Something Blue is a fun episode, and it works very well to
advance certain plot points (Buffy/Riley) and to deal with Willow’s pain from
Oz’s departure. The problem I have in writing this post is that the episode has
no apparent relationship to any of the season themes. I’ll therefore deal with
the episode on its own.
I’ll start with Willow’s spell. Like most spells, the secret is in the
exact (and frequently ambiguous) wording. The key language is this: “Out of my passions, a web be spun. From
this eve forth, my will be done.” The spell called for her will to be done “out
of my passions”. That’s why only some of her wishes came true – she had to say
them when she was feeling emotional.
I’ve seen criticism of Willow for casting spells on her friends without
their consent. She’s attempted such spells in the past (Lovers Walk, Wild at Heart),
though she’s never carried through on one. This spell was different. At no time
did she try to make Oz come back or punish him. The whole point of the spell
was to enable her to control her own emotions, that is, to enforce her will
upon herself. Her very first words after casting the spell were “It is my will
that my heart be healed. Now.” Only when she thought the spell had failed and
didn’t realize the impact of her words did she say something which affected
others.
For this reason, D’Hoffryn’s effort to recruit her as a vengeance demon
was never likely to succeed. Willow really didn’t intend to hurt her friends.
She wasn’t calling out for vengeance, she was expressing her pain.
There are a couple of ways to look at the issue whether Willow was
justified in her pain. One is to compare her reaction to that of Buffy over
Parker. It took Buffy 2 episodes to get her catharsis with Parker in Beer Bad. It’s taken Willow 3. That
doesn’t seem excessive given that Oz was much more important to Willow than
Parker was to Buffy. Indeed, the real comparison should be Buffy/Angel, and as
Buffy herself told Giles in The
Initiative, she ran away for months and went to hell. If we’re grading on a
curve, Willow comes out far ahead.
Because Buffy/Angel is the obvious comparison, I’m inclined to think that
Willow’s experience here was intended to serve as a message for Buffy as well.
She told Willow in the teaser,
Buffy: I don't know. I really like being around him [Riley], you know?
And I think he cares about me.. but.. I just.. feel like something's missing.
Willow
Buffy: Exactly. Riley seems so solid. Like he wouldn't cause me heartache.
Willow
Buffy: I know.. I have to get away from that bad boy thing. There's no good there. Seeing Angel in LA.. even for five minutes.. hello to the pain.”
Buffy: Exactly. Riley seems so solid. Like he wouldn't cause me heartache.
Buffy: I know.. I have to get away from that bad boy thing. There's no good there. Seeing Angel in LA.. even for five minutes.. hello to the pain.”
Since the remainder of the episode deals with Willow’s pain, I think
Buffy is supposed to take the hint and get over Angel, just as Willow needs to
move past Oz. This is all the more true because Buffy has a potential
relationship with Riley; she can’t hold on to Angel at the same time.
That said, the two situations are different in ways that make it more
understandable for Willow to grieve for Oz than for Buffy to grieve for Angel.
Among other things, Angel has been gone for much longer already. In addition,
Willow has always been very supportive of Buffy in her grief, as we’ve seen in,
for example, The Prom and in S4
regarding Parker. Buffy is more supportive in Something Blue than Xander is, but that’s a low bar. Willow
probably deserved a little better.
Buffy and Willow tend to cope in different ways. Buffy avoids other
people, while Willow tries to eliminate the pain. In my experience, people are
inclined to see their own coping strategy as “normal” and to be less
sympathetic to different strategies, even to see them as “wrong”.
Trivia notes: (1) The title comes from the old “folk wisdom” rhyme about
weddings: the bride should have “Something old, something new/Something
borrowed, something blue”. Here it
has a double meaning, referring both to Buffy’s “wedding” and to Willow’s mood
(“feeling blue”). (2) The first
transition in the teaser contains very subtle foreshadowing of a spoiler point.
(3) Buffy saw Angel in the AtS episode I Will Remember You. (4) The
Zagat Guide which Spike mentioned is a restaurant guide for major cities around
the world. (5) Willow referred to Spike as “the undead English patient”. The
English Patient was a 1996 movie. (6) Spike’s favorite soap opera was Passions. (7) Riley suggested taking Buffy for a ride
“past the vineyards”. The area just north of Santa Barbara has many vineyards.
(8) Xander’s description of Willow as a “brave little toaster” referred to the
movie The Brave Little Toaster. (9) Xander’s wistful mention of a “fuzzy
bikini” referred to the outfit worn by star Raquel Welch in the movie One
Million Years B.C. (10) The movie Steel Magnolias might make Willow
feel better in a “there but for the Grace of God” way – one character in the
movie died from the complications of diabetes. (11) Xander may think they’re
not all doomed to relationship badness, but remember the ending of IRYJ:
“Buffy: Let's face it: none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal
relationship. Xander: We're doomed! Willow: Yeah!” (9) If you’re used to the
Centigrade scale for temperature, the blood Buffy handed Spike was 37 degrees
(human normal). (10) Foreign viewers: American couples register their
preferences for gifts at department stores so that wedding guests have some
idea what to get them.
I had never before considered Willow's level of emotion being the operative element of her spell. The one other theory I've heard for the episode's spell's inconsistent effects has been proposed by SpringSummers, which is a little spoilery. (SPOILERS) She thinks that the spell only works if there is an element of truth in the words Willow says. So hearts don't heal instantly, and Q-tips don't unbend themselves. But Giles is somewhat blind; Xander is something of a demon magnet; and Buffy and Spike are (perhaps) somewhat attracted to each other. How much one accepts this theory depends on how much willingness one has to accept the idea that feelings have already sprouted between these two.
ReplyDeleteIn general, the other thing notable is that Buffy avoids people, but Willow tries to get people to help her, or reassure her. Buffy wants to be alone, and Willow wants to be surrounded. The question of which is more appropriate is up in the air. Buffy advocates could say that she prefers not to burden people; Willow advocates could say that she prefers not to shut people out or unduly worry them by abandoning them. Both strategies have pros and cons. I admit to being more sympathetic to Willow on this point, and unhappy with the gang for giving her a hard time for whining or shirking her "responsibilities" to do spells for Giles, especially since The Initiative and Pangs saw her suppressing the urge to talk about her problems around others, and, in The Initiative in particular, working hard on helping Buffy.
As I think I mentioned before (Dead Man's Party, maybe?) I'm personally more like Buffy on these issues. I can understand how it gets wearing to deal with someone else's emotions, but I find myself on Willow's side in this episode.
DeleteIt's interesting at this point in the series that Giles is encouraging Willow to use magic, though both Oz and Buffy have expressed doubts.
When spells go wrong, my first reaction is to look at the wording (my lawyerly instincts, I suppose). I believe most of the time the problem can be explained that way. For example, in Fear, Itself this was the sequence when Willow tried to summon the guide:
"(She opens her eyes and smiles as she sees a tiny speck of light floating in front of her face) Woah! I did it! I did you. Hi! - Right, you’re waiting for instructions. Lead me to Oz. (The speck of light starts to float past her, and Willow gets up) Wait! I should try to find the people trapped upstairs first. (Willow looks down and doesn’t see that there are now two then three sparks) But even if I get them we still need to find a way out of the house. (The sparks keep multiplying)."
IOW, by constantly changing her mind -- asking for the guide to lead extra people to different destinations -- Willow confused the guide and generated the additional lights which ended up overwhelming her. There are similar examples from future episodes as well (Triangle comes to mind).
Is it really a matter of whether Buffy or Willow is right here? I see it more as a matter of personal tendencies, the point being to respect and support one's friends when theirs are different from one's own. For example, I tend to be like Buffy, my sister more like Willow, and for years we hurt each other because we expected each other to act the way we ourselves did—now we understand that we just deal with problems differently and are able to be supportive. The problem, as I see it here, is that neither Xander ("So, so tired of it") nor Buffy ("We're all tired of it") nor GIles (it is not like you to shirk your responsibilities) are truly supportive of Willow: they want her grief, as she says, to cease being inconvenient. I agree with you, Mark, in in your measure above—and I see the impatience with Willow as another sign of the group's fraying, which does link it to the season's themes, at least a bit.
DeleteOn the level of the spell, perhaps my background in literature places me on the lawyerly side... I tend to go with the wording, too: in Greek mythology, that is always the catch in making requests from the Gods (such as asking for eternal life but not eternal youth and ending up a grasshopper... ). The hinge would be Amy—I see her as being emotional about her spell-making ability when she is able to turn Amy human, then reverse the spell again, which is why her words have power—is that how you read the scene?
Yes, that is how I read the Amy scene. I also agree about the strain the events of SB put on the various relationships, though I didn't see that on first watch -- it only seems likely in retrospect.
DeleteThis leads me to a point which I thought about making in the post but didn't: whether Willow's spells open doors to possibilities that otherwise might have remained closed. Giles warned her of that when she did the spell in Becoming 2 and I think it's possible now.
SPOILERS
Would Spike have realized his love for Buffy in S5 if not for the spell here? Would Xander's attraction to Anya have been so strong if Willow hadn't told him he was a demon magnet?
These are probably unprovable one way or the other, but thinking along these lines makes sense as a "but for cause".
I definitely don't think it has to be "either/or" Buffy or Willow.
DeleteOn the point below (I'll just write out my response here), I think it's true that Willow shouldn't be using magic to change her fundamental emotional makeup. On the other hand, I think it's hard to know which spells are truly "acceptable" morally and which are not. Is it wrong to, for example, drink to make oneself feel better? That is one possible comparison (and indeed she tires the spell shortly after trying alcohol). I'd say that the real instance is that one does have to accept that the world exists as it is, and that any attempts to change the world will be met with resistance. So alcohol can make one feel better temporarily, but can't make the problem go away and has negative consequences as well (like hangovers, and the like). Changing the external world with magic is sometimes necessarily in order to help/save lives, but there are almost always negative consequences associated with it.
(SPOILER) It takes until S6 for Willow to gain a full appreciation of those conesquences, but the show's final message, as of S7, is not "do not do magic," but to have a full understanding of the pros and cons of it and to do spells when the benefits outweigh the negative consequences. It seems likely that even if a spell could be done to remove Willow's pain without external consequences, the internal consequences could be negative: pain exists "for a reason" -- it does something positive (by forcing us to learn important lessons, by making us pay attention to what we have lost so that we value what we gain next time), and a Willow who had no pain at all would be a less whole person. That said, I am not so sure that I'd consider it morally wrong to remove one's pain, if it could be done in a way that didn't hurt other people: it's more something I'd say is unwise.
I meant "real message," not "real instance." Bah.
DeleteAs far as the final point you (Mark) make, I'd add that this episode also solidifies Anya's trustworthiness to the gang, since here she summons D'Hoffryn for the sake of the gang, rather than, in Doppelgangland, to try to return to her previous occupation. Her commitment to Xander over her past is now well-established.
SPOILERS
I think that it's partly true that the effects of Willow's spell leads to future relationships being partly determined, especially about Spike's feelings for Buffy. It also is partly what encourages Buffy to go for Riley more fully -- trying to put badboy attraction out of her mind completely is not just about her brief (from her perspective) encounter with Angel, but the memory of "lips of Spike." It's also partly that this episode acts as foreshadowing.
The ethics of Willow's magic use was one of those topics guaranteed to generate an argument at ATPO. It was forever unresolvable for several reasons, not least the fact that the show itself never tried to offer a Unified Theory of Magic. In addition, using magic as a metaphor in different ways at different times further complicated the issue.
DeleteI'd like to say I had an easy answer, but I don't. I've pretty much come to the point of Justice Potter Stewart's infamous line about pornography: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." In my charitable moments I see this as consistent with an existentialist ethics as discussed in my post on Choices. :)
In this particular case I think that Willow needed to let time do the healing. That's partly because we've all been through something similar; her situation isn't unique, not even on the show, and we can be confident the pain will subside. But I'd be reluctant to make this a general rule, as though every loss, no matter how awful, should be met with "just get over it". It depends.
And as I said, I think Willow deserved better from her friends here, even if the spell was the wrong approach.
My criticism of WIllow was never that she performed spells upon her friends but precisely that she sought to perform one upon herself: while I understand and sympathize with her motives, especially given the lack of sympathy she is finding with her friends, she is still abusing magic here, for she is seeking to avoid human emotions, cut short the grieving process—changing the world to suit herself, to echo what someone will say later... In LW she was also trying to work magic upon Xander, but I saw it as almost as problematic that she was turning to magic to control her own desires.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteInteresting take on Buffy vs. Willow. While I wholeheartedly agree that Willow deserves better from her friends, and I definitely see your point about Willow wanting to have people around while Buffy withdraws, I feel that Willow's belief that her pain should be gone now makes her handle it less well than Buffy, who at least understands that you have to go through it and that it takes time. Willow's inability to accept this and cope --SPOILER--causes bigger problems in the future. It's not that I think Buffy is great at coping, since obviously she isn't (and who among us is), but I see this issue as maybe Willow's greatest character flaw. And I don't mean to imply either that she doesn't deserve great sympathy for this loss, and any others that may come her way. It's just her reactions to these losses that is problematic.
ReplyDeleteI'm sympathetic to this, and to Buffy, since her coping strategy is my own. The show, interestingly, is very unsympathetic to both. Buffy's friends treated her pretty badly in Dead Man's Party (at least in my view). Willow's friends aren't much help here, though certainly better than DMP. In each case more understanding and more sympathy might have done the trick.
DeleteThat's not to say I'd give carte blanche to a Willow pity party, because there IS a point at which she needs to get over it. I just didn't think that point had come quite yet.
Working from your interpretation of the season, I took a stab at making this episode fit thematically. (SPOILERS throughout)
ReplyDeleteWillow is sad about Oz’s departure and mad at her friends because she thinks that they aren’t supporting her enough. Although I sympathize with her to some extent, she also clearly does not want to face up to the truth of her situation, which, while not an uncommon failing, is one that can lead to serious trouble. Hence, the beer part. When her friends refuse to play along, it triggers her insecurities about relationships ("Yeah, 'cause most relationships are great and trouble free") with her friends and she makes angry comments which trigger the “I will it so” spell. These comments are all drawn from the other characters’ insecurities, and are very negative and cutting.
To Giles: “You don’t see anything” Giles believes that he doesn’t see what’s going on, or put another way that he’s been cut out of the loop, which we find out in A New Man is basically true. We also know from Nightmares that he's long been concerned about losing the aility to read, a similiar though not identical problem.
To Xander: “You’re a demon magnet” Xander is not sure about Anya yet, as was made clear by his comments about vengeance demons in Pangs. His history gives him good reason to be unsure. He resolves this issue in Hush.
To Buffy: “I don't see the big. He's probably just standing out there. You could find him in two seconds.”
This minimizes Buffy’s duty as slayer, casting it, and her, as trivial. This recalls her fears in The Freshman, and her line in Pangs, “And they say one person can’t make a difference.”
Also to Buffy: “Why doesn’t she just go marry him?” This is the most important one. Buffy, having just seen Angel in LA, expresses to Willow in the cold open her concern about only liking bad boys:
Buffy: I know.. I have to get away from that bad boy thing. There's no good there. Seeing Angel in LA – even for five minutes – hello to the pain.
Buffy is worried that there might be something wrong with her, that she falls for bad boys because of some deep internal fault, probably connected with being the slayer, as the line and staking of the vampire just before the cut to the opening credits suggest. This was Buffy’s worry post-Parker in Fear Itself: everyone is going to abandon her because of who she is. We see that Buffy thinks her father left for that reason, and we know that her parents fighting was around the time that she became the Slayer. We know from Nightmares that she fears there is a causal relationship there: her father left because she was the slayer and he couldn’t deal. When the man jumps out at her just before the opening credits in “Fear Itself” she accepts his premise: that her hitting him (with slayer strength) meant that there was something wrong with her, even though it is obviously your own fault if you jump out at someone at night in a scary mask and they hit you. Buffy marrying Spike, someone she views as "a pig," who is "not even nice," certainly falls into the category of her falling for a bad boy.
Willow’s spell activates the insecurities for each of her friends. In this way, her spells are vengeance for their refusal to join her self-pity party. This is why D’Hoffryn is attracted to her (which metaphorically recalls Buffy’s fear). This tears the group apart, and isolates them. In the mausoleum, they aren’t even fighting together: Anya and Xander are fighting Xander’s demons, Buffy and Spike are kissing, and Giles isn’t even there. Their insecurities are manifested and separating them, just like in Fear Itself. Willow sees the results of her pain and anger, and this causes her to accept the burden of the pain and the insecurities vanish.
So how does this apply to Buffy? Well, as you point out, Buffy is also fresh off two major relationship disasters, feeling insecure about her identity, and facing the prospect a new relationship. In this case, Buffy rejects Riley because she’s into a bad boy. (This is extra ironic because in two episodes, she will be rejecting him because she’s afraid that he really is a bad boy and she can’t go down that path again. Her brief engagement to Spike dredges up the worry.) As the “hands,” Buffy represents the will, making a complete person with the others (mind, spirit, heart, will). Willow’s spell to have her will done out of her passions then represents Buffy acting out of fear (reinforced by Willow’s passions all having to do with insecurity). When Willow undoes the spell, she says, “Let the healing power begin. Let my will be safe again. As these words of peace are spoken, let this harmful spell be broken.” This renunciation of acting out of passion allows Willow to heal, just as Buffy renouncing her fear of her insecurities allows her to mend things with Riley at the end of this episode and in Doomed. As for how this plugs into the season down the line, in The Yoko Factor, Buffy actually confirms the major insecurity that the other Scoobies have, mainly “How can any of you help?” This is what separates the group, and it is, irnonically, a confirmaiton of Buffy's worst fear: the group leaves because her being the slayer means they can't stay. By renouncing this, and instead affirming that her friends are the source of her power, Buffy heals the group, and makes herself (the will) safe again, thus making her able to defeat Adam instead of playing into his trap. This is foreshadowed in one of Buffy’s line to Giles:
DeleteBuffy: I'm not crazy, and I know that you probably don't approve, and my father's not that far away, I mean, he could— but this day is about family — my real family — and I would like you to be the one to give me away.
The recognition that the Scoobies are her real family is crucial, albeit ironic here, given the circumstances.
This is very good. I have to think it through a bit, but I like it.
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