Also known as
"Breathing Room for Lindsey" or "Depth Takes a Holiday."
So what would happen, exactly, if a Slayer went crazy -- which, from everything
we've seen, is kind of a short trip?
Well, when it happens to Buffy -- at least a couple of times, in
"Earshot" and "Spiral" -- she retreats inward, becoming
catatonic while she wrestles with the demons in her mind -- which are not
inconsiderable, given what we saw in "Nightmares." In "Normal
Again" and for part of "The Witch" (in which technically she's
just under a spell) and "Beer Bad" (in which she's simply mystically
drunk) she lashes out, in some instances violently. Or she just gets silly, as
in "Something Blue," where again, under the influence of a spell, she
imagines she is in love with Spike.
Faith just goes really, really dark, falls into a coma, and lashes out in a
twisted "suicide by vampire" attempt. Fortunately, Angel is able to
bring her back to a stable enough sense of reality that she is able to at least
turn herself in.
Dana, who up until this point has nothing but pain and shared Slayer visions,
reacts with all the rage of the past 10 years played out on a wet red canvas.
Mind you, any psychiatric wing worth its salt would have tranq guns handy, but
from what we see on those tapes and from what we know from "Restless"
about visions of the Primative, we can expect every drop of blood shed in her
wake.
Is she evil? No. But her private pain just got really, really public.
Enter the vamps, or as Angel rightly points out, the last people who
should be confronting her. We know Angel gets tipped off by an upwardly mobile
nurse with an eye on career advancement. But how is Spike there again? The
ersatz Doyle got a vision? "Doyle" doesn't get visions,
because even in a coma, Cordy wouldn't let him anywhere near her for
smoochies and the Powers That Be aren't really talking to him. So
Spike's initial presence remains, much like the seven-letter word for "in
a mellifluous manner" an unsolved mystery.
But this isn't what this show is about. This show is about getting Spike's
hands cut off. This show is about exploring Spike's actual pain. It's about
bringing him face to face with his past in an important way. Not that much is
done with this, but Spike starts to feel the weight of the soul he won with
more reflection than the time he spent brooding sack-of-hammers in the basement
of the high school at the beginning of BS7.
But mostly it's about the hand thing. Because that's going to tip off the
people who need to be tipped off in the next episode. Whereas Spike gains a
little focus in this ep, "You're Welcome" is about providing the same
moment of clarity for Angel.
So the rest of it is just Tom Lenk being hilarious. Starting with "We
saved the world -- well, Buffy helped," watching nearly every scene with
him in it, there's this steady compulsion to say "ANDREW!" in a
reproving way, not that he listens at all.
GUNN WATCH revisited
We also get the most glancing exploration of where Gunn is right now --
"Nine holes of golf instead of a jury of your peers, just the way the
Founding Fathers intended."
This line by Fred is the reason I instituted the Gunn Watch in the first place.
The Senior Partners, in giving Gunn the legal upgrade, very subtly manipulated
his moral center, which in this context of this show, is pretty much Team
Angel’s moral compass.
Gunn, until now the figure least troubled by mystical influences, now sees
expediencies and loopholes. It's not obvious by any stretch of the imagination,
but very subtly, I believe Gunn has slowly been going dark. He's still
cheerful, he's still fighting that good fight, and he's doing it his way, but
his way can no longer be understood as the unalloyed "Force of Good."
He was largely indiscriminate in "War Zone," unconvinced that a
vampire, even one with a soul, could be a righteous man. He was a bit more
nuanced in "That Old Gang of Mine." But at this point, good and evil
have become moiré patterns and I'm afraid he's strayed from the path. And
when the pattern starts to fade, he can no longer handle it and signs whatever
is put in front of him to maintain it.
Gunn has, in my opinion, golfed his way cheerfully into the rough, whistling
the Rogers and Hammerstein catalogue.
Don't take my word for it. Check Buffy's assessment. Team Angel is no longer
trustworthy. Despite her own canoodling with The Immortal, the assumption is
that they've all gone bag and baggage over to the dark side.
While it seems
no one will agree with me about Gunn, from a perspective exterior to the show,
the perception is the whole lot of them have strayed, and are entirely
the wrong people to rehabilitate a Slayer.
So Angel has some soul-searching to do as well. As Spike suggested in
"Soul Purpose," their moral compass is in a tailspin. They think
they're doing the right thing, but meanwhile the "right thing" has
involved representing terrible people and doing a number of distasteful things
to stay profitable, and their stated goal of using the L.A. branch of Wolfram
& Hart as a tool for good is a little like using a throwing star as a
coaster. It'll keep your lemonade from making a ring on your coffeetable, but
it's still a weapon of violent, ugly death.
Some observations:
Dana's ramblings sound a little like River's.
The seer they call in to help is very cool.
Andrew tasting the random penny he found lying on the docks is hilarious.
Fred's demand that the shamans not use a donor hand for Spike's surgery was a
nice bit of continuity from "Dead End."
All in all, a decent installment, but a little like a placeholder. Even so it
was nice to get some answers to some of those unanswered questions from
"Buffy," like "Hey -- what's everyone up to these days?"
* suddenly interested in a bit of closure on that ... other Sunnydale
alumn *
Well, I'm sure they'll get to that shortly.
Well done, people. Well done.