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Episode 2.02: Some Assembly Required | Episode 2.04: Inca Mummy Girl
Characters:
| Buffy | Angel | Xander |
| Willow | Giles | Cordelia |
| Spike |
Overall (8/10)
Buffy:
We see in this episode the struggle Buffy has of balancing life, slaying, and school. She's pulled in three different directions and trying her best to cover each of them. It's interesting to see each of these facets of her life represented by three different characters. Joyce urges her to do well in school and stay out of trouble. Giles, of course, wants Buffy to focus solely on her slaying to the exclusion of everything else. And Willow, being the best friend, wants Buffy to let the fun in with Bronze trips galore.
In the end, her slaying world and her school world collide. To Buffy's credit, she generally ends up making a good attempt at school. However, with the pressure of her calling, her schoolwork tends to suffer.
She does, however, drop everything for a chance to see Angel. The guy needs to just give her the key to his apartment now. Her schoolgirl infatuation turned romance with Angel doesn't get very developed in the episode. Mainly cause of Angel's major miss in not meeting her at the Bronze.
She does an admirable job keeping her mom and others from finding out what's really going on while in the midst of a vampire attack. The Nile must be quite crowded.
Spike makes note about the oddity of Buffy having friends and family. This is a point that becomes a major theme throughout the series. It's brought up again in S5's Fool for Love where Spike informs Buffy that the only reason she hasn't succumbed to the Slayer death-wish yet is the familial and friend ties she has to her life.
Buffy's uniqueness IS that she does try to balance her life with her Slaying. She refuses to let the Slaying take over her life, and in doing so becomes one of the greatest Slayers ever seen. The importance of her friends is reiterated in S4's The Yoko Factor (and Primeval), and the importance of her family is crucial to the entire arc of S5.
Angel:
I gotta back Buffy on this one. How does a 200-year-old guy not pick up on the subtle anvils Buffy drops on him? This is, in part, explained in Becoming Pt 1 when we see that Angel has spent the majority of the last century hiding in alleys and feeding off rats. Obviously, during that time, he developed an aversion to people and forgot the rules that govern society. As such, he appears to be awkward, anti-social, and rather inept when it comes to interacting with others.
Gotta wish that he'd explain this to Buffy, though. That way she'd know the reason behind his strange behavior, and she could help him develop his people skills again. As it is, he ends up making a stupid move. She calls him on it. He runs off to brood. Not a healthy relationship.
He's also gotta get away from the habit of just popping by to drop off some info and then scampering off, as he did when he tells the gang about Spike. In fact, he doesn't even stick around to clarify what he'd told them. And, considering the fact that he's Spike's grandsire, it would figure that he'd have some helpful information for them. But, when Buffy calls him on his miss the previous night, he runs away to get all broody. Way to make an effort.
He does, however, make an effort when confronting Spike. I'm truly not sure what his plan was. What if Spike had bought it and gone in to bite Xander? Would Angel have let him? Angel surely knows that that wouldn't give him any brownie points with Buffy. So, amusing as his confrontation with Spike was, I'm not sure as to the point of it. It does, however, allow him to get one up on Xander, who can ride him pretty hard. Go Angel. Give in to your vengeful urges.
Xander:
Xander shows, again, his jealousy towards any guy that dare approach the Buff. He's still firmly against Angel in Buffy's life. His explanation being, of course, that he doesn't trust Angel as a vampire. And a part of this may be true. Xander did have the certainly traumatic experience of dusting his former best friend in the series premiere. That moment definitely colors his perceptions towards all demons throughout the series.
However, we also see many times that Xander extends this behavior towards human guys who become a part of Buffy's life (Riley being strangely immune, though). It seems likely that Xander's hostility towards Angel is primarily because of good old-fashioned jealousy. And that's never very attractive.
Willow doesn't have an incredible amount to do in this episode. She plays Supporto-gal to Buffy for the most part. We do get to see her take out a vamp, though. Well, she doesn't dust him, but she does knock him out with a heavy statue. She's developing those survival skills that are oh-so-necessary now that she's Buffy's best friend.
It seems that the Watcher's Council's training is heavily in force with Giles this early on. He seems remarkably unconcerned with Buffy's possible expulsion and, indeed, gripes at her for thinking of something outside of her slaying. I wonder if a Kendra-like Slayer is more what Giles is trained to deal with.
As the series goes on, though, Giles, obviously, loosens up and understands that it is important for Buffy to enjoy all aspects of life. At this point, though, he wants her to be all-Slayer, all-the-time.
He does already show his protectiveness of her, though. When he's trying to rush out of the library to go to her aid he's genuinely concerned for her.
Did Cordelia volunteer for stake-whittling duty or did she get drafted? She seems rather reluctant in her efforts, but, at the same time, she sticks around. I think we see that, once again, Cordelia enjoys doing the Slayer-related stuff. She just would never admit it.
Spike is easily one of the most controversial characters in the Buffyverse, and for good reason. Much has been made of his seeming capacity to love and do good without a soul. Writer David Fury, after having been against the idea of Spike being anything more than a serial killer, made mention in the S7 commentary of Lies My Parents Told Me that Spike is an anomaly among vampires in that he retains some of his humanity. Whether this is an anomaly or not(This will get brought up again in Lie to Me), it becomes increasingly apparent throughout the series that Spike is more than a heartless demonic creature.
And this is our first glimpse of Spike. Spike when he's bad. A Spike who's completely devoted to Drusilla. Spike may appear to be the one in charge at the moment, but we see signs of his being "Sire-whipped" even in this episode (And is it not telling that Spike changes to his human face when Drusilla appears? When it comes to love, we're dealing with Spike's human side, not his demon). He loyally goes out and gets a young girl for Dru to play with. Additionally, he stops his meeting with the Anointed One to tend to Dru.
We also find out a hint of his past with Angel. He refers to Angel as his "Sire", which Joss Whedon has explained to be a general term meaning that Angel is part of the line that sired Spike. Hey, it's Joss' universe. He makes the rules. We get the distinct impression that Angel and Spike parted on good terms as Spike welcomes Angel quite enthusiastically.
Something that also is apparent is Spike's methodical nature. He seeks the Slayer out and studies her moves at first. He introduces himself and tells her he'll attack on Saturday. Then he pulls a surprise attack on Thursday when she's not expecting it (Or, as an alternate explanation, he truly just got bored and showed some of his trademark impatience). This is a man who's good at what he does, and he knows it. He takes a great amount of pride in the Slayers that he's killed.
He is, however, not fond of rituals and traditions. He reluctantly gets "chanty with the fellas" and ends up rebelling against the archaic procedures at the end. He is the modern vampire who watches TV, goes to Woodstock, and drives a car.
It's interesting to point out that most of the info presented regarding Spike in this episode turns out to be wrong. Obviously, the Watchers aren't very accurate in their vampire bookkeeping. Giles states that he's barely 200. In the S5 episode Fool for Love, we see that Spike was turned in 1880, making him much younger. Fool for Love does leave the issue as to Spike's nickname ambiguous, though, so it is quite possible that he did earn it (well, he adopted it) after driving spikes through his victims' heads. It's also possible that that never happened, and Spike adopted that name for himself as a reaction to the insults he endured as a human.
It does seem likely, though, that Spike lets this misinformation get around. Notice that he tells Buffy that the last Slayer he killed begged for her life. As we see in Fool for Love, again, that just isn't true. Obviously, Spike isn't above rewriting history to keep up his Big Bad persona.
Die Hard meets high school. A new Big Bad is in town. This is an introduction episode for Spike and Drusilla. It covers their arrival and Spike's first confrontation with our protagonist, Buffy.
Spike and Drusilla are the new baddies. And they are fantastic. Finally, we get bad guys that we can enjoy watching. Both are complex individuals with interesting backstories and personalities. Not to mention that James Marsters and Juliet Landau have amazing chemistry.
This is the beginning of the S2 arc. The S2 arc is actually largely uneven and it tends to wander. At its heart, the arc is about Angel's dysfunctional family. This is a great episode to introduce the arc and set the tone for episodes to come.
We also get a slight set up for the S3 arc at the end when Principal Snyder is speaking to police.
A very solid episode. As mentioned, this is an introduction episode for Spike and Drusilla, and it successfully does what it sets out to do. It's definitely a classic in every sense of the word. Special performance award goes to Kristine Sutherland for hitting Spike over the head with an axe. Great axe-acting, Kristine.
This episode gets a solid 8 from me. It's a functional episode, and without more of an emotional impact, I can't rate it any higher than that.
The final scene wherein Spike dusts the Anointed One. This is a perfect way to close out the old standard of rituals and traditional vampires and usher in the modern vamps that are represented by Drusilla and Spike.
(*This is a revised and prettified wallpaper)
I had this wallpaper in my head for a while. It's a variation of the "box-style" wallpaper, which I tend to like. The problem I ran into is that there were so many shots that I wanted in the wallpaper, but not enough room to include them in. I had to weed it out to the bare minimum.
I knew I definitely wanted the progression of Spike's arrival with his knocking down the Sunnydale sign. I also knew I definitely wanted his dusting of the Anointed One. So I used those two scenes as "bookends", so to speak. I had to include Drusilla, as well. My main regret is that not many shots of Spike's meeting and fight with Buffy were included. That's simply due to space restrictions.
However, that does leave the focus of the paper as being almost entirely on Spike and Dru, which is good for this episode. The paper is very dirty (and not in the naughty way) as I tried to use some gritty textures and brushes to give it a grunge look that went with Spike. Especially given the low screen res of the caps, I tried to incorporate that into the paper by giving it kinda an old feeling. Like somebody left a scrapbook on the sidewalk and it got coated with mud (Though, obviously, not literally, as the paper is mud-free).
Anyhow, it was a good experience for me to try out a different style. I might approach another wallpaper like that again sometime.
Credits:
Caps: Screencap Paradise
Textures: Misplaced Moments
Fonts: Besign (Link)
Brushes: Unknown
*Some resources were used that I can't identify. All resources are generally linked to on the links page, but if you recognize an uncredited resource let me know so I can note it with the actual wallpaper.
Episode 2.02: Some Assembly Required | Episode 2.04: Inca Mummy Girl
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