On ambiguity, suicide, and speeches
Episode 7.15
Reviewed by Sanguine
 

After watching this week's episode, "Get it Done," written and directed by Doug Petrie, I was left with one burning question:

Was Buffy right?

As Buffy said at the beginning of the season, "It's about power. Who has it and who knows how to use it."

Indeed, that has been the theme this year: power. Willow and Spike are afraid of their power. Anya's power was taken away. Xander and Dawn don't have any special powers. Giles seems unusually defeatist, worrying that the First Evil may have more power than the Team Good. Kennedy is power hungry without really understanding the consequences. And Buffy? This season she has veered between ineffectual, sanctimonious speechmaking and moments of clarity in which she's able to put things in perspective (her debate with Giles over removing Spike's chip was a good example of this newly mature Buffy). Is Buffy using her power correctly? Was she right to encourage Spike to unshackle himself (literally and metaphorically), to bring back the Big Bad? Was she right to lambaste the Slayers in Training about Chloe's suicide? Was she right to chastise Willow for being afraid of magic? Or was she right last week, when she said, "You can't fight evil by doing evil?" Was she right to reject the demonic power offered to her by the shaman?

After all, as we now know (and it confirms something I've suspected for years), the source of the Slayer's power is demonic. The shaman shackled a girl to the earth and "raped" her, infusing her body with "demon dust." As many have pointed out, usually becoming more demonic on a Mutant Enemy show is not a good thing (look at any vampire, Cordy, etc.), but in Buffy's case perhaps she should have accepted the power. In accepting the power, she would have been accepting an essential truth about herself: she's not a normal human, nor will she ever be.

On the other hand, by defying the shaman, the men who did this to the original Slayer, Buffy is able to break the chains that bind her. She is no longer shackled to the earth. The tale of Buffy's journey to the cave is made more complex by the way it was paralleled with Spike's journey to find his power.

Buffy's criticisms cut Spike to the quick. I cringed for him when Buffy told him,"Fine, take a cell phone. That way if I need someone to get weepy or wailed on, I can call you." He got the soul for Buffy and now it's not enough, now he's being accused of weakness. Just like every other woman, Buffy doesn't want William, the sensitive poet; she wants Spike, the Big Bad. As Spike commented rather wistfully last week, some girls like the bad boy image. So, what does Spike do? He changes himself once again, trying desperately to be what Buffy wants. It's still, tragically, all about Buffy. He goes to regain his duster, which is, quite inexplicably, in the school basement, not at the Summers' house where he left it after the attempted rape. Emerging from the basement, he meets Wood, the man whose mother, unbeknownst to Spike, provided him with his leather trophy. He dons the duster and meets the consequences of being the Big Bad: an orphaned child who never knew his mother. Thus, we are told that the source of Spike's power (if we didn't know it already) is profoundly problematic, demonic at its core.

Just like the Slayer's.

So Big Bad Spike emerges, gleefully fighting the demon, laughing one of the first laughs we've heard since he returned from Africa and emerged from the basement. But this is the laugh of a killer, a demon, a thing that enjoys its work. It is not the laugh of a man.

As Spike frees his inner demon, loosing it upon his opponent, so Buffy unchains herself and fights the shaman. For Spike, he must find power by reverting to what he was. He can't afford to think outside the vampiric box. If he is to be of any use to the Slayer, he must relish killing. Buffy, on the other hand, wants to transcend her demonic essence and in doing so overturns her traditional role (serving the men who would have her kill for them) and frees herself. For Buffy, her power has always resided in her ability to think outside the box. She is the Slayer with family and friends, the Slayer that finds the unusual way out, the Slayer who has died and been resurrected more than once. While Buffy and Spike are both demonic hybrids and warriors, the Slayer's story is actually the inverse of Spike's. Spike strove to be a better man, and in doing so (if we are to believe Buffy) he lost his power. By trying to subvert his traditional role, he emasculated himself. On the other hand, Buffy strove to be a more powerful warrior, but by rejecting her essence, subverting her traditional role, she freed herself.

As Spike crows over the demon he killed, he lights a cigarette, Buffyverse signifier of evil. Gleefully he remarks, "Tussle like that is good for the soul."

Is it? Is violence ever good for the soul?

At the end of the episode Buffy remarks to Willow, "I think I made a mistake . . . they offered me more power, but I didn't like the loophole. They showed me that the First Slayer is right. It isn't enough."

So Buffy was wrong to kick patriarchy's ass?

The moral ramifications of Buffy's actions, like Spike's actions, are unclear. We shall see if their choices are eventually vindicated.
 

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