av Mr Chase » fre mar 05, 2004 1:43
Mr Chase's take on Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", no I'm kidding, just Joss' "Passion".
(Note: Brace yourselves, this is going to be a looooong one)
29. Passion
"It lies in all of us. Sleeping, waiting... And though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir, open its jaws, and howl.
It speaks to us, guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?
Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love, the clarity of hatred, and the ecstasy of grief.
It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow.
Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead!"
Oh, good grief! I'm finding it extremely hard to find the necessary words to describe my feelings about this episode. It was outstanding. You cried, you screamed, you truly felt your heart ripped out. After this you just want to lash out at something, anything! I don't think there has ever been something in episodic television which has managed to conjure up all these feelings. The emotional intensity of it boggles the mind. Is it really possible to make something this good -- and bad (in a good way)? It obviously is since it's here.
As if the methodical way that Angelus stalks and torments Buffy and her Slayerettes aren't enough, the *bastard* (now I'm not just speaking of Angelus but also of Joss) has the audacity to kill our favourite teacher, Jenny Calendar. Of course I understand all the plot reasons for doing so, but don't expect me to be happy about it. I never will be. But it says a lot about the extreme quality of the writing that we get to feel this way about what after all is a fictional character. And that I think is the whole point. If we, and the characters on the show, hadn't felt like this about Jenny's demise then she wouldn't have mattered, and we wouldn't have cared. But now we do, and as a consequence we suffer for it. Excellent!
The episode begins in a light hearted way with the Scoobies having fun at the Bronze. Xander dances with Buffy but when they walk out his arms are around Cordelia so the inter-jealousy is perhaps quieted for now.
From then on it gets darker. Angelus is a true nightmare of ex-boyfriend stalker, but with a bloodsucking twist. He's beginning to rival Drusilla in insanity.
As Spike so aptly put it: "Are you insane?! We're supposed to kill the bitch, not leave gag gifts in the friends' beds."
Drusilla: "But, Spike, the bad teacher was going to restore Angel's soul."
Spike: "What if she did? If you ask me, I find myself preferring the old Buffy-whipped Angelus. This new, improved one is not playing with a full sack. I love a good slaughter as much as the next bloke, but his little pranks will only leave us with one incredibly brassed-off Slayer!"
Angelus: "Don't worry, roller boy. I've got everything under control."
If you hadn't hated Angelus before, after this he has passed the point of no return. Next time Buffy will kill him, as she says herself. His gloating smile as he watches in secret when Buffy and Willow gets the news about Jenny's death is chilling. And having Angelus narrate this episode in a calm manner is equally chilling. It also makes sense in a twisted way. His passion for Buffy hasn't lessened after he lost his soul. But the passion is now one of evil hatred when it before was love.
And the rivalry between Spike and Angelus is also intensifying and who would have thought that your sympathies would be with Spike?
Jenny's death was made all the worse because she was on a good path to redeem herself. Instead of sulking about when the Scoobies shut her out she went to work on her own. And she actually succeeded, albeit no one knows it since the soul restoration curse is on disc hidden away between school desks. A good reminder that the Angel story isn't over and that Jenny's sacrifice wasn't in vain.
She was also on the road to rekindle her relationship with Giles: "I didn't know I was gonna fall in love with you... Oh, God. Is it too late to take that back?" Too bad that Giles never got to utter say to the same thing to her.
Instead we get this horrid scene were he finds her dead body lying in his bed, all the while "O soave fanciulla" from act one of Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème plays in the background. It is when the hero Rodolfo and the heroine Mimì declare their love for each other:
As Giles walks up the stairs Rodolfo sings:
"O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso Oh!
Di mite circonfuso alba lunar
In te ravviso il sogno
Ch'io vorrei sempre sognar!"
("Oh! lovely girl! Oh, sweet face,
bathed in the soft moonlight.
I see in you the dream
I'd dream forever!")
And when Giles finds Jenny's body and drops the bottle and glass Mimì sings:
"Ah, tu sol comandi, amor! Ah!"
("Love, you rule alone!")
To which Rodolfo sings:
"Fremon già nell'anima
Le dolcezze estreme."
("I taste in spirit,
The heights of tenderness!")
A truly fitting choice of music if ever there was one. *sniff*
If you feel emotionally drained after watching this one, imagine how Giles feels. Here we have a man who has spent the better part of his life being cooped up in his library doing his Watcher duty. Along comes a slayer and her friends, who he comes to care a great deal about, and then also a woman he falls deeply in love with. And then, just as they were about to finally hit it off she's brutally taken away from him by a savage beast. He allowed himself to fall in love and now gets to suffer from it. I would be a wreck myself but Giles goes postal. He's pretty scary when he goes after Angelus, repeatedly hitting him with feverish determination and fury, but if it hadn't been for his slayer he would surely have been killed. Another tear-inducing scene was when Buffy tells him afterwards "You can't leave me. I can't do this alone."
As might be expected there were few light scenes in this episode and they were more or less confined to the beginning. Like Xander's take on Angelus taunting style of stalking: "The nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah approach to battle?" Or Willow's excitement about teaching computer class: "Will I have the power to assign detention? Or make 'em run laps?" I bet she doesn't feel that excited about it now.
Another fun line belongs to Xander (who else).
Cordelia: "Oh, God! I invited him in my car once. That means he can come into my car whenever he wants."
Xander: "Yep, you're doomed to havin' to give him and his vamp pals a lift whenever they feel like it. And those guys never chip in for gas."
I have a smallish nit-pick about the reversal invitation spell. They could surely feel this coming so why on earth didn't they invoke it as soon as Angel turned Angelus? And on a related matter, why does it have to be crosses against vampires? I mean the demons have been her since long before Christianity. I would think that any good religious symbol would do just fine against the forces of demonic evil. In that case Ira Rosenberg's only daughter could have the Magen David by her window and they'd all be happy about it.
Rupert Giles: "I'll be back in the Middle Ages."
Miss Calendar: "Did you ever leave?"