- As with the episode 7 launchpad phenomena, there tends to be an episode around the same
late point in each season that exists to jumpstart that season’s 3rd and final act.
A bottom drop episode.
In Season 2 that episode doesn’t hit until Acathla’s reveal in Bargaining Part 1.
But then follows Choices, The Yoko Factor, and now Tough Love.
(Sidebar, Season 6’s Bottom Drop Episode is a doozy.)
As with episode 7s, Bottom Drops tend to share a handful of things in common.
The gang will probably turn against each other…
-
- …the Big Bad will get stronger…
- …and maybe it all comes together with a minor dash of creak and contrivance.
As much as Buffy tends to stick the landing with unbelievable finales, third act Bottom
Drop episodes can feel a smidge more mechanical, as the pieces are moved into place to setup
that race TO those stellar finales.
- But I will say that, of the handful, Tough Love is probably my favorite of the bunch.
- The episode opens with Buffy returning to campus to speak to her teachers…and, (as
can be the case with the type of traumatic life events we’ve had at this point in the
season,) I had pretty much forgotten that Buffy was even IN college.
(Hey, remember RILEY was this season?)
Though life must go on, until the daily normal can reset itself, the idea of going back to
school at this point in the season still felt silly and insignificant.
Meaningless in the face of so much grief.
- Buffy has come by to tell her professor that she needs to drop the class and can’t
finish the semester and this professor must not have heard the fates of faculty that are
actually NICE to Buffy…at least friendly faculty whose names don’t rhyme with Smiles.
- While the fate of the poetry teacher after the scene is never touched on, my money is
on tentacle evisceration while pooping.
- Elsewhere floppy-haired Benjamin is being fired from his job at the hospital because
he’s been spending more time as Glory than he realized.
The parallels between he and Buffy dropping out of what they perceive as *their* lives
are…not by accident.
- Buffy gets called to the Principal’s office because Dawn hasn’t been going to class
and despite Buffy’s fabulous sweater scarf ensemble’y, the principal is unswayed.
- Buffy goes to Giles for advice on parenting and for the 971st time, Giles makes me wish
he was my Dad.
- “Perk up your ears.
She needs you to do this.”
- Buffy goes a little too hard and Dawn doesn’t appreciate it.
Will pleads Dawn’s case to Buffy and, while I can empathize with all of the emotions in
the scene, I think everyone could afford to get their head out of their Hecates.
Willow’s approach here lacks any recognition of the weight of this new responsibility Buffy
must be carrying and reminds me a little bit of when she once told Buffy that she really
needed to find the fun, - Willow: “…B.”
- And Buffy lets smoldering resentment for having to drop out of school and being pulled
to the principal’s office push her to drop a bit of a martyr bomb.
“Don’t worry.
It’s not like I don’t have a life.
I have Dawn’s life.”
- Ben from earlier scene: “This is my life.”
- Glory and company have a new theory as to who the key is, which the scene leaves deliberately
vague.
- Tara brings the empathy for Buffy that Willow was missing earlier.
Willow doesn’t take it well and the conversation spins out of Tara’s grasp.
“It frightens me how powerful you’re getting.”
- “I frighten you.”
- This scene hit’s a little too real for me but, painful though it is, I like it.
With every fiber of my being, I FEEL the pain and panic of each fueling escalation here.
Until the fire gets hot enough that two people start saying things they don’t mean or,
worse, can’t take back.
And sometimes it’s tough to bear in mind that, canonically, Willow is barely 21.
These are two people, not only figuring out who they are but the love they’re worthy
of receiving.
As we’ve mentioned in previous conversations about Willow this season though, scenes like
this tend to be guilty of bi-erasure — something the writer’s even admitted in later interviews.
- Dawn rebels against Buffy’s first attempts at parenting and Buffy finally explains to
her what the principal threatened her with when Dawn wasn’t in the room.
Why should I care about any of this?”
- “Because they’ll take you away.”
- This is good drama, though I also wonder if a little truancy would be enough to take
a kiddo from their guardian, albeit their 20-something guardian.
There are a lot worse parents out there than Buffy.
Though, I suppose that doesn’t mean an authority figure wouldn’t capitalize on Buffy’s
ignorance of the law by *threatening* her with taking Dawn.
- Anyway, at the fair they were supposed to go to together, a very upset Tara is sitting
alone by herself.
Glory comes along thinking Tara was the key but no dice.
And you know…Buffy is a pretty violent series with all the punchy kicky action, but between
this and the spin off I always remember the hand thing as one of the most agonizing and
grotesque acts of violence in the show.
The only thing that tops it for me won’t be along for a couple more seasons.
- Willow shows up too late to prevent Glory from sapping Tara’s brainy bits.
- At the hospital Buffy says she can stay with the witches as long as they need because
Dawn is safe with a very badly beaten Spike and, in what proves to be something of a habit
for Spike with the Summers women, he ends up being the safe space Dawn needs to unburden
herself of what she’s really worried about.
“I must be something so horrible…”
- Buffy thinks that she has convinced Willow not to go after Glory.
Spike, as usual, highlights some of the Scooby naivette.
- “So she’s not going to do anything rash, then?”
- It…might not be that bad.
Maybe it’s padlocked to keep things *out*.
Or …the darkest means it’s for spells you only should do at night.
How bad can Magick with a ‘K’ be anyway?
That spelling is delightful.
“…nevermind.”
- Floaty pissed off Willow actually does some damage until Glory breaks her…everything.
- Willow spits the worlds gooberiest glob onto Glory’s face (I mean…seriously, I
think all the black magic may have lefter her a little dehydrated.)
Buffy saves the day.
Everything seems safe as Buffy, Will, Dawn, and Tara have a dorm room picnic over a peaceful
score.
Buuuuut Buffy is wearing black leather pants so you can be pretty certain that SOMETHING
bad is about to happen.
- And the episode ends with Glory removing a wall and brain sucked Tara revealing the
identity of the key.
- I find Tough Love fittingly hard to watch, but only because…you know…I love these
characters.
I love the Scoobies.
Seeing them fight is just…well…tough.
But, unlike certain Scoobies-at-war-with-themselves-type episodes (I’m thinking most specifically
of Dead Man’s Party or Yoko Factor,) the conflict between them feels BOTH earned and
driven by understandable character choices.
Where most of Dead Man’s Party felt like it could have been avoided with a simple open
conversation that the episode’s plot kept contriving reasons for everyone not to have…
- …the conversations in Tough Love actually keep making things worse because each character
is dealing with their own unexamined fears or expectations.
“I’m saying everything wrong.”
- And their reactions make sense to me, as opposed to them arbitrarily placing so much
trust in a KNOWN manipulator and former big bad that they skip the conversation and go
right to attacking each other.
A character departure so self-evidently stupid that the next episode immediately mocks it.
- Buffy’s familiarity with leadership is through slaying.
She is the commander.
It makes sense that her first attempts at parenting Dawn might be militant.
Willow and Buffy love each other but Willow has expressed her insecurity about being in
Buffy’s shadow more than once.
I’m not your sidekick.”
- It makes sense that she might have an automatic reaction to Tara not immediately taking her
side in a conflict with Buffy.
- This is the point in the series when I begin to swoon over almost every word that comes
out
of Spike’s mouth.
But I stick to my conviction that what we’re watching here is not him learning to be good
but a romantic hedonist bloodsucker, not being allowed to do evil and craving the same things
he always had..
“I told Willow it’d be like suicide.
- “I’d do it…if it were you.
Right person.
Person I loved.”
- That’s not new information.
We already know Spike would rather murder than be rejected by the target of his affections
or, if he can’t do that, be killed by them.
She didn’t even have the decency to cut my head off.
- Almost every scene between Dawn and Spike in the series is a banger and Dawn’s existential
ruminations on her own inherent nature is definitely one of my favorites.
“You’re not evil.”
- I think this is a super solid performance from Michelle Trachtenberg and I LOVED Dawn
having a moment to speak about what all of this is doing to her own sense of self.
“I’m like a lightning rod for pain and hurt.”
- I love Anya’s capitalist peanut gallery throughout the episode.
- Love the faintest Ripper hints we get.
“What happened?”
- “Changed his mind.”
- I’ve always felt like Glory was one of the scarier Big Bads in the series but it
may have been tough to understand why until the past couple of episodes.
I mean yes she’s strong but Buffy has taken blows from a lot of nasties over the years.
Is she giant snake strong or gravel-gargling Frakensoldier strong?
Who can say?
But this is the point in the show where Glory starts to feel more like the Terminator to
me.
Actually she’s already felt a little Rise of the Machines to me so I guess I’m talking
more Terminator 1.
- A terrifying unstoppable force that is slowly and steadily draining all will to keep fighting
from out protagonists.
That hasn’t existed yet.
Vampires are essentially MORE vulnerable than humans — turning into one actually adds
a whole EXTRA host of ways they can die.
Including basic sunlight.
And the message of the show has often been, get enough people together (including bow
and arrow wielding children) and there isn’t anything that can stop them.
- But during the quease-inducing park bench sequence, Glory makes the stakes clear.
“There’s no one here that can stop me.
I’ll kill him and her.
Kind of funny isn’t it.
All these people here and no one can do a thing.”
- Glory can do whatever she wants.
It is genuinely terrifying.
And Willow running to them but being constantly obstructed is pure nightmare fuel.
- It’s not perfect.
The last scene of the episode feels like an inelegant eleventh hour addition to the script
added to get the pieces into place.
It’s a little convenient this specific foursome all being in this exact place at this time.
But the location makes it more confusing.
Buffy both dropped out and moved home.
Willow and Tara moved in together.
In a VERY designed and specific shot from three episodes ago, we saw that Willow and
Tara’s room is on an upper floor.
- Sooooo…whose first floor dorm room is this that Buffy, Willow, a befuddled Tara,
and Dawn are all hanging out and picnic’ing in in the middle of the day?
My guess is, the spectacle of Glory tearing the wall off was a lot cheaper to execute
on this set than it would’ve been at the Summers house or The Magic Box where it would’ve
made a little more sense.
- But likewise, destorying the wall of one of THOSE locations, ones that come with such
a feeling of safety and permanence would’ve done a lot to heighten the feeling of no one
being safe from Glory anyplace.
- Some of the parallels between characters this season are more and more clear, and the
themes can be seen in their remaining contrasts.
Ben leaves his job because he is spending more time as Glory.
“This is my life and you’re ruining it.”
- Buffy leaves school to be a better caretaker for Dawn.
“I have Dawn’s life.”
- The difference between them is that Buffy is choosing to drop out of school, even if
she still hasn’t made peace with the hard choices.
And I love her admiration for Giles’ adultnessness….
“You’re so much more a grownup than me.”
Given that we’ve seen direct evidence of the fact that…he wasn’t always.
. - No one is birthed into the world complete,
and we don’t cross a line somewhere in their 20s to find we’ve arrived at ‘adult.’
We shape ourselves into the people we are by making choices, or circumstances will do
the shaping for us.
- Which brings us to Willow.
This episode is a significant one for the Rosenberg.
And I realized watching it, that I’ve suffered something of a Mandela effect when it comes
to her.
Specifically, I’ve been misremembering the very first episode where Willow’s eyes turned
black upon casting a spell.
In Becoming, after Giles tells Willow that casting the soul restoration spell might open
a door she’d be unable to close, she insisted.
But his warning implies that casting magic potentially leaves an indelible mark on the
caster. - — and while being watched by Cordy and
Oz, something channeled through her, and I was sure that she looked up, looked forward,
and had black eyes during the remainder of the spell buuuut no…
- Still, the door was open.
And, in Willow’s case what that has meant so far is magic becoming her number one coping
mechanism.
Magic has been a *metaphor* for a few things but one of it’s analogs setup early on by
Giles’ abuse of it to get high in ‘The Dark Age,’ was drugs.
A metaphorical connection of magic to alcohol was made in ‘Something Blue’ when Willow
first tried to deal with her grief over Oz by way of a sick Bud Light dance party.
- She has resorted to magic to cope with her lust (Fool for Love.)
To cope with her anger (Wild at Heart.)
To cope with her grief (Something Blue.)
And in Tough Love, her rage.
- Historically, there has usually been a scene afterwards where she suffers guilt for the
spell’s misfire and bakes a round of apology cookies but the episode always stops just
short of her learning the *actual* lesson.
Her regret is never specifically for the *use* of magic to solve her problems but for the
fact that she wasn’t capable enough to pull the spell off the way she wanted to.
“If I was a good witch I could’ve made Oz stay.”
- And everyone tends to let it slide.
Onto the next episode.
Because Willow is just…in pain.
Angry.
Sad.
Lonely.
Lost.
That’s all.
It’s a familiar pattern with abuse-based coping mechanisms given…there tends to be
a lot going on for that person, big things that their friends and family members see
as what actually drove their loved ones to this.
And that big thing feels more important right now than confronting the loved about their
little problem.
Now’s is not the time.
Now is never the time.
And then time slips past.
- But…Willow has continued to become more powerful with every passing season.
And, in Tough Love, her breaking into the Magic Box and channeling actual black magic
I think represents a turning point.
This is the first time her eyes actually turn black and, if every spell leaves an indelible
mark upon the caster, there is something in her now that she will have to carry.
- But, in keeping with Willow learning the wrong lesson or none whatsoever, the final
scene in the episode follows the pattern we’ve seen to this point.
Scoobies feeling bad for what Willow must going through.
Conversations about consequences not being had.
And Willow feeling defeated and depressed.
If the pattern fits, not just because of Tara state, but because Willow wasn’t strong
enough to wield the necessary power to properly take her revenge.
- Wasn’t strong
enough
- ...yet.