Reviewed by Sanguine

Once again, I must begin my review by singing the praises of Jane Espenson. She's great with the funny and in this week's episode, "Storyteller," she demonstrates her ability to craft an untraditional narrative. Or at least somewhat untraditional. We all know that Soderbergh used the video camera conceit in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Ally McBeal frequently escaped into fantasy sequences in her television show, or, to use a loftier example, so did the murderous protagonists of Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. But in "Storyteller" Espenson uses these conceits, which have become part of the filmmaker's standard arsenal, and has made them serve a larger story. At no time did "Storyteller" feel gimmicky, like a "very special episode" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Using the video camera seemed a like a perfectly natural medium to explore the character of Andrew, the geeky former supervillain, and in turn to consider and sometimes deconstruct the characters with whom we've become so familiar over the past seven years.

At the beginning of the episode Andrew addresses the audience directly: "It's wonderful to get lost in a story, isn't it? Adventure, heroics, discovery . . . don't they just take you away?" Yes, stories do allow us escape. Like Andrew, we are the voyeuristic consumers of a world in which we do no participate (a highly, as Anya humorously implies, onanistic exercise). Of course, the moral of "Storyteller" concerned the dangers of escapism, of fantasy, of watching and not participating. At the end of the episode Andrew realises that his obsession with fantasy was unhealthy--it allowed him to avoid the hard truths about himself and the violent world in which he lived. Perhaps Mutant Enemy is sending us a message, too--a wake-up call, if you will. Watching this episode, I couldn't help but find a subtle message regarding our "real lives". Many of us (myself included) spend a lot of time pondering the nuances and complexities of this fantasy Joss created. Like Andrew, we enjoy escape; we enjoy watching. Yet in our real world (as in Buffy's world) a war is coming, a war that will be very costly in many ways. What will we contribute? Will our tears be enough?

Of course, Andrew also represents the writers in this episode. Perhaps the writers are feeling that the time for storytelling is past. The time for escape is past. And the time for Buffy is past.

Potential political messages aside, let's move on to the question of point of view. Andrew has a dual perspective--the actual perspective from behind his viewfinder, indicated by the symbols or and his fantasy perspective, in which he frequently indulges in self-aggrandizement. Some of the episode is also from a typical omniscient narrator perspective--the perspective we see every week on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A great example of how Andrew's perspective is compared with that of the omniscient narrator occurs towards the beginning of the episode, when Andrew is in the graveyard, filming Buffy's nightly dance with the vam-PIRES. Andrew films Buffy and we see the world through his viewfinder. She objects, and then Andrew's frame disappears and the camera pulls back, so far back that the cinematographer must have used a crane to accomplish the shot. Now Buffy and Andrew look like miniatures and we (the viewers) are made completely aware that we are observing both of these characters through the omniscient narrator's viewfinder, which is just as much of a construct, just as artificial as Andrew's viewfinder. By placing the omniscient narrator so high above the actors in the scene, the idea is perpetuated that that narrator is somehow "godlike," that the omniscient narrator "knows all." But is this narrator really any more reliable than Andrew? I doubt it.

The "problem" of the unreliable narrator was central to this episode. Of course, Spike's comment earlier this year about "Montresor" also invoked this problem, so I have to think that Mutant Enemy is telling us something. What we've seen so far is unreliable. We aren't getting the whole story. And this could explain things that seem like sloppy writing--the wonky timeline, Giles's unexplained absences.

Unlike Mutant Enemy (whose agenda remains mysterious), Andrew's agenda as narrator is quite transparent. His fantasies (some completely hilarious--"We are as Gods!", some pathetic--his repeated denial of culpability in Jonathan's murder) give the viewer insight into Andrew's perspective, his desires So does his viewfinder. He only frames what he wants to see--we only have part of the story. This is made abundantly clear when, instead of focusing on Willow & Kennedy's smoochies, he pans to the window behind them, praising Xander's handiwork (XAndrew forever!). Or when he rewatches (another moment where Andrew is explicitly a "fan") the shippy scene between Anya and Xander--mouthing the dialogue he's memorized. Of course, Andrew's only framed part of the story--through the omniscient narrator (who may be unreliable as well) we learn that Anya & Xander didn't have a permanent reunion. Another moment where Andrew manipulates the perception of reality is when he gets Spike to act like the Big Bad. This moment served two purposes: first, we (the gentle viewers) are jolted into "reality": James Marsters is acting. He is not Spike. This is a role he plays, on cue, when the director yells action. Second, within the narrative of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we learn that Spike is just "acting" the part of the Big Bad (something we might argue he's always done--it was always a construct). Spike's escape into this persona (at the behest of Buffy) can easily be compared with Andrew's fantasies of himself. Andrew's memory of himself as a supervillain is no more "true" than Spike or Buffy's conception of the Big Bad. Spike, like Andrew, needs to come to terms with his "true" identity.

One scene completely puzzled me, in terms of point of view. Andrew is in the basement, explaining to his video camera about the Hellmouth and the Ubervamp. The camera then zooms in, focusing on specific illustrations. So, who is operating the camera at this moment? Even if Andrew has a remote, the panning and zooming the camera achieves stretches the bounds of credulity. In this moment, as in other moments throughout the episode, we find fluidity between Andrew's point of view and that of the omniscient narrator. For Andrew is also being watched, being filmed. And nothing we see is ultimately real.