av Mr Chase » mån mar 29, 2004 2:57
Mr Chase lämnar walk-over:
42. Lovers Walk
Oh my God, this was an awesome episode in almost every aspect (except one, more on that bellow). Spike returns with a bang, or rather with a whimper (in a good way, mind you). Our favourite vampire is really pathetic, a shell of a loser as Buffy puts it, since Drusilla's left him and he now seeks to remedy that with forcing Willow to cast a love spell. He's really so entertaining to watch when he lashes out or spills his guts in love sick despair. I just loved how we saw him crashing back into Sunnydale right after Cordelia said: "What kind of moron would ever wanna come back here?" Home, sweet home indeed, Spikey!
You can't help feeling sorry for the old vamp. His ramblings to both Willow and Joyce are absolutely hilarious. He's got it so bad. As I wrote about "Becoming, part 2" Spike would have a very pissed off girlfriend when she wakes up. Gee, like Xander I had hoped those crazy kids would make it work!
Spike: "She wouldn't even kill me. She just left. She didn't even care enough to cut off my head or light me on fire. I mean, is that too much to ask? Some little sign that she cared?"
Yeah, love's a bitch. And it's rather the theme of this episode.
Spike: "I caught her on a park bench, making out with a *chaos* demon! Have you ever seen a chaos demon? They're all slime and antlers. They're disgusting." LOL!
Everyone breaks up with everybody in this episode. It's lucky that Giles didn't have a squeeze otherwise I'd have to kill myself. The Xander/Cordelia break-up was bad enough to handle. It all ends with everyone being all alone. But of them only Spike seems happy with it, singing "My Way" as he cruises down the highway. He's come to terms with what happened but instead inadvertently has spread his misfortune to the others.
Spike: "I'm really glad I came here, you know? I've been all wrongheaded about this. Weeping, crawling, blaming everybody else. I want Dru back, I've just gotta be the man I was, the man she loved. I'm gonna do what I shoulda done in the first place: I'll find her, wherever she is, tie her up, torture her until she likes me again. Love's a funny thing."
Strangely it is Spike who clearly sees the impossibleness that is the love between Buffy and Angel and he forces them to face up to it. The bitter truth is that no matter how much they love each other they can never ever have each other, because we all know what that will lead to. So they have to break up.
Spike: "You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood. Blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
While not as life-and-death serious (well, almost) the break-ups between Xander and Cordelia and Oz and Willow are equally painful. I've made no secret of the fact that I vehemently abhor the Xander/Willow fling and I am in fact more upset with that development than with the Buffy/Angel thing. Those others didn't have the destinies stacked up against them. And I found it a bit to clichéd for Oz and Cordelia to catch Willow and Xander in flagrante delicto. But this is Joss Whedon we're dealing with here. He's not satisfied with ripping our hearts out. He has to stomp on them as well, that nasty little genius! As if seeing Xander kissing Willow isn't enough, poor Cordy has to get accidentally staked on a piece of rebar. She probably feels as if Xander himself had done it.
On a small side note, this was no alien experience to Charisma Carpenter (the staking, not the cheating). When she was five years old she fell into a pool construction and was impaled in the stomach by a rebar.
And then they cut a scene with a funeral in progress. When I saw this episode for the first time I thought 'WTF, the bastards! The killed off Cordy!' They totally had me there for a couple of seconds. Remember this is Joss so normal TV logic doesn't apply. They killed off our favourite teacher Jenny Calendar so they can kill off our favourite cheerleader! Big sigh of relief when I heard Buffy and Willow talking about Cordy getting better. Phew!
Anyway, I still feel awful for what happened to Cordelia (oh yeah, and to Oz too). I cried when she cried in the hospital bed after telling Xander to stay away from her. While he undoubtedly feels miserable and guilty as hell (and he should) she's just had her heart completely broken. It's quite obvious that she's deeply in love with him. For a girl that's spent her whole life building up protective walls around herself it took a lot of pain and effort to come as far as she did with getting together with the school dork, let alone love him. Xander probably never got that far even if he was very into her. And it's only now that he can realize how good he had it.
The sad thing is that while he might finally admit to himself that he loved her too, they will not get back together. Cordelia has a ton of pride and this was her first real love and it was spurned. She'll never really forgive him. There might have been a slight chance had she not fallen on that bar. But now the estrangement will widen as she recovers and Xander never gets a chance to tell his side of the story. Not that there is much to tell. More painful truths about clothes flukes and everything would obviously make it worse.
Oz, on the other hand, will probably take Willow back. For all his coolness he's always been a whipped werewolf puppy around Willow. "Where Willow goes, so goes my nation!" He'll forgive her eventually even if she doesn't deserve it. The poor sod.
Willow: "I can't do this anymore, Xander! I mean, this whole 'us' thing is... bleagh!"
She was right on that, the witch! I've probably laid to much blame on Willow for the fling and given Xander the benefit of the doubt. I am still of the persuasion that this whole mess doesn't ring true, but then again Xander and the rest are not my characters but Joss's. So he's the final arbiter of his creation. That doesn't mean I have to like it. With what is given, however implausible I might feel it to be like, Xander doesn't deserve her. With his unbelievable actions from "Homecoming" onwards, he showed her no respect. And he had just been promoted to locker door material, that was so cute! Who'd have in season one thought that the sympathies would lie with the Queen bitca?
Spoiler the rest of season 3 and "Angel"
I remember on my first watch that I spent the rest of the season wishing for Xander and Cordelia to make it work. I didn't know the details about the "Angel" spin-off then. But it is clear now that all this was a not so clever plot device to pave the way for Cordelia to leave Sunnydale and move to Los Angeles. I pretty much think that Cordy for the rest of the season was a wasted character, back in season one mode making snide and bitchy remarks, but this time without the entertaining snarkyness. Most of her interactions with Xander was just painful to watch. I still visibly cringe whenever I see it.
Sorry if I seem to ramble on about this. Make no mistake, despite this unfortunate development I really like this episode a lot. And in the context of it, the break-ups were an integral part.
It also had it's full share of witty dialogue and comments, like when Buffy's mom gets excited about her daughter doing well on the SATs.
Joyce: "It's just... you belong at a good old-fashioned college, with keg parties and boys, not here with Hellmouths and vampires."
Buffy: "Not really seeing the distinction."
Giles is also excited and hints that Buffy at least temporarily could leave the slaying duties to pursue an academic career.
Buffy: "She saw these scores and her head spun around and exploded."
Giles: "I've been on the Hellmouth too long. That was metaphorical, yes?"
Oz is a cool kid, at least before the big catching-in-the-act anyway.
Oz: "I can see why you'd be upset. Uh, that was my sarcastic voice."
Xander: "Y'know, it sounds a lot like your regular voice."
Oz: "I've been told that."
And what would have happened if his wolf senses hadn't kicked in?
Cordelia: "What? You can smell her [Willow]? She doesn't even wear perfume."
Oz: "She's afraid."
Cordelia: "Oh, my God. Is this some sort of residual werewolf thing? This is very disturbing."
Oz: "I really agree."
By the way, the population of Sunnydale is 38,500 according to the sign Spike runs over in the beginning. Not that big a loss since the probably have to change that number a lot.
And the song that Spike sings to in the end is not the Sid Vicious version of Frank Sinatra's old "My Way" as is commonly misconceived. It is actually Gary Oldman's from the movie "Sid and Nancy".
Rupert Giles: "I'll be back in the Middle Ages."
Miss Calendar: "Did you ever leave?"