Reviewed by Sanguine
According to popular science, entropy is the tendency of things to go from a state of order to disorder. This bears little relation to the actual scientific definition of entropy (isolated systems of atoms and molecules spontaneously tend to change toward a condition of greater energy dispersion). It would appear that Drew V. Greenberg's emotionally painful episode was drawing on both definitions. Things fell into chaos, bonds of affection and love were severed, the increasingly isolated players were sent careening into dispersal. My assumption is affirmed by Tara's final speech to Willow, which seems to sum up the theme of this week's episode:
Things fall apart.
They fall apart so hard.
Indeed, they do. But, unlike in nature, this "falling apart" didn't happen spontaneously.
Throughout this season, we have seen the Scoobies make disastrous choices in their personal lives. In a radical departure from previous seasons, the storyline has dwelt upon their internal demons rather than focusing upon external threats. Buffy struggled to feel again and used Spike, her "willing slave," to assuage the pain of her depression, ignoring the needs of her teenage sister. Willow, in one of the lamest plot twists ever on BTVS, became physically addicted to magic, causing a rift between her and Tara. Xander's insecurities, his abusive childhood, and his racist attitude towards all things demonic, dashed his chance at connubial bliss with Anya. As the primary characters crashed and burned, the second-string Scoobies--Tara, Spike, and Dawn--became the victims. This season, the Big Bad wasn't really the Troika, although they represent of some of the problems plaguing the immature Scoobies (lust for power; love of the quick-fix; moral confusion; disregard for the consequences of their actions; treating people like things). The core Scoobies were the Big Bad; the characters that we have grown to love over the years have become the characters that some of us love to hate. And this turn of events has alienated viewers. Others, like me, acknowledge the courage in pursuing such a storyline, while remaining unconvinced that it has been deftly executed.
Entropy centers around four primary relationships. In all four cases, fine acting sometimes rescues clunky dialogue. First, Dawn and Buffy.
Dawn has suddenly grown up in the space of one episode. Perhaps her sister should embrace homicidal insanity more often? In any case, Dawn has taken back all her pilfered merchandise, has offered to pay the merchants for their losses, and has repaired her relationship with her sister. In short, Dawn is willing to pay the price for her actions and because of this, her life is looking up. But Buffy still won't completely let her sister into her life. Buffy feels she must protect Dawn from the slayage, and from her own darkness, instead persisting in the charade of normalcy. But, as Dawn points out, Buffy's attempt to be a normal girl in a normal family is simply ludicrous. Buffy tells her that she can't go on patrol with her because, "I work very hard to keep you away from that stuff. OK? I don't want you around dangerous things that can kill you." Dawn gently rebuts, "Which would be a perfectly reasonable argument if my sister was chosen to protect the world from tax audits." Ah, now we come to the crux of the problem, and what some feel is the problem with this whole season. Buffy isn't a normal girl and sometimes it's downright painful to watch her deny her true nature.
Willow, like Dawn, has also paid a price for her actions. After essentially mind-raping Tara, her partner left, her trust in Willow permanently damaged. Willow initially sunk deeper into a big old black pit of black magic, but, after nearly killing Dawn, realized that she didn't want to be all Darth-Vadery. She didn't want to turn in her White Hat Card just yet. So, after a painful detox process, Willow has been clean and sober for a few months. In the tried-and-true fashion of BTVS lovers, she's taken up stalking her former partner, lurking in the shadows as Tara leaves class. Finally, she musters up enough courage to ask Tara for coffee, the beverage of love (although we must remember, unhappy, tragic love) on BTVS. Tara accepts and Willow fills her in on all the lame monsters they've encountered in the episodes Tara was better off missing (the penis-headed monster in Doublemeat Palace, the demon eggs in As You Were). Things seem to be looking up for Willow and Tara and that can only mean one thing on BTVS: tragedy. The reconciliation between Tara and Willow is complete by the end of the episode. Tara approaches Willow, works the definition of entropy into casual conversation, talks about how trust needs to be rebuilt, blah, blah, blah. Let's forget all that trust garbage, Tara suggests. Let's skip to the good stuff. And the good stuff in this case is much lip-lockage. Upon watching this my husband commented, "Wow, this would be really poignant if you didn't know something horrible is gonna happen." And no, my husband is not spoiled for future episodes. He's just watched BTVS for many years, and knows the typical pattern. Love is pain, folks.
Speaking of pain, Xander is wallowing, drinking himself into oblivion, listening to suitably morose music. Yeah, he screwed up, big time, and there's no quick fix. He can't just wave a wand and make it all better, although Willow might help him out if he asked really nicely. After stumbling out of his apartment, he returns to find Anya waiting for him.
"Anya!" he cries, happy she's returned.
Anya isn't equally pleased.
Xander then makes an effective speech about how much he loves her, how much he misses her, how much he wants her back. Brendon, given this meaty, emotionally-overwrought material, rises to the challenge, conveying Xander's pain with authenticity. However, these words, while nice, aren't what Anya needs. Actions speak louder than words, and Xander still isn't ready for marriage. Even though he loves Anya, he isn't ready to make a firm commitment to her. Which begs the question: why did he ask her to marry him in the first place? Perhaps Anya should have obeyed her first instinct. In The Gift she is initially angry with the Xand-man, claiming that the only reason he's asking her to marry him is because he thinks they're all going to die in the impending apocalypse and he won't have to go through with it.
Maybe Anya was right.
In any case, Xander's words do nothing to alleviate Anya--Anyanka's--sense of betrayal and rejection. So, we discover, she's rejected her humanity, embracing the part of her that Xander spurned. She embraced the demon, embraced power, and hopes to make him pay for his actions. In accepting D'Hoffryn's offer, it would seem that Anyanka has learned very little from being human.
But . . .
After attempting to curse Xander herself, after trying to get the Scoobies to curse Xander for her, after trying to get a drunken Spike to help, when the opportunity to curse her ex actually presents itself (a royally pissed Spike—in both the American and English senses of the word—begins, "I wish . . ."), Anya stops him. She has learned something after all. Anya's experience being human has profoundly changed her, and even though physically she has returned to her demonic status, emotionally she can never truly go back.
Spike is in a similar position. Neither he nor Anya chose to be altered. Anya didn't choose to be human; he didn't choose to get the chip. Yet, whether they like it or not, both have been profoundly changed by their experiences. This goes back to the essential question of whether nature or nurture is most important in shaping personality. Is Spike and Anya's evil essential, or can external stimuli give them a moral compass? In the early days of BTVS it seemed rather clear that the soulless were incapable of being good. Hey, the soulless creatures even believed that, and, if Spike is any indication, they still do. But things rapidly became less clear. Who would have thought that Xander would have been engaged to an ex-demon, that Spike would fight side-by-side with the Scoobies and serve as Dawn's guardian after Buffy's death, that Buffy would ever sleep with a soulless vampire?
I certainly didn't.
So, BTVS has taught us that while soulless or demonic creatures might be essentially evil (or morally neutral in the case of Clem), they are capable of change, if presented with the correct external stimuli. If, for example, Buffy had consistently treated Spike with respect and affection (if not love) then perhaps he would have behaved differently. In spite of Buffy's mistreatment of him, he still can't bring himself to do anything vengeful towards her. He doesn't kill her goldfish, hire someone to kill her friends, taunt her with creepy drawings. No, he just wants the pain to stop. He wants the traitor beneath his breast to stop its rebellion. He wants his worth to be confirmed.
So, he and Anya seek solace in each other's arms. Each intimately understands the pain of being a pseudo-Scooby, never quite good enough to join the elite little clique, always on the outside, looking in. Spike is right when he says that they don't know how to deal with the likes of him and Anya. They don't fit into a neat little moral box, and as such present a profound threat to their lovers' very black-and-white worldview. He's also right when he says that Buffy and Xander are "weak."
They are weak. Xander is nothing but an insecure little boy, spouting inappropriate jokes. And Buffy is a physically powerful woman who has proven incapable of accessing and acknowledging her emotions. She is afraid that if she does, they will overwhelm her. To be a killer, to slay every night, she needs to stay hard. Angelus taught her that, and she's never forgotten the painful lesson.
Of course, when Xander and Buffy see Anya and Spike in action, they feel betrayed, although they have no right. Buffy has just told Spike that she doesn't love him and that he should move on and Xander has told Anya that he doesn't want to marry her now but maybe someday he'll be ready. Buffy's reaction to the pornographic visual is understandable, given her conflicted feelings about Spike, and she retreats to the backyard, seeking solace with her sister. Xander takes a less healthy approach: homicide. Grabbing a giant battle axe, he prepares to kill a defenseless Spike. And Spike welcomes the confrontation. After all, as he mockingly tells Anya in a moment of drunken misery, some people think he's nothing but an "evil, soulless, thing." As such, he deserves to be beaten, abused, kicked to the ground. Xander is happy to oblige, and Spike greets his incipient death with open arms. Still the lovesick poet, he wants to embrace death, just like he embraced Drusilla in that dingy alleyway over a century before.
But Buffy won't let him go into that undiscovered country just yet. Both Anya and Buffy appear on the scene, stopping Xander in his murderous tracks. Xander then proceeds to rant about how Anya has defiled herself by sleeping with the disgusting detritus that is Spike. Never mind that she found solace and comfort in his arms. Never mind that Spike was accepting where Xander was rejecting. Perhaps that's what bothered Xander so much. An evil, undead thing was capable of comforting Anya when he was not. In any case, Xander's diatribe against sex with the soulless is interrupted by a broken Spike, who utters, "If it's good enough for Buffy . . ." Xander frantically looks for a sign from the Buffster that Spike's allegation isn't true, but to no avail. Xander finally acknowledges something that he's probably known, but denied, since Gone: Buffy and Spike had sex. Many times. In many ways.
As Xander runs away again and Buffy turns her back on Anya and Spike, a song begins to play, asking the musical question, "Who would sell their soul for love?" The answer is right before us. Spike sold his soul over a hundred years ago when Cecily rejected him. Ever a fool for love, he would have sold his unlife for Buffy, escaping into death rather than facing a life without her. Anya sold her human soul for love a thousand years before. When a lover cheated on her, she showed a spectacular talent for revenge, and she embarked on a career where power was ultimate and "justice" was decided by a jury of one. When presented with the same choice, escape from the pain of love into ultimate power, she again chose power. But, in rejecting Spike's wish, Anya has shown growth. She has shown that one doesn't have to be human to behave humanely.
As the season draws to a close, characters will have to choose between escape into ultimate power and facing their own flaws and vulnerabilities. When tragedy presents itself, Willow will have to choose whether to embrace dark magic or to take a higher path. Anya will have to decide whether to help the Scoobies or to hinder them. And Spike will have to decide whether to accept his humanity, or reject it to become what he once was: an evil soulless thing. Whatever they decide, the core Scoobies will have learned a painful lesson. Behaving badly always has consequences.