Becoming 1 & 2

[Updated April 29, 2013]

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose just one of the top 4-5 episodes on my personal list of best episodes, I might choose Becoming 1 & 2. Certainly they contain many of my favorite moments from the entire series: “It’s a big rock…”; “someone wasn’t worthy”; Whistler’s voiceover as Buffy races down the corridor; the whole extended dialogue between Spike, Buffy and Joyce; “the police of Sunnydale are deeply stupid”; every single thing from the moment the sword fight begins through the end of the episode, including the best single word of dialogue in the series (“Me.”).


As I said in my post on Surprise/Innocence, S2 is an in-depth exploration of the issues raised in S1 regarding Angel and the impact of Buffy’s relationship on her destiny/route to adulthood. In Angel she had the strength of character to walk away from her beloved, recognizing that “this can’t ever work”. In Surprise she succumbed to a moment of weakness, no not a moment, more like three months of weakness. (Those were the lyrics of the song which played in the Bronze when Spike first observed Buffy in School Hard: “I did a stupid thing last night / I called you / A moment of weakness / No, not a moment / More like three months of weakness.”) The remainder of S2 has shown us the consequences.

What makes the season brilliant is that the entire issue is never portrayed as one-sided. Buffy does love Angel and he does love her. Buffy, of all people, deserves love. Many viewers see it as a fairytale romance, and it certainly has those elements. And yet the relationship was wrong in many ways, as I detailed in the Innocence post. Buffy wasn’t and isn’t ready for this relationship; it threatens to divert her from her destiny.

Though neither Buffy nor Angel could have foreseen the consequences of letting their ids take control, Buffy, correctly in my view, takes responsibility for the consequences. Innocence gives no protection against tragedy: the death of the unfortunate prostitute and those of Enyos (Innocence), Theresa (Phases), a “quaint little shop girl” (BB&B), the Magic Shop owner (Passion), Jenny Calendar, and Kendra; Xander and Buffy nearly were killed, as was Gage; Giles was tortured and Willow put into a coma; and the world very nearly sucked into Hell. And in the end, Buffy herself had to destroy the man she loved. Walking away seems like it might have been a good choice.

Now let’s back up just a bit and consider how she was forced into having to kill Angel. Willow decided to do the spell all on her own. We could question this from Buffy’s standpoint, but Buffy had previously asked her to do it and her reasoning at that time still made sense. If Buffy failed, this would be the only hope.

Willow acted at some not-insignificant risk to herself in casting the spell: “Giles:  (very concerned) W-Willow... channeling... such potent magicks through yourself, it could open a door that you may not be able to close.” Giles knows this all too well from his experience with Eyghon. Note his phrasing, too. It’s not that Willow would generate the magic, it’s that she would channel it. That seemed to have happened from what we saw – it’s as if something took over Willow part way through the spell and completed it for her. As we’ve seen with Buffy and Giles, losing yourself in something may have consequences.

The other contributing factor to Buffy’s horrifying moment was Xander’s lie to her. In fandom this is The Lie. It was, and maybe remains, an extremely contentious issue, so I’ll explain how I see it.

I think everyone agrees that Xander’s Lie probably stemmed from mixed motives. He no doubt thought he was doing the right thing, but his thoughts on that score were inevitably colored by his jealousy of Angel and desire to be vindicated about Angelus. While some of his motivation doesn’t do him much credit, I’ll leave that aside and just consider whether he was morally right.

The argument in Xander’s favor is what I’ll call “military necessity”. That’s probably the wrong term (see the link), but that’s the term everybody uses and it’s the answer Joss gave when asked about The Lie. In essence, the argument says that Xander was saying what needed to be said in order to get Buffy to do what she had to do: kill Angelus. Buffy had been unable to face up to that duty for months now, and too many people had died as a result. If she had known that Willow was going to try the restoration spell again, Buffy might have wavered just when she needed to be determined.

I don’t buy this defense. The biggest problem is that even if the “military necessity” argument were true – I don’t think it is, as I’ll explain below – Xander doesn’t get to make it. Commanding officers sometimes do lie to their subordinates in order to get them to do difficult or dangerous things. But this is a one-way street: subordinates don’t get to lie to their commanders. Ever. It’s the job of the commander to hear and consider all information, not the job of the subordinate to withhold it because he thinks the commander might flinch.

Xander is a subordinate in this situation. It wasn’t his call to make; it never is his call to make. As Jane Espenson phrased it in the DVD commentary to the S3 episode Earshot, “Being the Slayer also makes you General. She has to be the one to figure out how they are going to approach all their crises….” Sometimes Giles might make the call, the rest of the time Buffy does. That’s inherent in the role of the Slayer. Because she’s the one to carry out the decision to slay, it’s always going to be her final discretion. Xander took that away from Buffy.

By taking the decision on to himself, Xander also subverted Giles’ role as Watcher. Xander made his argument to both Buffy and Giles in the library. Giles came down on Buffy’s side and Xander had no right to sabotage that.

I assumed above that Xander was correct about the “military necessity”. In fact, he was wrong about it. Forget for the moment the actual course of the fight (hardly an argument in Xander's favor, since it led to the worst possible outcome for Buffy) because we have to judge his decision at the time he made it. The most important factor is that the goal was not to kill Angelus per se, it was to stop Acathla. Killing Angelus was just one of several options. What Xander did was limit Buffy’s options going in. He left her solely with the option of killing Angelus. The option of delay, a distraction perhaps, might have involved less danger to Buffy. Xander eliminated her tactical flexibility.

He did this because he was worried she might not actually kill Angelus if she had to. While we can understand this concern, the fact is that Xander could not have had and did not have any moral certainty about Buffy's resolution. Only Buffy could know that, and she proved at the end that his doubts were unfounded: she was not only willing to kill Angelus, she was willing to and actually did run a sword through Angel himself.

The other problem is that he brought Willow into his Lie without her permission and against her own strongly held view. We know from the previous argument in the library that Willow favored the attempt to restore Angel’s soul – note particularly the look on her face when Xander made his arguments – and her determination to try again reinforced that. In fact, the only reason Xander even went to the mansion was because Willow told him to tell Buffy that she was going to try again: “Maybe she can stall.”

Xander’s Lie didn’t just conceal the renewed attempt at restoration at a time when that knowledge might do some good, it seriously compromised Willow’s relationship with Buffy. Consider how Willow must have appeared to Buffy after the fact: Willow performed the spell to resoul Angel, but “told” Buffy to “kick his ass”. That looks like Willow deliberately wanted Buffy to kill Angel rather than Angelus. While that’s not the only possibility, Buffy may wonder about it.

Worse yet, Xander put Willow to the risk of performing a very dangerous spell to no purpose. Thus, by my analysis he betrayed Buffy, Giles and Willow in order to achieve his own goal, not theirs.

For a strong argument in Xander’s favor, see the comments by farmgirl62 below (labeled spoilers).

Was Buffy right to run the sword through Angel? It would have been such an easy call if they’d never discovered the disk with the restoration spell. In that case, Angelus was a vampire, they had no hope of restoring his soul, and he posed a clear and present danger to the whole world.

But Angel was at least quasi-human once the spell took effect. That makes it tougher. Sure, the whole world was at stake, but would you kill the person you loved most even to save the world? Other writers have asked similar questions. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has one character put the case to another: "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!" It’s pretty clear Dostoevsky’s answer was “no”.

Maybe it matters what kind of person Angel was. Unlike Dostoevsky’s baby, Angel wasn’t innocent in any meaningful sense, even putting aside what responsibility he may bear for the actions of Angelus in Xander’s view. Angel had asked Darla to sire him: “Show me your world.” He may not have known exactly what being a vampire entailed, but he didn’t ask and he did agree to see Darla’s world. Then he fell in love with the 15 year old Buffy on first sight (a very Lolita-ish scene, lollypop and all) and followed her to Sunnydale with the obvious intent of wooing her, during which he withheld some pretty important facts. Notwithstanding the problematic nature of the relationship, which I’ve detailed in previous posts, Angel allowed himself to lose self-control in Surprise. Note that he had some warning of the possible consequences, too – in Angel he turned to vamp face when he first kissed Buffy.

We can also look at her decision from the viewpoint of an existentialist. Whistler’s voiceover expresses a very existentialist view of life, reminding us of Joss’s worldview. The events of the world happen to us, and the world itself doesn’t care. We can only control the choices we make thereafter: “Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments…. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does…. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.”

In existentialist philosophy, one of the consequences of the freedom to choose is that you must accept full responsibility for the consequences of your choices regardless of what they are. In Whedon’s show Dollhouse, the phrase “actions have consequences” is repeated twice in the very first scene of the very first episode.

This means, in practice, that life is a series of cascading choices, each one affected by the one before (as well as by events in the world). Buffy’s options in Becoming were constrained by her own decision to have sex with Angel in Surprise; her choice now depended in part on her choice then. Difficult as her decision was, it did mean that she and Angel, the two people most responsible for the current situation, would bear the consequences. Perhaps that’s only fair. Or karmic.

An existentialist would, I think, approve of Buffy’s choice. Her options may not have been good ones – and let’s face it, Buffy’s situation sucked (very bad pun) – but it was her human responsibility to make a choice among them. In Buffy’s case, the choices she makes affect the entire world. That’s a metaphorical enactment of a key tenet of existentialism. To Jean Paul Sartre, every time you choose, you should “act for the world”. What this means is that you should act in such a way that anyone else in your situation would agree that you made a good choice under the circumstances. In essence, each moral choice you make is a form of teaching by example for the world at large. Buffy stands for the world.

What her actions tell is this: Even when we’ve been deprived of everything else – “No friends, no hope…. Take all that away... and what's left?” – we retain our fundamental integrity. Buffy’s “Me” expressed the ultimate existentialist authenticity:

“Authenticity thus indicates a certain kind of integrity—…that of a project to which I can either commit myself (and thus “become” what it entails) or else simply occupy for a time, inauthentically drifting in and out of various affairs….

Authenticity defines a condition on self-making: do I succeed in making myself, or will who I am merely be a function of the roles I find myself in? Thus to be authentic can also be thought as a way of being autonomous. In choosing “resolutely”—that is, in committing myself to a certain course of action, a certain way of being in the world—I have given myself the rule that belongs to the role I come to adopt.” Cite. My bold, italics in original.

In the end, it’s Buffy who is Becoming. She’s committed herself to a particular project, namely being the Slayer (growing up in my reading). In order to be authentic in pursuit of that role, she must act consistent with her goal. If I’m right that Angel was a diversion from her destiny, then putting him aside was essential.

Now let’s run through some additional points:

The image we get of Angel before his meeting with Whistler is one of an alcoholic homeless person. Remember that the alcoholism metaphor was emphasized in Angel, and is reinforced here by the portrayal of Angel (we’ll later learn that his original name was Liam) as a drunken lout before his meeting with Darla.

Before these episodes, Angelus didn’t seem to have much interest in destroying the world. He was uninterested about the prospect in Innocence and never tried till now. What changed, I think, was his brief ensoulment in IOHEFY. That defeated his attempt to do to Buffy what he’d done to Drusilla. His frustration at that defeat, IMO, explains his sudden eagerness to awaken Acathla.

When Angel lured Buffy into fighting him in Becoming 1, he taunted her that “you fall for it every time” (referring to WSWB). I’ve seen people criticize Buffy for this. The trap this time is much more subtle and clever, though, and I want to walk through it because some viewers obviously overlooked what Joss did.

Buffy went to fight Angelus, leaving her friends to be attacked by the vamps. Seems the same as WSWB, but there are two important differences. The first is that this time she left Kendra to guard them; leaving them in the protection of a Slayer hardly seems negligent. The more important difference, though, is this: that as long as Buffy was fighting Angelus, Acathla couldn’t be awakened. The world was safe as long as she kept him occupied; better yet if she staked him. Her mistake here was not to confront Angelus, but to end the confrontation and return to her friends. And the reason she made that mistake was precisely because Angelus goaded her into it by taunting her about making the opposite mistake in WSWB. Angelus pulled off a double deception, using himself as bait and then using Buffy’s previous mistake against her. Now that’s clever.

Dru killed Kendra, the id destroying the last vestige of Buffy’s virginal innocence. “Be in me”, Dru says. The id absorbed the innocence. That part of Buffy is now gone.

Spike is in much the same position as Buffy: “I want it like it was before.” He doesn’t have Dru, Buffy no longer has Angel. Spike bargains for his second chance by offering to deprive her of her own. That’s maybe why she hit him.

Xander finally tells Willow what she always wanted to hear. In typical Joss fashion, Willow isn’t consciously aware of it. In my view, though, it’s what wakes her up from her coma.

Buffy “comes out” to Joyce in dialogue which evokes a child telling her mother she’s gay.

The sword fight, besides being very cool, recalls this dialogue from WSWB:

“Angel:  You're not as strong as you think.

Buffy:  (gives him a challenging look) You think you can take me?

Angel:  What?

Buffy:  Oh, c'mon! I mean, you must've thought about it. What would happen if it ever came down to a fight, you vampire, me the Slayer, I mean, you must've wondered! Well, why don't we find out?”

I see the fight between Spike and Dru as the ego reasserting control over the id.

In my view, Acathla was metaphorically sucking Buffy back into childhood. She avoided that, and stayed on the path of her destiny, by putting Angel away. In Joss’ world, as probably in our own, the path to adulthood requires painful sacrifices.

Trivia notes: (1) Every season from 2-7 has an episode, or sometimes two, which prefigure the season finale. In S2 that episode is Lie to Me: in outline form, Buffy’s boyfriend turns into a vampire and she has to kill him. Following up on my post on Lie to Me about the seasonal structure, I’ll note that WSWB set up the events of Becoming. In SAR we saw the id, ego, and superego metaphor introduced, while School Hard gave us Dru and Spike as the metaphorical id and ego. (2) Compare Darla’s dress in the teaser with the picture of the anonymous noblewoman in the Watcher’s Diaries we saw in Halloween. (3) Angel told Darla that her life “sounds exciting”. From Halloween: “They [noble women] were just incredibly dull. Simpering morons, the lot of them. I always wished I could meet someone... exciting.” (4) Further evidence that Joss sucks at dates: Acathla appears to be made of stone and therefore can’t be carbon dated. That only works on things that were once alive. (5) Alfalfa (Buffy’s mangling of the name Acathla) was the name of a character on the very popular series Our Gang. (6) Giles was using the Orb of Thesulah as a paperweight. From Passion: “One Thesulan Orb. Spirit vault for the rituals of the undead. I don't get many calls for those lately. Sold a couple as new age paperweights last year.” (7) Bullock’s (Buffy meant to pay for that lipstick) used to be an upscale department store. (8) We last saw Det. Stein in Ted, so it’s no wonder he thinks Buffy has a history of violence. (9) When Spike told Buffy “Goodbye Piccadilly, hello Leicester bloody square”, that’s from the World War I-era song "It’s A Long Way to Tipperary". (10) “Well, I sing.” James Marsters was and is the singer for a band called “Ghost of the Robot”. (11) Buffy’s expulsion was subtly hinted in WSWB by both Joyce and Snyder: “I'll just be happy if she makes it through the school year.”; “That Summers girl. I smell trouble. I smell expulsion, and just the faintest aroma of jail.” (12) Buffy’s “hello lover” in the mansion mimicked Angelus’s greeting to her in the graveyard after he lured her away from the library. (13) The re-souling spell did work, though tragically. The potential for such a spell was hinted in BB&B (Giles reversed the love spell by going back to the source and using Amy’s magic, just as Willow did here using Jenny’s) and, of course, in Passion, where we saw Jenny save the spell to the disk. (14) Just before Buffy stabbed Angel, she told him “Close your eyes.” These were Darla’s words to him just before she sired him in the teaser to Becoming 1. He’s damned both times, just as he said in The Harvest. (15) Sarah MacLachlan’s “Full of Grace” plays over the ending. Remember that in IOHEFY Angel was possessed by – that is, filled with – Grace.