Covering
from “Dirty Girls” to “The End of Days,” in which bleeeeeeeeeaaaagh
Know
how bad this has gotten? It’s gotten so bad, not even Faith saves it. She tries,
oh Lord how she does try, and she almost succeeds. Her taking the Potentials to
the Bronze gives some desperately needed life and energy to those empty
space-fillers to the point that some of them come dangerously close to
exhibiting personalities. Throughout her first scene with Spike I practically
screamed for her to grab he and Anya and flee the series. You could do it,
Faith! Faith the Vampire Slayer was
supposed to happen! Alas.
Alas.
Faith drops into the show with a
much more lucid and compelling story—convincing everyone she has struggled with
her past mistakes and indiscretions, allowing her to be an effective leader and
even role model—than whatever is supposed to be Buffy’s story right now. Yet
most of that story gets tossed into one scene, where the First shows up to her
in the form of the Mayor to jab at her doubts and worries with its usual battle
axe subtlety. Meanwhile we get plenty of scenes where Buffy shouts the same
stuff about Leadership, War, and Death while basically nothing happens. Oh,
there’s a scene where everyone is fleeing Sunnydale because of the bad vibes
and “supernatural occurrences out in the open” or somesuch, but we see exactly
none of that.
Anyway, Nathan Fillion has arrived.
While many of my fellows cheer any time and every time he shows up in anything,
I’m indifferent. He shows up here as the First’s most devoted and powerful supplicant,
and what is he? What form would befit the greatest devotee of the essence from
which evil was created, that which cannot be defeated for it lives in the
darkest impulses of every man, woman, and child? Well, see, he’s a girl killing
preacher who speaks in the patois of rejected lines from a later-rejected Justified first draft.
Imagine I’m squeezing the bridge of
my nose in irritation and bafflement, because I am.
Look, I get it, you want Buffy to
have something with personality she can punch in this last stretch, and why
shouldn’t that something be some sort of figure of patriarchy. So it almost
feels insulting to make that figure this fucking cartoon devil-worshipping
priest who’s one “Ah say Ah say” away from Foghorn Leghorn. Incidentally, the
First is supposed to be some sort of gestalt evil-within-human-hearts thing,
but why does it look like the Devil?
Probably for the same reason
everyone calls what is obviously an axe a “scythe.”
The centerpiece of these episodes is
Buffy leading an assault on a winery that gets two nameless Potentials killed (or
perhaps named, the way one blurted out “Cor blimey!” before getting ganked
makes me think it was Mollie), and costs Xander an eye. Significantly, Xander’s
eye gets mentioned a lot more often than the dead girls. Anyway, they get their
asses kicked, which prompts a big meeting where Buffy proposes they march right
back in there. Because she thinks there’s probably probably something they’re hiding there. Instead, Faith gets voted
leader, despite Buffy scolding that “democracy doesn’t win battles,” which is
very convincing given how many her authoritarianism has won, and “this isn’t a
popularity contest.” Losing the impromptu election she makes the hard choice
and the sacrifice of leaving in a snit.
Like I’ve said before, I always
rather disliked Buffy’s war footing, but this leader who should be followed
because they are the leader and they swear, guys, seriously, they swear, they have
very, very good reasons for sending troops in there, how dare you, how dare you
doubt them is the sourest build up to the Iraq invasion horseshit I can recall.
Everyone doesn’t turn on Buffy because they’re scared weaklings who lack f…fealty.
They do because this Buffy is bad at leading, really, really fucking bad.
Anyway, for having the temerity of
doubting Buffy’s amazing plan to go back right to where they already lost, the
Potentials led by Faith end up in a trap that nearly gets them all killed. One
nameless Potential gets very slowly caught and scratched to I guess death while
the rest look on and do nothing to stop it, valorous lot they are, bang up
training job. Buffy, however, also gets nearly killed in a trap except the
First lets her go, so I guess it’s a wash. She finds the axe everyone calls “scythe,”
saves everyone (this being something the character remains good at). Or
everyone by that one Potential that Kennedy practically tossed at the ultravamps,
I guess.
Then it’s all about the axe.
Everyone’s talking about the axe. First off, as I’ve said repeatedly, they keep
calling it a “scythe.” Second, it looks very silly, owing to its apparent
origins in a comic series Whedon wrote but I, at least, never read, so it’s
hard to care about this inanimate object. But that’s where the energy gets
invested—Xander and Anya have had virtually nothing to do all season because we’ve
been focused on Firsts and Potentials and now a goddamn axe.
Even better than all the time it
takes up is that the axe also leads to a last-minute and needless reveal of an
allegedly significant bit of lore, the existence of the Guardians (or more
properly, the Guardian), apparently immortal matrons who distrusted the
Watchers, made the axe, and have been watching the Slayer, and yeah, I chose
that word on purpose, because this is buuuuuuuulllshiiiiiit! Episode #143 of
144, and you’re going to try to reveal the real
allies, only they didn’t intervene because they “couldn’t until now,” and just
because the Watchers are dicks and the Guardian is a woman, I’m supposed to buy
it? The Watchers were dicks, patriarchal, paternalistic dicks, but they were also
actually there, and many of them, we hear, actually died getting their charges
to safety while this crone archetype sat in a fucking pyramid in California. “We,
unlike those evil men, wanted to help and protect you, so we made this secret
weapon, put it in a rock, buried the rock, told no one, and sat around for thousands of years while
you, personally, fended off five or six apocalypses and died twice, and then I
waited here even after you found this thing I’m still inexplicably calling a
scythe despite the fact that scythes aren’t weapons, they’re farming implements,
for you to come to me.” Screw you, old ass hippie lady, you ain’t done shit,
you don’t even know Buffy’s fucking name! Early Buffy was, as I’ve noted, very smart about its feminism, but this,
the Wicca shit, and the goddamn girl killer priest are fucking dumb dumb dumb
dumb dumb ass fuck dumb.
Luckily, Fillion shows up to kill
the old hippie lady, and then Angel shows up to help kill Fillion. Angel
arriving is actually great—it’s really the first real indication in these
episode that anyone realizes the show is ending so they need to start putting a
final stamp on stories or elements. But wait, what’s this? Spike sees Buffy and
Angel making out, and the First starts goading him again? Going into the
finale, that will cause some issues.
When the mountain is chipped away,
the first second of eternity will have passed.
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