'Doomed' is credited as a...
...David Fury,
...Marti Noxon...
...AND Jane Espenson episode.
Despite the pedigree of talent on this one,
...in general, the more writers you see listed on a movie or television episode,
...the less coherent things tend to become.
And 'Doomed'...
...sadly fits that premise.
It isn’t bad in the way of...
...'I, Robot...You, Jane'
or 'Go Fish',
...but it’s technically poor.
Scenes don’t string together
...and tones...
...switch jarringly throughout.
Because we know their voices so well you can almost hear which writer wrote what scene.
Certain discoveries in the plot don’t make a lot of sense.
Buffy and Riley’s love breaks physics.
And the audio and editing work is confusing and bizarre.
Still...
...as with any 'Buffy' episode,
...there is some good stuff to talk about.
'Doomed' picks up immediately where 'Hush' left off,
...with Buffy and Riley’s stunned silence.
The ripples of their secret identities have thrown into doubt that anything is true between them.
“Ever been to Iowa, Riley?"
"God, if that's even your name.”
Riley is shocked by Buffy’s power and abilities,
...making a few verbal comparisons between the two.
"You did pretty well yourself."
"Yeah,"
“...but I’m a walking bruise today.”
They decide they don’t know how to move forward and to just think on things.
When Riley goes to leave,
...rat-Amy panics
...and the ground shakes.
Buffy takes her concerns to Giles who tries to lower her anxiety
...and now...
...the technical problems in the episode start to show.
"Now in the meantime,"
"I've got a few theories about our mysterious commando friends."
"Oh."
"Really?"
For those of you who don’t know,
...if an actor can’t get a line right on the set
...or a director wants to change something later on,
...often they’ll bring the actor into...
...a soundproof booth later and have them record something
...that they’ll then dub into a scene.
When overdone it creates an auditory uncanny valley where a line sounds strange or a performance off.
Every single one of Giles’ lines has been recorded later and dubbed back into the scene
...while Buffy is very clearly on microphone.
Worse,
...they’ve tried to cover the dubbing with the editing,
...creating a very awkward scene that uses longer shots of Buffy while Giles is talking so the issue isn’t so apparent.
"If the quake heralded some such catastrophe..."
"...I'm sure there will be other signs to follow which will afford us plenty of time to avert it."
Feeling awkward at a party later that night and seeking a familiar site,
...Willow stumbles on Percy from 'Season 3'.
They have a moment of forced conversation
...and Percy leaves with his girlfriend.
Willow gets depressed,
...finds a room,
...and ends up in bed
...with a carved corpse.
Willow draws the symbol for the fellow Scoobies
...and we get another Giles-dubbed scene that is bizarrely edited.
Giles says it’s the end of the world,
...doesn’t explain why,
...Buffy says she’ll stop it,
...and the scene ends.
Nothing stitches together.
It feels more like a commercial for the show than something grounded in the script.
Buffy finds a big demon in a crypt.
They fight.
The demon escapes
...and Buffy runs into Riley.
Now the episode switches tone again,
...from plot
...to relationships,
I would imagine...
...Fury
...to Noxon.
Buffy tries to push Riley away
...and I give him some initial points for not allowing her to lump him into the same category as other men she’s known.
"--I can't go there again."
"Again?"
"You've dated me before?"
But the points
...are rapidly redacted
...when he throws out a trademark Riley
" you’re going to teach me",
...line.
“But I can feel my skin humming,"
"...my hands, my..."
"...my every inch of me.”
[Buffy disgusted]
Yeughk!
Was I the only one a little weirded out by the...
...“every inch of me” comment
...you know because of...
...every...
...inch?
...you know what, nevermind.
We also get the episode’s title metaphor, in Buffy’s apocalyptic perception of relationships.
"There is too much..."
"It’s just doomed."
Buffy’s argument about her not being able to date Riley
...because there’s too much risk due to him being all human-y
...and her being all Slayer-y
...doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If anything,
...now that their identities have been revealed to each other,
...she should see Riley as MORE a kindred spirit
...not less.
When she says that he chose to be a commando guy
...and she didn’t choose to be the Slayer,
...that’s true.
The problem is...
...she has CHOSEN to live a life that walks the boundary
...between the real world
...and the supernatural.
She CHOOSES to go to college.
She CHOOSES to have non-Slayer friends
...who in turn...
...CHOOSE to battle alongside her.
The double standard for a romantic relationship isn’t logical,
...but rather a manifestation of her own defense mechanisms against more heartbreak.
There’s a parallel scene of Buffy and Scoobs figuring things out
...while Riley and the Initiative do the same.
And I was reminded of their...
...separate and dissonant...
...battle from the clock tower in 'Hush'.
Willow and Xander drag a depressed Spike on an artifact hunt that goes nowhere.
And, in his frustration, Spike discovers a way to cause harm to humans
...that doesn’t involve physical violence.
“I should think you would be glad to greet the end of days."
"I mean neither one of you is making much of a go at it.”
Definitely my favorite bit in the episode.
In his continuing research,
...Giles discovers he actually has the item the demons need for their ritual
...and the demons are attempting to open the Hellmouth under the old library.
Buffy and company go back to a burned out Sunnydale.
This fits with the idea that everyone is currently questioning whether they’re better off since high school.
Has anything really changed?
Buffy’s love life has never properly righted after Angel.
"--and Percy said I was a nerd."
"Percy called you a nerd?"
Percy called Willow a nerd,
...despite her...
...brand new wiccariffic identity.
Xander is living in his parents' basement,
...and Spike can’t bite anyone anymore.
And the burned out school itself works as the metaphor for the idea...
...that you can never go home again.
The literal school and the life they had with it
...is gone.
In the final confrontation, Spike discovers he can hurt demons
...and receives a new lease on life,
...or...
...undeath.
One of the demons dives into the hole
...and Buffy jumps in after and catches him.
Thankfully,
...Riley had an 8 mile length of cable attached to his hip
...and Buffy can break the laws of physics by catching up to the demon in freefall.
The ending is the breakthrough moment for Buffy and Riley’s relationship,
...and more or less the culmination of...
...their issue that was introduced in 'Hush'.
Where in 'Hush' they barricaded themselves from each other with an overabundance of language,
...distinct from communication,
and fought separately and alone,
...here they are finally in sync.
But there’s something here that's important to note.
Buffy has kept Riley at bay
...finally changing her mind in the moment and deciding to date him.
But there’s a pattern if you look closely.
Both Riley and Angel are demon fighters.
Both Riley and Angel kept their true identities from Buffy.
Buffy finally fell for Angel completely when he went down into the Hellmouth to pull her back from the brink.
And Buffy falls for Riley here when he pulls her back from the Hellmouth.
What we resist,
...persists.
And especially in love,
...it isn’t always enough to just see the pattern in our lives.
We have to understand our own compulsions and desires
...that are keeping that pattern in place.
Something Buffy probably doesn’t yet.
The highlight of the episode is the B-story with Spike,
...carried by Marsters' total and complete willingness to "go there".
Spike: "Don’t look at me.”
[Comedy note]
The pizzicato string hits is what nails it.
Perfect.
And I kind of love that they didn't go with a slow pan-up to overdo it.
He’s lost Drusilla.
"Maybe I dumped HER!"
By virtue of the chip, he’s lost his ability to revel in a bit of the old ultraviolence.
And now, he’s lost...
...his sweet skinny jeans and tight shirt.
Spike’s identity crisis spiral culminates with his attempt at suicide by chair leg.
It’s fitting that all of this takes place in Xander’s basement.
We’ve mentioned it before
...but nothing good on the show ever happens in a basement.
And Xander...
...LIVES in one.
So what about the chip?
Well, in a show heavily rooted in the philosophy of choice,
...something important is being said when a character loses his ability to even make one.
In a BBC interview,
Douglas Petrie said
...the plan was always to...
...“Clockwork Orange”...
...Spike...
...when he came on 'Buffy'.
'A Clockwork Orange' is the story of...
...Alex.
Alex is intelligent,
...well spoken,
... a lover of art and music,
...and a violent sociopath.
Interesting to note that "sociopath" is defined as...
"a person with a personality disorder"
"...manifesting (itself) in extreme antisocial..."
"...attitudes and behaviour..."
"...and a lack of..."
"...conscience."
In the story,
...Alex assaults numerous people,
...including his own gang.
Rapes a woman in front of her brutalized husband.
And then is caught by the police
...after having just murdered a woman
...with a giant phallus.
In prison,
...Alex is chosen to undergo a process called...
..."the Ludovico technique",
...a form of operant conditioning...
"Hey, do you know if we're going to be studying operant conditioning in the first semester?"
"'Cause I hear that's kind of Professor Walsh's speciality."
...in which he is programmed to feel crippling nausea at even the thought of a heinous act.
Philosophically,
...this also relates to the utilitarian idea of a "panopticon",
...something that began as a prison reform in the late 1700s.
A way of cutting down executions.
The idea was,
...rather than simply punishing a criminal,
...prisons could be constructed in a way where the prisoner
...could be monitored at all times by a warden.
Should the prisoner get out of hand,
...the warden could intervene and punish them,
...thus reforming their behavior over time.
In the case of Alex and Spike,
...that warden...
...is inside their heads.
The title...
'(A) Clockwork Orange'
...refers to something organic,
an orange,
...being corrupted by science.
And there is no more significant defining characteristic to intelligent organisms
...than their ability to choose.
We’ll return to some of these ideas as we proceed throughout the season.
'Doomed' feels more like connective tissue than a realized episode.
A bit of gristle between meat and bone.
As I started out,
...it’s not actively bad by any means.
But these sorts of episodes almost always lean on moments of character to keep us interested,
...while the plot feels perfunctory.
In an interview,
...Petrie revealed that this episode was actually being written during his wedding,
...which most of the writers' room were a part of,
...and was finished over a weekend.
Which is why it was parceled out among David, Jane and Marti.
And its production suffered a little bit
...due to its proximity with and resources required to produce 'Hush'.
Technical nitpicks aside,
...I think my biggest annoyance with the episode...
...is the use of the...
...Hellmouth opening,
...end of the world plot
...that feels so flaccid and tacked on.
The ineffectual apocalypse works as a metaphor for Buffy’s fear of relationships,
...but seriously defates any sense of the dire that comes with the show’s fiction,
something the writers are normally so wonderful about keeping in balance.
With one exception,
...apocalypse--
--s...es...s
...have been used to set up monumental payoffs in season finales.
The fate of the world on Buffy’s shoulders.
The exception to that was 'The Zeppo',
...but 'The Zeppo' still works
...because it is a farce written from within...
...Xander’s unreliable perspective.
We can’t accept the details of the episode as 100% true
...because Xander is an unreliable narrator.
Here,
...in a single episode,
...three dude demons collect some trinkets,
...jump in a hole,
...nearly end the world...
...and Buffy and Riley’s chemistry-free love
...bends the laws of physics
...and grip strength
...to save the day.
“What?”