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Jan. 17th, 2026 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatHaven't done a lot today, outside of watching it snow - big heavy snowflakes falling lightly to the ground. Heavy wet snow. Not a lot of sticking. Well, that and knee exercises - lots of knee exercises, and watching of television, and scrolling through dream-width correspondence list.
Apparently sci-fi writer John Scalzi got an asteroid named after him (or a minor planet)? And the ultra conservative comic strip writer behind Dilbert died of cancer. (I can't say I ever liked the comic strip Dilbert all that much? It was okay in 1990s, but it slowly derailed into misogynistic and racist jokes by the early 00s.) Oh, and Cincinnati Chili may well be an acquired taste? (I've never had it - nor want it. I don't like Texas Chili. I only eat vegetarian chili? I don't tend to like meat in it - and grew up with beans.)
Binged Buffy and Angel episodes today. Of the two, I have to say Angel S3 Episodes 15-18 work better from a plot and character stand point than Buffy S6 episodes 15-18. I think David Greenwalt/Jeffrey Bell and Tim Minear were slightly better show-runners than Marti Noxon/David Fury and Joss Whedon.
Normal Again and Entropy are actually good episodes. They work on multiple levels. But, the problem with Normal Again and Entropy - is I'm relating more to Spike and Anya, than Buffy and her friends? It's an interesting flaw and a risky one.
Both episodes get across the changes in Spike. And how confused he is. It's also clear from both - that the writers need Spike to leave - or the rest of the season won't work.
Normal Again - is possibly one of the more interesting takes on a popular television/science fiction/fantasy trope - which is that the fictional world of the series isn't real, and reality is really a horrible mental institution, mundane real world, or an apocalyptic world people are trying to escape. In Normal Again - they suggest that maybe Buffy's in a mental institution and the series is really just in her head? Which doesn't really work - because we have the Angel spin-off. It works better - if there isn't an Angel spin-off. So, it's clear that this is the demonic illusion, and the normal world that Buffy fantasies about and wishes for - but also is terrified of. She tells Willow - what if I'm still in the clinic my parents put me in when I was a kid, and none of this is real? What pulls her out of the mental health clinic world inhabited by her parents and in black and white, grey and dull tones - oddly enough - is her Mother. Joyce tells her - "you are strong Buffy, you can fight this, your father and I will always be here, and you'll always live with us, and we'll always take care of you." She knows that's impossible. She's 21. She can't live with them forever. It's a child's fantasy. It's time she grew up.
Spike is interesting in the episode. Because Xander triggers him. Treating him like a thing, something that they can use to help them - but beneath them. Xander's behavior towards Spike is demeaning and triggering. And Spike ends up ranting about - "oh right, we're all delusions in her brain, and she gave me a chip, and turned me into her sodding sex slave!" Xander turns and says, "What?" And Spike sighs, and says it's nothing, just talking about alternate dimensions. But he later lets Buffy know, when she's given the antidote to her delusions - "that she needs to tell her friends about them, they'll either understand and god forbid help her, or kick her out - into the dark with him. But at least she won't be playing martyr any longer - and live." He's tired of the back and forth. She tells him she doesn't love him, then comes to him for comfort, then breaks up with him, then comes back. He has whiplash, and its confusing him. He also doesn't know how to please her. She keeps changing the rules on him. Note, this is a really patient vampire - he's been with Drusilla and Harmony. But Buffy is driving him crazy. And who can blame him? He's coming back to his crypt with groceries, when he runs into her in the grave yard in front of his home. So he understandably asks if she's there to see him about something, and she rudely responds, really not. He tells her to leave then.
And then asks about the wedding - if she cried when they tied the knot, which is when she tells him what happened. And that's when Xander and Willow show up, and Buffy collapses, and Xander picks a fight with Spike.
I get where Spike is coming from. Xander keeps poking him. And Buffy keeps teasing him.
By the time I get to Entropy? I'm kind of rooting for Spike and Anya to hook up. Seriously, Xander and Buffy deserve it. The Spike/Anya scene is interesting, and Emma Caulfield is right - she had a lot of chemistry with James Marsters, more actually than she had with Xander. Spike comes in for a spell or something to take the bite off - he's heartbroken over Buffy. Misses her. And Anya has just finished talking to Hali about casting a vengeance spell on Xander and being unable to find anyone to help her cast one. Hali suggests Spike. (The writers decided not to have Hali or Spike recognize each other - or act on it. Not sure why? I was kind of hoping they would. So, it is just the writers teasing the audience. They reused actors a lot - Jeff Kober has two roles in the series for example).
Spike and Anya then have a discussion that is reminiscent of the one they had in Where the Wild Things Are in S4. About feeling less than. What draws them together is their outsider status, the feeling of being disenfranchized, and diminished. And it's kind of hard not to feel sympathetic and root for them to get together. To be fair to both - they intend to hurt anyone. They didn't know there were cameras in the Magic Box. When Xander finds them and says that he saw - Anya is like, "Uhm, how?" And later, in Seeing Red, when Dawn informs Spike about the pairing, and he wonders why Buffy told her - she says no, she saw it - and he's like how? And she tells him.
Buffy hurt Spike - she basically did to Spike what Parker Abrahms and Angelus had done to her. (You could say Spike did it to Harmony too, I guess, so ironic?) Both Parker and Angelus told Buffy that what they had wasn't real, it was for her, not for them. It was just to get off, and she wasn't all that. But hey, sorry she feels that way. That's kind of what she did to Spike?
Which is fine - except? She's upset about him and Anya sleeping together.
So upset, that Dawn picks up on it - and confronts him about it. And he feels the need to confront Buffy about it. The very fact that Dawn visits him after he sleeps with Anya - shows how embroiled he was in the Scooby Gang. Also the fact that they went to him for help during Normal Again to get the demon. (He was the only one outside of Buffy that could take it out). Or that they fought against him all summer.
I can see why Spike's confused. (Heck, I'm confused). As he put it in Crushed, "you say you don't want it - but you won't leave" or in Once More with Feeling, "why do you keep coming to me? Why won't you leave, and let me rest in peace"?
This is a complicated relationship. Which Spike seems to realize. Also an impossible one, which he also realizes.
In Entropy - Xander tries to kill Spike, and Spike refuses to fight back. Spike's drunk, and the sex with Anya didn't help - so much as give him and Anya a brief escape. They look at each other with regret, but also a kind of mutual appreciation and thanks. If Anya and Buffy hadn't stepped in to stop Xander, Spike would have let him kill him. He says he can't fight him off - chip. But in the past, he has been able to duck and run.
And it's here - that Spike tells Xander that he slept with Buffy. He does it partly to protect Anya, and partly to defend himself. Xander is demeaning him, and Buffy is letting him.
And Anya is right - Xander has no right to feel offended, he lost that right when he left her at the altar. And heck, Buffy told Spike to move on.
I decided to watch Seeing Red after Entropy. The two episodes go together. Or build up to each other. When they originally aired in 2002, folks who were downloading or watching the episodes via satellite television in colleges around the country - ended up watching "Seeing Red" before Entropy. People watching Broadcast Television or Cable saw Entropy, people watching via satellite feed saw Seeing Red. Can you imagine what happened online? Yup, the fandom exploded. I was watching on Broadcast Television or Cable - so saw the episodes in order. The people who didn't, kind of reacted badly and spoiled everyone else.
Seeing Red is an uneven episode. The writer has to do several difficult things in this episode:
1. Spike needs to be motivated to leave town and hunt a soul, but the audience should think he's getting the chip removed (which if you've been watching the series closely and following the overall story thread, you'll realize - no, it's a soul). I don't know why I didn't see it initially - maybe because I was in the fandom, and other people can color how you see things yourself? Or I got emotionally invested in him being redeemed without a soul - which doesn't quite work canonically within the verse. Again it helps if you watch Angel at the same time or concurrently? For the same reasons Angel contradicts the view that Buffy's mental clinic is reality in this world, Angel contradicts the view that a vampire without a soul can be redeemed, or that the chip redeems Spike.
They also have to make it clear to the audience that Spike would seek a soul, and why. That's hard to do, because it's a fine line? They have to find a way of doing it - without confusing the audience. Spike seeking a soul actually does work - with Angel, since Angel is a noir series and Angel himself is a bit of an anti-hero character. They've also dug down into the addiction metaphor. Angel is right when he tells Lorne - I'm a vampire, I have to drink blood - that doesn't make me a blood-a-holic, however human blood - he's been off and when you give him a taste - he wants it. Same with Spike, because of the chip, Spike has gotten used to drinking blood from a glass, and usually pigs blood, not human blood or whatever he can get.
2. Flip Willow - they need to kill off Tara in a way that will make Willow see red, hence the title. They also need to provide Willow with all the information on Warren - so she knows where he'll go and how to destroy him.
3. Warren needs to piss off Willow, without realizing it. Warren sees his main and only threat being Buffy. It's clear he doesn't see magic as being that big a deal - since he dismisses Jonathan who is the warlock in the group.
4. Have Buffy finally confront Warren, Jonathan and Andrew - and get Jonathan and Andrew away from Warren. And bring Buffy, Xander and Willow back together again - mainly through their pursuit of Warren, Jonathan and Andrew.
To give the writers credit - they have planted clues and seeds throughout the season foreshadowing what happens in Seeing Red. Buffy throughout the season tells people that guns are seldom useful and to get rid of them. Often damaging the gun when she returns it to them. Also, throughout the season, Buffy tells Spike that he can't change, he can't be good, he can't be redeemed without a soul. He's nothing without a soul. He's an evil thing. She can't love him without a soul. And what he feels for her - can't be real without a soul - that he can't "love" her without a soul, not really. And Spike wants to change, he's tried everything. He's tried getting the chip removed on multiple occasions, he tried in S5. He tried in S4. It's been made clear to him that it is impossible. The only ones who can are the Initiative, and they've disbanded, and he can't make them - since he's incapable of hurting humans. So obviously, he can't get it removed.
What doesn't quite work here - is that he could indirectly hurt humans and knows that - so why doesn't he? He kind of does with the demon egg contraband? Also, now that he can hurt Buffy - why doesn't he? Why doesn't he sire her and make her a vampire? (That question is actually answered in S7 with Lies my Parents Tell Me - where it's revealed that he sired his own mother and it ended badly and traumatized him. But it's not clear here.)
When I rewatched the scene in which Spike confronts Buffy in her bathroom. I was distracted by questions that I should not have had to ask myself. Such as, WTF is he doing in her bathroom? And why didn't she have Willow dis-invite him from her home? It made no sense to me that he walked into her house, the door was unlocked, he left his jacket on the banister, and strolled into her bathroom with barely a howdy do. I just don't see him doing that? Confronting her in her living room or bedroom, maybe, or even in the grave yard, but her bathroom???
I get why they did it - it's a plot contrivance. They had to put Buffy in a space in which she was vulnerable. A smaller space. One that she'd have more difficulty fighting him off. And make look more like a sexual attack.
But, it doesn't quite play that way? Also, that's a huge bathroom.
Also, Buffy, why did you let him attack you? When he came at her - she should have kicked him off immediately? Kind of like she did with Xander in The Pack? Or Angelus? The difficulty with the scene is how it is filmed - it is filmed hyper-realistically - which would be fine if I were watching The Pitt or The Wire, but I'm watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It's not even Angel. And all the other scenes aren't? The color scheme of their confrontation in the bathroom - is black and white, dull tones, and similar to Normal Again - it's almost as if - Buffy and Spike went through a portal to the Normal Again verse for that scene. I know what they were trying to do here - they wanted to convince both Spike and the audience that he needed a soul, and also put an end to the sexual relationship and make it clear to Spike, Buffy and the audience that the sexual relationship was toxic and not love.
What is interesting about the scene - is it shows rather well the consequences of using "sex" as a drug. Buffy was using Spike as a way to get off - to lose herself. Spike - in a way - saw her as a drug as well, he tells Anya that she was so raw, he never experienced anything like her. He told Buffy that as well - on numerous occasions - that he'd never been with anyone like her, it had never been as good as it was with her. But to be fair to Spike - he fell for her before he had sex with her. Romantic love is addictive - it's a drug, or sex as a drug, and it can't last - as Buffy tells Spike - it can't last. Spike, being a soulless vampire, doesn't understand that - for him love is crazy and wild and pulls through the blood. He says as much in Lover's Walk and in this scene - to him, love isn't love without the fire, the passion, the wildness. And Buffy wanted the fire - wanted to burn, until she finally realized that it didn't last, it wasn't real. Something I think Angel tried to tell her when she visited him way back in the beginning of S6, when she first got back.
Angel tells Wes that the love he feels for Connor is not what he thought it would be. It's painful. He used to see love as swallowing you whole and ripping you apart, but he doesn't feel that with Connor. And Buffy doesn't feel that with Dawn or her friends. Just with Angel and Spike, and possibly Riley.
The addictive nature of romantic love or the drug aspect - is destructive, as shown in the confrontation in Buffy's bathroom. It was a matter of time - before Spike would force himself sexually on Buffy. That's foreshadowed throughout S2-S6. The fact he hadn't - has more to do with Buffy than Spike, I think? He does try to actually on numerous occasions prior to this - but in the metaphorical sense - by biting and killing her. In School Hard, Harsh Light of Day, Out of My Mind - Spike attacks Buffy and tries to bite her, and it is very sexual. And about power.
This encounter is more about Spike attempting to reclaim some power her thought he had over Buffy. "You loved me when I was inside you!" or "You felt something when I was inside you!" He's trying desperately to reclaim their relationship - and to be fair, she's initiated this more than once.
Smashed and Gone - she thrusts herself at him, literally attacking him.
Their sex has included punches and throwing each other against walls. And as a soulless demon - he really doesn't have any breaks or ways to stop. (This is kind of repeated in the Angel episode Loyalty - where the Angel crew explains to a woman whose son became a vampire - that she couldn't save him.) Spike even tells her in both Smashed and Dead Things, that she can stop it, not him. And he doesn't quite understand why she hasn't.
The difficulty I have with this scene - is my sympathy is oddly with Spike?
And I am asking Buffy a lot of questions. So is Spike.
Spike: "Why didn't you let him kill me?"
Buffy: "You know why."
Spike: "Because you love me."
Buffy: "I don't love you. I can never trust you enough to love you."
Yet, she trusted him with Dawn? She confided in him. She slept with him.
I don't know what she things he'll do? He's not like Angel or Riley - he won't just leave. And he's fallen for her - and shown that? And now he can hurt her - and she is driving him crazy.
When he attempts to attack her sexually - and kind of ineptly, and awkwardly, at that, he's crying and angry, and frustrated. He doesn't get very far. Just gives her a few bruises. But she kicks him across the room eventually. And it's nowhere near the amount of damage - she gave him in Dead Things, or previously, when he couldn't fight back. (That's the problem, the writers had Buffy punching him in the nose and the face every other episode in S5 and S4, when he had the chip, and no way of fighting back).
He's crushed and devastated, and flees. He's so upset, he leaves his jacket behind and doesn't go back for it. This is his beloved jacket, he never goes anywhere without it? And he left it behind in her house. (It's left behind so Xander will find it and confront Buffy). He must have passed it on his way out.
Not only that - he has the oddest conversation with Clem. "Why didn't I kill her? Slayer/Vampire. Vampire kills slayer, crushes her bones, and drinks from her brain stem and has himself a real good day. I've killed two slayers, but this one - this one...what has she done to me? It's the chip. It must be? It makes it so I can't be a monster, and I can't be a man, I'm nothing - I can't go on this way."
Spike is having an identity crisis. He's not quite sure why he's reacted the way he did with the chip, or why he loves Buffy. The demon and the man in him are fighting, and the man wants to win. The chip has managed to quell the monster. Spike was never completely evil, not like Angelus or Darla, he was more amoral, neither good or evil. As Holtz tells Justine - things aren't that clear cut, people aren't good or evil. Although, Angelus is evil.
"Things change, give it time" says Clem. Spike's reaction is "yeah, right,"" then he looks up and gives a half-smile, "they do if you make them". Spike is fairly proactive and persistent. He's a favorite character - because he never gives up. It's what he has in common with Buffy - he doesn't give up. And that may well be what he fell in love with - that she never gives up.
"The girl is going to see a change. I'll be back and when I do, things are going to change."
It's what he's been saying all season long - things are going to change. Things have changed. The rules have changed. I have changed. You have changed.
I think that part of the story works, but I think the sexual attack portion doesn't, and I think - if they had more time, worked better with the actors involved, and maybe did it a little differently, it could have? Filmed it more like the Xander/Buffy scene in the Pack and less like the one in the bathroom?
I don't know.
I do know this - I won't fight over the episode any longer. We've flogged that horse already.
Everything else in the episode worked for me.
Apparently sci-fi writer John Scalzi got an asteroid named after him (or a minor planet)? And the ultra conservative comic strip writer behind Dilbert died of cancer. (I can't say I ever liked the comic strip Dilbert all that much? It was okay in 1990s, but it slowly derailed into misogynistic and racist jokes by the early 00s.) Oh, and Cincinnati Chili may well be an acquired taste? (I've never had it - nor want it. I don't like Texas Chili. I only eat vegetarian chili? I don't tend to like meat in it - and grew up with beans.)
Binged Buffy and Angel episodes today. Of the two, I have to say Angel S3 Episodes 15-18 work better from a plot and character stand point than Buffy S6 episodes 15-18. I think David Greenwalt/Jeffrey Bell and Tim Minear were slightly better show-runners than Marti Noxon/David Fury and Joss Whedon.
Normal Again and Entropy are actually good episodes. They work on multiple levels. But, the problem with Normal Again and Entropy - is I'm relating more to Spike and Anya, than Buffy and her friends? It's an interesting flaw and a risky one.
Both episodes get across the changes in Spike. And how confused he is. It's also clear from both - that the writers need Spike to leave - or the rest of the season won't work.
Normal Again - is possibly one of the more interesting takes on a popular television/science fiction/fantasy trope - which is that the fictional world of the series isn't real, and reality is really a horrible mental institution, mundane real world, or an apocalyptic world people are trying to escape. In Normal Again - they suggest that maybe Buffy's in a mental institution and the series is really just in her head? Which doesn't really work - because we have the Angel spin-off. It works better - if there isn't an Angel spin-off. So, it's clear that this is the demonic illusion, and the normal world that Buffy fantasies about and wishes for - but also is terrified of. She tells Willow - what if I'm still in the clinic my parents put me in when I was a kid, and none of this is real? What pulls her out of the mental health clinic world inhabited by her parents and in black and white, grey and dull tones - oddly enough - is her Mother. Joyce tells her - "you are strong Buffy, you can fight this, your father and I will always be here, and you'll always live with us, and we'll always take care of you." She knows that's impossible. She's 21. She can't live with them forever. It's a child's fantasy. It's time she grew up.
Spike is interesting in the episode. Because Xander triggers him. Treating him like a thing, something that they can use to help them - but beneath them. Xander's behavior towards Spike is demeaning and triggering. And Spike ends up ranting about - "oh right, we're all delusions in her brain, and she gave me a chip, and turned me into her sodding sex slave!" Xander turns and says, "What?" And Spike sighs, and says it's nothing, just talking about alternate dimensions. But he later lets Buffy know, when she's given the antidote to her delusions - "that she needs to tell her friends about them, they'll either understand and god forbid help her, or kick her out - into the dark with him. But at least she won't be playing martyr any longer - and live." He's tired of the back and forth. She tells him she doesn't love him, then comes to him for comfort, then breaks up with him, then comes back. He has whiplash, and its confusing him. He also doesn't know how to please her. She keeps changing the rules on him. Note, this is a really patient vampire - he's been with Drusilla and Harmony. But Buffy is driving him crazy. And who can blame him? He's coming back to his crypt with groceries, when he runs into her in the grave yard in front of his home. So he understandably asks if she's there to see him about something, and she rudely responds, really not. He tells her to leave then.
And then asks about the wedding - if she cried when they tied the knot, which is when she tells him what happened. And that's when Xander and Willow show up, and Buffy collapses, and Xander picks a fight with Spike.
I get where Spike is coming from. Xander keeps poking him. And Buffy keeps teasing him.
By the time I get to Entropy? I'm kind of rooting for Spike and Anya to hook up. Seriously, Xander and Buffy deserve it. The Spike/Anya scene is interesting, and Emma Caulfield is right - she had a lot of chemistry with James Marsters, more actually than she had with Xander. Spike comes in for a spell or something to take the bite off - he's heartbroken over Buffy. Misses her. And Anya has just finished talking to Hali about casting a vengeance spell on Xander and being unable to find anyone to help her cast one. Hali suggests Spike. (The writers decided not to have Hali or Spike recognize each other - or act on it. Not sure why? I was kind of hoping they would. So, it is just the writers teasing the audience. They reused actors a lot - Jeff Kober has two roles in the series for example).
Spike and Anya then have a discussion that is reminiscent of the one they had in Where the Wild Things Are in S4. About feeling less than. What draws them together is their outsider status, the feeling of being disenfranchized, and diminished. And it's kind of hard not to feel sympathetic and root for them to get together. To be fair to both - they intend to hurt anyone. They didn't know there were cameras in the Magic Box. When Xander finds them and says that he saw - Anya is like, "Uhm, how?" And later, in Seeing Red, when Dawn informs Spike about the pairing, and he wonders why Buffy told her - she says no, she saw it - and he's like how? And she tells him.
Buffy hurt Spike - she basically did to Spike what Parker Abrahms and Angelus had done to her. (You could say Spike did it to Harmony too, I guess, so ironic?) Both Parker and Angelus told Buffy that what they had wasn't real, it was for her, not for them. It was just to get off, and she wasn't all that. But hey, sorry she feels that way. That's kind of what she did to Spike?
Which is fine - except? She's upset about him and Anya sleeping together.
So upset, that Dawn picks up on it - and confronts him about it. And he feels the need to confront Buffy about it. The very fact that Dawn visits him after he sleeps with Anya - shows how embroiled he was in the Scooby Gang. Also the fact that they went to him for help during Normal Again to get the demon. (He was the only one outside of Buffy that could take it out). Or that they fought against him all summer.
I can see why Spike's confused. (Heck, I'm confused). As he put it in Crushed, "you say you don't want it - but you won't leave" or in Once More with Feeling, "why do you keep coming to me? Why won't you leave, and let me rest in peace"?
This is a complicated relationship. Which Spike seems to realize. Also an impossible one, which he also realizes.
In Entropy - Xander tries to kill Spike, and Spike refuses to fight back. Spike's drunk, and the sex with Anya didn't help - so much as give him and Anya a brief escape. They look at each other with regret, but also a kind of mutual appreciation and thanks. If Anya and Buffy hadn't stepped in to stop Xander, Spike would have let him kill him. He says he can't fight him off - chip. But in the past, he has been able to duck and run.
And it's here - that Spike tells Xander that he slept with Buffy. He does it partly to protect Anya, and partly to defend himself. Xander is demeaning him, and Buffy is letting him.
And Anya is right - Xander has no right to feel offended, he lost that right when he left her at the altar. And heck, Buffy told Spike to move on.
I decided to watch Seeing Red after Entropy. The two episodes go together. Or build up to each other. When they originally aired in 2002, folks who were downloading or watching the episodes via satellite television in colleges around the country - ended up watching "Seeing Red" before Entropy. People watching Broadcast Television or Cable saw Entropy, people watching via satellite feed saw Seeing Red. Can you imagine what happened online? Yup, the fandom exploded. I was watching on Broadcast Television or Cable - so saw the episodes in order. The people who didn't, kind of reacted badly and spoiled everyone else.
Seeing Red is an uneven episode. The writer has to do several difficult things in this episode:
1. Spike needs to be motivated to leave town and hunt a soul, but the audience should think he's getting the chip removed (which if you've been watching the series closely and following the overall story thread, you'll realize - no, it's a soul). I don't know why I didn't see it initially - maybe because I was in the fandom, and other people can color how you see things yourself? Or I got emotionally invested in him being redeemed without a soul - which doesn't quite work canonically within the verse. Again it helps if you watch Angel at the same time or concurrently? For the same reasons Angel contradicts the view that Buffy's mental clinic is reality in this world, Angel contradicts the view that a vampire without a soul can be redeemed, or that the chip redeems Spike.
They also have to make it clear to the audience that Spike would seek a soul, and why. That's hard to do, because it's a fine line? They have to find a way of doing it - without confusing the audience. Spike seeking a soul actually does work - with Angel, since Angel is a noir series and Angel himself is a bit of an anti-hero character. They've also dug down into the addiction metaphor. Angel is right when he tells Lorne - I'm a vampire, I have to drink blood - that doesn't make me a blood-a-holic, however human blood - he's been off and when you give him a taste - he wants it. Same with Spike, because of the chip, Spike has gotten used to drinking blood from a glass, and usually pigs blood, not human blood or whatever he can get.
2. Flip Willow - they need to kill off Tara in a way that will make Willow see red, hence the title. They also need to provide Willow with all the information on Warren - so she knows where he'll go and how to destroy him.
3. Warren needs to piss off Willow, without realizing it. Warren sees his main and only threat being Buffy. It's clear he doesn't see magic as being that big a deal - since he dismisses Jonathan who is the warlock in the group.
4. Have Buffy finally confront Warren, Jonathan and Andrew - and get Jonathan and Andrew away from Warren. And bring Buffy, Xander and Willow back together again - mainly through their pursuit of Warren, Jonathan and Andrew.
To give the writers credit - they have planted clues and seeds throughout the season foreshadowing what happens in Seeing Red. Buffy throughout the season tells people that guns are seldom useful and to get rid of them. Often damaging the gun when she returns it to them. Also, throughout the season, Buffy tells Spike that he can't change, he can't be good, he can't be redeemed without a soul. He's nothing without a soul. He's an evil thing. She can't love him without a soul. And what he feels for her - can't be real without a soul - that he can't "love" her without a soul, not really. And Spike wants to change, he's tried everything. He's tried getting the chip removed on multiple occasions, he tried in S5. He tried in S4. It's been made clear to him that it is impossible. The only ones who can are the Initiative, and they've disbanded, and he can't make them - since he's incapable of hurting humans. So obviously, he can't get it removed.
What doesn't quite work here - is that he could indirectly hurt humans and knows that - so why doesn't he? He kind of does with the demon egg contraband? Also, now that he can hurt Buffy - why doesn't he? Why doesn't he sire her and make her a vampire? (That question is actually answered in S7 with Lies my Parents Tell Me - where it's revealed that he sired his own mother and it ended badly and traumatized him. But it's not clear here.)
When I rewatched the scene in which Spike confronts Buffy in her bathroom. I was distracted by questions that I should not have had to ask myself. Such as, WTF is he doing in her bathroom? And why didn't she have Willow dis-invite him from her home? It made no sense to me that he walked into her house, the door was unlocked, he left his jacket on the banister, and strolled into her bathroom with barely a howdy do. I just don't see him doing that? Confronting her in her living room or bedroom, maybe, or even in the grave yard, but her bathroom???
I get why they did it - it's a plot contrivance. They had to put Buffy in a space in which she was vulnerable. A smaller space. One that she'd have more difficulty fighting him off. And make look more like a sexual attack.
But, it doesn't quite play that way? Also, that's a huge bathroom.
Also, Buffy, why did you let him attack you? When he came at her - she should have kicked him off immediately? Kind of like she did with Xander in The Pack? Or Angelus? The difficulty with the scene is how it is filmed - it is filmed hyper-realistically - which would be fine if I were watching The Pitt or The Wire, but I'm watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It's not even Angel. And all the other scenes aren't? The color scheme of their confrontation in the bathroom - is black and white, dull tones, and similar to Normal Again - it's almost as if - Buffy and Spike went through a portal to the Normal Again verse for that scene. I know what they were trying to do here - they wanted to convince both Spike and the audience that he needed a soul, and also put an end to the sexual relationship and make it clear to Spike, Buffy and the audience that the sexual relationship was toxic and not love.
What is interesting about the scene - is it shows rather well the consequences of using "sex" as a drug. Buffy was using Spike as a way to get off - to lose herself. Spike - in a way - saw her as a drug as well, he tells Anya that she was so raw, he never experienced anything like her. He told Buffy that as well - on numerous occasions - that he'd never been with anyone like her, it had never been as good as it was with her. But to be fair to Spike - he fell for her before he had sex with her. Romantic love is addictive - it's a drug, or sex as a drug, and it can't last - as Buffy tells Spike - it can't last. Spike, being a soulless vampire, doesn't understand that - for him love is crazy and wild and pulls through the blood. He says as much in Lover's Walk and in this scene - to him, love isn't love without the fire, the passion, the wildness. And Buffy wanted the fire - wanted to burn, until she finally realized that it didn't last, it wasn't real. Something I think Angel tried to tell her when she visited him way back in the beginning of S6, when she first got back.
Angel tells Wes that the love he feels for Connor is not what he thought it would be. It's painful. He used to see love as swallowing you whole and ripping you apart, but he doesn't feel that with Connor. And Buffy doesn't feel that with Dawn or her friends. Just with Angel and Spike, and possibly Riley.
The addictive nature of romantic love or the drug aspect - is destructive, as shown in the confrontation in Buffy's bathroom. It was a matter of time - before Spike would force himself sexually on Buffy. That's foreshadowed throughout S2-S6. The fact he hadn't - has more to do with Buffy than Spike, I think? He does try to actually on numerous occasions prior to this - but in the metaphorical sense - by biting and killing her. In School Hard, Harsh Light of Day, Out of My Mind - Spike attacks Buffy and tries to bite her, and it is very sexual. And about power.
This encounter is more about Spike attempting to reclaim some power her thought he had over Buffy. "You loved me when I was inside you!" or "You felt something when I was inside you!" He's trying desperately to reclaim their relationship - and to be fair, she's initiated this more than once.
Smashed and Gone - she thrusts herself at him, literally attacking him.
Their sex has included punches and throwing each other against walls. And as a soulless demon - he really doesn't have any breaks or ways to stop. (This is kind of repeated in the Angel episode Loyalty - where the Angel crew explains to a woman whose son became a vampire - that she couldn't save him.) Spike even tells her in both Smashed and Dead Things, that she can stop it, not him. And he doesn't quite understand why she hasn't.
The difficulty I have with this scene - is my sympathy is oddly with Spike?
And I am asking Buffy a lot of questions. So is Spike.
Spike: "Why didn't you let him kill me?"
Buffy: "You know why."
Spike: "Because you love me."
Buffy: "I don't love you. I can never trust you enough to love you."
Yet, she trusted him with Dawn? She confided in him. She slept with him.
I don't know what she things he'll do? He's not like Angel or Riley - he won't just leave. And he's fallen for her - and shown that? And now he can hurt her - and she is driving him crazy.
When he attempts to attack her sexually - and kind of ineptly, and awkwardly, at that, he's crying and angry, and frustrated. He doesn't get very far. Just gives her a few bruises. But she kicks him across the room eventually. And it's nowhere near the amount of damage - she gave him in Dead Things, or previously, when he couldn't fight back. (That's the problem, the writers had Buffy punching him in the nose and the face every other episode in S5 and S4, when he had the chip, and no way of fighting back).
He's crushed and devastated, and flees. He's so upset, he leaves his jacket behind and doesn't go back for it. This is his beloved jacket, he never goes anywhere without it? And he left it behind in her house. (It's left behind so Xander will find it and confront Buffy). He must have passed it on his way out.
Not only that - he has the oddest conversation with Clem. "Why didn't I kill her? Slayer/Vampire. Vampire kills slayer, crushes her bones, and drinks from her brain stem and has himself a real good day. I've killed two slayers, but this one - this one...what has she done to me? It's the chip. It must be? It makes it so I can't be a monster, and I can't be a man, I'm nothing - I can't go on this way."
Spike is having an identity crisis. He's not quite sure why he's reacted the way he did with the chip, or why he loves Buffy. The demon and the man in him are fighting, and the man wants to win. The chip has managed to quell the monster. Spike was never completely evil, not like Angelus or Darla, he was more amoral, neither good or evil. As Holtz tells Justine - things aren't that clear cut, people aren't good or evil. Although, Angelus is evil.
"Things change, give it time" says Clem. Spike's reaction is "yeah, right,"" then he looks up and gives a half-smile, "they do if you make them". Spike is fairly proactive and persistent. He's a favorite character - because he never gives up. It's what he has in common with Buffy - he doesn't give up. And that may well be what he fell in love with - that she never gives up.
"The girl is going to see a change. I'll be back and when I do, things are going to change."
It's what he's been saying all season long - things are going to change. Things have changed. The rules have changed. I have changed. You have changed.
I think that part of the story works, but I think the sexual attack portion doesn't, and I think - if they had more time, worked better with the actors involved, and maybe did it a little differently, it could have? Filmed it more like the Xander/Buffy scene in the Pack and less like the one in the bathroom?
I don't know.
I do know this - I won't fight over the episode any longer. We've flogged that horse already.
Everything else in the episode worked for me.