Intervention.

[elisi]

AOQ didn't like 'Intervention'. He doesn't seem to 'get' Jane Espenson, which is a great shame, and his loss. The good thing though, is that One Bit Shy outdid himself again. I'm just copying the whole thing - lots of good points about the ep. and Spike in particular! (AOQ quotes in italics.) (Oh and I *will* get back to comments at some point...)


BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Five, Episode 18: "Intervention"
> I think one of the stages one has to go through to be a true devotee of
> this (or any) series is to start getting to know which writers you're
> most and least compatible with...
> ...So I think I may have to turn my antipathy on Jane
> Espenson.

It's ok AOQ. You don't have to create a special Espenson theory to hide it.
We already know you don't have a sense of humor. Don't run from it.
Embrace it. Announce to the world that you laugh in the face of their
pitiful humor!.... Wait. That doesn't quite work, does it? OK. Blame
Espenson then.

"Intervention," the fourth episode by my count (not including
> "Pangs") to feature something that looks like one of the main
> characters masquerading as him/her, contains things that're energetic
> or funny, but at the expense of holding together. I'll give my big
> examplar in a second, but first of all, yes, I'm going to complain
> that Buffy's friends should've figured out what was going on. One
> of the dangers of handing the audience lots of background knowledge
> that the characters have to figure out for themselves is that unless
> it's written well, the heroes can easily seem thick-headed. They do
> here. We never get an answer to "you guys couldn't tell me apart
> from a robot?!" and we deserve one.

Maybe they think Buffy's been doing a real good imitation of a robot lately.
The Buffybot should be offended - but, no, she's too nice for that.

Robo-Buffy's behavior isn't
> just weird, it's very obviously mechanical in a way that the gang
> should have on their minds, having recently dealt with a robot. The
> crew do notice her acting strangely-in-some-way, but it seems to take
> longer that it did in "When She Was Bad." And yet Buffy pegs the
> imposter as a robot seconds after entering. Does not compute. So as
> entertaining as Xander's getting the image of her with Spike,
> "Guy-les," and so on are, they don't go down easy.

From this kind of continuity perspective, the thing I noticed more than the
robot was Xander's blase reaction to Spike showing up in the cemetary to
begin with. Xander's never been a Spike fan, and his attitude towards him
and the flowers for Joyce last episode was decidedly unfriendly. This is
the only glitch of that sort that actually bothers me this episode, because
I think it matters for something that happens later.

I don't care about recognizing that it's a robot though. The setup is made
clear the first time the Buffybot talks to Xander and Anya. And the series
has always been willing to go blind in the service of humor. Just think of
the innumerable times characters have stammered their way through made up
stories without being the slightest bit convincing - yet still getting away
with it. *shrug* It's part of the series, and not important enough to get
in the way of the jokes.

So, my example of a quote as a microcosm for what bothers me the most
> about this show? "Angel's lame. His hair grows straight up, and
> he's bloody stupid." That's quite a funny line, especially with
> the matter-of-fact delivery.

Yes it is.

It should also, by all rights, be either
> a dead bloody giveaway or at least a step in the direction of putting
> things together. I don't accept that Willow wouldn't pick up on at
> least some of the significance.

Or it could be just about the single most unexpected thing Buffy could say
and leaves Willow flabbergasted. I mean her head is already spinning about
sex with Spike - lots of times - lots of different ways. And the suggestion
of drawing diagrams...Yeee! How much can poor Willow digest in one
conversation?

Anyway, I think Willow really was starting on the path of figuring stuff out
when they got interrupted by even bigger and more alarming news.

On an unrelated note, that brings up
> all sorts of other questions (that aren't really especially
> important) about the implication that Spike was the one who made all
> the decisions about which particular "facts" Robo-Buffy would know.
> Why bother to include the drive to Slay and do other non-Spike-focused
> things?

Good lord! What good is a Buffybot that doesn't slay? Spike's no layabout
puffter. He wants to go on the hunt with his hunny and mix the sex in with
a few good stakings. Live (un)life large.

The slaying part is, for me, the absolutely best thing about the Buffybot.
Initiatlly I was a little uncertain. Lines like, "I can't resist the
sinister attraction of your cold and muscular body," are pretty funny. But
it was all still boiling down to just a sexbot, and getting repetitious
mighty fast. But when she put on her jacket (by her own volition) and
announced, "Time to slay," my interest definitely perked up. And then,
"Vampires of the world, beware," spoken as she strides out. Oh, that
Buffybot slayer stride. It's fantastic. To me that was the really defining
character trait of the Buffybot. (SMG does some nice work with the
Buffybot - and in the contrasting scenes with real Buffy.) After that, I
was totally hooked by it.

I also liked how her programming that persistently calls Spike evil
backfires so that she accepts the real Buffy's need to kill him. "You're
right. He's evil. But you should see him naked. I mean really."

The real Buffy is conveniently absent while her imposter wreaks havoc
> and such. I like the weighty feel to the opening scene, in which
> she's reached the point of dulling her pain by "getting into a
> routine." Buffy trying to make sure everyone knows they're loved
> is a little bit raw and uncomfortable, in a good way. Giles's
> tentative but increasingly persistent attempts to get her back to
> training play well, as does his concerned acceptance of the idea that
> she might want to retire.

There's some nice theme work here, both for the season and the series. The
very first theme of the series was resistance to the slayer calling taking
control of Buffy's life. Now it's being applied in a new way. Being slayer
isn't just interfering with Buffy's freedom, it's getting in the way of real
responsibilities that contend in importance with her calling. The old
deciding factor - how much the innocents in the world need her aid - doesn't
weigh in so strongly when put up against taking care of Dawn. Of course,
the two coincide a lot right now. But it's still a powerful element to add
to the ongoing tension between Buffy's life and her job.

I think it's also very interesting that Buffy's examination of what being
Slayer is doing to her - her fear that it's hardening herself inside - is
first manifested by resisting going back to the training and studies with
Giles. Because it's really the same thing that drove Buffy to start up that
training and studying. You may recall that she was going out every night
then - not patrolling, but rather hunting. Buffy was really struck by
Dracula's description of it - and that he saw something dark in it. Buffy
was feeling it then and needed to understand. Of course that eventually led
to her frantic search into the cause of slayer deaths and Spike's awful
claim that death was her art and that deep inside she sought death herself.

One might conclude that what she learned from those studies was that being a
slayer was sapping her ability to love and that she needed to get away from
it. But Giles gets Buffy to look for answers elsewhere, and so Buffy gets
instead a Spike like message that she's filled with love, but love is pain
and death is her gift. All of these things are linked - from Dracula to the
spirt guide's message. Part of the same exploration into herself.

That leads into a bit of a mystical quest,
> with the wide pans across the desert and the musical score setting the
> kind of mood we don't often see on the show. With the Hokey Pokey
> thrown in, and seeming even funnier than it would've been otherwise.

Isn't that a stitch? I love how self conscious Giles is jumping out and
into the circle. Another line I like is, "Buffy, please. It takes more than
a week to bleach bones."

The advice that our hero gets seems to embrace love, which I hadn't
> expected based on "Restless." With a caveat about love leading to
> the Gift Of Death, though. I'm sure it'll at least kinda make
> sense someday. Once the First Slayer started talking, I was afraid the
> show might have gone a little overboard with the mumbo-jumbo factor...
> until Buffy's perfectly timed "what?" Now that's funny.
> Nicely handled mini-plot overall.

It's not really the First Slayer, which is probably why it doesn't match
well with Restless. It's something calling herself the guide using the
First Slayer's form. What exactly the guide is, I don't know. Once could
imagine a number of things.

I do like Buffy's, "What?" quite a bit, as I do her later sneering repeat
of, "Death is my gift", when she meets back up with the Scoobies. Ambiguous
would be a mild description of what was said to Buffy. Not exactly helping
her at the moment. But the words do deserve some thought.

First Slayer: You are full of love. You love with all of your soul. It's
brighter than the fire ... blinding. That's why you pull away from it.
Buffy: I'm full of love? I'm not losing it?
First Slayer: Only if you reject it. Love is pain, and the Slayer forges
strength from pain. Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the pain. It is your
nature. Love will bring you to your gift.
...
First Slayer: Death is your gift.

There are probably more opinions on what that all means than there are
people in this newsgroup, but it still bears thought.

Glory's torturing Spoik isn't a huge standout sequence for me one
> way or the other, but "good plan, Spike" is nice. And the fight at
> the end has some energy.

I think maybe if you had gotten a little more engaged in Spike's torture
scene, his behavior might not have been as mysterious in the end. Right now
I'll just say that I loved Spike's taunts at Glory.

Glory clearly isn't accustomed to backtalk. ("I command you to shut up!")
A nice little contrasting moment back at the start is when Glory speaks to
her scabby minions saying, "If you love me..." and they look up at her
adoringly in eager anticipation of her command.

The fight at the end had energy in the sense that there were a lot of people
and frantic editing. But I thought the choreography was awful. Everything
seemed way too deliberate. Like I could hear them counting beats in their
head. One, two, three, punch, turn, thrust, seven, eight, fall. Now the
earlier fight in the cemetary with the Buffybot worked nicely for me. It
wasn't so fast moving, but it had the amusing bit of Anya trying to find a
staking position until Xander kicked the vamp into her. And the Buffybot
tossing the stake to Spike for him to strike with a flourish.

The way this episode plays out raises two major issues with regards to
> Spike. The first is his refusal to betray Dawn to save his own skin.
> The others naturally expect that he can't be trusted to keep his
> mouth shut under such circumstances, and their fear is justified by
> everything except what actually happens in "Intervention." His
> stated reason is all about concern for another, simply not wanting
> Buffy in particular to be in pain. That itself could be traced back to
> selfishness, of course, but what kind of altruism can't? It re-blurs
> the boundaries of what kind of empathy someone without a soul can feel.
> My instinct, and let me emphasize that this is just a first
> impression, is to say that this is "wrong." Doesn't seem to sit
> quite right. But it does get one thinking, and this is something
> I'll have to keep thinking about before making any sweeping
> pronouncements. And watching more show, of course.

A lot of people seem to struggle with this, but it's never seemed that big a
deal to me. What happens this episode is important. Buffy's perceptions
change and it suggests a new version of the Buffy/Spike relationship going
forward. But Spike's decision not to blab to Glory doesn't strike me as
remarkable or something new.

Hitting the fringes first, let me point out that Spike isn't keen on being
pushed around and isn't going to be favorably disposed to cooperating with
Glory just because she's a skanky fashion victim giving him grief. He
doesn't need a special excuse to resist Glory. He flat out doesn't like
her.

He also genuinely enjoys taunting her. Spike doesn't really want to get
beat up like he was, but getting under Glory's skin almost made it
worthwhile. To Spike, he won that encounter.

So it wasn't quite as hard for him to do that or quite as bad an experience
as it might appear. That's probably not enough reason in iteself. The
"altruistic" motive you refer to is, I believe, necessary too. I just
wanted it clear that there were other things pushing him that direction to.

I think it might also be fair to assume that at this point Spike will get
off on being heroic - for any reason. Not so much for the sake of heroism,
but because that's the kind of behavior available to him (now that he can't
ravage humans) that lets him swagger and show what a big bad he really is.
Yes, that's twisted, but that's the kind of weirdness you get from shock
induced behavior modification.

But doing it for Buffy is still the biggest thing. Just not new. He would
have done the same thing any time going back to the end of Fool For Love.
This is just the first time the situation came up. Spike's in love with
Buffy. Not talking to Glory is a natural byproduct of that. I doubt Spike
seriously thought of doing anything else.

Let me pause for a moment to note the ongoing argument about love vs.
obsession and whether vampires can love and so on and so forth. They always
frustrate me. To begin with because I don't think anybody even applies the
same meaning to the words. It seems like most of the time people are
speaking of entirely different concepts. Second because we continually
jumping back and forth between human and vampire ideas of love. It gets -
well - confusing. I call it love here because Spike does. Whatever anybody
else thinks it really is, to Spike it's love. And that means something to
him. Does it mean the same as human love? Of course not. He's a vampire.
But it still means something. It's still a passion to him. It still leads
him to act certain ways. Leading among them is a devotion that doesn't have
room for allowing foes like Glory to destroy his love. This idea isn't even
new to chipped Spike. He gave all of himself to Dru too. It nearly got him
killed in What's My Line.

This has been solidly in place since Fool For Love. Part of what happened
at the end when he put down the gun and consoled Buffy is that he made his
choice. He gave up on trying to be the vampire he used to be and devoted
himself to Buffy. When he's love's bitch, he admits it. And he's stuck to
that persistently since. Astonishingly so. The only notable exception that
I can think of is the incident with Dru. Now Dru was the one vampire with
the power to break through that decision - but only briefly - as Spike quick
enough rejected Dru's appeal and turned it around into his grandest play for
Buffy's affections yet.

The weird thing is that, to Spike, this wasn't that big a deal. Being
nearly killed by Glory was a big deal. But not the part about keeping
Dawn's secret. When Buffy came and kissed him, it stunned Spike. I'm sure
he recognized it as gratitude, but the last thing he expected was gratitude.
This from the guy who looked for gratitude for not feeding off of disaster
victims. He seems as much, if not more stunned by Buffy's remarks on what
is real. What actually matters. This is that important? Offering Dru's
life up to Buffy in the name of love - that's real to Spike. That's *his*
idea of a big deal. Not this. Not his part in it anyway. He just didn't
want to see Buffy cry.

Now mind you, Spike is unlikely to leave here with many great new
understandings. Why exactly does this earn a kiss while not drinking from
disaster victims earns disgust? I doubt Spike could answer that. But he
did learn that he really can matter to Buffy. And I think that must be
motivating.

The second issue is more about Buffy's behavior than Spike's:
> Besides a good robot imitation and a good plan to find out what she
> needs to know, human-Buffy has a kiss and some gratitude for Spike.
> That I'm not buying, particularly the former. There's the
> still-recent events of "Crush," and then more immediately there's
> the fact that he made a clone of her to have sex with. The latter is
> not something that I would expect Buffy to easily forgive and forget,
> and the former should make her extra cautious about sending anything
> that could be interpreted as mixed signals. Doesn't play well at
> all, especially the kiss. Pretending to play along with this, I wonder
> whether she knew what she was going to say from the beginning - it
> seems more likely that she was playing it by ear and trying to see if
> she could get an explanation for his burst of non-evil.

Hmmm. Ok. Those are good issues, but I think you're running a step behind
Buffy's thoughts.

First of all, to get the context set, she clearly *is* untrusting of Spike
and not at all ready to forgive and forget. On the contrary, she's ready to
kill him. The danger to Dawn that Spike poses finally brought her to that
point. The only reason Spike wasn't dusted immediately is that Buffy needs
to know what Spike actually revealed to Glory. When Xander and Giles come
back from dumping Spike at his crypt, the first thing she asks is whether
they killed him. So whatever changed, happened only after that.

Which starts in the Magic Box - not the crypt.

Xander: God, I feel ... kind of bad for the guy. Gets all whupped and his
best toy gets taken away.
Buffy: Xander. Please don't be suggesting what I'd have to kill you for
suggesting.
Xander: No, no, travesty, completely on board, it's just ... the guy was so
thrashed

Xander is hardly the first guy you would think of to express sympathy for
Spike. (This is why I wasn't keen on his seemingly easy attitude towards
Spike at the beginning. Fortunately that was eased a little by Xander later
laying down the law to Spike and being the one to raise the red flag about
Buffy going crazy.) Indeed, the whole gang had been harsh on Spike since
Crush. Remember Giles giving him his evil eye? But after Xander's brief
false start, he got down to it. The guy was so thrashed. So thrashed that
both Xander and Giles were subdued about his condition.

Buffy knew this. She'd seen Spike. She just hadn't had time to think about
it yet. Nor, probably, that they found Spike trying to escape. Whatever
went on between him and Glory, it clearly wasn't Spike pulling another Adam.
And the guy was so thrashed. That gave Buffy pause. The first seed of
doubt was planted. When Buffy went to Spike with her Buffybot scheme, I
think she probably already suspected that he hadn't been broken. But she
didn't know why, and she needed to confirm it.

Once she's in the crypt she gets to see how badly Spike is hurt again. And
that's the first thing she remarks on. His sexy wounds. Except they surely
looked pretty awful to her. And Spike's weak response demonstrated how
badly off he was. This isn't looking like the betraying scumbag she was
ready to dust not long before. I emphasize this because it's not just
Spike's words to come that impact Buffy, it's the realization of just how
far he would go for that reason. The guy was so thrashed.

Then, of course, Spike tells Buffy why he did it, and now Buffy is thrown
somewhere she never thought to be. That was the last thing she expected to
hear, but it rang true. She knows Spike well enough to see that he's being
honest. When Spike bares his feelings, he doesn't hold back. And for the
first time - in total contradiction to the understanding she thought she had
after Crush - Spike's affection for her isn't disgusting. It's life saving.

It probably bears remembering at this point that Buffy also has a great
weight lifted from her. Glory doesn't know about Dawn. The disaster she
fears hasn't happened. Her sense of relief is immense. Combined with the
revelation of just how much Spike went through for her and how important
that was to her and then you have the moment of the kiss. Which I believe
was an entirely spontaneous expression of gratitude.

What's interesting though, is that it's a kiss. She didn't just say thank
you with enthusiasm. Or hug him. Or cry. Or whatever. She kissed him on
the lips. Though it doesn't seem terribly sexual. One can debate that
forever. But my take is that Buffy knew that's what he would want and
decided right then and there that he had earned it.

Is that believable? Hell, yes. She was blown away by what he had done.
She didn't believe he had that in him. And here he is nearly dying for her
when that's exactly what she needed from him. The gratitude was genuine.

I think that no matter what, the kiss has to be somewhat a mixed message for
Spike though. But not as bad as it would have been had the scene ended
then. Fortunately for Buffy, Spike asked about the Buffybot. That gave
Buffy the chance to lay into Spike for that. And really vent by implication
her upset at all the disgusting things Spike did. I'm not entirely certain
about this - Spike's so beat up that he looks awful in any pose - but to me
it looks like Spike hangs his head in shame then. Even he knows that the
Buffybot is more than Buffy can accept.

Curiously (at least from how it looks to me), Buffy's little rant about the
Buffybot comes across as a scolding. It certainly leads up well to the
closer about what's real. Which also provides some explanation to Spike of
the kiss - hopefully reducing the mixed message aspect. I've mentioned
before how I think there's a parallel between Buffy/Spike and Xander/Anya
specifically in how Buffy has acquired the role of teaching Spike what being
human means. Here for the first time I think Buffy gets an inkling of her
job. She's giving Spike a big honking lesson in that here. Now the
question is will Spike learn it. I can't wait to see.

So...

> One-sentence summary: Has a good half and a soulless-robot half.

> AOQ rating: Decent

Also of note is that things are getting really serious with Glory. Her
minions may have made a spectacularly wrong guess with Spike. But it was
still way too close for comfort and now that Glory knows it's a human, and
presumably around Buffy, time has to be running out. Buffy still doesn't
know why Glory wants The Key, what The Key is, or how to fight Glory. Tick
tock.

I get a lot of pleasure out of this episode. Other than the final fight
it's a terrific romp. Even the torture gets filled with some nice put downs
and sets up Buffy pretending to be the Buffybot. And it has the nifty trip
to the spirit guide with her obscure message to worry about. Even so, most
of the scenes really aren't all that important, nor all that extraordinary.
So I leave it as a very high Good not quite able to make it to Excellent.
(I think there are something like six episodes this season ranked right
about there.)

One Bit Shy