'Amends' is such an odd addition to the 'Buffy' pantheon.
It’s a Christmas episode whose established universe runs contrary to the show's internal subtext.
It isn’t silly enough I think to warrant the candy episode moniker,
...but it does have plenty of flaws.
It’s bleak,
cheesy,
loaded with melodrama
...and I absolutely love it.
This episode for me falls into a favorites category
that is very similar to 'Lie to Me'.
It has its shortcomings and dramatic oddities,
but it’s so ambitious and successful in so much of that ambition
...that I just ignore everything else.
The episode opens with a ‘Previously On’ featuring the infamous adventures of Angelus
which leads into a flashback of some earlier time in his murdering career.
Angel is just reliving one of his old kills in a dream.
He stumbles out into a street and we hear via news report that it’s supposed to be a very sunny Christmas.
He and Buffy run into each other for some awkward post...
(would you call what they went through a breakup?)
...awkward "we shouldn’t see each other anymore" conversation.
As they speak, Angel spies the man he killed in his dream over Buffy’s shoulder.
Buffy tells the gang and...
"I don't wanna bug Giles."
"He's still kind of twitchy when it comes to the subject of Angel."
"Oh, it must be that whole..."
"...Angel-killed-his-girlfriend-and-tortured-him thing."
"Hey, Giles is pretty petty when it comes to stuff like that."
"Xander, enough, okay?"
I’m pretty sure this instance of Buffy telling him to shut his trap
...is one of the few times in the SERIES where she does that.
At this point in the series, Xander’s self righteousness over Angel has become less maddening to me.
And Whedon immediately balances it out when Cordelia overhears him telling everyone he’ll be having his annual Christmas camp-out.
“I thought you slept outside to avoid your family's drunken Christmas fights.”
The details of Xander’s life outside of the group have been meted out
...very slowly throughout the series,
and some of it requires inference.
"I just can't believe a kiddie league coach would do something like that."
"Well, you obviously haven't played kiddie league."
"Surprised it wasn't one of the parents."
"Oh hey, you want to come over to our place tonight for dinner?"
"Mom's making her famous 'phone call to the Chinese Place'."
"Xander, do you guys even HAVE a stove?"
"Have you ever done an exchange program?"
"My dad tried to sell me to some Armenians once?"
"Does that count?"
"Yep, yep, I knew this would happen."
"Nobody can be wound as straight and narrow as Giles without a dark side erupting."
"My uncle Rory was the stodgiest taxidermist you've ever met by day."
"By night, it was booze, whores and fur flying."
"Mom, hi."
"Xander."
"Yeah, uh--"
Here we have the first truly clear picture of Xander’s home life that isn’t frosted with a veneer of Xander’s sense of humor.
He is without a doubt,
the most consistently funny character on the show,
razor witted and sharp,
but that doesn’t run contrary to the idea that his homelife is a depressing mess.
In fact,
...it might actually be evidence of it.
Deborah Serani, a clinical psychologist and author of the book ‘Living With Depression,’
has said that
“[c]omedy can actually be a defensive posture against depression.
"Humor is a "counter phobic" response to the darkness and sadness they feel."
"Their intelligence," she said, "helps them put a funny spin on their despair.”
Not to suggest that there is a direct corollary in all cases between the compulsively funny and the depressed.
Only that this is one possibility for it.
And in Xander’s case
...it seems to fit.
I’m also not suggesting a free pass for transgressions
that no other character in the show would get one for either.
But expecting accountability doesn’t mean excluding compassion or empathy.
Xander is a deeply complex and sometimes confused character
whose shortcomings can make me SO angry,
especially because of how
...brave and inspiring he can be when he’s at his best.
Of course,
there will be MUCH more to talk about as the seasons roll on.
And after Cordelia uses Xander’s private life to scorch the earth around him
in comes Oz and tells Willow how badly he is missing her and wants to give it another shot.
It’s incredibly sweet
and the apparent relief Oz feels in her arms
as he closes his eyes and hugs her to him
always gives me a case of the manly sniffles.
At the tree park, Joyce suggests Buffy invite Faith over for Christmas.
"What about Giles?
"I mean he doesn't have any--"
--"No, I'm sure he's fine."
Buffy notices an odd patch of dead trees
and is informed by the owner that for some reason those on that patch keep dying out.
And we quick cut to a dream of Angel’s in which he sees facially scarred men underground worshipping
...something.
And this is one my favorite scenes in the episode.
Anthony Stewart Head is such a tremendous actor
...and can do so much in with what he DOESN’T say.
His face, falling as he sees Angel at his door is chilling
and instantly invoked for me
...the scene between the two of them in 'Becoming (Part 2)'.
He arms himself and invites Angel in to hear his request.
Jenny’s reveal is a haunting one
...but allows us to completely disregard what Giles says here.
To quote,
“--[t]he last time you became complacent about your existence,"
"...it turned out rather badly.”
More on that shortly.
Back at the mansion, Angel sees himself as Angelus tormenting and murdering a house maid.
As he goes in for the kill, he looks up and sees...
Buffy goes to Giles and asks him to help Angel.
Giles agrees,
... as does Xander.
As the trio does research,
Willow shares her fears about earning Oz’s trust back,
...especially in continuing her friendship with Xander.
Meanwhile, Angel is being taken through one of Angelus’ gruesome crimes at the mansion.
Look at this guy’s outfit.
This is not pre-industrial clothing.
This man is describing a murder that Angelus committed,
...between 'Surprise' and 'Becoming (Part 2)'.
I love the chilling thought of what Angelus might’ve been up to outside of the scenes we saw in 'Season 2'.
Angel begs, saying he was a man once.
“And what a man you were.”
“A drunken, whoring layabout”
"...and a terrible disappointment to your parents."
Here's a good opportunity to revisit our ever evolving conversation about the soul canon.
In the review for 'Surprise', *'Innocence'
linked here in the top right,
I brought up the seeming contradiction that the Judge sensed humanity in Spike and Dru,
...but didn’t sense any in Angelus.
I suggested that maybe there was such a thing as a soul residue that might account
...for the purer evil of Angel.
But that theory has never really sat well with me,
especially after reading through the volumes of comments and other ideas people had here on the channel.
And the question came up again in the 'Becoming (Part 2)' review.
It wasn’t until I wrote...
...'My Top 10 Buffy or Angel Episodes (to pair with wine and a good cry)'
that an idea clicked for me,
specifically relating to my #1 on that list
...which I can’t talk about here for spoilers sake.
But what I was missing when talking about the Judge,
...was a proper definition of what makes us human.
Perhaps,
...it’s our desires, our passions that make us human.
And perhaps it’s those traits that define the characteristics of the monster we become as vampires.
As Buffy says in 'Lie to Me':
"You die,"
"...and a demon sets up shop in your old house,"
...and it walks and it talks, and it remembers your life,
"...but it's not you."
If Liam was as the ghost says here:
“A drunken, whoring layabout..."
If he was a man without beliefs or passions or desires.
No humanity.
Then there would be very little template for the demon to follow that took him over.
Nothing for the Judge to burn.
No guiding principles other than the demon’s pure sadism,
...and a singular desire to destroy the world.
A great failure as a man
...would make a helluva monster as a vampire.
In contrast, we can imagine the man Spike might’ve been before he was turned.
A romantic.
A poet.
A much more structured template for the demon that took him over.
Mind you, that doesn’t yet answer the question of whether or not a souled vampire is responsible for the crimes of an unsouled vampire.
Nor does it explain why Angel and Angelus are treated so distinctly in the canon.
The ghost
(or whatever)
soothes Angel and tells him to go to sleep.
Those of you who are reading several seasons ahead...
...notice...
...the uhm...
...the ghost can touch him?
In the library, Buffy has fallen asleep and into one of Angel’s dreams.
They kiss.
They have sex.
There’s a scar-faced man in the corner watching.
Angel bites her.
He awakes.
And Ghost Jenny tries to get Angel to go and kill Buffy,
...and suggests that whatever the ghost is was responsible for bringing Angel back.
Giles has discovered that the ghost is really nothing of the kind.
It’s a monster called the First,
...or the first original evil.
Older than most things.
And the scar eyed worshipers are...
the Bringers or Harbingers.
The Bringers can conjure the spirit of the First and sic him on people.
Buffy and Xander hit up Willy’s for information and find out the Bringers are underground.
They both remark on how hot it is.
Oz and Willow are having a video night.
Willow has a fire and a little Barry White going in the background.
"You ever have that dream, where you're in a play and it's the middle of the play and you..."
"...really don't know your lines, and you kinda don't know the plot."
"My turn?"
"Mmh-mm!"
[screech]
Willow says she’s ready to d...
...well...
...you know
...you know?
And Oz says he’s not.
This might be as good a time as any to bring up one single problem I actually have with Oz’s character,
"Canapé?"
Prefacing of course with,
... I love the guy.
But there’s an issue:
In a show heavily loaded with characters who make mistakes
...and learn from them,
and make mistakes
...and learn from them,
Oz is essentially flawless.
His speech to Willow in the van about kissing her was flawless.
In 'Beauty and the Beasts', he tried to storm off and make a dramatic gesture,
...but then very sweetly explained that he was making a dramatic gesture.
And last episode, he provided an inhumanly patient and rational explanation to his girlfriend who’d just cheated on him
...about how he needed space.
Very well done.
Angel can’t seem to get the First's voice out of his head
...and runs.
At the mansion, the First continues to taunt Angel, suggesting he’s weak and too powerless to prevent this.
The episode answers the question I brought up in 'Revelations':
Does souled Angel think that he is responsible for the actions of unsouled Angelus?
Clearly,
...the answer is yes.
Which makes sense of course, and is not incompatible
...with Angelus’ belief that the answer is no.
"Dream on, schoolgirl!"
"Your boyfriend is dead."
When we talk about Angel’s timeline, we’re talking about...
...THREE distinct individuals.
Liam,
Angelus,
...and Angel.
Soulless Angelus is not Liam,
...merely a monster created from the template of him.
But souled Angel is BOTH Angelus and Liam.
As a vampire,
Angel can’t be free of the demon inside of him,
...his dark half.
Buffy figures out the dead trees from the tree farm earlier indicate the Bringers underneath.
She drops into an underground cave,
...beats up the Bringers
...and ends the spell.
The First confronts her, and warns her of Angel’s impending demise.
Buffy runs to the mansion and finds Angel on a cliff overlooking town
...waiting for the sunrise.
Ready to kill himself.
There IS a precedent here for Angel attempting suicide.
Don’t forget in 'Season 1, Episode 7' when I suggested
...he was attempting suicide by cop against Buffy
- fighting poorly and freezing at the pivotal moment.
Buffy confronts him and tries to get him to relent
...but Angel is adamant.
“It told me to lose my soul in you and become a monster again.”
"I know what it told you."
“What does it matter?”
“Because I wanted to!"
According to Angel,
...the flaw in him is not the monster that wants to kill
...but the human that is too weak to resist.
In the review for 'Lie to Me', I brought up the fact that Joss Whedon has stated he is an atheist and an absurdist.
And in the 'Lovers Walk' review, I pointed at that Angel was reading...
...'Nausea', by Jean Paul Sartre.
Sartre was a key figure in the evolution of the philosophy of existentialism
which, in a nutshell,
is the belief that the universe outside of us lacks any intrinsic meaning
...but that we can create meaning as individuals through personal responsibility and choice.
So what then is absurdism?
Absurdism shares a common template with existentialism
in the belief there is no intrinsic meaning to life or the universe around us.
But also that it is a part of the the human condition to constantly seek meaning and purpose regardless.
And what can spring from awareness of that spiritual dissonance
...is a profound melancholy or despair.
The man most principally responsible for contemporary Absurdism
...was Albert Camus,
who called the disconnect between the meaningless universe and the insatiable human desire to look for meaning,
...the absurd.
And Camus’ essay, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus', begins:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem"
"...and that is suicide."
"Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
Angel being forced to relive the deeds of Angelus has certainly painted for him a meaningless world,
...and triggered in him an existential crisis.
"--I need to know..."
“I need to know why I’m here.”
Camus postulated three possible choices to the problem of absurdity and the resulting despair.
The first was the leap of faith.
Believing in something which was intangible or unprovable.
Not necessarily a belief in God, per se,
... though that certainly counts.
But blind hope with lack of evidence is another.
"You trusting fool!"
“How do you know the world is any better than this?”
“Because it has to be.”
But Camus was an atheist.
And it’s unclear right now whether the Buffyverse has a deity or an afterlife
(though I have something to say about that in a bit).
Even if it did, it’s doubtful that Angel could get into it what with the demon in him and all.
“Am I a thing worth saving, huh?
"Am I righteous man?"
This brought Camus to his final two choices.
And by example he used 'The Myth of Sisyphus'.
Sisyphus was a man condemned by the gods to push a rock up a hill.
Just before reaching the top the rock would roll back to the bottom and Sisyphus would go and get it
...forever.
And here, at the top of a hill in Sunnydale,
Angel’s rock has rolled back down to the bottom,
and he has the choice of whether or not to go and get it,
...or to stand at the top and watch the sunrise.
Camus’ answer was to embrace the absurdism that arises from being an entity who hungers for meaning in a meaningless universe,
...and to continue the hunt for it regardless.
By embracing things as they are
...we free ourselves from the despair over how things are not.
In acknowledging the absurdity of seeking meaning, by continuing the search regardless,
...one can be happy,
gradually developing one's own meaning from the search alone.
So why not suicide?
Well, the absurd must be taken on;
... it's part of the human experience.
Suicide eliminates the absurd rather than confronting it,
and so it doesn’t solve a problem
...but instead ignores it.
In other words:
“Strong is fighting."
"It’s hard"
"...and it’s painful"
...and it’s every day.”
"It's what we have to do."
Of Sisyphus, Camus wrote.
“It is during that return [to go and get the rock],
"...it is during that pause that Sisyphus interests me."
"That is the hour of consciousness."
"At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods,"
"...he is superior to his fate."
"He is stronger than his rock.”
So, does Angel go and get his rock?
Does he decide to continue to the fight?
Well, for tonight,
he is spared having to make the choice,
as at the end of a sweltering day in Southern California,
...it begins to snow.
So is this a cheat?
The magical or divine intervention that brings the snowstorm and spares Angel’s life?
'Buffy' is a show that might seem to have an internal contradiction between its subtext and its fiction.
We’ve spent a lot of time on the channel covering the cold, uncaring nature of the universe.
The existential dilemma and how life without choice is barren of meaning.
And the show handles these topics unflinchingly,
staunchly favoring the perspective that the power and control over all these things
is up to the individual and their ability to choose,
... the individual here being Buffy.
That’s the subtext,
but it’s the subtext to
...a fictional universe in which there ARE
...demons,
and monsters
and dimensions of Hell.
Now why in a world like that would there not be a contrary force,
if not a deity then some kind of powers that be or force for good?
In this episode, the First says he, or she, brought Angel back from Hell
... but that doesn’t make a lot of sense
...as Giles says in the library that the First doesn’t have the ability to affect the real world
-unable to do much more than haunt, and even then not without the aid of the Bringers.
Wouldn’t it make more sense that some contrary force for good brought Angel back?
Beings that could bring Angel back from a hell dimension might certainly have had the ability
...to bring in a snowstorm and keep him alive.
Is the snow a cheat?
I don’t think it is.
It wasn’t our central protagonist that was spared through divine influence,
...it was Angel.
Angel didn’t choose.
He hasn’t understood all this yet.
But the snow gives him more time.
And the fact that it wasn’t Buffy, preserves our subtext.
The universe of the show is certainly rich with potential for certain outside forces that we haven’t gotten to see.
Is the snow CHEESY?
Sure.
That’s a concession I’ll make.
Along with the guilty admission
...that I actually love cheese,
especially as a side dish to material as ambitious as 'Amends'.
For me this episode is sort of ''Angel' the Series, Episode 0'.
And represents the beginning of Angel’s own journey off of 'Buffy' and onto his own show.
As the First Evil Jenny comments:
“You never were a fighter, Angel."
"Don’t start tryin' now.”
At this point in his life, he’s not a fighter yet.
But give it time.
In his conclusion to 'The Myth of Sisyphus', Camus said:
"It happens that melancholy rises in man's heart:"
"...this is the rock's victory,"
"...this is the rock itself."
"The boundless grief is too heavy to bear."
"But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged."
"The struggle itself toward the heights"
"...is enough to fill the human heart."
['Magic Snow']