Grave

[Updated May 2, 2013]

Grave is the only finale which was not written by Joss and the only one to end on a cliffhanger. For these reasons and others, as I mentioned in my post on Bargaining, I’ve come to think of seasons 6 and 7 as an extended two-year arc which comes to completion only with Chosen. That makes Grave less a conclusion than a transition. If you look at the seasons this way – roughly, IMO, as the two seasons which deal with Buffy as an adult subsequent to the five seasons she spent becoming an adult – then it makes sense both that Grave ended with issues unresolved  and that it would seem less like the other finales. Joss: “I've said this before, that I think when people look at the seventh season, as a story, they'll understand season six better.”

I’ll talk first about the major unresolved issue. The short version is that the last three episodes were deliberately ambiguous about whether Spike wanted his soul back or the chip out, to the point that James Marsters was instructed to play it as wanting the chip out. So many viewers were confused – *raises hand* – that Joss issued a statement afterward confirming that Spike did, in fact, go to the demon with the intent of having his soul restored. In an interview, Jane Espenson said, “But it was that moment, in the bathroom, when Spike looked at the demon in him, that's what made him want to go get a soul…. We did mislead on you all, led you to believe it was the chip. We knew all the time. If all he wanted to do was hurt Buffy, he could have hurt Buffy [so he didn’t need the chip out]."

In general, the fans were not amused by this trickery. While I won’t go into the issue in detail, the phrases "Make me what I was" and "former self" present major problems if he intended to become a souled vampire. Most thought it unfair, and I know many who absolutely refused to believe that Spike wanted his soul until Joss said it.

There’s a difficult issue raised by the decision to stick with the soul canon rather than to reform Spike as a vampire. The problem is that they implicitly reformed him in order to insist that they were following the soul canon. It’s hard to explain why a vampire would come to want his soul back. That should be, to coin a word, inconceivable. When we first met Spike in School Hard, he told Angel that demons don’t change: “Angel:  Things change. Spike:  Not us! Not demons!” By the end of Seeing Red, he had an epiphany: “CLEM: Hey. Come on now, Mr. Negative. You never know what's just around the corner. Things change. SPIKE: Yeah, they do. … If you make them.” The whole series is predicated on the idea that vampires don’t change. Spike did.

One possibility is that Spike changed in some fundamental way since he acquired the chip in The Initiative. Maybe the behavior modification changed him. Or maybe it post-dated the chip: he fell in love with Buffy 3 episodes earlier, (h/t Aeryl) in Out Of My Mind. I don’t think there’s a right answer here, but my own view is that it was contact with Buffy which did it (see below on the religious imagery in this episode).

In my post on Crush, I pointed out that writer David Fury got the message of The Hunchback of Notre Dame all wrong. He had Tara say that Quasimodo’s love for Esmerelda was selfish, such that he could never end up with her. He meant her statement as a prefiguring of Spike and Buffy. In fact, the whole point of Hunchback was that Quasimodo’s love redeemed him. Here in Grave, David Fury wrote the scene in which Spike’s love for Buffy has put him on the road to redemption. The trials constituted Spike’s rite of passage and the soul signifies Spike’s willingness to change himself.

I’ll discuss Spike’s journey, including its relationship to A Clockwork Orange, in my posts on S7. For now, consider the purpose of Spike’s chip in that novel. Consider, too, my post Amends, where I discussed Angel’s culpability for the deeds of Angelus. Spike’s dark night of the soul raises the same issues. And it’s not by accident that the relevant episode is Amends.

Grave does share one characteristic of the other finales: Buffy has the epiphany – quite literally – which solves her season-long challenge. As prefigured in Life Serial, it was a puzzle that resisted solving, but she eventually got there. Buffy told Giles here in Grave that “It was like ... when I clawed my way out of that grave, I left something behind. Part of me.” That part of her was Dawn. In my post on Bargaining I said this:

“As applied in its original form -- to impending death -- bargaining ‘involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, “I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time...”’

It’s worth asking whether someone in these episodes promised to be better – to reform her life – as part of a bargain, and what that might mean metaphorically:

DAWN: You told me I had to be strong ... and I've tried. (tearful) But it's been so hard without you.

Buffy still has eyes closed, frowning.

DAWN: I'm sorry. I promise I'll do better, I will! (still tearful) If you're with me. Stay with me ... please. I need you to live. 

In my view, we need to interpret this via the metaphor. Dawn isn’t the Key anymore, but she still has a metaphorical role as Buffy’s inner child. Buffy’s inner child wants her slayer half – the adult half – to pay more attention to her, and promises to be better in return. Keep that metaphor in mind as we go through S6.”

Buffy thought she needed to repress her humanity, her inner child, in order to be an adult. All season long Buffy ignored Dawn, pushed her aside, insisted on protecting her – “sheltering” would be more accurate – in her effort to adopt adult behavior. We also see this reflected in Willow’s attacks on Dawn in TTG – Buffy’s metaphorical spirit lashing out. Dawn’s whiny reaction to being ignored led most viewers to take Buffy’s side, but metaphorically Buffy was wrong: “BUFFY: No. Giles, you were right about everything. It is time I was an adult. … I guess ... I wasn't ready before.”

Here in Grave, Buffy realizes that she doesn’t need to suppress her human, younger self (Dawn, in the metaphor) in order to be an adult, but to accept that aspect of her as an essential part of her adult life. When Willow took the power from Giles, she exulted in feeling “connected to everything”. But that connection was false, and it led Willow to try to destroy the world. Buffy found the true connection in her inner humanity: “I don’t want to protect you from the world, I want to show it to you.”

Buffy climbs out of the tomb, just as she had to do in Bargaining 2, metaphorically ending her depression by bringing her seasonal journey full circle. She wants to show Dawn the world, the exact opposite of her inadequate solution in Older And Far Away, where she stayed inside at the end. Staying inside with Dawn represented one step forward (willingness to recognize and include Dawn) and one step back/sideways because "staying in" continued to shelter her.

One reason S6 got so much criticism, I think, was that viewers didn’t expect Buffy’s depression to last all season. Joss: “We really went to a dark, dark place. … I also understand that it got too depressing for too long, but I don't think all of my instincts are perfect.” In fairness, Joss had promised that her return from the dead would be hard, but most of us didn’t expect it to be that hard. And we can’t say we weren’t warned: the season theme was, as always, given in the opening episodes. Depression and acceptance are, of course, the two stages of grief after bargaining.

Metaphorically, Buffy reaches acceptance after Andrew and Jonathan, who represent the lure of immaturity, flee the scene and immediately after her metaphorical heart and spirit achieve catharsis and reconciliation. In my reading, it’s Willow’s rage at Tara’s murder which leads to the catharsis. I mentioned in my essay on After Life that Buffy didn’t get catharsis there; she had to wait until now.

The catharsis isn’t just Willow’s, though it’s obviously that too. Willow’s rage is also Buffy’s rage – rage against the petty sexism represented by the Trio, rage at herself for what she thinks she is and what she thinks she’s done, demonstrated in her confrontation with her metaphorical spirit in TTG: “WILLOW: The [world] where you lie to your friends when you're not trying to kill them? And you screw a vampire just to feel? And insane asylums are the comfy alternative?” Similarly, Willow’s confrontation with Giles in Grave is an extended attack on the rational part of Buffy, the part that for years now has insisted that she grow up.

That explosion of emotion metaphorically breaks the blunted affect characteristic of Buffy’s depression. Her heart accepts her spirit with all its flaws and puts aside its own self-hatred – in the story, Xander’s, but in metaphor Buffy’s: “Well, last season [S6] was very much about Buffy doubting herself and the concept of power, sort of hating herself….” (Joss) We saw that self-hatred, a common symptom of depression, repeatedly emphasized in Two to Go as well as here in Grave:

XANDER: (calls after her) Okay, then, I'll just ... catch up. She's only my best friend, you know. No big deal, just...

He trails off in frustration. He has walked up to the car and now he slams his fist down on its lid angrily. Then winces in pain.

XANDER: ...glad I could help. (TTG) 

ANYA: You know, none of this would be happening if it weren't for you.
XANDER: You think I don't know that? You think I'm the hero of this piece? (upset) I saw the gun. Before Warren raised it, I ... I saw it, and I couldn't move. He shot two of my friends ... before I could even.... You want me to know how useless I am? That it's my fault? Thanks. Already got the memo. (TTG)

DAWN: Where are we going?
XANDER: I have no idea.
DAWN: What?
XANDER: I don't know, okay? I can't even run away well. And that's something I'm usually good at.
DAWN: Maybe we should we go back and help.
XANDER: Yeah, 'cause I've been such a big help already. Standing around like a monkey while Buffy gets shot. Tara's dead ... and Willow ... losing...
DAWN: (annoyed) Well, feeling sorry for yourself isn't helping either, Xander, okay? (Grave)

The ending scenes complete the parallel between Buffy and Willow which I’ve mentioned in previous posts: both need to access their humanity in order to solve their problem. Buffy does this by accepting Dawn in Dawn’s metaphorical role, Willow through the agency of the magic Giles “dosed” her with and through Xander as Buffy’s metaphorical heart:

ANYA: Oh. (getting it) You dosed her.
GILES: Yes.
ANYA: You knew she'd going to take your powers all along.
GILES: The gift I was given by the coven was the true essence of magic. Willow's magic came from a ... place of rage and power.
ANYA: And vengeance. Don't forget vengeance.
GILES: Oh. How could I? In any case, the magic she took from me tapped into ... the spark of humanity she had left. Helped her to feel again. Gave Xander the opportunity to ... reach her.

I’m not a particularly big fan of the hilltop scene with Xander and Willow. I see the show through a very Buffy-centric lens, so I don’t get as much emotional resonance from Xander’s actions. It didn’t help that I was angry with Xander already in the episode for telling Dawn about the attempted rape. Xander had no right to tell Dawn about it. That works in metaphor – the heart breaking a hard truth to the human, child part of Buffy’s self. But it can’t work at all in real life even if, as farmgirl62 pointed out in comments, “she was throwing Spike in Xander's face in an attempt to get him to go back into the fight. Xander bites back by throwing Spike under the bus as a bad individual for Dawn to idolize.” It would be unforgivable (h/t farmgirl62) incredibly obnoxious for someone to tell anyone such a personal fact. To disclose it to family is a flat out betrayal of friendship, especially after Buffy stopped him from telling Dawn in Villains.

In fairness, here’s a counterpoint to my view of the hilltop scene from Solitude1056:

“The first time I watched the episode, I thought: geezuz, doesn't Giles realize where Willow is heading, with all her protestations that she can't take it, must end it, must stop all the pain? Why is he encouraging her with the phrase "you can stop it," spoken yet again, and even included (I think) the nail-in-the-coffin phrase of you can end this. It seemed logical that she'd think in global terms, seeing as how she was feeling in global terms. How the hell could he push her like that? But on second watching, I realized, Giles was playing a dangerous game, betting on the fact that he knew the players well. Hence his pushing - because sometimes, you've got to really hit bottom in grieving before you can claw yourself up again - and hence him sending the message with Anya, betting on Xander being there to hear it as well. Dawn's pleading did nothing, Buffy's fighting got nowhere, Anya's separateness backfired, and it was down to Giles as the deliverer of humanity-magic, and Xander's love. Giles couldn't save the day, and didn't - he just created the door and could only hope Xander would step through it. In second viewing, I can see how touch-and- go it was, and strangely, as a result the whole thing affected me much more than it had the first time around.”

Putting aside my personal views, my critical evaluation is that (1) Buffy’s speech to Dawn – “I want to show you the world” – fits the theme, but, along with too much other dialogue in the episode, particularly the magic/drugs methaphor (heh), is clunky; (2) Buffy’s joie de vivre seems a bit out of place. Tara is dead. Anya is a vengeance demon again. Willow killed a human being, tried to kill others, threatened Dawn, beat Buffy senseless, and tried to end the world; and (3) there’s an awful lot of forgiveness necessary in the story line for what Willow did.

Still, the hilltop scene is affecting and Willow’s breakdown very classically cathartic:

“Priam wept freely…as Achilles wept himself

now for his father, now for Patroclus once again,

and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

Then, when brilliant Achilles had had his fill of tears…

he spoke out winging words, flying straight to the heart…

Enough of endless tears,

the pain that breaks the spirit.

Grief for your son will do no good at all.

You will never bring him back to life….”

 

When Buffy climbs out of the tomb after being dead, first literally in Bargaining and then emotionally and spiritually here, she is truly born again. The music – Sarah McLachlan’s “Prayer of St. Francis” – emphasizes this theme:

Lord make me an instrument of your peace

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon...

Where there is doubt, faith...

Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy...

O divine master grant that I may...

...not so much seek to be consoled as to console...

...to be understood as to understand...

...to be loved as to love...

For it is in giving that we receive

And it's in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it's in dying that we are born...

...to eternal life...

Amen.

 

Recall also that at the end of Entropy Tara quoted a line from Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”, consistent with Buffy being born again. I think this resurrection imagery is quite deliberate and that the consequences will be important in S7. The flash cuts to Spike receiving his soul as the song plays make it apparent that we’re to see this journey as implicating Spike also.

In the scene just after the teaser, Buffy tells Giles that she doesn’t know why she was brought back, and Giles has no answer for her:

BUFFY: (quietly) I guess ... I wasn't ready before. It took a long time for that feeling to go away ... the feeling that I wasn't really here. It was like ... when I clawed my way out of that grave, I left something behind. Part of me. I just... (pauses, looks Giles in the eye) I don't understand ... why I'm back.
GILES: You have a calling.
BUFFY: But it was my time, Giles. Someone would have taken my place. (Giles grimacing) So why?

Giles looks away, pensive, not answering.

Note that this is the question Angel asked Giles in Amends. Giles had no answer for him either. As with Spike, the reference to Amends is no accident.

As I see this, it means that Buffy doesn’t yet recognize the Ultimate Boon of the Hero’s Journey: “The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.” That Boon is the subject of S7.

Trivia notes: (1) I rather doubt Buffy told Giles about Spike’s attempted rape when she was bringing him up to date in the teaser. That might have put a serious damper on their laughter. (2) Willow reminds Giles that he called her a “rank, arrogant amateur” in Flooded. (3) Giles said that Willow killed “a human being” (singular). The DVD commentary strongly implies that Rack was not human. (4) Willow uses flying knives against Giles just as she did against Glory in Tough Love. (5) Willow refers to Giles as Jeeves, the character from P.G. Wodehouse novels. (6) Willow describes Andrew and Jonathan as “dead men walking” after the movie of that title. (7) Willow sent off the fireball with the words “fly, my pretty, fly”, from the movie The Wizard of Oz. (8) When Xander called Willow “black-eyed girl”, that was probably a play on the Van Morrison song “Brown-Eyed Girl”. (9) The hilltop scene reminds me of the climax of A Wrinkle in Time, in which Meg’s love saves Charles Wallace, though I don’t know if that was used as the exemplar or not. (10) Joss wrote Xander’s “yellow crayon” dialogue. (11) During the summer, Joss announced that the theme for S7 would be “back to the beginning”.