Covering
from “Doomed” to “Goodbye, Iowa,” in which that
you fight evil is secondary to why and to what end you fight evil.
“Doomed”
is a fairly rote episode about everyone not feeling cool which I really enjoy on
the strength of three scenes. Spike, driven to the pits of despair by shrunken
laundry and an unfortunate tropical shirt, has his suicide attempt botched by
Willow and Xander, who have differing perspectives on his attempt (“It’s ookie,
we know him!” vs. “We’ve shared a lot here! You should have trusted me to do it
for you!”). Later, Riley fails to credibly explain why he was on hand to save
the world (“Uh…paintball! I was playing paintball.”), and nearly recognizes
Spike (“No, sirr. I’m just a friend of Xanderr’s herre.”). And lastly, the
piece de resistance, realizing he can hurt not-humans all he likes, tries to
rouse Willow and Xander to battle (“For…justice, and the safety of puppies, and
for Christmas, right? Let’s fight that evil!”), but can’t hide his real desires
(“Let’s kill something!”). This last
bit is, by far, the most important to the show as it moves forward. Most of the
issues of doomed—Buffy’s fear of loving another, Willow and Xander feeling
inept and lost, another vague Armageddon—are resolved by episode’s end, but the
question of Spike is merely posed: is it enough that he wants to fight evil,
even if it’s not for a very good reason?
But “Doomed” is also a harbinger of
things to come, and more episodes will get by on fun individual scenes rather
than by being particularly good. All is not lost just yet, there’s plenty to
enjoy still to come. But there are far more Doomeds than Hushes on the horizon.
As we know, Buffy’s birthday lands
somewhere in the low teen episodes, and as we also all know, her birthdays have
a habit of being histrionically bad. It’s when she thought she was losing Angel
only to actually lose him, and when she was subjected to the Cruciamentum,
which went spectacularly awry. This year, though, Buffy gets a birthday where
the awfulness is pretty minimal. No, perhaps in a bit of karmic payback, it’s
Giles, who had a role in ruining her last birthday, that has a spectacularly
awful time. Giles feeling unmoored, purposeless, and lonely has been one of the
background stories all season, but the last few episodes have added an element
of him being off his game (also he sounds weird at the start of “Doomed,” like
they couldn’t get Anthony Stewart Head in for some ADR, so they let the guy
who’d go on to be Giles in the video game to do it…except that ASH did voice Giles in the video game). In
“A New Man,” this coincides with Ethan’s return to town. Yes, Ethan does
transform Giles into a demon, but he also gives him a night of commiserative
drinking with a real peer, and some information gleaned from the demon
underground that gives Giles a sense of purpose again—the Initiative is doing
something that threatens to unbalance everything, all pivoting around the
mysterious “314.”
Turns out, “314” is a room. And in
that room is a guy. It also turns out “314” is the project code to create that
guy. He’s named Adam, and apparently the balance-threatening thing about him is
that he takes a punch real good. After so much build up, Adam is something of a
letdown. Initially, though, it isn’t clear exactly how much. He’ll be dubbed
the “most boring” of the big villains, and I’d have to agree, though I’d not
that doesn’t mean he’s the worst. Not by a long shot. Anyway, he’s actually
works well enough in “Goodbye, Iowa,” but it’s hard to shake the sense that the
dark secret of the Initiative should have been something more impressive and
grander.
Anyway, he’s going to be around for
a bit, so we’ll be able to discuss Adam’s failings later. “The I in Team” and “Goodbye,
Iowa,” our traditional season-escalating de facto two-parter, is much more
about the Initiative itself and how it functions, and how it’s going wrong. Buffy
is invited into the Initiative’s under-frat lair by Riley where she joins the
team. Would it surprise you to learn she fails to endear herself to the command
structure with her unconventional ways and her tendency to respond to orders
with questions? It really shouldn’t. She, however, doesn’t realize that, as she
adopts their military lingo and jumps at their summons like the rest of the
soldiers. Partially, this is billed as her eagerness to work with Riley, and
partially it’s to impress Maggie Walsh, but it seems noteworthy that this is
the first new college experience Buffy has truly embraced. I think that’s
because it’s the first one she truly understands—the fight against evil.
But the Initiative isn’t about the
fight against evil, or at least not for the sake of fighting evil. This is why,
despite appearances, Buffy doesn’t actually fit in at the Initiative, as Walsh
doesn’t intend to just fight evil, and seeing her ulterior motives to fruition
requires Riley, Forrest, Graham, and the rest of the Initiative boys to be
proper soldiers and not ask why their food tastes kind of funny. She needs
effectiveness and obedience both.
At least for me, this is the sort of
stuff that could have made the Initiative really shine, the more paranoid,
X-Files-esque spy business, like Riley showing up at Giles’ house immediately
after the latter says the Initiative is unlikely to drop by. Is he there on his
own accord? Or did they actually send him? No, he’s totally there on his own
accord, but the Scoobs don’t know that.
Riley, it turns out, isn’t quite as
simple a boyfriend as he initially appears. He’s got a mean drug habit (which
he doesn’t know about), and the withdrawals make him violent and even more
paranoid, though “Goodbye, Iowa” doesn’t spend a whole lot of time digging into
that circumstance—besides, nursing a lover through a crippling affliction is
pretty old hat for Buffy at this point. But his deteriorating physical state
reflects his deteriorating mental state, as we see when his hunt for Adam
converges with Buffy’s at the newly rechristened Willy’s Place, and he winds up
waving a gun at something that looks like an old lady. The supernatural world
is one of uncertainty, but not asking questions helped Riley navigate it, and
once he questions one thing, he ends up questioning everything, down to his
senses and perceptions. It’s a better way, but a rough transition.
But before all that, there’s the “honeymoon”
period, where Riley and Buffy fight as a happy, confident team, their rapport
leading to sexy times, which we see intercut with the fight itself.
Say, wasn’t there a character who
talked about how slaying got her hot and bothered?
A
Separate Tribute: “A New Man” marks the final appearance of Ethan Rayne,
which is really too bad. Ethan was a great spice to throw in, tied directly to
the show’s earliest strongest non-Buffy character, and just all around a
delight: wry, cowardly, and droll. His observation in this episode that the “stay-and-gloat”
that fails him is great. I wish the show had been able to make more use of
Ethan, but it was not to be.
Imagine my surprise, years after
Buffy ended, when I discovered the actor who gave Ethan so much life had turned
up in not one, but two media I truly adored, both from the Bioware game studio.
And I didn’t even realize it, until I was told. Actor Robin Sachs contributed
his gravel to both Dragon Age and Mass Effect. If you asked me to name two
series I could play forever, both make that list.
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