Conversations With Dead People

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Conversations With Dead People, the second great episode of S7 – third if you include Beneath You – marks the true beginning (heh) of the season storyline, as Buffy tell us in the opening words: “Here we go.” The season’s Big Bad isn’t officially identified yet, though viewers with a good memory could be pretty sure by now. I’ll hold off until we get confirmation in Never Leave Me.

I’ll begin with a sad farewell to Jonathan, who was a fan favorite notwithstanding his tendency to fantasy and bad decisions. His final words showed real maturity. After all the trauma of Earshot and Superstar and the Trio, he grew up. So, of course, Joss killed him. J

As shadowkat pointed out just after Conversations aired, each of the 3 principals got what she perhaps most wished for, and it turned into a nightmare. Dawn got to talk to Joyce, who told her that Buffy would be against her. Willow got to talk to Tara, whose conduit told her to kill herself. Buffy got to voice her anxieties, only to have them reinforced and a new one added regarding Spike.

One thing comes through loud and clear in Buffy’s conversation with Webs, namely her sense of being isolated, alone. Loneliness is the theme of the episode, just as it is of Angie Hart’s song which opens and closes it. Each vignette, including that of Andrew, Jonathan, and Warren, showed an individual who thought s/he was making a connection (in Andrew’s case with Warren, in Jonathan’s case with Andrew), but each was in fact alone.

Buffy tells Webs that she commits, but that’s debatable. Yes, she certainly committed to Angel, but her failure to commit was why Riley left and she certainly didn’t commit in any meaningful sense to Spike in S6 (she does seem committed to encouraging his new-found soul here in S7, but that’s different). It shouldn’t be surprising if she finds committing difficult – she had to kill Angel, she nearly had to kill Willow and Anya, and she may now have to kill Spike. Her role as Slayer makes it tough to commit to anyone, which reinforces the isolation she confesses to Webs.

Of course, she makes no connection with Webs either. He’s just a way for Buffy to talk to herself, still a conversation with a dead person be it noted: “Whisper in a dead man’s ear/doesn’t make it real.” This isolation goes all the way back to the beginning of the slayer line: “First Slayer: No ... friends! Just the kill… We ... are ... alone!” It could hardly be otherwise when she’s the Slayer:

HOLDEN
So, all that time, you were a slayer?

BUFFY
The.

HOLDEN
"The", like as in "the only one"?

BUFFY
Pretty much.

HOLDEN
Oh. So, when you said not connected, that was kind of a telling statement, wasn't it—?

Giles told Willow in Lessons that “it’s all connected”. Webs feels his own connection to a “powerful all-consuming evil” (and see trivia note 9). The bad guys are connected. How can Buffy achieve her own connection, not to evil but to other people, in light of the dilemma she expressed in Selfless: “You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off.”? That’s Buffy’s dilemma for the season. In the words of director Nick Marck, “this episode is the set up for the season finale.” (DVD commentary)

Everyone was unsure who or what Dawn saw. Jane Espenson had to confirm Dawn’s vision, and I’ll discuss that in two more episodes. Joyce’s words to Dawn will be controversial later, so I’ll be discussing them later as well. For now, they’re intended to put a rift between Dawn and Buffy, consistent with the theme of Buffy’s isolation we saw in her conversation with Webs.

For Willow’s conversation, I want to copy here a discussion I had with local-max in comments to Older And Far Away (slight edit to avoid mild spoiler):

Local-max: “I don’t think Tara is 100% wrong. I think Willow is so used to being powerless, and has grown accustomed over the years to both being smarter than her peers and to rules being essentially meaningless (she has to break out of “I can’t make the first move or I’ll be a slut” and “I can’t walk off campus when I’m not a senior!”, after all), that her judgment is fairly terrible; she can’t distinguish good uses of power from bad ones. I think Tara’s attitude is that Willow simply can’t be trusted with power, because she abuses it automatically, and if only Willow stops using power, well, everything will be better. That attitude is wrongheaded, though, because Willow needs to learn how to use power effectively, not just to give up on it. But I don’t think Tara’s position is psychologically incredible: I think that it makes a lot of sense for her, and for someone of her background, to have a knee-jerk feeling that Willow is just one of those people who can’t be trusted with power, and who can only be trusted otherwise.

I think that you can argue that season seven continues Tara’s role as skeptic of Willow’s power, a role Willow has to grow beyond needing/wanting. “Cassie”, representing “Tara,” also functions as a dark mirror for Tara. While Giles tells Willow that giving up magic is harmful to her and that she should use her power for herself and others, “Tara” tells Willow that she can’t be trusted to do even a single spell, because her power itself is so deeply corrupting that she will eventually kill all her friends. And the ne plus ultra of that is, of course, that she should kill herself. What is killing herself but the ultimate way of cutting herself off from her power. The thing is, Tara—the real Tara—may have an element of being anti-power, where Willow is concerned, in a way that I actually do think is wrongheaded. But she would never take it to the extreme of wanting Willow to kill herself.”

My response: “I'm not convinced that Tara's qualms about Willow's abuse of magic lead inexorably to the conclusion "no more magic". That's certainly one possible conclusion, and Willow's "mind wipe" behavior supports it. But there are less drastic reactions too, and Tara seems uniquely well-placed to do some teaching on the proper use of magic. Jumping to the most extreme solution in direct opposition to her original admiration of Willow's power, seems a bit discordant to me. Not "out of character", because I think your explanation is certainly a plausible read, but "off". Obviously, that's a very subjective reaction.”

Willow certainly distrusts her magic, and perhaps she (at least in retrospect) got the same sense from Tara that local-max had. Willow certainly told Giles that she distrusted magic in Lessons and Beneath You. Her “mutual ‘no-see-ems’” spell in STSP can hardly have increased her confidence. Then, in Selfless, the old Willow came back for a minute when she threw the spider demon out the window, and D’Hoffryn called her on it. Her conversation here with “Cassie” was clearly designed to implant further doubts in her regarding her own ability.

What saved Willow was not magic, but her love for Tara. She has no doubts on that score – Tara would never be a party to any effort to get Willow to kill herself. So while the Big Bad can play on Willow’s insecurities, there are parts of humanity it clearly doesn’t understand.

Self-confidence is a key issue for everyone in S7, particularly Buffy. In addition, Willow is Buffy’s spirit, so any lack of self-confidence in Willow will reflect Buffy’s own internal doubts, just as Buffy’s doubts will be made manifest in Willow’s insecurities. But love is a key theme too.

Lots of interesting discussion points in CWDP. Spike (see below) and Andrew both killed someone. Should they be treated differently? Different from Willow? Anya? Stay tuned – these will be major debates for the season.

Actually, there was a great deal of debate after this episode over whether Spike actually killed the girl. Some thought it was the Big Bad. Others thought it a trick of some kind because, well, “he has a soul now”. He also has a chip, which we saw working in Beneath You and Help, but which obviously didn’t fire when he bit the woman here.

Webs played expertly on Buffy’s fears regarding both herself and Spike; the two fears are connected, even if Buffy isn’t, as we’ll see. Consider Buffy’s dilemma if Webs told her the truth. She just made a big issue to Xander about the fact that she killed Angel. For her to have to stake Spike, when she admits to having indeterminate feelings about him, would be another level of pain. At the same time, she steeled herself to kill Anyanka, even if in the last resort, notwithstanding Xander’s accusation of a double standard. Actually pursuing a double standard would cause all kinds of problems, especially increasing her isolation from others.

Trivia notes: (1) AFAIK, the time stamp at the beginning has no meaning except as the air date and time, though it could also set the beginning of the final arc towards Chosen. (2) Angie Hart, whose song opens and closes the episode, is a friend of Joss and performed on the show in two previous episodes. Joss co-wrote the song with her. (3) Joss also wrote the Buffy scenes, while Marti Noxon wrote the Willow scenes, Jane Espenson wrote Dawn’s scenes, and Drew Godard wrote the Trio. (4) This is the only episode in which Xander does not appear. (5) The original plan was for Tara to appear in the scenes opposite Willow. Amber Benson refused the role because of the fallout from Seeing Red; she didn’t want Tara to appear evil. (6) Cassie told Willow, “Remember that time on the bridge when you sang to each other?” This was a clue that Cassie wasn’t actually in communication with Tara: Tara sang on the bridge in OMWF, but Willow didn’t. (7) It’s a little hard to catch, but Dawn was talking on the phone to Kit, from Lessons. It’s a subtle way of reminding viewers that events continue to happen offscreen. (8) Webs wrote an essay on Vaclav Havel, a playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia. (9) Webs tells Buffy that being a vampire feels “Like I'm connected to a powerful all-consuming evil that's gonna suck the world into a fiery oblivion.” Compare what Jesse said in The Harvest: “I feel good, Xander! I feel strong! I'm connected, man, to everything!” (10) The joke about Scott Hope coming out is that Fab Filippo, who played Scott Hope, later played a gay character on the TV show Queer As Folk. (11) Buffy said she didn’t need therapy from “the evil dead”, referring to the movie of that title. (12) In the flash cuts behind Dawn, Joyce’s body is in the same position on the couch as when Buffy found her. (13) Andrew called Jonathan “McFly”, referring to the main character in Back to the Future. (14) Jonathan used the Spanish word “cuesta” to mean “quest”. It actually means “hill” or “slope”. (15) Warren called Jonathan “Short Round”, after the character in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (16)  Cassie reminded Willow that she was “strong like an Amazon”. That was the phrase Willow and Tara used in The Body. (17) The pronunciation of “nemeses” refers to Warren’s uncertain pronunciation of that word in Gone. (18) Buffy’s use of the phrase “insane troll logic” refers to Triangle. (19) It may be a stretch, but I read Webs’ phrase asking Buffy if she was ready for “our little death match” as a Shakespearean reference to orgasm. (20) Cassie mentioned the Indigo Girls, who are a lesbian band. (21) Conversations won the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.