Klytaimnestra's Review of "Help"

by Klytaimnestra

** Apologies to Kly - I missed uploading this last week! ** [- editor]

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I'm trying really hard here to review the episode I saw, rather than reviewing the episode I didn't see. But it's hard.

You see, ME made a huge mess last year. They did their best to make sure they'd utterly destroyed the characters. They took their time doing it. There were some continuity problems but big deal. They're talented writers. They succeeded. By the end of the season here wasn't a single character left standing, of the original Scoobs, that I had the slightest respect for.

So I wondered, at the end of the season, how are they going to retrieve these twerps? Because they're going to have to do something to make me care about them again, build them up somehow. And I figured the beginning of this season, at least, would be devoted to putting the characters back together, showing them learning from their mistakes and growing up sadder and wiser.

But gosh, guess what. It turns out that the person who didn't learn anything last season was me. Because just as every episode last year we were supposed to forget the Bupiphany from the episode before - God knows Buffy did - apparently, this season, we're supposed to forget that last year ever happened at all. Build them up? What for? Nobody, apparently, needs any retrieving. Maybe Willow's going to have a little magic control problem. But as for the rest? Apparently the world is suffering collective amnesia. We're all good guys again and we didn't do anything bad.

Xander dumps his girl at the altar? Trust the bitch to over-react. Gee, lucky escape, getting away from an evil vengeance demon like that. Her store gets trashed when she helps avert another apocalypse? She's not a Scoobie, so who cares; let her cart out the debris herself. Meanwhile he'll be all supportive for his childhood buddy, never mind that she was on the wrong side of that particular world-destruction attempt.

Buffy beats up her talking dildo, lies about him, abuses him, destroys him, and can't scrape him off the soles of her shoes fast enough? Apparently perfectly acceptable behaviour. Because we're supposed to forget all that now. Certainly everyone else has.

Spike goes and gets a soul for love of Buffy, and is suffering the torments of the damned in consequence? Sorry, non-Scooby, no credit, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, do not leave the basement, and we'll make fun of you when the urge strikes.

If Season 6 had never happened, "Help" would have been a perfectly acceptable episode. Buffy's first week as counsellor, she finds a student, Cassie (loved the name; poor Cassandra, always right, never believed) who knows she's going to die. And she does. But not before Buffy does everything in her power to help her, asking the unanswerable question, "what do you do when you do everything you can to help, and you can't?" And the scenes where Buffy saves the girl from being murdered, or from being shot by a crossbow bolt, were decent; good fight scenes, good quips; good stuff.

And continuing the "Help" motif, Spike drags himself out of his madness long enough to help save Buffy's ass, and the girl's too; suffers pain in order to drag the attacker off her (and what was Buffy thinking, sending him to attack a human?) But he'll do anything to help, and do anything for Buffy. So quips are quipped, fights are fought, Buffy tries to help, Spike tries to help, help is given, ultimately help isn't enough. Philosophical questions are asked. Not a bad episode as BtVS goes.

Except. Except. Season 6 DID happen. And I don't know about anyone else, but *I* can't forget. I can't just say, okay, bring on the Lethe's Bramble, let the good times roll.

So the entire first scene, with first Dawn and then Xander & Willow recounting the things on Buffy's mind - Willow's not exactly all there yet, Buffy has a school day tomorrow, the Hellmouth is opening - I kept thinking, WHAT ABOUT SPIKE? Nobody even bothers to mention him. Apparently everyone's happy to forget him, and so is she. Finished using him, I guess. No use to her crazy.

But no, hey, here she is, heading into the basement halfway through the episode. Gee, she needs hired muscle, where to go to get it? Let's try the crazy vampire, never mind the smell. Gee, he's having a bad spell, not too useful today, for the very first time he can't help her when she asks. Watch that thin little mouth thin even further with irritation. Of course, he's Spike; he comes through in the end, for the girl he thinks he hurt.

So Spike helps Buffy. Spike tries to help Cassie. Buffie tries to help Cassie. She dies anyway. But in the end, as Dawn points out, what matters is that Buffy tried.

I couldn't agree more. So I'd like to end with the help she DIDN'T try to be. When Spike, her sex toy, her dirty little secret, her abuse victim, her broken vampire doll, asks her not to leave him alone with his ghosts, his pain, in the basement, what does she do?

Stays and comforts him, of course. Is what help she can be. Holds his hand and tells him she'll help him through. The way she did with her world-destroyer friend Willow. Because he did it for love of her, he's got a soul now, and hey, she's got loads of strength ...

oh. right. sorry. That was a Buffy I could respect.

It sure as hell wasn't the one I saw.

As for the little trollop on the screen? When the demon finally showed up (anyone notice he looked like Skip?) I was hoping he'd rip open her chest and piss in the empty hole where her heart's supposed to be.

But I guess this isn't going to be the season, either, where I get to watch the story I really want to see.

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Klytaimnestra