Surprise/Innocence

[Updated April 29, 2013]

And so, at last, we reach the end of Innocence. In his DVD commentary, Joss describes Innocence as the “mission statement episode” of the show and says, with the benefit of 3 years hindsight, “This episode in a sense is and probably always will be the most important episode of Buffy that we did.” He has rated it his favorite episode of the whole series. It’s certainly a transcendent episode, one regularly appearing on fans’ Top 10 lists. Buffy’s life will never be the same again, and neither will the show.

All of S2 after WSWB has been building to this point. (In case you’re wondering, WSWB sets up different themes which we’ll see later on in S2.) I’ll start by summarizing how Innocence weaves together the various strands of those episodes.

Sex has been an important theme of most episodes: Daryl’s need for a mate in SAR; Spike and Dru’s sexual charge in School Hard; Ampata ready to suck the life out of Xander; the anvilicious metaphor of Reptile Boy; the sexual overtones of Halloween; Giles’ and Jenny’s budding relationship, including Eyghon’s sexual insults to Giles; Xander and Cordy’s relationship; and pretty much all of Bad Eggs.

There’s a reason why sex has been emphasized so often. I’ve been holding off discussing the metaphor of Spike and Dru until this point, so now I’ll make it clear: I suggested in my post on SAR that Chris, Daryl and their mother formed a trio representing ego, id, and superego, and that the whole theme of S2 was that an out-of-control id would lead to disaster. School Hard, the very next episode, introduced us to what I interpret as Buffy’s metaphorical id (Dru) and ego (Spike).

The id is the source of our desires and the ego is what the id uses to find ways to satisfy those desires. Buffy desires Angel. That’s the story which the early episodes have developed in metaphor, and it’s why there’s been so much emphasis on sex. Let’s see just how this played out.

Spike is nothing if not egotistical. He brags, he’s arrogant, he believes he’s in charge (like Captain, only to find that the real power was Tennille). In fact that dialogue from Ted pretty accurately describes the Freudian understanding of ego and id, in which the ego thinks it’s in charge but is actually just the method used by the id to obtain its desires:

“Willow:  Xander, he was obviously in charge.

Xander:  He was a puppet! She was using him!

Willow:  He didn't seem like the type of guy who would let himself be used.

Xander:  Well, that was her genius! He didn't even know he was playing second fiddle.”

Spike’s also obsessed with Buffy and her sexual side. Spike was the one to destroy the Anointed One because the ego believes that it has put childhood behind even when Buffy’s still in the transitional stage of being a teenager, a fact emphasized in School Hard itself when Xander went through Buffy's purse.

Dru serves as the metaphor for Buffy’s desire, her id. We see this in part by noticing her similarities to Buffy which are emphasized in Surprise: Buffy’s birthday is Dru’s “coming out” party, meaning Dru is reborn; Dru is wearing Buffy’s dress from Prophecy Girl in Buffy’s second dream, the same dress Buffy is wearing in that dream, the dress which represented Buffy’s virginal innocence in Prophecy Girl; they have prophetic dreams. Buffy’s dream to open Surprise is one such prophetic dream, though in metaphor: Dru is the one to kill Angel because, by allowing her id to take control, Buffy will destroy the human being she loves most.

Dru, we learned in Lie to Me, was created by Angelus, which makes perfect sense because it’s Angel who is the object of Buffy’s desires. It’s more than that, though – Dru will die if Angel does, just as Buffy’s desire would die without Angel: “Spike:  Oh! Right. Right, you almost got me! Aren't you a 'throw himself to the lions' sort of sap these days. Well, the lions are on to you, baby. See, if I kill you now you go quick, and Dru hasn't got a chance. And if Dru dies your little Rebecca of Sunnyhell Farm and all her mates are spared her coming-out party.”

At the beginning of the season Dru was weak and controlled, just as Buffy’s desire for Angel was. The basic purpose of the ego in Freudian theory is to find ways to satisfy the id’s desires. Freud expressed it very pithily: "Where the Id was, there shall the Ego be" (h/t executrix). Spike’s goal for the season, announced in School Hard, was to “restore Dru to health”, that is, metaphorically, to bring the id to full strength. That’s what he did in WML. During the “restoration spell” Angel’s essence – that which had created Dru in the first place – poured into her, bringing her to full strength.

The ego is also supposed to remain in at least partial control of the id. Because Spike was disabled in the fight, Buffy’s id was now unrestrained except by her superego (see below). Bad Eggs demonstrated this in metaphor, with Joyce (superego) harping on Buffy’s “irresponsibility” while hormones were on parade by Buffy/Angel and Xander/Cordy.  Buffy herself put her desire in plain English just after the teaser to Surprise when she told Willow she was going to sleep with Angel.

I promised to talk about Kendra, and I think she fits into the metaphor as well. Kendra I see as Buffy’s virginal conscience. Remember Kendra’s stammering shyness around Xander in WML:

“Buffy:  I'm guessing dating isn't big with your Watcher either.

Kendra:  I'm not permitted to speak with boys.”

And the fact that her parents gave her to her watcher when she was young, where she was then isolated, almost like being given to a convent:

“Kendra:  De tings you do and have, I was taught, distract from my calling. Friends, school... even family.

Buffy:  Even family?

Kendra:  My parents, dey sent me to my Watcher when I was very young.

Buffy:  How young?

Kendra:  I don't remember dem, actually. I've seen pictures. But, uh, dat's how seriously de calling is taken by my people. My modder and fadder gave me to my Watcher because dey believed dat dey were doing de right ting for me, and for de world.”

Kendra’s goal was to prevent the rise of “a very dark power”, i.e., Drusilla: “our priority is to stop Drusilla!” If Drusilla represents the id, then it makes sense that Kendra would be the one who wanted most of all to stop her.

Most important of all is her nagging warning about Angelus, whom Buffy was overlooking in favor of Angel:

“Kendra:  Angel? You mean Angelus? I've read about him. He is a monster.”

By giving into her desire, Buffy lost herself in Angel similar to the way Giles lost himself in Eyghon. She (unintentionally) unleashed a monster on the world, just as Daryl tried to do in SAR. Like Ted, Angel appeared to be human but was a conscience-less killer underneath, in each case revealed after Buffy killed the human. Buffy even signaled this similarity between Ted and vampires in her rant in the graveyard in Ted by running vampires together with Ted: “I mean, people are perfectly happy getting along, and then vampires come, and they run around and they kill people, and they take over your whole house, they start making these stupid little mini pizzas, and everyone's like, 'I like your mini pizzas,'….”

In essence, Buffy achieved without intending it the very result which she prevented Ampata from accomplishing deliberately: she sucked the life out of her beloved to satisfy her own desire. The Guardian we now understand was the superego which kept the id (Ampata) under control. Ampata became free only when she destroyed her guardian.

The way this played out in Innocence was that the Judge metaphorically disabled Buffy’s superego. In the real world, a judge separates the innocent from the guilty. In Freudian theory, the superego acts like a judge because it punishes misbehavior with feelings of guilt. In the twisted demon world, the Judge performs the opposite function: he is “a demon brought forth to... separate the righteous from the wicked... and to burn the righteous down.” The Judge operates by burning the souls – in the Buffyverse, the metaphorical conscience (Joss’s word) or superego (my gloss) – of human beings. When Buffy made contact with the Judge despite Angel’s shouted warning not to touch him, “it was like a sudden fever”. That disabled her superego just enough to allow her id to take control in the emotion of their escape. And one moment of happiness separated the righteous from the wicked.

With this all as background, let’s consider now the nature of Buffy’s relationship with Angel both in text and in metaphor. How should we evaluate her decision to have sex with Angel? The title of the episode gives us one possible answer: she was (and still is) innocent. Joss says of the title, “Buffy is still an innocent … she hasn’t lost anything of herself.” Giles, being the best dad ever, reinforces this at the end:

“Buffy:  You must be so disappointed in me.

Giles:  No. (she looks at him) No, no, I'm not.

Buffy:  But this is all my fault.

Giles:  No. I don't believe it is. Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly? You did. A-and I can. I know that you loved him. And... he... has proven more than once that he loved you. You couldn't have known what would happen. The coming months a-are gonna, are gonna be hard... I, I suspect on all of us, but... if it's guilt you're looking for, Buffy, I'm, I'm not your man. All you will get from me is, is my support. And my respect.”

The other side of the argument can be found in my reading of the season to this point. Joss says that Angel was designed to be Buffy’s “star-crossed lover” (Shakespeare!) and is “exactly the wrong guy for her”. In my view, every episode has been warning Buffy of the consequences of giving in to her id and telling her, in metaphor, that sex with Angel was a very bad idea. We saw this in SAR, in Inca Mummy Girl, in Reptile Boy, in Ted, and in Bad Eggs. Lie to Me prefigured Buffy’s dilemma now. There she had to kill her former crush because he’d become a vampire, and that’s where she is now with Angel. “Give me time.”

This reading is reinforced by the parallel Xander/Cordy relationship. It’s wrong, every which way it’s wrong. Their first kiss was in the basement of Buffy’s house, the site of her metaphorical subconscious, home of her id; there had never been a scene in the basement before that, and they built the set for that episode. Every time Xander and Cordy talk about their relationship they say how wrong it is. Bad Eggs could hardly have made it any clearer that they were letting hormones get the better of them. Willow sums up X/C here in Innocence: “It’s against all laws of God and man.” Note that this perfectly describes a relationship between a Slayer and a vampire.

I obviously lean strongly to the view that Buffy made the wrong decision, romantic though her relationship with Angel may have seemed. In my read of the show, Buffy’s destiny is to grow up. The whole season has built off the theme briefly explored in Angel, namely that Buffy’s relationship is a diversion from her destiny. She’s not ready, as DreamJoyce suggests in Surprise, and the effect is that her destiny has become secondary:

Angel:  So you don't think about the future?

Buffy:  No.

Angel:  Never?

Buffy:  No.

Angel:  (swallows) You really don't care what happens a year from now? Five years from now?

Buffy:  Angel, when I look into the future, a-a... all I see is you! All I want is you. (Reptile Boy Bad Eggs h/t anonymous.)

 

Some people were emotionally attached to the Buffy/Angel relationship and disappointed at the turn of events in Innocence. The psychology of the plot, though, is very well thought out. Adam Smith laid it out 250 years ago in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which I quoted in my analysis of Angel. Smith notes that we never empathize with lovers entirely because we never have the desire to form the same attachment they do. We form our own attachments, of course, but not with the same person as others do. Though their love will seem perfectly reasonable to them, it can never appear in the same light to us because we aren’t in love with the same person. Smith goes on:

“But though we feel no proper [empathy] with an attachment of this kind, though we never approach even in imagination towards conceiving a passion for that particular person, yet … we readily enter into those high hopes of happiness which are proposed from its gratification, as well as into that exquisite distress which is feared from its disappointment. It interests us not as a passion, but as a situation that gives occasion to other passions which interest us: to hope, to fear, and to distress of every kind. …

Hence it is that, in some modern tragedies and romances, this passion appears so wonderfully interesting. It is not so much the love … which attaches us …, as the distress which that love occasions. The author who should introduce two lovers in a scene of perfect security, expressing their mutual fondness for one another, would excite laughter, and not sympathy.  If a scene of this kind is ever admitted into a tragedy, it is always, in some measure, improper, and is endured not from any sympathy with the passion that is expressed in it, but from concern for the dangers and difficulties with which the audience foresee that its gratification is likely to be attended.” [Slightly edited for readability; my emphasis.]

In short, it’s the anticipation of a relationship, or concern about its ending, which is the proper subject of drama. A quiet, uneventful relationship is of no interest. Joss Whedon understands that: he says in the DVD commentary that he knew Buffy and Angel would get together, and that once they did people would become bored with them unless he did something else. Plus, of course, we should always remember the ending of I Robot, You Jane:

“Buffy: Let's face it: none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal relationship.

Xander: We're doomed!

Willow: Yeah!

They all laugh. Their laughter quickly becomes nervous and stops. Only the fountain can be heard as they each consider their plight.”

Buffy’s emotions still have a strong hold on her at the end when she’s unable to dust Angelus. The consequences of her decision will obviously be an issue going forward, so I’ll talk about that as we go along from here.

There are lots of other interesting issues as well. Since I’ve mentioned Willow’s criticism of X/C, we should take a look at her reaction in more detail. I obviously think Willow correctly identified the relationship as wrong, and Joss agrees: “The idea that Cordelia would end up falling for Xander … that would be a perfect romance because they are so very wrong for each other.” That doesn’t mean Willow was right to call Xander out on it. Her unrequited love for Xander causes her to overlook the fact that it may be a wrong decision, but it’s his decision to make, not hers. He didn’t owe her anything, and she seems to have forgotten her own statement in Angel that “If you care about somebody you care about them.”

Attempting to use Oz as a form of revenge was thoughtless on her part, but you gotta love Oz’s reaction. As Joss says in the commentary, you can see Willow fall in love with him in that moment. And AH’s smile … well, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Buffy’s dream about Jenny at the graveyard showed Angel standing in the sun. I see this as meaning it was Angel’s human side, now separate from the vampire. It was Angel, therefore, who gave her the clue about Jenny.

What about Jenny? It’s not at all clear that she did any harm in concealing her role – she had no way to know that Angel’s curse could be lifted – but spying on people isn’t the best way to get them to trust you. Buffy’s reaction is probably too harsh, though I excuse her under the circumstances. Giles is more interesting. He’s willing to sacrifice Jenny and his own feelings in order to keep his Slayer focused in an extreme emergency. That was essential under the circumstances, and it’s a character trait Giles will demonstrate repeatedly.

There’s so much greatness in these two episodes that I can’t really list it all. “Wow.” Angelus exhaling the smoke, post-coital both literally and metaphorically (Vampire bite? Prostitute? I mean, really.). DB’s marvelous portrayal of Angelus. The devastating scene in Angel’s apartment. Willow getting it first: “No, I don't think you can.” “I knew it! Well, not 'knew it' in the sense of having the slightest idea….” “Wear something trashy ... er.” Oz and Willow in the van. Possibly my favorite comedic line in the whole series: “I’m seventeen years old. Looking at linoleum makes me think about having sex.” “That was then. This is now.”

One reason I rate S2 so highly is that, with all respect to Joss, I’m not at all sure that Innocence is even the best episode of the season.

Trivia notes: (1) The lyrics we hear as Surprise opens in Buffy’s dream are from the song “Anything”: "Take me over, I'm lying down / I'm giving in to you." (2) The monkey next to Willow in Buffy’s dream is speaking French. The words translate as “The hippo stole his pants.”, which references back to Willow’s conversation with Oz in WML in which he told her that all monkeys are French and that the hippo wanted the monkey’s pants. Buffy wasn’t present for this conversation, so it’s a signal to the audience that the dream really is prophetic. (3) The monkey is a visual pun: it’s a capuchin monkey and Willow is drinking a cappuccino. (4) Willow tells Buffy “carpe diem” which means “seize the day”. Buffy told Willow to “seize the moment” in WTTH. That worked out poorly then, just as it does here when Willow quotes it back to her. (5) Giles told the gang, “Discretion is the better part of valor”. That’s a cliché these days, but is from Henry IV Part 1, Act V, sc. iv. (6) Xander said that Buffy ground the Master’s bones to make her bread. “Grind his bones to make my bread” is from “Jack and the Beanstalk”. (7) The song which plays at Dru’s party is called “Transylvanian Concubine”. Well, yes. (8) Cordelia in Some Assembly Required: “Angel saved me from an arm.” Here he saves Buffy from one. (9) The heavy breathing in the scene of Angel and Buffy making love was dubbed later by Joss and the sound editor. (10) The movie Buffy and Joyce watch at the end is called Stowaway and starred Alice Faye and Robert Young. (11) Brian Thompson, who played the Judge, was Luke in WTTH and The Harvest. (12) Surprise was the third episode written by Marti Noxon on her own (she collaborated writing WML 1; h/t anonymous). Marti would go on to become the co-showrunner with Joss.