Re: SPOILER: "Angel" vs. "Buffy"

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Spoiler Space still necessary for "Tomorrow"

but

I

must

admit

this 

gets

to

be

a

grind


I'm frankly lacking patience with the Spike-redemptionista shibboleth
that Giles's "higher purpose" line in "The I in Team" means that Spikey
has a destiny and therefore it's perfectly all right for him to go
around raping Buffy and such.

A cursory glance at the scene reveals that Giles has just very
reluctantly parted with $300 (the debt he owes Spike from "A New Man")
and is desperate to salvage something from the situation. Since he
can't stake Spike, because Marsters has a contract (and, btw, for no
other logical reason), he tries to ensure Spike's assistance and butters
him up in the process. (Spike himself sees it's just a line of crap Mr.
Skinflint ex-Watcher is trying on so he won't have to pay for Spike's
aid in the future, since paying off this debt has hurt him so.)

Giles himself clearly doesn't believe his own malarkey, since later in
the same ep, he gleefully holds Spike up for the repayment of the $300,
rather than immediately remove the Initiative tracer. If Spike's
continued existence actually seemed to have any merit for Giles, he
never would have risked it for a few bucks.

It's a **joke**, nothing more. Just the set-up for a punchline. Giles
could have told Spike he had the most beautiful blue eyes he'd ever
seen, and it wouldn't have meant anything, either. David Fury was
trying to unsnarl a main arc, and move the W/T subplot along; he wasn't
burying four-year-long portents in throwaway jokes.

There never was a grand plan for Spike. He was supposed to die in
"What's My Line, Part 2", but Whedon kept him around so that the
"Angelus at home" scenes in later Season 2 would have some conflict.
(And they needed those scenes so Boreanaz could have something to do
over the last 9 eps besides stalk Buffy.) They brought him back because
they needed fresh eye candy, and at this point, ME was desperately
trying to rescue the Season 4 arc because they'd unexpectedly lost
Lindsay Crouse. The eps were a mess--"Doomed" was thrown together by
three writers over a weekend, for example. They had no real concept on
why Spike was on the show at that point, bouncing from "we need him for
info on the Initiative" ("Pangs") to "he can only fight demons and he
likes it" ("Doomed") to "the demons are against him and he has nowhere
else to go" ("Goodbye, Iowa") until they finally decided to head for
Spuffyville in Season 5. It. Doesn't. Mean. Anything. Honest.

And I don't for a minute mean that Cordelia deserves Hell or that she's
unforgiveable. I just mean that sending her there instead of Heavenward
would

a) rescue us from the idea that she's a "higher being", which she
surely ain't (if anything, her character has backslid since "Birthday"),
and 

b) reinforce the concept that demons are evil, sneaky, lying bastards,
which I know seems to be forgotten these days, but I still have hopes...

Dan

holding out for the existence of Evil, otherwise Good kind of lacks a
purpose...