As we continue through the series there are two things that are going to begin to happen more often.
The first is we will stumble deeper and deeper into areas which I have very little first hand experience with.
We already regularly bump into the limits of my knowledge.
Consequently, I do a lot of reading for each script
and I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions my primary source,
Mark Field’s book 'Myth, Metaphor & Morality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
Go and buy it on Amazon!
It’s a friggin dollar!
The Kindle app is on everything!
But the second thing that's going to happen is we’re going to start to land on more contentious and incendiary topics.
Topics that are precious to people,
that have even had thunderous and agonizing consequences in their own lives.
Topics that are the still the center of teeth gnashing shouting matches between individuals today.
Let’s take an example from ‘Helpless’.
The word "patriarchy" can have considerable impact depending on the form of it you use.
There’s "patriarch",
which means "the male head of a family",
a definition that to me doesn’t preclude the possibility of there being a female head of the family.
There’s ‘patriarchal’,
a general term that can be applied to an organization or system.
And then there’s the more loathsome term,
"The Patriarchy".
Which judging by the subjective flogging the internet has given it
could refer to our U.S. society
which is no longer legally patriarchal but reforms take a long time to permeate the cultural zeitgeist.
Or it could refer to a shadowy stone cutter cabal of men.
Is there a shadowy cabal of men in this world,
whose intense machinations are meant to stall and handicap the status of women in the modern times?
I don’t know.
If there is, I haven’t been invited into it.
Which is fine by me.
I don’t much like going to meetings.
But that’s my point.
I don’t know.
I don’t know,
...and the channel must continue forward anyway.
Which is why I’ve always considered the channel a conversation between you and me.
I have no interest in debates.
The objective of a debate is to win.
The objective of a conversation is to understand.
So let’s continue to be kind and civil to each other.
I expect things to become contentious between us
...and I welcome that.
Because the things we care about the deepest,
...are the most worth talking about.
And if something I believe is wrong
...I’d want to find that out.
Wouldn’t you?
Angel and Buffy are having a sparring session,
perhaps a substitute for working out
...other impulses they have to stay away from.
Buffy wins the match and threatens death by baguette,
which made me, for the first time, consider the phallic nature of staking.
“Satisfied?”
"I'm not sure that's the word."
Angel seems chipper for the first time in a few episodes.
The way he asks Buffy what she’s up to this weekend sounded like a teenage boy talking to his first crush.
“Um, am I gonna see you this weekend?"
Again, she is his only tie to the world
but the fact that she’s willing to spend time with him is clearly bringing him back from the brink.
Giles is spending time with Buffy training her on distinguishing between vibrational stones.
During their conversation, Buffy drops an important MacGuffin for the plot
which is
that Faith has gone on a walkabout and can’t be out patrolling.
None of the rest of the episode would be possible without that little detail.
Out on patrol later, Buffy feels a wave of nausea and her considerable power suddenly dissipates.
She barely escapes with her life and Giles tells her to take a few days off for herself.
It’s birthday time,
Buffy’s eighteenth,
and Buffy’s Dad
...welches on their annual ice capade tradition.
At a dilapidated bed and breakfast in town,
some men are performing curious renovations on the structure.
Their most senior member comments that whatever they’re doing
...has something to do with Buffy.
At school the next day, Buffy is trying to convince Giles to go to the ice capades with her in her Dad’s place.
"You know, it's usually something that families do together."
A touching and incredibly telling indication of his status in her life.
Giles pulls out the large blue crystal again, which he refers to as a grounding crystal,
...and asks Buffy to look at its inner flaw.
She becomes hypnotized and Giles uses the opportunity
...to drug her with some kind of magical injection.
The next day on campus, a roided out high school boy
who looks to be about in his late 20s
...gets physical with Cordelia.
Buffy tries to intervene
...and is tossed by him easily.
She runs to Giles again for help.
"I throw knifes like--"
--"A girl?”
He says not to worry, it will sort itself out.
Again, Anthony Stewart Head gives a nuanced little performance here.
Not overplaying Giles’ guilt or his inability to make eye contact.
WE know what’s going on because we’ve seen him act nefariously
but he gives a convincing enough performance for Buffy that we can believe she might feel reassured by it.
In the next scene at the bed and breakfast, Giles' complicitness in whatever is going on comes to light.
The whole rite they’re engaged in is spoken of vaguely
but it’s clear that whatever is going to happen,
Buffy will succeed
...or die.
Giles tries to argue that the practice they’ve engaged in is barbaric
...but is rebuked for being too close to the Slayer.
The monster in the box is revealed to be
...a raging vampire named Kralik,
who is addicted to pills of some sort.
"PILLS!"
The gang is doing research into the nature of Buffy’s illness.
Oz and Xander again get some of my favorite dialogue in the episode,
...arguing over which kryptonite does what to Superman.
“Guys?"
"Reality?”
This is a favorite gag of mine,
...most commonly in science fiction.
“Well, can’t he just BEAM up?”
"This is reality, Greg."
Kralik suckers one of his late night Watchers into getting too close to him and escapes,
turning one and butchering the other.
His switch from raging monster
"Ahh!"
...to calm psychopath
"Everything's okay now."
...is completely unnerving.
At the mansion, Buffy is confiding in Angel her fear of who she might be without her Slayer powers.
Angel confesses to
semi-stalking Buffy pre-Slayer calling
and says he fell in love with her from the beginning
...because
...he could see her heart.
"And more than anything in my life I wanted to keep safe,"
"...to warm it with my own."
“That’s beautiful.”
I think in some ways Angel is supposed to represent angsty teenage sad poetry Hot Topic love,
...so I get it.
A few hours later, Giles returns to the bed and breakfast
...and discovers the disemboweled other member of the night Watchmen.
And while most of the carnage is off camera,
whatever it was was sickening enough to nauseate Giles.
GILES!
I love Christophe Beck’s score in this bit as well.
His soundtrack is a standout throughout the episode
...but in this scene plays particularly well.
Buffy is sexually harassed by two older men on her way home,
a curious parallel to the bit in the diner in 'Anne' when Buffy had also lost her power,
...only by choice in that episode.
She then gets attacked by Kralik and henchmen,
barely escaping with Giles who takes her back to the school.
There he comes clean.
"It's a test, Buffy."
“It’s given to the...Slayer once she..."
[clears throat]
"...well, IF she reaches her eighteenth birthday.”
That insanely subtle correction of phrase is so incredibly brutal
and highlights the mostly unspoken vile nature of the Slayer role
...in a way I hadn’t really thought about since 'Prophecy Girl'.
Giles' confession comes out heavy in facts
...but Buffy quickly puts a stop to that.
Cordelia’s timing is perfect as ever,
...cutting the tension at just the right moment.
At Buffy’s home,
Kralik baits Joyce out of the house and steals her,
...leaving a note for Buffy to come find them both
She loads up on tools, heads to the bed and breakfast
...and is trapped inside.
Kralik has a wonderfully unnerving line he delivers to Joyce.
"I won't kill her, I'll just make her like me."
"Different."
"She'll go to sleep,"
"and when she wakes up..."
"...your face will be the first thing she eats.”
There are a lot of references to 'Little Red Riding Hood'
...including Buffy’s red jacket.
According to Wikipedia,
in early versions of 'Red Riding Hood'
the Wolf would often leave out grandma’s blood or meat for the girl to eat,
...who then unwittingly cannibalizes her own grandmother.
That detail dovetails nicely into Kralik’s horrifying line here.
Quentin informs Giles that the test is still on.
And Giles runs off after her.
"--Giles, we've no business--"
--"This is NOT business!"
At the bed and breakfast, Buffy quickly subdues the lackey.
Kralik taunts her from the shadows
... before pouncing
and from there
...there's a nightmarish cat and mouse.
Buffy manages to steal his pills
...and ends up in the basement with Joyce.
Kralik breaks in,
steals the pills back
and grabs a nearby glass of water
...which Buffy has filled with holy water.
"If I was at full Slayer power,"
"...I'd be punning right about now."
Buffy tries to free Joyce
but is attacked by the lackey,
who is then staked by Giles,
...perhaps
...restoring a fraction of trust.
“Congratulations, you passed.”
Try not to sound TOO excited about it.
So she passed.
Giles, on the other hand, is released from the Council
...for having a fatherly love for Buffy,
...which takes priority for him over his duties to the Council.
I think this is one of the most ACTUALLY horrifying episodes of the show.
While 'Buffy', as a show, plays with horror tropes staged in its high school setting
it very rarely achieves levels of tension and anxiety comparable to a good horror movie,
...at least not for me.
But not so here.
Still, this episode never really had a place in my heart
before watching it for the Guide.
As ever, I loved the father-daughter dynamics between Buffy and Giles
...and how they were affected here by Giles’ betrayal and eventual atonement.
But the problem is I couldn’t sort out
the stupid,
dumb
why-in-the-hell-would-they-do-that-test
...test.
Those of you who aren’t stateside might not know
that the eighteenth birthday in the U.S. is an incredibly significant one.
You can vote.
You can get a tattoo.
Your eighteenth birthday signifies,
...your independence.
And what a terrifying prospect that must be for the Watchers Council,
who consider the Slayer power to be THEIR instrument.
The reality of this rite of passage is
it’s intended to allow the Council to maintain
strict control over the Slayer power
by keeping the bearer of it,
...young.
They don’t care about the individual.
"One Slayer dies, next one's called."
Strip the Slayer of her all her power without warning
and throw her in cage with a Wolf,
...under the guise of it being a rite of passage.
What does it matter to the Council?
This isn’t a test.
It’s a system of control.
"--it's been done this way for a dozen centuries."
Quentin’s argument that, this is how things have always been done
has a very familiar conservative ring to it
and, I think, indirectly relates to the other side of the episode's coin,
...the male patriarchy that the Council represents.
Throughout the series,
the Council is shown to be predominantly male,
the binary opposite of...
...the all-female Slayer line.
And in this episode, Buffy has unconscionable things done to her
to remind her of her of her powerlessness
-something which they attempt to tie to her gender.
"I throw knives like--"
--“A girl?”
"Like I'm not the Slayer."
Instances of sexual harassment on the show
tend to always awkwardly stand out from the narrative
and are usually, in some way related to Buffy’s power.
In 'Phases', Larry grabs Buffy in gym class
...and is immediately tossed to the ground.
In 'Anne',
Buffy has deliberately given up her role as the Slayer
...and gets harassed at the coffee shop.
And here, when her power is stolen from her,
...she gets accosted by two men on her walk home,
"Hey, sweet girl!"
"How much for a lapdance for me and my buddy?"
...directly and uncoincidentally
...before being attacked by two monsters.
But physical power doesn’t define a person’s value or worth
...as Buffy proves by beating the test at the end of the episode.
It’s easy to couch the subjugation of individuals
...in the dry and lifeless terminology of institutions.
Tradition.
Rite
Advanced cultures tend to try and promote equality through law
but discrimination that occurs
...beneath the veil of tradition
...often takes the longest to die out.
The length of time something has been done the wrong way
...is never a good argument for continuing to do it.
And the agency of any single individual should never be denied on the basis of preserving an institution.
"--Giles, we've no business--"
--"This is NOT business!"
Giles’ being fired from the Council is, to me, symbolic of him no longer being a contributing member of THE patriarchy.
He disobeyed a direct order.
He broke with tradition.
Buffy’s final words to Quentin are telling.
“Bite me.”
That phrasing suggests that the Council now hold in her own life
...the same status to her as vampires.
Enemies.
Adversaries.
And while they appear to have reconciled by the end of the episode,
Giles’ betrayal
...represents a sobering loss of innocence here for Buffy,
tied to her actual father ditching her in the beginning of the episode,
and positioning Buffy in a similar place as Faith
...when it comes to authority figures.
“Faith."
"A word of advice."
"You’re an idiot.”
If the concept of over valuing physical as special
weren’t completely debunked by the end of the episode
...Xander takes us home.
"Admit it."
“Sometimes you just need a big strong man.”
[jar open fail of shame]
It’s a great episode,
just not one I would personally choose to revisit very often as,
funny enough,
...I’m not a huge horror fan
...and this one is actually pretty tense.
Kralik,
as acted by Jeff Kober,
...is a terrific bad guy,
...played almost like a psychopathic 'Batman' villain.
[chuckle]
"Oh-oh, no, no."
"Just a little lower.”
"Right..."
[satisfied noise]
"Oh, yes."
The first priority of any episode
...is always to tell a good story
...and 'Helpless' delivers.
It is perhaps
...one of the scariest episodes of the show.
Intense.
Significant.
And heartbreaking.
"PILLS!"