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Becoming Closer to Fine
Ever find a song or poem that explains everything you feel at the moment? Better than anything you can think up yourself?
I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life afterall
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore
Chorus:
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me
in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free
I stopped by the bar at 3 am
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity
Chorus:
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
E. Sailers - The Indigo Girls
Saw a couple of interesting TV shows this week that made me think and wonder about heroes. The heroic acts our society seems to focus on are the melodramatic ones, the successes, or the blazes of glory worthy of plaques and metals and rewards.
Our society also appears to expect a great deal out of a hero - they must be perfect, with no blemishes in their past, no scars. The underrated Dustin Hoffman movie Hero is a good exploration of this theme. In that movie, a petty thief and all around loser, saves a plane-load of people without asking for anything in return. The reporter hunting for the Hero that saved the people – wants someone upstanding, pretty, media-savvy. And is disappointed when she eventually discovers Hoffman. I think it would shock us to our core if someone we saw as a horrible person, a complete devil - did something heroic. Just as it would shock us if someone heroic did something twisted. I also wonder about all the people in between, the people who fall flat on their face attempting to do the right thing. The everyday heroes amongst us, who deal with our failures and somehow struggle on. Sometimes I think we can display heroism in how we deal with life’s little disappointments, as much if not more than how we handle the successes.
Three TV shows this week, all completely different, different genres, different channels, and different tones - tackled the idea of hope, connection and heroism. And each in its own way delicately walked a tightrope between sentimental clichés and honest story telling.
I admit, I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to sentimentality on TV, Movies and Books. Seen one too many tearjerkers...and there really are no new ideas. But these three shows in their own ways seemed to find a new way of telling an old story and by doing so, genuinely moved me this week.
First up : The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinqu, Ats 5.6. The tale concerns a former Mexican wrestler who has become embittered and hopeless. He lost his family and friends in an epic battle. And his heart seems to have died with them. He no longer sees any meaning or hope in helping others. He sits weighted down by the burden of his success. What's the point, he wonders aloud watching how future generations make fun of what his family once did. He and his brothers tried to make a difference, they saved the world many times, yet they are remembered as a joke? Angel recites a speech to Numero 5, which he has recited so many times by now that it sounds more like a platitude, and sensing Angel's own lack of conviction, Numero 5 predictably leaves and hops a bus. "We don't do good to be rewarded," Angel remarks I his speech, "We do it because it's the right thing to do and a part of you knows that..."
Angel's speech is repeated this week in Joan of Arcadia by a little girl in glasses and a pink dress. The gimmick of Joan of Arcadia is God or someone who states they are god (we’re never quite sure), appears to Joan in the guise of different people. In this instance it's a little girl who smilingly looks up at Joan and tells her that you help whomever you can. Joan has volunteered to help a woman on a bus. She’s become the single woman's son's babysitter, but apparently it's not the woman but her son, Joan is supposed to help now. Joan asks the little girl - "Don't I get points for each person I help. I helped the woman. Do I have to go back and figure out what the son’s problem is now? What’s the point?" The little girl smiles back and tells Joan: "It's not a point system. There's no points. You just help whomever needs it...that’s what people do. You listen and you help when they need it. The system is perfect."
But what if you think the help you're offering is hurting rather than helping the person? What if the person doesn’t want your help? In Miss Match, Kate Fox wonders this as she valiantly attempts to help two people find love, and a third get an equitable settlement from her husband. Is it right to provide people with a means of making an emotional connection? Is she right to hunt one for them? Or should she set up boundaries? Disconnect herself from them?
Angel, doesn’t have this problem in ATS, he’s already feeling pretty disconnected. Actually, Spike whose a ghost, seems more connected and chatty with the gang than Angel is this week. Numero 5, a masked Mexican wrestler, like Angel has lost hope in his calling. Numero 5 like Angel has disconnected himself from the world due to a tragic loss. Angel lost his family – Cordelia and Connor in S4 and Numero 5 has lost his brothers. But Numero 5 has taken his disconnection a step further – he’s isolated himself from everyone. His face, his life, remains isolated beneath the mask of his past, which he continues to wear like a badge of honor, showing no one.
Angel and Numero 5 are attempting to defeat an Aztec demon named Tezcalpita, who is cursed to reappear every 50 years to hunt for a talisman that will turn him into an indestructible being of light. The demon represents both Angel and Numero 5’s current state of hopelessness, despair, disconnection. To survive the demon collects the hearts of heroes – Angel and Numero 5 aren’t it’s targets because both lack the beating heart of a hero. One’s heart is dried and dead, the other’s is hopeless. Hearts represent our emotional connection to one another. Without a heart – a body can’t function – because the heart beats blood to all the other organs, connects them to one. Ironically the way to kill the demon is the same way one kills a vampire – through the heart. Kill the central engine. And like a vampire, the demon dissolves. But how Angel kills the demon isn’t as interesting nor the point/heart of the episode – it’s how he figured out how to kill the demon that is important just as it is how he was able to pin the demon down that’s important.
Going back to Joan of Arcadia, Joan’s best friend is cranky, she can’t figure out why nor really cares. He says he hates November. But Joan has other problems. God comes to Joan at a career fair, tells her to listen to people, to help. Bewildered, Joan starts hunting people to help, and hears a woman crying on the bus that she and her cranky friend are riding on. The woman tells her that she needs a baby sitter so she can go to night classes, Joan offers to become the woman’s sitter, and through an odd inter-locking series of events, which eventually leads to Joan walking through a grave-yard with the son, she stumbles upon the reason her friend hates November and is so cranky. It’s ironically through helping the woman and her son, that Joan inadvertently discovers her friend’s pain. A pain that oddly echoes Joan’s own, not to mention Numero 5 and Angel’s – the loss or injury of a loved one.
Angel discovers how to defeat the demon by inter-acting with the AI group. The combined efforts of Fred, Gunn, Wes, and Spike inform Angel that Numero Cinqu and the demon’s heart are the keys to defeating it. He must work with Numero Cinquo.
He can’t do it alone. Through his work with Numero Cinqu and the miraculous reunion of the five dead brothers, Angel realizes that what is important is his connection with humanity and he searches out the Shanshu prophecy, which he hopes will someday literally re-connect him. Immortality seems to separate Angel from the world, just as immortality separates the Aztec demon. Both are dead, yet cursed to walk amongst the living like leeches, both strive for a way to overcome that – one to be a god, indestructible, the other to be human and mortal, free from the disconnection that comes with being a demon. Although one can’t help but wonder if part of Angel still wants the prize – the super-powers more than the mortality? But as we see with Numero Cinquo super-powers without friends are worth little. It’s the human connection that is important.
Joan discovers the same thing. On a bus, she confronts the person representing God, and asks him why people must suffer. Why do they die? What’s the point in helping? What’s the point in caring? Why don’t you help? Smiling God answers that it’s important to care. To want to help. That helping in of itself is the answer, whether we feel it’s succeeded or not. The fact that she cares so much, feels others’ pain so powerfully – makes her powerful, makes her strong. It’s when we start ignoring our empathy for others, stop feeling for them, stop noticing their pain – that we become weak, disconnected. That, says God, is hell. The emotional disconnection.
At the end of Miss Match, Kate Fox discovers somewhat the same thing. The people she’s helped, that she’s reached out to, tried to set up a connection with, even her failures, appreciate the fact she’s taken the time to care. Thank you for caring enough to help. Kate looks at the book she bought on setting up boundaries in her life and throws it away.
Sentimental? Maybe. But isn’t it interesting that three different television shows attempted to explore this in three different ways this week, coming more or less to the same conclusion – that whether we like it or not, we need one another, like a body needs a heart.
I’m not usually a fan of Miss Match, the characters often grate on my nerves, but tonight’s episode was actually worth a visit. Joan of Arcadia has become a sort of comfort food that I watch whenever I’m home but don’t feel a need to tape. So far it has managed to dance around the pitfall that Touched by An Angel and Seventh Heaven fall into – preachy sentimentality and religious indoctrination. This week was no different.
Regarding ATS 5.6 , I enjoyed it. The masks – indicate the masks that the AI gang wear.Angel – who hides Angelus. Spike – who hides William. Wes/Fred/Gunn – whose memories have been altered thus hiding the darker sides that emerged in S3-4.
I vaguely remember a poem about masks – something about until we have faces, we remain masked?? And I remain convinced the memory wipe will be addressed this year in some fashion. My fear is that they will address it in the same blasé manner they addressed Spike getting a soul. I trust these TV writers about as far as I can throw them.
I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life afterall
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore
Chorus:
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me
in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free
I stopped by the bar at 3 am
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity
Chorus:
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
E. Sailers - The Indigo Girls
Saw a couple of interesting TV shows this week that made me think and wonder about heroes. The heroic acts our society seems to focus on are the melodramatic ones, the successes, or the blazes of glory worthy of plaques and metals and rewards.
Our society also appears to expect a great deal out of a hero - they must be perfect, with no blemishes in their past, no scars. The underrated Dustin Hoffman movie Hero is a good exploration of this theme. In that movie, a petty thief and all around loser, saves a plane-load of people without asking for anything in return. The reporter hunting for the Hero that saved the people – wants someone upstanding, pretty, media-savvy. And is disappointed when she eventually discovers Hoffman. I think it would shock us to our core if someone we saw as a horrible person, a complete devil - did something heroic. Just as it would shock us if someone heroic did something twisted. I also wonder about all the people in between, the people who fall flat on their face attempting to do the right thing. The everyday heroes amongst us, who deal with our failures and somehow struggle on. Sometimes I think we can display heroism in how we deal with life’s little disappointments, as much if not more than how we handle the successes.
Three TV shows this week, all completely different, different genres, different channels, and different tones - tackled the idea of hope, connection and heroism. And each in its own way delicately walked a tightrope between sentimental clichés and honest story telling.
I admit, I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to sentimentality on TV, Movies and Books. Seen one too many tearjerkers...and there really are no new ideas. But these three shows in their own ways seemed to find a new way of telling an old story and by doing so, genuinely moved me this week.
First up : The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinqu, Ats 5.6. The tale concerns a former Mexican wrestler who has become embittered and hopeless. He lost his family and friends in an epic battle. And his heart seems to have died with them. He no longer sees any meaning or hope in helping others. He sits weighted down by the burden of his success. What's the point, he wonders aloud watching how future generations make fun of what his family once did. He and his brothers tried to make a difference, they saved the world many times, yet they are remembered as a joke? Angel recites a speech to Numero 5, which he has recited so many times by now that it sounds more like a platitude, and sensing Angel's own lack of conviction, Numero 5 predictably leaves and hops a bus. "We don't do good to be rewarded," Angel remarks I his speech, "We do it because it's the right thing to do and a part of you knows that..."
Angel's speech is repeated this week in Joan of Arcadia by a little girl in glasses and a pink dress. The gimmick of Joan of Arcadia is God or someone who states they are god (we’re never quite sure), appears to Joan in the guise of different people. In this instance it's a little girl who smilingly looks up at Joan and tells her that you help whomever you can. Joan has volunteered to help a woman on a bus. She’s become the single woman's son's babysitter, but apparently it's not the woman but her son, Joan is supposed to help now. Joan asks the little girl - "Don't I get points for each person I help. I helped the woman. Do I have to go back and figure out what the son’s problem is now? What’s the point?" The little girl smiles back and tells Joan: "It's not a point system. There's no points. You just help whomever needs it...that’s what people do. You listen and you help when they need it. The system is perfect."
But what if you think the help you're offering is hurting rather than helping the person? What if the person doesn’t want your help? In Miss Match, Kate Fox wonders this as she valiantly attempts to help two people find love, and a third get an equitable settlement from her husband. Is it right to provide people with a means of making an emotional connection? Is she right to hunt one for them? Or should she set up boundaries? Disconnect herself from them?
Angel, doesn’t have this problem in ATS, he’s already feeling pretty disconnected. Actually, Spike whose a ghost, seems more connected and chatty with the gang than Angel is this week. Numero 5, a masked Mexican wrestler, like Angel has lost hope in his calling. Numero 5 like Angel has disconnected himself from the world due to a tragic loss. Angel lost his family – Cordelia and Connor in S4 and Numero 5 has lost his brothers. But Numero 5 has taken his disconnection a step further – he’s isolated himself from everyone. His face, his life, remains isolated beneath the mask of his past, which he continues to wear like a badge of honor, showing no one.
Angel and Numero 5 are attempting to defeat an Aztec demon named Tezcalpita, who is cursed to reappear every 50 years to hunt for a talisman that will turn him into an indestructible being of light. The demon represents both Angel and Numero 5’s current state of hopelessness, despair, disconnection. To survive the demon collects the hearts of heroes – Angel and Numero 5 aren’t it’s targets because both lack the beating heart of a hero. One’s heart is dried and dead, the other’s is hopeless. Hearts represent our emotional connection to one another. Without a heart – a body can’t function – because the heart beats blood to all the other organs, connects them to one. Ironically the way to kill the demon is the same way one kills a vampire – through the heart. Kill the central engine. And like a vampire, the demon dissolves. But how Angel kills the demon isn’t as interesting nor the point/heart of the episode – it’s how he figured out how to kill the demon that is important just as it is how he was able to pin the demon down that’s important.
Going back to Joan of Arcadia, Joan’s best friend is cranky, she can’t figure out why nor really cares. He says he hates November. But Joan has other problems. God comes to Joan at a career fair, tells her to listen to people, to help. Bewildered, Joan starts hunting people to help, and hears a woman crying on the bus that she and her cranky friend are riding on. The woman tells her that she needs a baby sitter so she can go to night classes, Joan offers to become the woman’s sitter, and through an odd inter-locking series of events, which eventually leads to Joan walking through a grave-yard with the son, she stumbles upon the reason her friend hates November and is so cranky. It’s ironically through helping the woman and her son, that Joan inadvertently discovers her friend’s pain. A pain that oddly echoes Joan’s own, not to mention Numero 5 and Angel’s – the loss or injury of a loved one.
Angel discovers how to defeat the demon by inter-acting with the AI group. The combined efforts of Fred, Gunn, Wes, and Spike inform Angel that Numero Cinqu and the demon’s heart are the keys to defeating it. He must work with Numero Cinquo.
He can’t do it alone. Through his work with Numero Cinqu and the miraculous reunion of the five dead brothers, Angel realizes that what is important is his connection with humanity and he searches out the Shanshu prophecy, which he hopes will someday literally re-connect him. Immortality seems to separate Angel from the world, just as immortality separates the Aztec demon. Both are dead, yet cursed to walk amongst the living like leeches, both strive for a way to overcome that – one to be a god, indestructible, the other to be human and mortal, free from the disconnection that comes with being a demon. Although one can’t help but wonder if part of Angel still wants the prize – the super-powers more than the mortality? But as we see with Numero Cinquo super-powers without friends are worth little. It’s the human connection that is important.
Joan discovers the same thing. On a bus, she confronts the person representing God, and asks him why people must suffer. Why do they die? What’s the point in helping? What’s the point in caring? Why don’t you help? Smiling God answers that it’s important to care. To want to help. That helping in of itself is the answer, whether we feel it’s succeeded or not. The fact that she cares so much, feels others’ pain so powerfully – makes her powerful, makes her strong. It’s when we start ignoring our empathy for others, stop feeling for them, stop noticing their pain – that we become weak, disconnected. That, says God, is hell. The emotional disconnection.
At the end of Miss Match, Kate Fox discovers somewhat the same thing. The people she’s helped, that she’s reached out to, tried to set up a connection with, even her failures, appreciate the fact she’s taken the time to care. Thank you for caring enough to help. Kate looks at the book she bought on setting up boundaries in her life and throws it away.
Sentimental? Maybe. But isn’t it interesting that three different television shows attempted to explore this in three different ways this week, coming more or less to the same conclusion – that whether we like it or not, we need one another, like a body needs a heart.
I’m not usually a fan of Miss Match, the characters often grate on my nerves, but tonight’s episode was actually worth a visit. Joan of Arcadia has become a sort of comfort food that I watch whenever I’m home but don’t feel a need to tape. So far it has managed to dance around the pitfall that Touched by An Angel and Seventh Heaven fall into – preachy sentimentality and religious indoctrination. This week was no different.
Regarding ATS 5.6 , I enjoyed it. The masks – indicate the masks that the AI gang wear.Angel – who hides Angelus. Spike – who hides William. Wes/Fred/Gunn – whose memories have been altered thus hiding the darker sides that emerged in S3-4.
I vaguely remember a poem about masks – something about until we have faces, we remain masked?? And I remain convinced the memory wipe will be addressed this year in some fashion. My fear is that they will address it in the same blasé manner they addressed Spike getting a soul. I trust these TV writers about as far as I can throw them.
Great essay, s'kat!
Btw, I'm smacking myself on the forehead right now. *waves* Hi, s'kat! I didn't even know you were here! Didn't notice until I was surfing aliera's friends list just now. I don't tend to surf the friends list of ATPoers, cuz I figure I already have them all friended, so what's the point? I do surf friends lists of non-ATPoers, though. Sorry I missed you until now!
Re: Great essay, s'kat!
Do you think it was just coincidence that all three shows revolved around a similar theme of human dis/connection? Or is there a reason why TV shows seem to be echoing this theme, perhaps in response to a lack in our culture of hope and love.
I think things go in cycles, to be honest. But there are certain things inherent in our nature that we tend to repeat in stories and art-work almost subconsciously.
The need for human connection, family (blood or otherwise) desire for hope.
I thought Wes actually put it best this week when he told Angel that it was important not to lose "hope" that giving into despair could be fatal. Angel's conflict which is more literal in some ways than Joan's - is the conflict between being a part of humanity (connected) yet not giving up who he is, his individuality. I think people are struggling right now with the desire to connect and the fear that if they do so they'll be horribly hurt.
Spike & Angel are great metaphors for that struggle.
Spike snarkly rejects people before they can reject him.
He puts it perfectly in the episode - "It's in the poetry love - if someone's after hearts? I'm damn well going to get their heart before they get mine." Translated: "I'm going to beat myself down, insult you, make a quip - before you can do it me!" (He reminds me a lot of my kid brother - the king of the one-liner, snark attack and image - yet underneath? sensitivity squared.)
Then there's Angel whose means of dealing with rejection and insults - is withdrawl. He disconnects himself from
people. Pulls into his shell. (This is more me, actually.
When attacked I retreat into a corner. Bottle up the rage. Brood.) Both behaviors result in a feeling of disconnection and isolation. We see the same responses echoed in Joan of Arcadia - with Joan and her friend, and even Joan and her brother. They are universal - and I think the writers intentionally try to address universal desires and pains - b/c the more universal the theme - the more likely you'll get viewers. That may be the conscious reason. The unconscious reason - is the writers of these programs probably yearn for the same things we all do - that sense of connection. Not sure that made sense.
Thanks for the response! And the welcome! sk
Re: Great essay, s'kat!
I think you're right about TV shows wanting to touch on universal themes, and that connectedness is pretty much something we can all relate to. It's interesting the psychology they use to address the different characters' responses to that push/pull for a connection. Plin was talking about Ennegram's types over on her journal, though I didn't get very far in that particular post.
Thinking of Wesley, I don't really understand why people say he's so much like Spike. In the way Wes reacts to things, he seems more like Angel in the whole brooding, withdrawing into himself, lone wolf thing. Or kind of like Buffy, hardening her heart.
One (good?) thing the mindwipe has done is make the gang more emotionally open. Even though their personalities have been altered, perhaps their openness will allow them to forgive Angel more easily once the big reveal (hopefully) occurs. Of course, it could go the extreme opposite: because they are so emotionally open right now, the gang could react by being so hurt that they withdraw from Angel completely. Hopefully not. Or at leaest, not forever.
Re: Great essay, s'kat!
Odd. Giles? Yes very much so. Ripper/Spike, William/Giles. Can see that. Wes? Nope. I always saw Wes as being more like Angel. Sort of the Watcher counterpart to Angel. But hey if I work at it I can find similarities in everyone. No, part of the reason Spike's there is he is such a good contrast to the other characters, a wonderful foil - you need a contrast to create conflict. But I don't want this to fall into a Spike debate - they get dicey. There's not a character in the regular cast of Angel right at this moment that I don't thoroughly love.
One (good?) thing the mindwipe has done is make the gang more emotionally open. Even though their personalities have been altered, perhaps their openness will allow them to forgive Angel more easily once the big reveal (hopefully) occurs. Of course, it could go the extreme opposite: because they are so emotionally open right now, the gang could react by being so hurt that they withdraw from Angel completely. Hopefully not. Or at leaest, not forever.
Actually I'm hoping for a little separation, not a lot, just something akin to S2. Except this time the gang quits AI and W&H and Angel has to find his way back to them. If it happens? Doubt it'll last long. A) I'm not sure they can leave W&H, and B)there's a heavy theme about not going it alone this season. Every, I mean "every" time someone tries to go it alone - they get slaughtered. The whole lesson of Numero 5 was team effort, not being cut off, working together.
My prediction? Something drastic will probably happen prior to them figuring it out which will either make them decide to quit and be less forgiving of Angel "or"
make them think twice about leaving Angel in the lurch.
I do see the memory wipe as being important thought.
Heck, Numero 5 was written by the show-runner and that episode underlined it.
Talismans
(Anonymous) 2003-11-08 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)And the point you made about the amulet in this week's AtS: that it is designed to channel the power of the Aztec sun god if the demon warrior can ever find it, is a parallel to Spike's amulet from Chosen. The demon warrior is undead, too and needs this amulet to harness great power and probably immortality, etc. Now there are two amulets that are associated with sun, light, and souled vamps. Nice.
If and when Spike gets corporeal again, I suspect that there are riders on the contract that will make his unlife just as difficult as being ghosty. I'm not convinced that W&H had a double-cross in mind for Angel with that amulet for Chosen. At that point, it was just the deus ex machina plot device to get Angel on BtVS and provide BtVS with the doohickey to save the world/kill Spike. If JM hadn't been signed for AtS S5, it wouldn't have mattered...probably.
Also liked your reminder that Angel has lost his family (Connor & Cordy) just as Numero Cinco has. AtS has been a little too subtle about that, but probably more out of necessity (too much backstory) than neglect. Using NC's story to tell Angel's story was a rather elegant structural solution IMO. Unleashed, same thing, but not as well executed. The regular fandom seem to be up in arms over the MoTW format, but it seems to me that ME is very cleverly weaving thematic and character arcs into the standalones in place of the *narrative* arc that was S4. Structurally, what else can they do when they've committed to doing mostly standalones to appease the WB's PTB? Interesting stuff.
As for the memory wipe, I think that they've had to hold back on dealing with that until they could sign CC or VK for an ep or two. For the biggest dramatic impact, they need either or both of them to reprise their characters. Now that Angel's let slip the "father will kill the son" prophecy to Wes, it's just a matter of when we'll see Cordy or Connor again to explode the whole memory wipe sitch. Here's hoping!
Alice
Re: Talismans
Agree, I don't think Spike's amulet has more than metaphorical significance.
I suspect ME will find another way to keep Spike tied to W&H that has zip to do with amulets and contracts. I keep remembering all the wonderful ways W&H found to keep Lindsey, Lilah and Angel bound up with them.
Also characters on the Buffyverse have a nasty habit of doing things without appreciating the consequences.
Angel with the mindwipe, Willow and Buffy with the slayer sharing spell in Chosen, Spike wearing the amulet...Wes taking prophecies a tad too literally.