'Pangs' is the 'Buffy' half of an Angel' and 'Buffy' crossover
that began with Doyle’s vision of her in danger at the end of the last 'Angel' episode.
"Divisive" is probably not the proper word for it.
Jane Espenson is one of the best
...and 'Pangs' is good.
Funny,
clever,
and a complex little argument.
But maaaayybeee...
...it isn’t aging as well as the series.
['Angel Guide' theme]
Buffy is out for a typical night of Slayage
...and is being stalked from the trees by a familiar face.
Angel, stalking Buffy, must’ve felt like old hat for him.
The next morning, the university’s anthropology department is breaking ground on a new cultural center a few days before Thanksgiving
and the Gang is in attendance to watch a
...tank-topped Xander do his thing.
“I’m imagining having sex with him again."
Well...
...mostly Anya.
Xander digs in with his shovel and falls into (a) lost underground mission.
And Willow makes a comment describing something in a way I’d never actually caught before.
“It’s like what happened in the 30s with that church the Master was in?”
I swear I’ve watched the show seven or eight times
and never heard Willow disclose that detail as something they were all aware of.
Buffy decides to host Thanksgiving for everyone this year
...because we all should have a place to go.
Which brings us to a lonely and unable to feed Spike.
I think my favorite thing about this ensemble is he’s got the torn blanket
wrapped over the top of his normal black leather jacket.
Ever the stupid sexy drama queen.
A camo’d Riley is out on patrol with his team looking for Spike.
So.
Many.
Questions.
Aren’t they on campus?
Aren’t they MORE conspicuous in camo?
Is UC Sunnydale surrounded by miles of forest?
Xander has come down with something and Anya insists he stay home.
Something from the discovered Mission rises up
and claims an ancient knife from the school
beginning a murderous revenge spree.
Buffy is insisting Thanksgiving festivities be held at Giles’
...and hustles out for more groceries,
...revealing Angel.
Angel makes the thinnest of thin excuses for why he can’t tell Buffy he’s there.
“If-if she knew I was here I..."
"Look, it would distract her or could get her hurt."
"I don’t want to..."
"...to get in the way.”
His argument here flies in the face of...
three seasons of the two of them fighting side by side
and you could just as easily make the counter point.
That he can’t follow her 24/7
and should whatever what was in Doyle’s vision find her UNPREPARED she could get injured.
Meanwhile, Oliver Spike stares wistfully into a vampire's nest as melancholy music plays in the background.
At the shop, Angel pulls Willow aside to try and give her a heads up about Buffy’s incoming danger
...and Willow says he should tell her.
"She sees me it'll be worse."
“See, I don’t get that."
"All this-"
"-this "leaving for her own good" garbage.
"Because that's what it is."
You-you can’t just give up because there's obstacles.”
Willow’s diatribe,
obviously more about her and Oz,
is a window into her still unsure state of mind,
...relevant in the later discussion.
Buffy goes to speak to one of Giles’ sources on the missing knife
...and discovers the episode's cultural stereotype has hung and stabbed the contact.
They fight.
The Native American stereotype uses Buffy’s liberal guilt to get her to let him go.
And then disappears into a flock of cultural insensitivity.
“You slaughtered my people."
"Now you kill their spirit."
[flock of cultural insensitivity]
Buffy talks with Giles about how confusing this is for her.
“I like my evil like I like my men."
"Evil."
Willow comes in and explains that the Chumash were a peaceful Native American tribe
that had many atrocities committed against them by the colonials,
and the spirit is simply reenacting those atrocities on who it perceives to be its aggressors.
A little odd Willow wanting to aid a murdering spirit of vengeance
but we can probably attribute her knee jerk pro-murder stance as relating to her current mental state over Oz.
Probably.
Anyway, Giles thinks they need a more pragmatic approach here.
The spirit has killed and will kill again and needs to be dealt with.
Willow on the other hand thinks they need to have a more empathetic approach
to the plight of the spirit('s) people and what they went though.
And as they argue, between them stands Buffy.
Torn.
This single shot is a wonderful piece of evidence for the Scoobies' mind/heart/spirit relationship to her.
It’s been a little while since I touched on the Scoobies' metaphorical relationship to Buffy
so...quick refresher.
Giles represents Buffy’s mind,
Xander her heart
(meaning courage and strength),
and Willow her spirit
(which I’ve always read as empathy, compassion and vulnerability).
Buffy’s various struggles then tend to relate to the corresponding Scooby and vice versa.
In 'The Freshman', for example, Buffy was suffering an identity crisis
...with all the newness of college
...and having just had her butt kicked.
Until Xander showed up in The Bronze and provided her the strength necessary
...to defeat Sunday.
Here, Giles and Willow’s squabble represents Buffy’s spirit and mind being torn
...as to how to deal with the Chumash spirit.
And as I mentioned,
we might read Willow’s misfiring empathy
...as Willow’s grief over Oz leaving her.
As Angel left Buffy at the end of 'Season 3'
...which she’s been dealing with moving forward from so far this season.
Xander and Anya show up and Xander is clearly worse than he was earlier.
The Gang checks the books and realizes the vengeance spirit has infected Xander with
a number of diseases including...
"--standard sort of--
“Syphilis?!?”
Spike shows up and begs for clemency.
He offers to trade info about the Initiative for a quarter
... and they tie him to a chair.
The vengeance spirit, who has summoned a small horde of warriors, attacks Buffy’s Thanksgiving,
...skewering Spike several times.
Angel helps Buffy from a distance, taking out snipers and throwing knives.
Buffy steals the spirit's knife and cuts him with it, realizing his knife can kill him.
The spirit turns to a bear,
Xander distracts with potatoes
Buffy stabs him
and Angel leaves realizing Buffy is now safe.
Finally, able to sit down to dinner
..Xander accidentally lets slip that Angel has been here the whole time.
Such a memorable final shot.
I love Spike’s entertained smirk.
And the arrow through the Pilgrim.
It’s a pretty good episode
... but with one possible caveat.
As follower Guy R pointed out,
Buffy’s...
...uhm...
...memorable head gear in the episode's opening
is probably a symbol for their intention to play with a "Cowboys and Indians" motif.
To its credit, the episode has a relatively progressive point of view on the plight of the Native Americans.
Even Giles, the one for killing the Chumash spirit acknowledges what was done
but insists that vengeance is an intrinsically evil act
...and Buffy needs to take care of it.
And he’s right.
The problem is, while the ideas contain some nuance
the portrayal of Hu, the Chumash spirit
...does not.
He speaks in stilted “Indian” dialect.
"I am vengeance."
"I am my people's cry."
He never expresses a single emotion.
He manifests most of the pagan spiritually earthy “Brave” stereotypes.
And any dignity to the portrayal at all vanishes
the second Anya and Willow started
...beating one of the fearsome Braves with shovels.
In all likelihood, he’s not SUPPOSED to have any character one way or the other
so that we can project whatever side of Willow and Giles' argument onto him we want.
Hu is intended to be the Indian portion of
the Cowboys and Indians motif,
not a Native American representation.
The problem is his cartoony simplistic nature had the effect for me
of neutering any the nuance that might’ve been possible in Giles and Willow’s debate.
He is essentially no more complex than a demon
which makes the right choice in Buffy’s decision blindingly self-evident
and silly that she would act otherwise.
'Pangs' is an episode I watch for the funny lines and little else.
I’m giving the episode the benefit of the doubt mind you
in thinking Hu was mostly a problem with the chosen motif
rather than just an ethnically tone deaf decision
...more common to that era of television Buffy is from.
But at some point we should probably talk about that aspect of the show as...
"Chick fight?"
[Questionable ethnical treatment montage music]
"I hear once you've tasted a Slayer you never wanna go back."
[Questionable ethnical treatment montage music]
"If this-this girl gives him one minute of happiness it is one minute too much."
...it hasn’t aged well.
Angel’s appearance here feels a little perfunctory at times.
They manage to make that a part of the joke, of course.
"He's evil again!"
"I-I-I'm not evil again!"
"Why does everyone think that?"
But it ends up making the 'Buffy' half of this crossover event feel a bit tacked on.
Where the events of 'I Will Remember You' are soul shaking for the characters.
But it does work as a nice symbol for the complexity of the episode's issues.
Take Buffy’s line:
“I like my evil like I like my men."
"Evil."
The funniest part about the line is it isn’t true.
Buffy and Angel were nothing but complex.
Like the Native American spirit,
in Season 2', Angel was good and then turned evil.
And while his plight that season that brought him to this turn was a sympathetic one,
once bodies started dropping
...Buffy’s path was clear.
In the eyes of the show, the plight that brought the individual to an evil act,
...never can justify the act itself.
Of course, it’s interesting to note that the school science department’s invasion into the mystical goes
...poorly.
More on that later on.
All of that said, it is a very funny episode
and I’m happy that, if they were going to go there, they tried to do something more complex than say...
...'Inca Mummy Girl'.
It’s possible that the episode suffers a bit for me due to its proximity to greatness.
The upcoming 'Something Blue' is hilarious
...and unencumbered,
and the next episode in the 'Buffy'/'Angel' crossover
'I Will Remember You',
...is a fan favorite.