to madman to stalwart, both Spike’s personality and his relationship with Buffy undergo the most development in the whole show. He’s done some truly awful things, but when it really matters and everyone else has abandoned her, it’s always Spike, and Spike alone, who’s there to watch her back.

*I say arguably, because Angelus’s crimes are pretty horrific, too, and YMMV in terms of which you consider to be worse overall: there’s no sliding scale for evil, no definitive catalogue with which to determine their heinousness objectively.

Buffy Rewatch: Hush

S4’s Hush is widely acknowledged to be an awesome episode of Buffy. The acting is wonderful, the arc and writing are strong, and the non-verbal characterisation and communication are both brilliant. As villains, the Gentlemen are not only hugely creepy, but iconic – so much so that, as I was watching, I came to the belated realisation that two of Steven Moffat’s original monsters in Doctor Who, the Silence and the Whispermen, are inarguably Gentlemen knockoffs. (He’s even copied Whedon’s trick of the fake-creepy nursery rhyme to describe them.) It’s definitely one of the strongest episodes overall, and one that I still really like.

But.

(You knew there’d be one.)

Two things really bothered me in this episode – jarringly so, because I’d never noticed them before, and because they were both unequivocally sexist.

Firstly, there’s the issue of Anya. Ever since she turned human in S3, something about her characterisation in general and her interactions with Xander in particular has been really bothering me, but it wasn’t until Hush that I was able to pin it down: she’s a sexist caricature. Though her directness, socially inappropriate behaviour and greed are all played as quirky demon-turns-human traits, they overwhelmingly manifest as exaggerated and stereotypically negative female behaviours. After going with Xander to prom, which constitutes their one and only date, she forms a disproportionately strong attachment to him, demanding to know about the state of their relationship and in all respects behaving like a clingy, obsessive stalker – which is played for laughs at her expense. Immediately after sleeping with Xander, she says ‘I’m over you’, then penalises him for expressing the same sentiment, thereby conforming to the stereotype of women who say the opposite of what they mean – which is played for laughs at her expense. And then, in Hush, when she once again asks Xander about their relationship, he turns to her and says, ‘You really did turn into a real girl, didn’t you?’ – confirming the fact that her commitment anxiety, irrational mood-swings, demands that Xander buy her things, and nagging, attention-seeking behaviour are not only deemed to be inherently feminine traits, but are also viewed as negative because they’re female. Which, as ever, is played for laughs at her expense.

And I just. This skeevs me out and pisses me off so much, because even though Anya develops into an awesome character, these basic elements of her personality are always there to some extent, and they’re invariably painted as grounds for someone to mock or laugh at her. There are plenty of ways to portray her misunderstanding of human convention that don’t hinge on exaggerated sexist stereotypes, and given that Xander – Xander, King of Nice Guys and Insecure Masculinity, whose issues I’ll be blogging about in the future – is the one who helps her grow into a Real Human by socialising and correcting her, frequently by belittling her in front of other people? This is a serious problem.

Secondly: this is the episode where Willow first meets Tara at her Wiccan group, whose other members are portrayed as being anti-magic and generally ignorant. And… OK. It’s potentially a very cool idea! But here’s where it doesn’t work for me: the Wiccan group, instead of being about magic, is very clearly shown to be a feminist, pro-sisterhood organisation – or at least, they are on paper. They talk about empowerment and getting the word out to the sisters, and when Willow brings up the idea of actual magic, she’s chided for buying in to negative stereotypes. So, feminism, yes?

Only, no. The girl who rebukes Willow does so very passive-aggressively, in a way that portrays no sisterhood at all. But her treatment of Tara is even worse: despite the fact that Tara is visibly shy and stutters when speaking, the Wiccan group-leader mocks her, calls for quiet so Tara can speak (which is clearly a silencing tactic, designed to make her back down – which she does) and expresses sarcastic amazement at the idea that Tara might have anything to contribute. It’s clear from the way this is done that she – and, indeed, the others, who laugh along with her – have a pre-existing dislike of Tara, though we’re not told why. And I get what this scene is meant to do: in the Buffyverse, magic really exists, so the idea of Wiccans who think it’s fake is obviously comic. But here, in the real world occupied by the audience, there’s no such thing as magic – so what we’re left with is a scene that not only mocks as ignorant an overtly feminist group, but portrays its members as catty and cruel. Which, I’m sorry, but no.

And lest someone make the argument that, well, not every episode in the season was written by Whedon personally, so obviously some sexism still squeaked through? No. Hush is written by Joss alone; and believe me, as uncritical a fan as I used to be of his stuff – and even though I still love the vast majority of it – man are there some serious issues with what he does. UGH.