Conversations With Dead People
I really love the premise of CWDP as a series of vignettes on loneliness and (dis)connection. It's very much the 'experimental' episode of the season which puts it alongside 'Hush' and 'OMWF'. Although it operates on a much smaller scale stylistically and in terms of plot, like them it plays with narrative form. It's the only episde to have a Frasier-like title card at the beginning (apart from the opening credits of OMWF), which immediately calls attention to its constructedness, it's fictionality. Yet, as Rhonda Wilcox notes in her essay on the episode, the following date and time notation on screen 'November 12, 2003, 8:01pm invites us to connect with the moment. To me the date notation also felt reminiscent of a diary entry - the idea that we're getting access to these characters most private thoughts and confessions.
I'd say the only con of this set-up was the absence of Xander. This really felt like it should have been an episode that focused on the core Scoobies (plus Dawn), yet what his absence did make me realise is that so far, aside from being extremely helpful and put-together, I don't really know yet who Xander is this season - what makes him tick, what anxieties he continue to have aside from his relationship with Anya? I'd have loved a glimpse into his mind and I love
@sosa lola's idea of Xander meeting the First as Jesse. Anyway, on to the characters:
Dawn:
- Nice classic horror atmosphere
- The focus of Dawn's connection issues is with Buffy and her mother and I liked that the Dawn/Joyce relationship was brought to the fore after such a long time. The flash of Joyce on the couch lying in the same position Buffy found her suggests Dawn may have unresolved issues over her death. This is the kind of stuff we should have been seeing her dealing with in season 6 and which should have then helped her growth as a character.
- As for Buffy - 'Buffy won't choose you' is pretty straightforward sowing-seeds-of-dissent.
- 'Mother's milk is red today' - I immediately thought back to the 'vino de madre' used to resurrect Buffy. Is this a deliberate reference? Would make sense if they were planning on developing the 'resurrection of Buffy screwed up the balance' storyline that they introduced with Beljoxa's Eye later, but if so shouldn't this message have appeared to Willow?
- I loved Dawn's bravery in doing that banishing spell. Kick-ass Dawn continues!
- The extent of the First's powers are never outlined clearly, are they? We know it's incorporeal so it resorts to psychological manipulation, but now it can apparently control physical objects and make, uh, wind..?
Willow:
- Heartbreaking. AH was wonderful in these scenes.
- Where Buffy is feeling disconnected, Willow, as we saw in 'Lessons' is feeling more connected than ever to magic and so the First naturally and with miserable irony, intends to sever that connection by utilising Willow's other strongest connection - her love for Tara.
- The First shouldn't be able to sit down! Unless it was somehow hovering millimetres above the chair, undetectable to the human eye...
😵
Andrew and Jonathan:
- I'd forgotten how much I hated Warren. I know it's the First but it plays Warren to a T and he's utterly repulsive.
- The 'check check' thing - LOL.
- I do feel for Jonathan. He's been there since the first season - he's our connection to the early years - and he shows here that he's matured quite a lot. I guess that's why he needs to die...
- Though why does TF need to recall these two just to open the seal? We know from subsequent episodes that any blood will do, so why go to all this effort getting them here? It could've manipulated a school kid or teacher or random homeless person whose absence would be more likely to go unnoticed far more easily and efficiently.
Buffy:
-It's good to finally get an insight into Buffy's mind. That she opens up to a vampire again is fitting ('whisper in a dead man's ear/doesn't make it real'), if also depressing.
-Disconnection from Dawn: as she converses with Webs, he phone lies in the grass as Dawn is trying to reach her. After the finale of S6 where it seemed like Buffy was reconnecting with her humanity as represented by Dawn , here the suggestion may be that she is drifting apart from it again...? In light of this her harsher behaviour with the potentials and Dawn's own inability to identify with the Slayer part of her (in 'Potential') could be read as symbolic of Buffy once again cutting herself off from her human self.
- I'm not entirely convinced on the notion that Buffy has commitment issues because she feels superior. I think she does have a sense of superiority due to the power and authority and she in turn despises the necessity of that role. However, I don't think it defines her romantic relationships - at most you could say it contributes to them. She clearly never had trouble committing to Angel but she was burned by that relationship, which undoubtedly had an effect on her. With Riley I don't think it was so much a case of being able to commit as it was of her feelings just not being as strong for him. Even though she wanted a relationship with him, Riley picked up on that and then allowed it to fuel his own inferiority issues. If he'd just accepted what Buffy could give him at that time (and not pressured her with that stupid ultimatum) theire relationship would have continued quite well - for a time at least. The distance created by her being the Slayer came second to this and compounded that emotional unavailability because of everything she had to deal with, but I don't think it caused it. She did after all run after him because she wanted to make it work; it's after he leaves that she blames herself and worries that her strength scares men away. Finally, her relationship/liaison/thing with Spike was clearly having a detrimental effect on her and stemmed from a bad psychological/emotional place so her unwillingness to commit there is no surprise and definitely the right decision (I can't imagine what commitment in that case would have looked like anyway). I think it's a bit remiss to apply a one-analysis-fits-all approach to her romantic/sexual relationships.
- Thankfully Webs tells her to ease up on herself - *slow clap* Thank you, Holden! Of course the sad thing is that this is coming from a soon-to-be-dusted vamp rather than her friends or family.
- The other big issue I have with what Buffy reveals is this idea of wanting to be punished because she felt she didn't 'deserve' to be loved. Of course this is about Buffy's own insecurities and perceptions of herself, but it does feel like it we're also supposed to ascertain a degree of truth from what she says and in that case it feels like a bit of a misreading/miscasting of her psychological issues in S6. What I saw in S6 was her using sex with Spike like a drug to escape the numbness and the trauma of her return to life. Eventually she comes to the realisation that it's actually making her feel worse rather than better because she's using him, which is why she breaks it off. I'm not sure how this squares with the idea that she wanted to be hurt/punished because she doesn't feel worthy of the power she has?
😕 She certainly later felt monstrous for the way she used spike even though she didn't love him, but that's not what instigated or fueled the relationship in the first place.
I think the strongest part of this episode is the structure and framing. I love the way it connects references and images of mouths: we start with 'conversations' in the title and by the end we've had shots of Dawn's blood-filled mouth, Spike's bloody fangs, First!Cassie opening its mouth and consuming itself - 'from beneath you it devours' indeed!
Sleeper:
This is the start of S7's more serialised run of episodes which I'm not very keen on. It's just not something the writing team is good at because it's not really the show's strength, unlike AtS where the structure and writing team are set up much better for this mode of storytelling. As a result, 'Sleeper' feels more like a bridging episode, linking the Scooby/MoTW focused section of the season to the more Big Bad arc heavy section. I do like that it picks up right where CWDP left off, which gives the plot a good pace but I thought it felt a little flat by the end because I could see what the outcome would be - Spike's being controlled, and Buffy decides to help him. This may just be because I'm not a first-time viewer (I can't remember what I thought on first watch - anyone else remember?) but I don't how much of a surprise the reveal could have been since we know he's been seeing and talking to
something from the beginning, and even if the name 'The First' wasn't mentioned last episode, there clues couldn't have been any bigger.
I like that Spike's story is moving forward and he's now starting to confront his issues. I think Spike's lack of dialogue works very well to amp up the tension - his humming as he digs is incredibly disturbing and there's agreat use of Aimee Mann's song in the Bronze scenes to underscore the addiction metaphor.
Some possible Angel parallels:
- Spike seems to be wearing a black shirt and
leather trousers when he goes a-killing. Spike
never wears leather trousers - what is the meaning of this!! There must be a reason!!
- Buffy tailing him reminds me of when Angel caught sight of human Darla the first time. It's the same set-up: crowd, promenade, hot-dog stand. (might've been filmed at the same promenade in Santa Monica actually)
- The First to Spike 'You're going against the plan...But we can make it work' (Sleeper). The First to Angel: 'This isn't the plan...But it'll do.' (Amends)
Buffy & Spike confrontation:
- 'It haunts me. Everything I did.' We get a lot of people claiming during Spike debates that he doesn't seem to be troubled about his non-Buffy related crimes. I think we should be able to put that one safely to rest by now as he couldn't have stated it much clearer than this. Whether this aspect should have been
explored more on the show is another debate.
-Though admittedly Spike then turning the argument to Buffy's supposed jealousy ('you can't ad mit it)and then saying 'it's still all about you' kind of overshadows the broader aspects of his guilt by refocusing on the Buffy element.
Basement:
- How did the First get the trigger in Spike (we'll never find that out, will we?)
- How did all the new vamps manage to wake up at the same time if they were sired on different nights? Was the First controlling them somehow since 'everything's connected', even evil as Webster pointed out in CWDP: 'I feel like I'm connected to an all-powerful consuming evil'
- I can't believe Buffy was able to be held down by two fledglings like that. Field reads this scene metaphorically, suggesting they newbies represent her fears about Spike so she is only able to deafeat them after seeing him resist, but when watching it on its own it does feel contrived.
- The conclusion of the basement scenes was good. Spike takes the important step in asking for help and SMG played the right combination of compassion and wariness in her response.
Also, she looked particularly beautiful in this episode. I loved her hair a lot but there was just something about her. I don't know how to explain it, but I noticed.
I noticed that too!
