Wednesday, November 25, 2015

BtVS: Hell: Season 6, Episodes 19-21

Covering from “Seeing Read” to “Two to Go,” in which at least things sort of happen.

First off:

            I’m not angry, Buffy, I’m just disappointed.
            Just because I’ve already crowned the worst doesn’t mean these episodes aren’t deeply bad, they just, unlike the last stretch, have things happening in them. Granted, those things include Spike sexually assaulting Buffy and Tara getting randomly shot and killed, and they feel unnecessary and cheap, but they happen and have consequence and much as I hate them, and make no mistake, I hate them both, at least they don’t defy everything I’ve seen before. I mean, I hate Spike sexually assaulting Buffy enough that I prefer to not dwell the specifics and just generally think “He did something to confirm he was irredeemably evil, and decided to do something about it,” and luckily I’m in good company, because the show feels the same. Once he leaves Sunnydale on his quest (annoyingly, his intent is kept vague, his language played not just too close to the chest, but pushing too far to the obvious conclusion to feel clever when all is revealed, but that’s for later), he regains so much of what I and others loved about the character. The swagger, the bravado, the joy of the brawl, and the shocked way he exclaims “Son of a bitch” when the combatant he faces bursts his fists into flames made me laugh harder than I have in, Christ, I don’t even know when.
            But the aggravating annoyance of “Seeing Red,” a carry-over from “Entropy” really, is how Anya and Spike’s dalliance continues to be treated, focusing mainly on how their actions hurt Xander and Buffy respectively. I have zero patience for this. These people were all broken up. Buffy ended whatever it was she had with Spike, and while Xander may not have said “I’m breaking up with you,” leaving her to tell their wedding that there wasn’t going to be a wedding while he slinked out the fucking back door said it without words. It’s immensely frustrating how wrongheaded this is.
            Anyway, Warren gets some orbs her keeps in a sack that gives him super-strength and invulnerability, at least until Buffy breaks his orbs, and yeah, it’s not very subtle. Enraged at having been foiled yet again, he steals a play from Darla’s book and comes to Buffy’s backyard with a gun, critically wounding Buffy and killing Tara because he shoots like a spaz. Separate of everything, this could work fine as a harrowing, random tragedy, it could even have been great. However, it’s part of a season that has displayed a singular disinterest in having any of its characters be anything less than trembling buckets of misery, with no level of contrivance too contorted in accomplishing that end. In that context, Tara getting shot out of the blue doesn’t feel shocking, and indeed, I recall back in the day not reacting with surprise and horror but with a frustrated “Of fucking course!” It doesn’t help that Buffy hasn’t exactly foiled Warren all that much. But the season needs Willow to go bad, so Tara needs to die, so Warren needs to be that crazy and desperate.
            Yes, Tara’s death drives Willow to evil—it doesn’t go as far as a bonafide fridging, but we’re perilously far into the kitchen—and she juices herself up on magic. Parts of this are suitably scary, the scene in the ER is particularly suffused with a dreadful awe, but magic as a concept remains desperately muddled, so much so I was briefly convinced everyone had forgotten how magic was supposed to work until Anya and Xander pulled out a spell book and started translating and incanting (the frustration here becomes that they keep rejecting Jonathan’s help, despite his proficiency in magic and vested interest in getting some protection around himself). For seasons and seasons, magic existed as energy that is manipulated through practice, concentration, and knowledge to achieve a specific purpose. While it was a power, it wasn’t one in the same way that Buffy’s strength and healing were powers, it was a skill, which is what made what Willow and everyone else who utilized magic distinct from Buffy. But that’s pretty much gone, as Willow just has god powers again, especially when she channels all her energies to…give herself strength, agility, and fighting abilities just like Buffy has, which some people, such as myself, is a fairly base and uninspiring use of the raw energies of the cosmos.
            Oh yes, it’s become clear one of the purposes of the wedding story was to give Anya a motive for becoming a vengeance demon again. I suppose this was thought to be fruitful ground that would give her some utility, but trouble is Anyanka was designed to fill a role in a story, and thus her powers are simultaneously too immense (she can grant any wish!) and too limited (she can only do so for purposes of vengeance) to be of any actual utility. This trouble gets highlighted here, as Anya is able to briefly track Willow, teleports, and that’s it.
            Back to Willow. Despite her state being billed as the endpoint of a continuum, of long-festering darkness and resentment given expression, even to the point of calling back to the previous Evil Willow by invoking her catchphrase, it never really feels that way. Most obviously, the vampire Willow who first said “Bored now!” was killed when she was 15, and her evil was typified by a sort of schizoid vicious carnality, not the cruel wrathfulness our Willow exhibits just before she drops the line. She also is petty, bitter, and bitchy, mocking Dawn for her whininess (which may well have bothered her, but she never, ever indicated such), and snarling at Buffy that she isn’t a sidekick anymore. But “sidekick” isn’t how Willow has seen herself since season 3 at the latest—she had her own stuff going on (of course, season 3 is also where Xander realized he is brave and valorous, and we know how that’s gone). Of course, she is this way because we’re still clinging to an addiction story, so despite being, we’re told, full of coursing energies beyond our conception and understanding, she acts like an addict and says things. She’s all id in a situation where it would have been scarier if she’d been all superego.
            Throughout the crisis, Buffy, Xander, and Anya endeavor to keep Willow from truly crossing a line and killing the less-than-guilty Jonathan and Andrew, but as several characters point out, they don’t really have much of a plan that will help accomplish that goal. If only there were someone mature, seasoned, and temperate to channel their zeal in fruitful directions, huh?
            Oh. Hi Giles. Gosh, sure would have been nice to have you around sooner.

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