Buffy Season Two Episode Nineteen

[koganbot]

This entry will be hurried and sloppy because I want to get my thoughts down before my memory of the episode fades utterly, and I have to be somewhere in an hour, so corrections and additions will come when I get back, but HOLY AMAZING COW! How did they pull this off? I was sure at the start that (1) this episode was yet more time-killing while the series waited to take care of Angel in the season finale; (2) so, like the previous episode, it wouldn't have much to do with the story arc that we've been intermittently getting since Episode Thirteen; (3) ghost of a dead boy from the Fifties is almost guaranteed hokum; and (4) in fact, My So-Called Life, the gold standard for teens on TV as far as I'm concerned, had already fumbled and flubbed their attempt at Ghost Boy From The '50s several years earlier. So anyway, as this was going along, I was saying to myself, "OK, they haven't made any wrong moves yet, I'm actually taken by the mystery here, but still, it seems wrong that they've forgotten their ongoing task." And then, man, did they pull one on me, not just relating the story to the arc but nailing it to the themes and to poor Buffy's emotions, or nailing Buffy's emotions to this story, leading us by the nose and whomping us with the connection but, owing to strong dialogue and acting, getting me to absolutely buy into and feel as profound a tale that fundamentally was constructed out of a spare and worked-over melodramatic scene with sentimental paperback psychology layered on top of it. I guess people's lives as they're told often are melodrama and sentiment, even if as lived they're much deeper, but smart drama can suggest a world of thoughts and feelings beyond the simplicities of the story. This episode is about whether Buffy Can Find A Way To Forgive Herself. Also, I don't actually get the plot logic of the conclusion, though that's no matter since we're pushing for emotional "logic" here anyway, but now we go down under the cut.

How does suicide-boy James get his happy ending (EDIT: slight rewrite, with the word "whom" added)? Every other time he'd re-enacted the story, finding some guy to possess, and some woman to be his lover, Miss Newman, the movie keeps moving as planned, the shots fired, the show over. So how come the result is different when he inhabits Buffy and - somehow - the beloved Miss Newman inhabits Angel? This isn't explained at all. I suppose that since Angel, a vampire, can't be killed by gunshots, Angel/Miss Newman (Grace Newman) isn't cut down by the shots, so, even though it is poltergeist James who is reenacting the story, Miss Newman gets to continue on, make her way back to James (Angel making his way back to Buffy), tell him her truth, that with her dying breath she'd still loved him; she knows he hadn't intended to kill her (and Angel - the Angel whom Buffy loved, that is - knows that Buffy hadn't intended to destroy him). And this revelation, which is no more than what we the viewers already feel towards Buffy, nonetheless rewrites the episode for us; when Buffy had earlier been so unforgiving of poltergeist James, the inference was that she was being unforgiving of Angel and the pain that he'd caused. But now Buffy's earlier harshness and anger are seen to be anger - hatred - directed towards herself. And this also adds a whole other layer to the last few episodes, to Buffy's feeling that her moment of love and passion and joy had polluted everything. This hadn't quite seeped into us (or into me, anyway) in the way it does now.

EDIT Gellar as actress (slightly rewritten): Can't say that acting is something I understand, or that I can tell the difference between whether it's an actor that moves me or whether it's the lighting or the background music. But I don't think Mark's right in calling Gellar wooden. If anything, she's too easily buoyant, but that is also the character as written. This story arc, especially this episode and Episode Fourteen (the Morning After episode) [the two best in the series so far, I'd say], is utterly dependent on Buffy's pain being convincing and on our feeling that it is coming to us - we are perceiving it - unfettered. Buffy hurt, Buffy confused, Buffy shell-shocked, Buffy angry; Buffy going from pain to numbness to humbled to coldly angry. A lot of this is defined by the words and by what we know of the situation, but the actress has to give it all a convincing look, so that the emotions seem to inhabit her body. Gellar has to make the guilt not only credible but beautiful. There's a dark stillness to her in crucial scenes in fourteen and nineteen, Buffy physically closed-in on herself but her pain palpably dominating the scene. Camera movements are important in creating this, but so too is body language.

Gellar made the guilt credible, and made it beautiful. So we believe in Buffy's feelings even if we don't believe she had anything to feel guilty about. But Buffy's story would be even more involving if she'd done something that we did feel was at least somewhat wrong (though understandable), rather than her being utterly blameless.

EDIT Cordelia watch: Cordelia as potential pleasure principle and potential link to everyday reality. OK, my final addition (unless I think of some other): If they ever do pull their conception of Cordelia together, this is how I'd want them to do it: First, as I've said, they've got to motivate Cordy's moments of self-centeredness. They can't simply have her as someone who for the moment cares more about her hair than about the fate of the world, since they've already established that she cares more about the fate of the world and that she admires Xander and Buffy et al. for being courageous and rescuing others. It's simply not credible that a bored, pleasure-seeking Cordelia is e.g. going to be distracting Giles while Giles is doing the research that will potentially save a little boy's life, etc., and whenever the scripts pull something like this it just registers to me as "the script is pulling something like this." But this episode hints at something better: Cordelia as the innocent pleasure principle. The school is totally haunted by insects or bats or whatever, a seat of destruction, and the kids and Giles are off in Buffy's living room trying to figure out what to do about it, and Cordelia pipes up, brightly, "Hey, if Sunnydale High School shuts down forever, do we automatically graduate?" Here she almost feels like common sense, in comparison to everyone else's over-the-top world-saving concerns. Why it works this time is that she isn't opposing her concerns to the world-saving stuff, she's adding them. Just because we're saving the world doesn't mean the rest of life stops (this is a principle of the show, as Mark says down in the comments). The scene is powerful, Buffy separate from the others, leaning against the wall, shattered and depressed, being the one who intones her dark truth, while the others are wondering what's with the poltergeist. He wants forgiveness, she tells the others, her voice dead, affectless. He wants forgiveness, wants to be forgiven for killing the one he loved, but he doesn't deserve to be forgiven, and it makes no difference that he didn't know what he was doing and that he couldn't help himself. So Buffy prosecutes herself, and wanders desolately into another room, while Cordy remarks that there seems to be a bit of overidentification going on - which is the show hedging its bets, telling us it knows that it's laying things on real thick. And here Cordy is reality talking; the remark would have worked totally if the show had previously done a good job along the way of having her embody the pleasure principle and be a link to everyday reality. As it is, it jars a little: bet-hedging when this is a bet the episode is committed to.

(There's more to say about Cordy as the potential artist of style and artist of the everyday, but I'll hold off.)

The Flamingos track didn't come out until 1959, by the way. I wonder why the show chose 1955 as the flashback date.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Will wait until you finish the thoughts, but I STILL don't know what exactly I think of Gellar's acting -- not whether or not it's "good" (which is a moot point once the show's really hooked me) but the mechanics of how it works. I'd like to go back into episodes in which she's literally "outside of herself," including this one, to see how she handles a more obvious sort of interpretation as an actress. My thinking is that she's constantly employing this observation into her performance as Buffy, but inhabits the character so fully that we rarely actually notice it. Looking for "tells" when she's a sort of 3rd person or externally-motivated "new character" (usually via possession, but sometimes through a kind of emotional...I dunno, dispossession? Losing herself is what I mean) to see if I can also spot them in her Buffy-as-Buffy acting.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I love this episode massive amounts - for all your reasons above plus how they actually make use of the fact that Vampires Are Immortal You Guys thing in a different context that's actually relevant to the plot. We're so used to the vampires being easy fodder for Buffy, it's easy to forget that actually they do have superhuman powers that Buffy does not have (er despite Buffy coming back from the dead seventeen times as well er). But yeah, it feels like a change when the 'monster of the week' involves vampires for once.

wooden in a good way

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i guess i should stress that while "wooden" is in a sense a diss -- and i think it has worked against SMG in other contexts, esp.movies -- i think it is a terrific asset here: what it really is is an unusually extreme recessiveness perhaps

i think her readings are able and intelligent: but i think they're often quite hard for the viewer to reach -- as frank says, some things don't always seep in

but this -- which is a general characteristic or mannerism of the actress -- works so well n context that HURRAH: i have never been especially excited by buffy as a character or an object of attraction or whatevs, but as the centre of this story, SMG's arguable flaws or quirks are exactly right... they actually allow her levels and masks to separate out more clearly than with most actors; they provide a space for us to observe the character's evolvng strategic intelligence as it's torn across by the normal passions of her age-group and social context

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

possibly bcz his background is superhero comics, whedon seems to distrust cliches less than many smart directors: treats them as opportunities to pull his best work

i think this is because he recognises that his audience already have two very useable assets, when it comes to a cliche -- they know where it ordinarily goes, so he can shortcut and play with that; and they know to disdain and be a bit suspicious of where it ordinarily goes, so he can shortcut and play with THAT

and somewhere round about here -- it's a few months since i rewatched all of season two, so i'm a bit sketchy the exact order -- the team grasped that there's no such thing as killing time; that off the main ball or project may well be where the best work is done, in jokes and diversions; in the reflection of the main story on its sidelines

[koganbot]

off the main ball or project may well be where the best work is done, in jokes and diversions; in the reflection of the main story on its sidelines

Yes, absolutely, but for this to work the main ball has to be totally on, or else there's too much weight on the jokes and diversions, and they're no longer diversions. By "killing time" I'm specifically referring to "monster of the week" episodes killing time before we get to Buffy finishing business with Angel. The love potion/witchcraft episode works because in effect it pulls a complete reversal: the monster or demon-witchcraft spell isn't the main ball here - the main ball is Xander and Cordy's serious love for each other, the episode teaching them that yes, they really want each other, and want each other as is, not as someone else. But that main ball isn't going to roll for more than five nonconsecutive minutes total before losing us, powerful though it is for those five, and the show knows this, so the "monster" - all of womankind other than Cordy (show probably thought it would be one theme too far to bring Larry back for this episode) - is wild raucous comedy, a full-scale diversion that allows those five minutes to germinate and blossom. The other killing-time episode (that is, before we get to the next killing-time episode) is the Death Man terrorizing children; that episode gets across just because it's a strong story in itself. But too many more of such episodes will start to feel like bullshit, if the show seems unwilling to take care of its main business.

Re: wooden in a good way

[koganbot]

But I'm arguing something different. Gellar is warm when need be, and hot when need be (and not just hott), and wet when need be. She makes Buffy believably warm - almost incandescently sympathetic - whenever Buffy and Xander have their end-of-episode hallway walks. (Xander would be the human being Buffy cares most about if her role as slayer hadn't precluded such attention to a single human being.) And especially I don't see how fourteen and nineteen (and, really, fourteen through twenty-two overall) can work if the viewer doesn't fall for Buffy, doesn't break along with her when Angel is being inexplicably (to her) cruel in their first scene after his switch, doesn't want to reach and comfort her when she's unreachably sad. When Buffy heads towards tears of distress and near hysterics, Gellar is up to it. But the character really can't indulge in those much, or else we don't have a show. And in a sense vampire-slaying is her detachment, and Gellar as martial-arts action-girl is the real withdrawal, what puts Buffy outside of everything else.

But there's something to what you say about recessiveness, though "wooden" and "recessive" seem like the wrong terms. Gellar's not recessive when Buffy's crying or when she's warming Xander. But her full-body depression has withdrawal in it, and Gellar's Buffy is charismatic when depressed - charismatically depressed. (Compare to Boreanaz when Angel is in mope mode, which simply got tiring, though that may not be Boreanaz's fault, since he was undoubtedly doing what he was told.)

Essential reading is Dave Hickey's essay on Robert Mitchum in the O.K. You Mugs anthology. He quotes Mitchum:

So a lot of times, in a complicated scene, the best thing to do is stand absolutely still, not moving a muscle. This would look very strange if you did it at the grocery store, but it looks okay on screen because the camera and the shots are moving around you.... Then, when you do move, even to pick up a teacup, you have to move at a speed. Everything you do has to have pace, and if you're the lead in a picture, you want to have the pace, to set the pace, so all the other tempos accommodate themselves to yours. In a furious action scene, for instance, if you move a little more slowly and a little more deliberately, you control the tempo. Everyone else looks out of control.

This may not be generalizable to anyone who doesn't want to come across as Robert Mitchum. But in the library scene in fourteen, for instance, Gellar's dead still sadness absolutely controls that scene and rivets our attention (though of course our knowledge of Buffy's predicament helps put full attention on her even when the camera has her out of shot). But that stillness, unlike Mitchum's, is a hot stillness (and again, it may be our knowledge of the circumstances that makes it feel hot). Whereas Buffy's strategic intelligence - and maybe Season Two is too early for what you have in mind - is more a kind of bantering withdrawal, teasing and goading vampires, some repartee with Giles, etc.

[koganbot]

And see my addition above in regard to Cordy's potential role if they can ever pull their shit together in regard to her.

[koganbot]

possibly bcz his background is superhero comics, whedon seems to distrust cliches less than many smart directors: treats them as opportunities to pull his best work

t.A.T.u. to thread!