Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Riley’s view of the demons and his reaction to them stem from his social indoctrination, one of the themes of S4. He’s been trained to see the world in a given way and he’s not (yet, at least) capable of achieving a deeper understanding. For all the technology the Initiative can bring to bear, it can’t actually stop the Vahrall demons or even find them because it doesn’t understand them. Riley just assumed that the demons were instinctual animals on a “crush-kill-destroy” spree, while Buffy took the time to acquire actual knowledge of their goal. The seemingly hard-nosed, pragmatic attitude of the Initiative in fact represents a superficial understanding of the world. This was prefigured in the teaser when Buffy described Riley’s “secret” to him while he had never heard of the Slayer.

  The ending of Doomed provides two twists on the Clockwork Orange story. One is that Spike, who’s having his own identity crisis, can hurt other demons, a fact which he celebrates hilariously while Willow and Xander sit and stare. That’s consistent with the basic idea of his conditioning because the chip causes pain when he tries to do evil but he can still get pleasure from fighting it. The other is his realization that words alone can hurt Xander and Willow without triggering his chip. That allows free rein to his worse instincts. These contradictory impulses will play an increasing role in the future.

  Trivia notes: (1) This dialogue – Giles: Now in the meantime, I’ve got a few theories about our mysterious commando friends.” Buffy: “Oh. - Really?” – is possibly a play on Riley’s name (Oh Really/Oh Riley). Note that Buffy otherwise failed to tell Giles about Riley’s connection to the commandos. (2) When Forrest suggested that the Slayer was a thrash metal band, that’s because there really is such a band by that name. (3) Forrest’s description of Buffy as “she’s cool, she’s hot, she is tepid, she’s all temperature Buffy” referenced old commercials for the detergent Cheer. (4) When Riley said his duties were “not just a job”, Buffy responded “It’s an adventure….” That’s a reference to the slogan used in commercials for the US Army: “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.” (5) When Xander said “I second that revulsion”, he was playing off the song by Smokey Robinson “I Second That Emotion”. (6) Riley’s description of the demon as “kill-crush-destroy” quoted the Lost in Space episode “Revolt of the Androids”. (7) I see the following dialogue as an extended double entendre:

  Cut to a stake clamped to the edge of a table. Camera pans up to reveal Spike standing on a chair before it his arms spread wide.

  Spike: “Good bye, Dru. See you in hell.”

  He lets himself fall forward just as Willow and Xander walk in. He turns in the air to look at them and misses the stake, smashing the table.

  Willow: “What are you doing?”

  Spike picks himself up: “Bloody rot. Can’t a person knock?”

  Willow: “What were you doing?”

  Xander: “You were trying to stake yourself!”

  Spike: “Fag off!

  Willow: “It’s ooky. We know him, we can’t just let him poof himself!”

  Spike’s behavior and reaction suggest the scene can be read as a metaphor for masturbation. The stake, of course, is a phallic symbol, as we just saw in the lecture scene in Hush. Interpreting his behavior as masturbation is consistent with the references to him as “impotent” by Xander here and by Giles in Something Blue, and Buffy’s “flaccid” in Something Blue. Remember also the scene in The Initiative, in which Spike’s inability to bite Willow was played metaphorically as the inability to perform sexually. Asking someone why they didn’t knock is a cliché for interrupted sex scenes in television and movies. Then too, “fag” is derogatory American slang for a gay man, just as “poof” is British slang for one.

  A New Man

  A New Man is another POV episode, this time seeing the world through Giles’ eyes. As was true for the previous POV episodes, we learn important things about Buffy in the course of this. That’s because Giles is reacting to what Buffy does and, more importantly, doesn’t do. We can see the episode title as referring to him – he’s a “new man” in the sense that his role has changed this year, and he wakes up after his evening with Ethan very new indeed. But the title also refers to Riley, as the new man in Buffy’s life. It’s Buffy’s relationship with Riley which is the source of Giles’s alienation.

  Giles is filled with anger and rage, he says when he’s a Fyarl demon, and it’s easy to see why: Buffy, for the most part. She treated him as so unimportant that she neglected to tell him that Riley was one of the commandos. In fact she didn’t tell him about Riley at all until she introduced him as her boyfriend at the party. She followed those omissions with comments about Prof. Walsh’s age and intelligence which implicitly compared Giles unfavorably to her. Bringing up her previous birthdays didn’t help, considering Giles probably wouldn’t care to be reminded of his role in Helpless.

  We can look at the situation in metaphor as well. Giles is Buffy’s metaphorical mind. Buffy hasn’t been using her mind very much lately. She began the year doing well academically, even being asked to lead a discussion section. Then she got distracted from class by Parker, by Oz’s departure, by the mysterious commandos, and by Riley. Her school work dropped off, as Prof. Walsh noted: “And to think all that time you were sitting in my class. Well, most of those times. I always knew you could do better than a B minus.” The metaphor tracks the story line.

  Giles also serves as Buffy’s surrogate father. When kids go off to college, they don’t need their parents as much and they don’t communicate with them as often. At this stage of Buffy’s progression to adulthood, we’d therefore expect Giles to feel neglected. In fact Giles was feeling useless as early as Wild at Heart, when he showed up at the Bronze very awkwardly, and then later when he was watching game shows on TV and appeared over-eager to see Buffy:

  “Giles : You come on business, I hope?

  Buffy : (Giving him a look.) Yes. Lucky for you, people may be in danger.

  Giles : (Embarrased.) I only meant, uh, that I'm at the ready.”

  Then, in The Initiative, Giles and Xander both felt useless:

  “Giles : Oh, I think we can safely assume they're human, So, um, no research needed.

  Xander : No studying? Damn! Next thing they'll tell me is I'll have to eat jelly doughnuts or sleep with a supermodel to get things done around here. I ask you, how much can one man give?

  Giles : Not too much, I'm afraid. Um... Once again I'd say that you and I will not be needed to help Buffy.

  Xander : Really?

  Giles : Really.”

  In the commentary to Wild at Heart, Joss and Marti Noxon describe Giles like this:

  Joss: It was season 4 where Giles has no life.

  (Marti laughs)

  …

  Marti: It's sort of "creepy hanging around for no reason" Giles.

  Another factor, played out in metaphor, added to Giles’s sense that he didn’t belong. Buffy and Riley are courting. She introduced him to her surrogate father, albeit without mentioning Riley’s “job”. Riley, in turn, introduced Buffy, in her capacity as Slayer, to his “mother”. When the in-laws meet, they stereotypically don’t get along and so it proved here. Prof. Walsh – whom Buffy had just praised so extravagantly – was arrogant and rude to Giles in suggesting that Buffy lacked a male role model. I’ll have more to say about his conversation with Prof. Walsh, but I’m holding off for 2 more episodes.

  To make his bad day even worse, Giles then mistimed the rising of the “demon prince” and learned from Willow and Xander, rather than Buffy, that Buffy’s new boyfriend was one of the commandos Giles had been searching for.

  After his experiences at the hands of Buffy and Prof. Walsh, Giles naturally believed he must be some kind of hideous monster whom nobody listens to, that he might as well be speaking Fyarl. And there’s a small additional metaphor thrown in for good measure, as we see Giles wake up a demon after a night of drinking. The blind rage of the demon reflects Giles’ anger at his situation, whi
ch dissipates at least somewhat, after he’s able to express it in his fight with Buffy. The fight scene also teaches us something important about Buffy, though I won’t mention it for a few weeks until we get to the episode which this sets up.

  Yet another metaphorical point also tracks the story. Just as Buffy failed to tell Giles about Riley and the commandos, Willow conspicuously omitted Tara from her description when she told Buffy about the failed magic experiment:

  “Buffy: Hey. I didn't hear you come in last night. Where were you?

  Willow: (quickly) The chem lab, by myself. (a beat) I-I was trying this new spell; floating a rose, when all of a sudden (motions with fork) zing, zing, zing! Like all over the room. It was like a rose-based missile.”

  Buffy’s spirit is focused elsewhere than on her immediate family. As usual, consequences will follow.

  A New Man gave us additional signs of the conflict between science and magic, as well as some hints about where this conflict might be going:

  “Prof. Walsh: … We use the latest in scientific technology and state-of-the-art weaponry and you, if I understand correctly, poke them with a sharp stick.” Apart from being condescending, Prof. Walsh demonstrated with these words the shallowness of her understanding. She followed that by praising Riley’s kill/capture count and implying it would be higher than Buffy’s. This served only to reinforce her shallowness; at the risk of being crude, I’d say she volunteered Riley for a cock-measuring contest which he proceeded to lose. To a girl.

  “Ethan: Heh, you know demons. It's all exaggeration and blank verse. "Pain as bright as steel" things like that. They're scared. There's something called "314" that's got them scared most of all. The kind of scared that turns to angry. I know we're not particularly fond of each other, (Giles chuckles scoffingly) Rupert. But we are a couple of old mystics. This new outfit, it's blundering into new places it doesn't belong. It's throwing the worlds out of balance. And that's way beyond chaos, mate. We're headed quite literally for one hell of a fight…. We're just a couple of sorcerers. The night is still our time. Time of magic.”

  Trivia notes: (1) Giles described himself to Prof. Walsh as like Theseus in the Labyrinth, but his reference made no sense. Quick review: Theseus was the son of the King of Athens. Every year Athens had to send a number of boys and girls to be devoured by the Minotaur on Crete. They were put into the Labyrinth, at the center of which was the terrible beast. The victims couldn’t find their way out of the Labyrinth so were eventually killed. Theseus seduced the daughter of the King of Crete, Ariadne, and she provided him with string which he could lay down on the path as he wandered. All he had to do was follow it in order to get out. Thus, if Giles had really felt like Theseus, he could have found his way to Prof. Walsh very easily. I don’t know if we’re supposed to see this as a mistake by Giles, setting up Prof. Walsh’s dismissal of him, or if it’s just a mistake by the writers. I suspect it’s the latter because when Giles turns into the Fyarl demon he has a bull’s horns on a man’s body, just like the Minotaur. That makes it seem as if the earlier reference was somewhat shoehorned in for the joke. (2) Spike’s “What do I spy with my little eye?” refers to the child’s game “I spy”. (3) Sadly, this is the last TV episode in which we see Ethan Rayne, one of my favorite villains.

  The I in Team

  The I in Team brings us to the second real world event which impacted S4: Lindsay Crouse, Prof. Walsh, left the show. Her death at the end of this episode was not part of the original plan. It was written in when she decided to leave. Nobody has ever explained just why she left; it’s all very professional on both sides. Something happened but we don’t know what.

  Her departure had a major impact on the season because she was supposed to be the Big Bad. Adam got substituted as the Big Bad, but this changed some of the thematic points which had been intended (I’ll talk about that in the next post and later ones). As a result, in my view, a lot of the emotional resonance of the season got lost. I’ll explain this in more detail later on.

  The expression “there is no ‘I’ in team” is a cute way of saying that teams are supposed to work together as a unit. They can’t succeed if each team member refuses to set aside her ego and goes off on her own. The natural question, therefore, is Who is guilty of this behavior? The answer, not surprisingly, is Buffy. Buffy became, however briefly, a member of the “team” at the Initiative: “Prof. Walsh: Welcome to the team.” She was, obviously, not much of a team member given the way she stood out in dress and in attitude.

  We’re obviously supposed to think that Buffy’s maverick behavior was a good thing. She began asking questions which someone should have asked before. When she questioned Riley about “314”, the phone rang immediately afterward. Since we know that Prof. Walsh was watching Buffy and Riley on video, the natural implication is that this is what led Prof. Walsh to attempted murder, which in turn backfired on her and exposed her big secret, Adam. All well and good – it’s a classic rogue agent story line – but …

  Buffy began the episode belonging to another team. She then found an exciting new form of foreplay with her new boyfriend, and she became eager to become part of his “family”. Yes, the Initiative is a “family” – that’s why, when the commandos get paged in the Bronze, Riley tells Buffy “Mother wants us”, and it’s why Adam’s first word is “Mommy”. Prof. Walsh told both of them to “make me proud”, just what a mother would tell her children.

  Buffy “joining” the Initiative is a metaphor for the way the world often works – the woman leaves her own family and goes off to become a member of her man’s. Thus, another way to interpret the episode title is that Buffy left her team to go off on her own – that is, without the SG – to join the Initiative. Buffy therefore was “the I in team” when it came to both her old team and her would-be new one.

  Her metaphorical heart and spirit have doubts about her choice which they express in the teaser:

  “Xander: Wish the Buff could've made it. This three-hand poker is not quite the game.

  Willow: Guess she's out with Riley. You know how it is with a spanking new boyfriend. …

  Xander: Well. . .(coughs) The thing is . . . I think Riley is . . . okay, in an oafish kind of way. But . . . am I the only one with a big floating question mark over his head about this Initiative thing?”

  Buffy’s distraction from her friends then gets hammered home in the early part of the episode:

  “Buffy: Hmm. How was your night?

  Willow: Like a normal person's. Light on the action-pack. Hope tonight's not too much of a let-down for you. Excitement-wise. (a pause) You do remember about tonight, right?

  Buffy: Bronze. The gang. Are you kidding? I wouldn't be anywhere else. I miss you guys. We haven't been able to spend that much time together lately.

  Willow: You've been busy. Fighting armies and stuff. Not to mention other distractions of a romantic-- (sees that Buffy's no longer paying attention)”

  ***

  Xander: … Besides, it's getting late. Maybe we should go.

  Willow: Go? You can't go. Buffy hasn't gotten here yet.

  Xander: Let's face it, Will. She's over an hour late. She's probably out living the life of Riley. I don't think she's coming.

  Willow: She is! (unconvincingly) She said she was looking forward to spending quality time with just us. (brightens) See? Here she comes.

  Shot of Buffy walking into the Bronze followed by Riley, Graham, Forrest, and two other guys.

  Willow: (crestfallen) . . .with Riley . . . and some other guys.”

  ***

  “Buffy: (lowers voice, but excited) I'm in. The Initiative. Professor Walsh gave me the grand tour and we're talking Grand as in Canyon! You'd never believe the size of it.

  Willow: That's really . . . again I say 'neat.' So, what do you mean exactly? You've joined them?

  Buffy: No. N-not exactly. It just means that when I patrol I'll have a heavily armed team backing me up. (smiles) Plus, boyfriend going to work with me: big
extra perk.

  Willow: Buffy, do you really think this is a good idea? I mean, don't you think you're rushing things a little?

  Buffy: (frowns) I thought you liked Riley?

  Willow: Not with Riley. With the Initiative. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff about them we still don't know.

  Buffy: I know that. (then) Like what?

  Willow: Well, what's their ultimate agenda? I mean, okay, yeah, they-they neuter vampires and demons. But then what? Are they gonna reintegrate them into society? Get them jobs as bagboys at Wal-Mart?

  Willow: Plus, don't forget that '314' thing that Ethan told Giles about.

  Buffy: Well, a man that worships chaos and tries to kill you, is a man you can trust.

  Willow: Well, bad info or not, I just think there's certain questions you should ask before you go off and enlist.”

  Buffy’s rejection of her friends is paralleled with Willow initially declining to meet Tara later to work on spells. When Willow did knock on Tara’s door after Buffy blew her off, she commented on the irony.

  From the perspective of her actual team, the SG, Buffy went off on her own and nearly got herself killed. That’s what Prof. Walsh told Riley: “She . . .went after them on her own. … she kept insisting she didn't need any team, she could handle it by herself.” Prof. Walsh lied when she said this, but her words were true from the perspective of the SG. The title has different implications depending on which “team” is meant.

  But there’s another way to think about the title as well. I don’t want to talk about that in detail yet, because it would spoil the season ending, but I will drop a couple of hints:

  (1) The I in Team serves the same functional role as Gingerbread did in S3. By this I mean that the episode shows a potential, but wrong, solution to Buffy’s seasonal dilemma. (2) The discussion above focused on the two different “teams” and Buffy’s role on those teams, but another way to think about the title is to ask “what is the meaning of ‘I’?” We’ve already seen that the issue of identity is one of the key themes for S4, so asking this question obviously connects directly to that theme.