Covering
“Surprise” and “Innocence,” which I don’t think I need explain.
BtVS is
still widely remembered because of “Surprise” and “Innocence.”
These episodes properly start the
Angelus arc (technically, it starts in “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” but really really it starts here), which is
where the show’s legend well and truly begins, was burnished, and set into
stone. Without them, I feel confident in saying the show would be relegated to
a cult, time-capsule curiosity, thought upon, when it is thought upon at all,
as being much wittier than anyone expected a show spun off that movie where Pee
Wee Herman was a vampire had any right to be. They elevated the show to greatness
in perception and actuality, the kind of thing that invites reams of critical
theory essays on its psycho and social-sexual feminist statements, or, say,
overly ambitious blog projects.
Shockingly, I think this is the first
time I’ve watched them in order, rather than piecemeal. I’ve always known just
how important these episodes were, known all the parts and where they go, and,
obviously, admired the brilliance. Simultaneously, they are impossibly grand,
intensely personal, and universal. Back in season 1, Giles found the idea of a
vampire in love with the Slayer rather poetic, but the vampire with a soul
losing it when he has a moment of true happiness, and that moment is sex with
his love? Not only is that a clever heightening of a story of the fraught world
of teen sex, but how could any emotional adolescent girl resist that? Boys are
conditioned somewhat differently, but even they have to admire the craft.
But
witnessing them in proper context, with the build and escalation (even if that
build and escalation is just a function of existing in the show’s world for a
while), really impressed upon me how earth-shattering they are. The end of
Angel and restoration of Angelus abruptly occurs without warning (hence “Surprise”),
but at the same time, there is a palpable sense that everything has been
building to This, and certainly that Nothing Will Ever be the Same. In a lot of
ways, this is the story BtVS was made
to tell, and the story only it could—at least in this particular way. That’s certainly
not to say the show has peaked and everything after this sucks, or even isn’t
worth considering—after all, I wouldn’t get into the show for more than two
seasons hence and have never done this sort of concentrated viewing of this
season before, and I thought it was great and worthy—but the Angelus arc
sustains stakes and significance that future arcs and their baddies would
achieve with varying levels of fitfulness. And mostly that’s because what Angelus
represents is so intensely personal, both in that he was privy to her rawest
and most vulnerable moments, and also in the embarrassment and unjust shame
Buffy feels as one by one everyone figures out how it was he came to be. BtVS would come to encompass much more,
but with Angelus, its role in history was sealed already.
After a little research, I confirmed
my suspicions and determined that these episodes originate the “Buffy and Angel”
theme (which is apparently called “Close Your Eyes”). I’m not going to claim to
be a connoisseur of either music or soundtracks, my tastes are probably
unrefined and cheesy, but I am sensitive to music and soundtracks, and “Close
Your Eyes” is notable for being the first memorable and prominent musical cue
of the show(truth be told, it's probably a little overused here), and, well have to look out for this, also the only good one of the
show’s entire span (the musical doesn’t count, and the score in some later
seasons is pretty horrendously bad). Bit of an aside, but notable.
Just before I began this
undertaking, a friend shared the supposition that the show punishes Buffy when
she has sex. Even though the show would go on to feature many couples, one of
which enjoys a vigorous and inventive sex life, watching a sodden Buffy visibly
slump as her lover mockingly throws their physical relationship back in her
face, such a reading can be hard to discount. And, to be honest with myself,
when I felt the lone wilderness voice in finding the show’s creator a touch
dubious, I’d pretty eagerly latch onto this reading. But, and this will be
something to keep an eye on as the series progresses, but I’d offer a slight
adjustment: the shows makes Buffy having sex consequential. Certainly, there
are some massive consequences here, but, well, despite the business with
vampires and souls, Angelus cruelly telling Buffy basically she read too much
into their experience, using that experience to torment her with feelings of
shame and rage, well, a lot of that is sadly true to life.
I feel the final word on punishment
and judgement comes, inevitably, at the end from Giles, in many ways her true
parental figure (Buffy clearly loves Joyce, but so much is hidden from her
mother that, at this point, Joyce seems almost a riff and a joke on all that
worry about parents who treated their children as friends). This, I think, is
where his reveal as once Rupert the Ripper really pays off, as he speaks with
the authority and wisdom of someone who had a far darker and more dangerous
youth than Buffy will ever have, and he uses that wisdom to not only deny her the
chiding lecture she obviously thinks she deserves, but to, through that denial,
tell her she doesn’t deserve one. “Surprise” and “Innocence” are rough on both characters
(much more so on Buffy, obviously, but there is a brief acknowledgement that
Jenny’s deception wounds Giles in a different spot, but one no less deep), but
even amid all that turmoil, they still find a way to end beautifully. And
again, the Buffy and Giles Theory holds true.
These episodes are so good that
Buffy killing a demon with a rocket launcher, as the Judge (played by Brian
Thompson, who fought Arnold, Sly, Mulder and Scully, and Buffy herself as he
was Luke in the pilots) misjudges how modern weapons are made, and thus
averting Armageddon again is relegated to “a good bit” I have to homage in the
header image.
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