The First: Wouldn't they have noticed?

B

Bexieh

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Sineya
First off, apologies if this has been discussed before! I checked around and couldn't find anything, but I can't be 100% certain.

Anyway, my question is this: During season seven, The First takes on the form of dead people a couple of times and manages to fool the gang or the potentials etc into thinking it's really them. At one point they suspect Giles may be The First and fair enough the show cleverly manages to make it seem as if he's not touching anything a few times in the episodes beforehand, but my point is, if he WAS The First, or when The First was impersonating Eve and managed to convince them she was a potential, wouldn't someone, somehow have noticed that they weren't touching anything? I can't be certain, but I'd imagine anyone living in my house and not actually touching anything may raise some kind of suspicion even if I wasn't aware that The First could do that. It makes me wonder how they could have gone on so long without noticing, especially in such close quarters.

Anyone have any thoughts or views on this? There may be something I'm missing, but I thought it was interesting to think about.
 
C
Christopher
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W
Willow My Love
But when you're in a new place, and scared for your life constantly, are you really going to think about little things like that?
Bexieh said:
First off, apologies if this has been discussed before! I checked around and couldn't find anything, but I can't be 100% certain.

Anyway, my question is this: During season seven, The First takes on the form of dead people a couple of times and manages to fool the gang or the potentials etc into thinking it's really them. At one point they suspect Giles may be The First and fair enough the show cleverly manages to make it seem as if he's not touching anything a few times in the episodes beforehand, but my point is, if he WAS The First, or when The First was impersonating Eve and managed to convince them she was a potential, wouldn't someone, somehow have noticed that they weren't touching anything? I can't be certain, but I'd imagine anyone living in my house and not actually touching anything may raise some kind of suspicion even if I wasn't aware that The First could do that. It makes me wonder how they could have gone on so long without noticing, especially in such close quarters.

Anyone have any thoughts or views on this? There may be something I'm missing, but I thought it was interesting to think about.
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It was typical of a rushed season 7 episode, with not much thought put into it. There is no way that Buffy and some of the other characters hadn't hugged (the first thing they would have done when he returned from England) or interacted with Giles by that point in the season. It was just lazy writers trying to inject some tension and suspense in an unbelievable and stupid manner.
 
They couldn't remember Giles touching anything. I also imagine they were a little paranoid what with The First being non-corporeal and being able to spy on them at any given time.

While season 7 is badly written, it actually sorta makes sense - who goes around making mental notes of when their friends touch things?
 
C
Christopher
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M
Ms.Trick
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Yeah if I was in that house I wouldn't have been paying attention "did so and so touch something? Did so and so?" That was part of my argument in the why did the first not show up as Buffy thread I created... most people wouldn't be saying "did you touch something today?" So they wouldn't notice.
 
I agree that people wouldn't make mental notes of who touched what, but see I didn't really expect them to be looking around for people not to be touching things, I just thought that, for example, it's natural for us to be picking things up and touching things etc, so I thought whether they knew they were looking out for it or not that they'd still pick up on something being off when one of them wasn't touching anything. I imagine it'd just seem really weird if one of my friends just stopped touching things. It'd seem bizzare and I figured someone would notice it eventually even if they didn't know about The First being incorporeal. Maybe they'd just think that person was acting a little weird, but I figured they'd pick up on SOMETHING.
 
When Giles first arrived at Buffy's house, she moved to hug him, but the Potentials barreled in front of him and pushed into the house, cutting off their contact, and then Giles had to explain who they were, pushing aside their concerns about reuniting in the face of the up-coming apocalypse.

When the Scoobies, and the viewers are faced with the possibility that he could be The First, the only thing sticking out in our minds is the fact that, in the same episode, Giles asked Dawn to return a note book to Vi, and that Giles couldn't drive the car because 'he let his California license expire', even though there are ways in which his British license would cover him.

When WE stop to think about these things, we start asking ourselves if we'd seen Giles touch anything since he came back, and I don't know about the rest of you, but watching the ep when it aired, I honestly couldn't remember him touching anything besides his glasses.

As people, we're programmed to look at things as a whole, not the tiny details. Yes, it maybe obvious in the every day world if we watch our friends and family pick up a glass, or the newspaper, but in the face of the apocalypse, the biggest Buffy's ever faced, and the fact that girls were running out and getting themselves killed right under her nose, it's not hard to imagine that Buffy and everyone else would be hard pressed to focus on something as insignificant as Giles smacking Xander across the back of the head.
 
Our brains fill in missing information with expected information. Unless they were making intentional and effortful attempts to screen people, I find it perfectly plausible that they simply wouldn't make special mental effort to remember something so mundane and expected. If the did not make a habit of testing people, explicitly or just in noticing more, after Eve and then worrying about Giles...that would have just been tactical silliness.
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Lyri
Lyri
Well said
Also in my last watch of season 7 I really did try to pay attention and to the best of my knowledge... he really didn't touch anything but his glasses up to that point. So if we the viewer can see Giles not touch anything and not think anything of it, the characters did too.
 
C
Christopher
On a rewatch it is quite noticeable!
Bexieh said:
First off, apologies if this has been discussed before! I checked around and couldn't find anything, but I can't be 100% certain.

Anyway, my question is this: During season seven, The First takes on the form of dead people a couple of times and manages to fool the gang or the potentials etc into thinking it's really them. At one point they suspect Giles may be The First and fair enough the show cleverly manages to make it seem as if he's not touching anything a few times in the episodes beforehand, but my point is, if he WAS The First, or when The First was impersonating Eve and managed to convince them she was a potential, wouldn't someone, somehow have noticed that they weren't touching anything? I can't be certain, but I'd imagine anyone living in my house and not actually touching anything may raise some kind of suspicion even if I wasn't aware that The First could do that. It makes me wonder how they could have gone on so long without noticing, especially in such close quarters.

Anyone have any thoughts or views on this? There may be something I'm missing, but I thought it was interesting to think about.
Click to expand...

The answer is don't think about S7, or it won't make any sense. Every single character, both heroic and villainous, were consistently morons.
 
Anyway, my question is this: During season seven, The First takes on the form of dead people a couple of times and manages to fool the gang or the potentials etc into thinking it's really them. At one point they suspect Giles may be The First and fair enough the show cleverly manages to make it seem as if he's not touching anything a few times in the episodes beforehand, but my point is, if he WAS The First, or when The First was impersonating Eve and managed to convince them she was a potential, wouldn't someone, somehow have noticed that they weren't touching anything?
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Why would you assume that the Scoobies and the Potentials would notice Eve out of all those other Potentials? As I recall, hardly anyone noticed her, until she committed suicide.
 
LadyLavinia said:
Why would you assume that the Scoobies and the Potentials would notice Eve out of all those other Potentials? As I recall, hardly anyone noticed her, until she committed suicide.
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Oh, sorry, I thought Eve was the one who Buffy and Xander found dead in a motel room, not the one that commited suicide. My bad. But the one I meant was the motel-death one. She seemed very friendly with the other potentials and whatnot before they found out about her, I just thought someone might have noticed something was up.

I mean I find it hard to believe no one even touched the girl slightly or tried to hand her a glass or something, y'know? Anything that would have given her away as being The First.

But I do get the idea that they may have just overlooked it. Perhaps I'm overthinking how obvious someone not touching anything could be to someone who isn't particularly looking out for it.
 
Yeah, but wouldn't Eve have gone out of her way to make sure that no one handed her anything, or tried to touch her in anyway? The First was good at manipulating people, and at the time when it was in Buffy's house, Buffy was busy bringing in the new girls, Andrew was tied to a chair, and Xander was so out of it from lack of sleep, that the only people it really had to fool was a room full of impressionable teenage girls, that swallowed up everything it fed them.
 
One thing that always bothers me about non-corporeal people and ghosts is how, if they cant touch anything, do they stand up on the floor ? Why don't they just sink through ?

This doesnt bug me whilst i watch or stop me from enjoying the season or anything but it does always cross my mind 🙂
 
B
Bexieh
Lol! I often wonder that too :p
C
Christopher
Haha, I always think this during season 5 of Angel!
They would have noticed if they had two braincells to rub together. And by they, I mean the writers.

The answer is don't think about S7, or it won't make any sense. Every single character, both heroic and villainous, were consistently morons.
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True story.
 
I made a mistake.

Eve was the Potential, whose body was found in the motel room. And the First Evil had been impersonating her for a while.

Chloe was the Potential who had committed suicide.


Icarium said:
They would have noticed if they had two braincells to rub together. And by they, I mean the writers.



True story.
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True story? We're supposed to accept what is obviously an opinion of someone who dislikes S7 as "true story"?
 
Joss admits on one of the commentaries - I forget which one - that they didn't come up with the no-touching rule until a few episodes in to Season 7. The First as Drusilla appears to touch Spike in Lessons.
 
The thing is, it wasn't just that episode. Anthony Stewart Head hadn't touched anything since returning for the whole season up until that episode. They did that on purpose. (Being interrupted before he could hug Buffy, having one of the potentials carrying the Watchers' stuff in her bag, not driving to the desert, etc.)

Of course, within the Buffyverse he probably DID touch things...we just weren't shown it, and the Scoobies couldn't remember it, in order to make us question whether or not Giles was dead.

As far as Eve goes...the one thing that drives me nuts is we see her under a sleeping bag at one point. How on Earth did the First manage that?
 
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