Gone

"I told you, stop trying to see me." Buffy to Spike, Gone

What would I do if I were invisible for a day? Gone taps into one of my favorite childhood fantasies. I spent many enjoyable hours contemplating what mayhem I might cause if no one could see me and hold me accountable for my actions. Obviously I have something in common with some of the residents of Sunnydale.

"It was an episode about the dangers of trying to escape from life rather than deal with it - essentially the arc Buffy's been going through all season." (Jane, 9-Jan-2002)

Buffy's having a rough year. She's still suffering from the effects of the resurrection spell. She's not meeting the economic responsibility of her household. She's not handling her responsibility for Dawn's welfare. She's not reconnecting to her friends. She's not managing her non-relationship with Spike. All of these things converge to overwhelm her in the opening scene at the Summers house. Within a few short minutes, Buffy fails to meet the needs of three of the most important people in her life: Willow, Dawn, and Spike.

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"Before Buffy can grow up - in other words accept and balance her life and responsibilities - she has to accept her LIFE. Period." (Les, 9-Jan-2002)

She confronts herself in the mirror. In a fit of guilt and self-loathing at what she sees there, she hacks off her hair. Later, she tells her hair stylist, "Just make me different." Suddenly we're immersed in one of the core themes of the Buffyverse: the difficulty of perceiving what's real and authentic. Buffy is both tired and scared of being Buffy. She's tired of the very adult responsibilities that have been laid on her shoulders: earning a living, paying bills, monitoring Dawn's schoolwork, helping her addicted friend, and maintaining a romantic/sexual relationship. She's afraid to be seen for who she really is. What does her attraction to Spike, that "evil thing" say about who she is? If her friends really understood her, would they love her? Is she no longer full of love, but hardened inside like the First Slayer? Is she out of control like Faith?

Then, when Buffy's suddenly zapped into invisibility by the Troika's ray gun, it suits her perfectly. The Troika are stuck in a state of arrested adolescence. None of them have been capable of the hard work necessary to sustain a real romantic/sexual relationship. So they plan to use the invisibility ray to spy on nude girls. If they can't have a real relationship, they'll manufacture one through voyeurism and deception. This is just another shortcut they take in order to obtain things of value without working to get them. In her newly invisible state, Buffy is suddenly free to explore just how much she has in common with them. Instead of working through her problems in the real world, she can retreat into a world of games and illusion.

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"Serious things are happening and she's acting like a teenager with no responsibility, and she's not that anymore." (Ancient Lady, 9-Jan-2002)

It's interesting that Buffy wants to do two things when she's invisible and the controls on her behavior are lifted: she wants to solve her problems with Dawn, and she wants to be with Spike. She takes a very Troikalike shortcut by tormenting Doris, Dawn's caseworker. ME is rarely kind to bureaucrats and authority figures; Buffy's treatment of Doris is no exception. But what Buffy fails to realize is that she's only delayed the inevitable. The caseworkers will keep coming. She has cheated to get herself another chance, but she hasn't fixed the underlying problems that are threatening her guardianship of Dawn.

She also manages to do further harm to her relationship with Dawn. While Buffy jokes around with pizza boxes, Dawn gets right to the heart of the matter: "How can I talk to you when I can't see you?" Dawn knows that Buffy isn't really present in her own life. Dawn recognizes that Buffy is still going through the motions and that she'd still rather be dead. She desperately wants her relationship back with her sister. She's tired of being ignored as if she's the one who is invisible.

In After Life, the hitchhiker ghost taunts Buffy that she's "barely here" and that she "won't even disturb the air"' when she dies. Now she's literally invisible. But Buffy's not ready to handle the ugly truth Dawn has exposed. She's upset at Dawn's outburst, but she lets Dawn run away. She just doesn't know how to bridge the gap that yawns between them.

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"Spike seems to see himself as an important relationship in her life, even if Buffy can't yet…and is trying to play that role as fully and best he can. When Buffy tells Doris that Spike is not her boyfriend, he looks up at her in the pause as if to say, 'What would you call me then? What would you call the role I play in your life?'" (Les, 9-Jan-2002)

Buffy's encounter with Spike is strikingly similar to her encounter with Dawn. Buffy's clearly conflicted about her relationship with Spike. When she's invisible and "free of rules and reports," she heads over to Spike's crypt for sexcapades. She's revealing that he is someone essential to her and someone that she desires. But circumstances and perceptions keep her from him and the reality that he represents. She only feels comfortable being with him if she can separate it from what she perceives her "real" life to be. She insists on framing her liaison with Spike as something that is not real, when it may be the most real thing in her world.

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"Buffy's recovery lies not, as she believed in Wrecked, in staying away from Spike, but in regaining the will to live. Intriguingly, this is the very message Spike has been giving her." (Melissa, 12-Jan-2002)

Spike sees right through her. He knows that her desire to be free of life is unhealthy. Buffy is frustrated and annoyed by his perception. Spike is a teller of truths in Buffy's life. It's one of his important roles. He has told her that she shares the Slayer death wish, but that her friends and family tie her to this world. Spike is now in the category of friends and family, even if Buffy isn't ready to see it. He is one of the ties holding her to the world, but the more she tries to define him as an escape, the more she prevents herself from reconnecting to the world. Her invisibility will lead to her death, and Spike knows that, even if he isn't aware that she's literally turning to pudding.

Spike scares Buffy. It's scary to be seen. Spike's unique insight into Buffy has been established since Lover's Walk. Even when she's invisible or uncommunicative, he can read her. Buffy's not used to this in a relationship. Angel and Riley never really understood her. But Spike sometimes seems to know Buffy better than she knows herself. She's betrayed truths to him, most recently about her sexual nature and her lack of a connection to life. That's giving him a power over her that she both desires and fears.

She knows Spike thinks they are "birds of a bloody feather," and that's a truth she's not ready to acknowledge. How can she be a good person if she's like an evil vampire? It's all too complicated for her childlike approach to life. Spike just wants Buffy to be Buffy. He can understand both the woman and the Slayer. But Spike challenges too many of Buffy's fundamental beliefs. She instinctively remains blind to him in order to protect herself.

Spike wants Buffy to acknowledge and understand him. This is one of his deepest desires. But Buffy keeps using the same two responses. Sometimes, he is the "evil, disgusting thing" that she denigrates (Crush, Smashed). Occasionally, she is silent when he pursues the point (The Gift, Gone). Buffy is only capable of admitting to seeing Spike as he was. When she's confronted with the fact that Spike has changed, she can't acknowledge it.

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"Twice he stopped before spelling out what he expected from the relationship. At some point, he's going to have to. She's not going to figure it out for herself." (Ancient Lady, 9-Jan-2002)

Spike also wants Buffy to acknowledge that they are in a relationship. In Wrecked, Buffy ordered Spike out of her life and then retreated to her childhood bedroom armed with the crosses and garlic to ward him off. But Spike knows that adult relationships aren't that easily severed. He reminds her that she's "let him in." He's involved with Dawn, with her friends, and with her work. These are ties that bind. If Buffy truly wants to sever the relationship, there's going to be pain. A fiat won't do it. This isn't a mistake easily blotted out with an eraser. Spike is the mature voice of an adult who understands how messy and complicated relationships can be. Buffy just wants to cheat her way through it. Dawn runs away from Buffy, but Spike is strong enough to throw her out.

The confrontations with Spike and Dawn (as well as the evidence that she's turning into pudding) push Buffy to a realization. She doesn't want to die. This is a first, important step to her recovery. There's a life wish inside her yet, and one that may well have been kindled by Spike's stubborn refusal to let her slip away. It will be interesting to see if this epiphany translates into positive action in future episodes.

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"Most of the evil in our world is banal and offhand." (Ancient Lady, 9-Jan-2002)
"It's shown this season that humans are displaying monster qualities as well." (Bluemuse, 11-Jan-2002)

We wouldn't be doing the episode justice without a quick look at our two other main storylines: the Troika and Willow. Warren is beginning to reveal that he's capable of fairly significant evil. He was quite willing to let Buffy turn to pudding and even to accelerate the process. Andrew and Jonathon have been playing a game, but Warren's actions in Gone are making it feel far too real. There's no coming back from threatening to rip off Boba Fett's head. Warren's walking that thin line.

Willow continues to battle her dependency on magic. Judging from the numerous bottles of water she's consumed, her lack of interest in food, and her physical exhaustion, the Metaphor!Fairy is hitting the audience pretty hard with the drug addiction parallels. Willow exhibited a fairly typical addict mentality when she immediately wanted to use Xander's quite understandable question about her role in Buffy's blinvisibility as an excuse to fall off the wagon. She doesn't see that she needs to repair the trust she's broken with her friends. There was no hint of Willow's true underlying issues with self-image, self-esteem, power, and control. In fact, Willow got to take a spin as the hero of this episode, since she saved Buffy from a fate worse than pudding. We can only wonder when the time will come that Willow really has to pay the piper.

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Memorable Moments from Gone:

1. Xander's coining of the word blinvisible

2. Spike's shockingly hot chemistry with thin air

3. Buffy's appallingly bad attempt at mocking Spike's accent

4. Xander's apparent deafness, blindness, and lack of olfactory nerves (dare we say his blobliviousness?) when he finds Spike in bed doing pushups

5. Warren's identification of the Troika as Buffy's arch-nemesises…ses

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