Chosen

[Updated May 3, 2013]

DRUSILLA
… You like our little songs, don't you? You've always liked them, right from the beginning. And that's where we're going...

THE MASTER
...right back to the beginning. Not the Bang... not the Word... the true beginning. (Lessons)

Joss: “And the real beginning was girl power. The real beginning is what does it mean to be a Slayer?”

There’s much to say about Chosen and about S7 as a whole, such that this, like most of the finale posts, will be a long one. As I did with The Gift, I’ll start with the conclusion. It’s always easiest to reverse engineer the season once you know where it’s going. Then, because S7 often gets criticized, I’ll outline how the season themes played out and the paths of the core characters.

End of Days

[Updated May 3, 2013

Having reached End of Days, it’s only fitting that we finally discover the (symbol of the) Ultimate Boon. In my post on Grave I said that S7 would cover the stage of the Hero’s Journey known as the Ultimate Boon. Wikipedia describes the Ultimate Boon this way:

“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.” My emphasis.

Here in End of Days Spike tells us that Buffy’s found it (my emphasis again): “And you did it. Fulfilled your mission. Found the Holy Grail.” The quest for the Holy Grail is, symbolically, a quest for the deeper meaning of life. At different times that might mean Christian salvation or, more generally, spiritual progress. We might see it in more secular terms as seeking wisdom or the meaning of life. Success on the quest involves asking the right questions. Buffy’s conversations with Spike and Faith are leading her in the right direction, but she has one more step to take.

Touched

[Updated May 3, 2013]

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Continuing the point from Empty Places, the chaos of the teaser in Touched drives home the logical necessity that someone has to be in charge. The group was incapable of even having a discussion, and both Xander and Kennedy suggested that not everyone should participate (without, of course, including themselves out, to quote Samuel Goldwyn):

XANDER
You know, I'm thinking that everyone here shouldn't have a say.

KENNEDY
I just wonder if those of us who have been here longer should have more of a say.

Empty Places

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Et tu Brute?

Empty Places made viewers angry when it aired and I think still does today. It’s comparable to Dead Man’s Party in its plot, and that generated a similar reaction. I don’t like DMP (second bottom on my list), but EP works for me. What’s the difference? Mainly the fact that the abuse of Buffy was SO one-sided in DMP. It wasn’t just that Xander and Joyce, and Willow to a lesser extent, were self-righteous, the episode and its successors implied that they were entirely right. In EP the situation is much more nuanced. We see the conflicted feelings of the SG, we see Buffy’s side, we know that there’s something to be said on all sides. While my heart’s with Buffy, just as it was in DMP, here I can see the point of her critics.

Dirty Girls

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Dirty Girls re-enacts a standard horror scenario in order to take us back to the original concept of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It seems like a long time ago, but in both my Introduction and in my post on Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest, I quoted Joss on the reason why he created the show. I’ll quote it again here because I think Dirty Girls brings us back to the beginning in a crucial way:

“Where did the idea [for BtVS] come from? There’s actually an incredibly specific answer to that question. It came from watching a horror movie and seeing the typical ditzy blonde walk into a dark alley and getting killed. I just thought that I would love to see a scene where the ditzy blonde walks into a dark alley, a monster attacks her and she kicks its ass.”

Lies My Parents Told Me

[Updated May 3, 2013]

"For when was revenge in its exactions ought but an inordinate usurer?" Herman Melville.

Immediately after the episode which taught us that the narrative has trapped Buffy, we learn that some part of that narrative consists of lies. The brilliantly constructed Lies My Parents Told Me is the fourth/fifth great episode of S7. Why is it so great? Partly it’s the flashback scenes, building on what we saw in Fool For Love, to which there are many references. Partly it’s the major clue about the source of Buffy’s various related problems. But mostly because it poses, in the sharpest possible way, the moral dilemmas Buffy faces this season: justice v. vengeance; redemption; consequentialist v. deontological ethics.

By no means does LMPTM provide definitive solutions to the difficulties it exposes. What it does is pose them in a way which furthers our understanding of several major characters in circumstances where arguments can be made for or against any of them. “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” (G.W.F. Hegel) Because it was so carefully constructed, there were probably more internet arguments about this episode than any other besides Seeing Red or maybe the upcoming Empty Places.

Storyteller

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Jane Espenson gives us the third (for me, the fourth) great episode of S7 with her masterpiece Storyteller. It’s one of my very favorite episodes, mostly based on the way Buffy closes the Turok-han pez dispenser (h/t Rob).

The most important thing I can say about Storyteller is that it’s shot almost entirely in Andrew’s POV. In that sense it’s similar to earlier episodes like The Zeppo (Xander’s POV), Doppelgangland (Willow’s), and A New Man (Giles’s). Andrew may think he’s telling Buffy’s story, but in fact he’s telling his own.

Get it Done

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Buffy formally and dramatically took on the role of General in BotN, but she has always seen herself more as a protector than as a commander, even if she does assert authority in some cases (most recently Selfless). We saw her protector role in Showtime. Here in Get it Done, she’s much more playing the role of General; she’s having Kennedy train her “soldiers” in the back yard; she’s recruiting Wood; she’s demanding that Willow and Spike go back to being warriors.

First Date

[Updated May 3, 2013]

This being a Valentine’s Day episode (it aired on February 11), we can be sure that Buffy’s having a true First Date. What we can’t be quite so sure of is the identity of her date. It looks on the surface as if it’s Robin Wood, but I’d argue it was Spike. Since Xander is Buffy’s metaphorical heart, the fact that Xander is attracted to demons (Teacher’s Pet, Inca Mummy Girl, Anya, Something Blue, First Date) is letting us know by allegory that Buffy is attracted to Spike, not Wood. Similarly, Xander’s on-off behavior with Anya mirrors that of Buffy with Spike, particularly with Anya and Spike now comparable as “recovering” former demons.

The Killer in Me

[Updated May 3, 2013]

The Killer In Me is, I think, a very good episode which could have been a great one and just misses. The basic concept is excellent and IMO Alyson Hannigan and Adam Busch both do great jobs. Part of my disappointment is that some of the Spike scenes are played almost as slapstick. Part of it is my annoyance at the lame joke about touching Giles, which bothered me a lot the first time around but which I ignore on re-watch. I, uh, won’t touch the Giles story and instead will focus on the important ones, Spike and Willow.

Potential

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Potential is a very important episode, though not really a favorite of mine. I suggested in my post on BotN that you should be asking yourself the question, what is a Potential, metaphorically? Andrew, of all people, tells us the answer here: “It's like—well, it's almost like this metaphor for womanhood, isn't it? The sort of flowering that happens when a girl realizes that she's part of a fertile heritage stretching back to Eve…”

Showtime

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Showtime is episode 11. In seasons 3 and 5, episode 11 showed us the basic problem Buffy will face in the finale, but with a wrong or incomplete solution (seasons 2 and 6 did that in episode 14). That’s what Showtime does. I won’t give any details because of spoilers, but I can say that the wrong solution here is directly related to every single one of the themes we’ve seen in S7.

Bring on the Night

[Updated May 3, 2013]

As should be obvious by now, the writers depended on the viewers having an obsessive memory for the details of previous episodes. By S7 there are numerous references to earlier seasons in each episode, and the whole plot line of S7 depends on everyone remembering the events of Amends. Bring on the Night contains a number of scenes which follow from Amends, and if you haven’t re-watched Amends in some time it’s probably helpful to do that now.

In Amends the First tried to get Angel kill himself (among other things). Here we see it work on both Willow and Spike, in addition to using the Ubervamp against Buffy. I’ll talk first about Willow and Spike, because what happens with them reminds us of what happened to Angel and thus what the First is. With that in mind, I’ll turn to the main plot of Buffy and the Potentials.

Never Leave Me

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Never Leave Me – the title quotes the words of Spike’s trigger song, “Early One Morning” – reveals the identity of the Big Bad while tying together more tightly the threads of the Spike and Andrew story lines with each other and with the seasonal arc.

Sleeper

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Sleeper connects Spike’s “addiction recovery” story and the Big Bad (still unidentified). I now need to explain how Spike’s story since S4 intersects with the themes of S7.

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.

Him

[Updated May 3, 2013]

The question you should be asking about Him is “who’s the ‘him’”? There’s an obvious “him” in Him: R.J. But the entire teaser focuses on Spike. It begins with Spike moving into Xander’s apartment, and then shifts to Dawn and Buffy discussing Spike. The teaser always sets up the episode. Thus, I think we need to see the title as referring to Spike as well. There are several clues to this effect throughout the episode:

Selfless

[Updated May 3, 2013]

Season 7 has its critics, but I’ve never seen anyone who dislikes Selfless (this being the internet, I’m sure someone will now prove me wrong). It’s in my top 25, and it’s one of many reasons I personally rate S7 so highly. I think it’s a perfect example of what Joss meant when he said that we would understand S6 much better when we saw S7 – Anya’s story here couldn’t be told without the background of Hell’s Bells and succeeding episodes.

Help

[Updated May 3, 2013]

In my view, Help plays the same functional role for S7 that Inca Mummy Girl played in S2. Ampata was a Chosen girl who sucked the life out of others for her own selfish purposes. That’s exactly what Buffy saw herself as having done with Angel, as her emotional reaction in IOHEFY showed:

“Buffy:  No. James destroyed the one person he loved the most in a moment of blind passion. And that's not something you forgive. No matter why he did what he did. And no matter if he knows now that it was wrong and selfish and stupid, it is just something he's gonna have to live with.”

Buffy gave in to her selfish desire when she slept with Angel and that sucked the (metaphorical) life out of him. She therefore saw herself as worse than even Ampata; she failed a “chosen one” test.

Same Time, Same Place

[Updated May 3, 2013]

When I first saw Same Time, Same Place, I thought the Gnarl demon was too heavy-handed. In thinking about it since, I realized it works both metaphorically and in the context of the plot. As metaphor, Gnarl represents Buffy’s fears about Willow.

As plot, I think we should see Gnarl as born of Willow’s guilt about how her friends perceive her:

GNARL (O.S.)
Your friends left you here. (singing) No one comes to save you. (talking) They wanted me to have you. Did they leave you as a gifty for me? Are you a tasty little gifty? … Or did they just throw you away?

Gnarl then punishes Willow as her sense of guilt leads her to feel that she should be punished. The entire situation, then, was something she herself created, just as she created their mutual inability to see each other.