Covering
from “The Wish” to “Gingerbread,” in which everyone dies. For real.
Just
to get it out of the way: it’s Anya’s first episode! Cheers!
She isn’t much of a factor in “The
Wish,” and in truth, she isn’t really “Anya,” though her human form identifies
as such. She’s really Anyanka, Patron Saint of Scorned Women, and as such she’s
mostly here to serve as a demonic conduit for Cordelia’s pain, which find
expression in a hellish dystopian alternate reality. The closest she comes to
anything Anya-esque is her escalating frustration and umbrage at the end when
she’s rendered powerless (though I’d forgotten the eventual irony that she was
drawn to Sunnydale because of Xander and spends much of her time in this
episode trying to steer the conversation into how he sucks).
Like any fan of this sort of
pulpish, comic-y genre fare, I love a hellish dystopian alternate reality.
They’re a chance to indulge in worst-case-scenario speculation and revel in
cracked avatars of characters without consequence. And the hellish dystopia
“The Wish” delivers is pretty great. The Master, Lord of Sunnydale, with the
cold, cruel Xander at his dexter side and sadistically sensual Willow upon the
sinister! Angel, their broken captive! Giles, despairing but resolute, leading
a battle-weary Oz, Larry, and, uh, some girl in futile war! And, of course, a
Buffy who doesn’t seem to be Buffy at all, but blends Faith’s growing bitterness
with Kendra’s lack of an outside life, a Slayer who truly is just a weapon, and
throws herself heedlessly into combat, intent only to kill until she herself is
killed.
There’s more than just the thrill of
alternate events and dark incarnations of our heroes at work in “The Wish.” The
carnage of the episode mirrors and comments upon the emotional havoc that’s
been wreaked over the past few episodes (“This is the world we made,” Anyanka
says). As it was her pain that caused this alternate reality, you’d expect
Cordelia to be involved in restoring the main timeline, but instead she’s
killed by the very people who caused her pain, and in a manner that strongly
evokes a three-way, no less. Xander kills Angel. Buffy stakes Xander and walks
away as if he were just one of the Three. Oz kills Willow. And none of them
have any idea what they mean to each other. Fortunately, Giles restores the
world (“ because it has to be” better, he says), leaving the core crew laughing
it up on a sunny day.
And supporting my contention that
the Master was mostly felled by budget, I think he’s actually pretty good here,
suitably villainous and imperious when he has minions to imperiate over.
So, the First. There will be plenty
of time to really dissect the First, Lordy how there will be time and spoiler
alert it won’t be pretty. Anyway, while Lovecraftian cosmic horror has been a
possibility since the pilot episodes (where we hear about “the Old Ones”), the
First is the show’s…goddamit the first attempt to really invoke the idea, and
shows up in the show’s first and if memory serves only Christmas episode. It’s
called “Amends.” Guess what everyone makes. No one has more amends to make than
Angel, of course, but unlike Willow and Oz or Buffy and Faith (scenes which are
pretty sweet), most everyone he wronged is dead. The First’s torment of him and
the mystery of his return to this earthly dimension leads to an attempted
suicide, which Buffy tries to stop, and they talk about capitalized concepts
for a while—Good, Punishment, Fighting, etc—until it miraculously snows because
something not the First has plans for him. Some good ideas are expressed here,
such as Angel’s problem isn’t his demon but rather the man who is weak enough
to want Buffy despite the certainty of damnation, but Angel’s dilemma feels
most resonant when Giles only speaks to him with crossbow in hand.
Cosmic horror is a very intellectual
exercise, as the intellect is what it directly attacks—it’s founded in the
sense that there are forces in the universe larger, vaster, and too
incomprehensible for your puny brain to handle, and that are utterly
indifferent to your existence. Supposedly, the First is that, a primordial
entity, the force from which originated all evil, beyond anyone’s comprehension
or understanding. In theory, the interest such an entity takes in Buffy and
Angel elevates their status. Problem is, Buffy and the show meet this force
with the usual mockery, which could make Buffy look a bit dim as she’s unable
or unwilling to grasp the difference between the usual blustery vampire and
cosmic horror, but since we know she’s not, so it ends up making the First look
like a cheap ghost, even if it is one wearing Jenny. In the end, Angel doesn’t
learn what brought him back, but had he done so it may have rent his mind worse
than any non-Euclidean city—you can’t star in a spin-off if you’re tortured in
another dimension, dude.
A stronger reminder of the hole
Jenny left appears in the next episode, as book-deprived Giles has to battle
with a computer. While the main thrust of Joyce and Willow’s mom getting
tricked by demons into going Tipper Gore seems quaintly 90’s (and also evokes a
very 80’s paranoia of satanic cults) in light of what modern mobs get up to,
much of “Gingerbread” retains relevance. Buffy may take the fact that the only
thing anyone knows about the tragically dead moppets is that they are dead as a
sure sign that demonic forces are at work, but they look more like the way such
tragedies usually get treated to everyone else.
Fitting given the Mayor’s brief
appearance even if he has little bearing on the action, we’re also back dealing
with the structural forces that have been such a concern this season, as Joyce
makes a clear something we’ve long suspected—everyone in Sunnydale knows evil
stalks their town, and they choose to ignore it. And, of course, the most
primal of authorities and institutions, parent and child, is thrown into chaos
here, too. There is, in fact, a lot going on in “Gingerbread”—parents, boundaries,
the madness of mobs, bullying of outsiders, censorship, a lot of themes that
actually end up working well together. But in the midst of her demon-induced
insanity, Joyce does raise some good points about Buffy’s campaign against
evil. She can’t be everywhere, can she? Why does she keep slaying if she
actually hasn’t made things better? Buffy is unfortunately a little too young
to point out that just because improvement will never be done doesn’t mean it
isn’t worth the effort.
And it ends with perhaps the most BtVS climax ever—Cordelia hosing down
the crowd while Giles shouts in German, and Buffy asking if the stake she’s
tied to killed the demon, as Xander and Oz crash gracelessly in from above. “We’re
here to save you,” they say.
Quite the tableau.
No comments:
Post a Comment