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Episode 2.06: Halloween | Episode 2.08: The Dark Age
Characters:
| Buffy | Angel | Xander |
| Willow | Giles | Cordelia |
| Spike |
Overall (9/10)
Buffy:
Buffy ends the episode with some major trust issues going on, and with good reason. She stumbles upon Angel and Drusilla having a moment outside. In typical Buffy fashion, she plays avoidogirl and doesn't confront him until much later about it. This is only after he outright lies to her about the meeting. His lie, while understandable, makes it even more difficult to trust him when the truth is revealed.
Add on top of that his jealous research of her childhood friend and his bringing of Willow and Xander into it, and it's easy to see why Buffy's not incredibly happy with them right now. Angel is not having his shining moment this week.
Buffy thankfully doesn't go into Denialland when she finds out about Ford, though. With what Angel tells her, combined with her discovery that he didn't dust the vamp, she easily realizes that he's not being entirely honest either. I was very grateful to see the Buffy/Ford dynamic played without any romantic undertones. Despite the guys' jealous reactions, Buffy and Ford interact like old friends, and it's refreshing to see.
However, by the end, Buffy is left confused as to who can be trusted and who can't. And how much to trust them. It doesn't help that she knew Ford and understood why he was doing what he did. Her discussion with Giles at the end is very touching.
Angel:
As I mentioned before, Angel doesn't exactly come out in a good light in this episode.
Let's talk about Drusilla first. When Angel was evil, he drove her insane and then turned her. Bad Angel! Just as a sidenote, Angel mentions that his unsouled self was attracted to her because she was innocent and pure....both apt terms to describe Buffy. It seems that some traits are there with or without the soul, they are just twisted in different directions.
But I digress. Now he feels horribly guilty for what he did to her. Good for him. And I do understand why he was hesitant to tell Buffy about her. That's completely natural. Angel is stuck in a tough situation. I would like to think he'd try to make amends if he could. But what could he do? Apologize? Drusilla doesn't care anymore. He could dust her to get rid of the monster he created. But that seems to be a rather callous act. All Angel is left to do is tell her to leave so he doesn't have to deal with her. Interesting enough that his words of warning to Drusilla do come to fruition through the rest of the season.
His jealousy of Ford is typical for Angel, and over-the-top. Fortunately, in this case it's justifiable. However, is he gonna be investigating every other old friend that wanders into Buffy's life? That's bordering on the edge of stalkerish which, as we see later, is a trait of the unsouled Angelus. I don't blame Buffy for being peeved with him.
I would like to mention that I was glad to see Angel spending some time with Willow and Xander. Okay, yeah, he ditches them at first at the Bronze. But then he takes them with him to the vamp-lovers' club. For a guy so into Buffy, he doesn't really try too hard to make nice with her friends. Obviously, this goes into his social awkwardness thing he has going on.
Xander:
Xander actually plays wingman to Angel in this episode. Like Angel, he's jealous of Ford. And, like Angel, he loses Buffy's trust because of his actions in regard to that. Can we please have an episode where Xander is not jealous? Please?
Willow is relegated to the Supportogal role again this week. She goes along with Angel's investigation and, in doing so, puts herself in the doghouse.
Lemme clear my ears. Did Giles suggest that Buffy take the night off? Wow. Obviously, Reptile Boy did have an effect on him.
Not only that, but he goes out on another date with Miss Calendar. True, he turns out not to be a fan of monster trucks. But it's the novelty that counts.
Giles' shining moment, though, is at the end when he comforts Buffy. During this episode where lies are thrown around and trust is broken between so many people, Giles is the most honest with her. She tells him to lie to her. So he does. But in doing so, he tells her the truth in what to expect. It's a sad and poignant moment.
Cordelia gets one throwaway scene. I can't help but think that she must have had some scenes cut or something cause she has woefully little to do.
Now we come to one of the central controversies that comes up in regard to this episode. Spike, a soulless creature, lets a roomful of goodies and the Slayer go to save his girlfriend from a dusty death. In doing so, it's very strongly indicated that vampires, or at least this vamp, can feel such strong and positive emotions as love.
Let's get back to that, though. When he confronts Drusilla about her meeting with Angel, one can't help but wonder about his true motivations behind his questioning. Yes, surely, he's upset that she's talking to the enemy. But it could also be seen as his never-ending jealousy of Angelus and Drusilla's affection for him that spurs his actions. He even gets frustrated to the point of snapping at Dru, a rarity for Spike. Somehow, James Masters' performance makes Spike seem almost insecure when asking Dru about Angel. Course, we see why later on in the season. But it's interesting that it was brought out so early.
And we see who, at the end of the day, wears the pants in that relationship. Drusilla keeps Spike from killing Ford right off the bat. While Spike is the stronger of the two now, he's obviously put himself more into the role of nurturing caretaker and still submits to her commands without hesitation.
What it basically comes down to is that Spike is love's bitch, as he so eloquently puts it. Everything he does is for his love, who, at the moment, is Drusilla. So when given a choice between killing the Slayer or saving Dru's life, he takes the latter. His entire purpose of coming to Sunnydale was for her. And we've seen already even this early, that his every action is done for her.
These are remarkably selfless motivations for a soulless creature. And, thus, a controversy is born.
As a final note, why on earth did Spike turn Ford at the end? Did he know that Buffy would be there to stake him? Or was it more of a thing where he's honoring his promises?
Buffy's old friend comes into town. He wants to become a vamp, see, cause he has cancer and will die anyway. So he works out a plan to offer up Buffy and a bunch of vamp wannabes to Spike in exchange for immortal life.
Ford is the ambiguous baddie. He even does everything possible to put himself into the role of the bad guy. He knows what he's doing is wrong. But he's acting out of desperation and a fear of death. I'd just like to mention that I really liked Ford, and I thought his actor did an excellent job with this part.
A slight arc episode in that we do get more information into Angel's (and Dru's) past. Additionally, we see vamps stealing a book from the library which comes into play in What's My Line?
Okay, I'll admit. I love this episode. It wonderfully shows the moral ambiguity that Buffy is so good at. I actually did feel sympathy for Ford. Still didn't like what he was doing. But at least I understood it.
It does bring up interesting questions, though, about the nature of vamps. Buffy tells Ford that he'll die and a demon will set up shop in his body. This suggests that the demon will be nothing like the human that it's replacing. This is probably what the Council is teaching Buffy because they can't afford to have a Slayer live with the ambiguity of killing human-like creatures. As it is, at the end, Buffy stakes Ford without hesitation.
However, we are shown on the show countless examples of vampires who retain striking similarities to their human counterparts. The most noteworthy of these is Harmony, who is turned at the end of S3. When she comes back as a vampire in S4, she is, in essence, the same old Harmony. Just with fangs. It seems more likely that, while a demon does enter your body upon being turned, a part of the humanity does remain as well. Perhaps it varies from vamp to vamp. But it's impossible to just say that the human dies off completely once a vampire is born.
Which, of course, leads to the question: If vampires do retain part of their humanity, how justified is Buffy in killing them? Unfortunately, that seems to be a question for fandom as it's never fully addressed in the series.
But let's move on. Special performance award goes to the actor who played Diego/Marvin for his wonderful cape acting. Good job!
9 out of 10. The ending makes me cry.
Well, the final scene. It's very sincere and is a good representation of the series, as a whole.
A wallpaper for the final scene featuring Buffy and Giles. Great scene. And I'm fairly happy with the wallpaper for it.
Credits:
Caps: Screencap Paradise
Textures: Misplaced Moments
Fonts: Calisto MT, English (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 2.06: Halloween | Episode 2.08: The Dark Age
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