Re: Power & Responsibility

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

I almost think there's a bigger "Giles going to pot" arc that they
planned but didn't tell. He seems to be riding hard enough on Willow in
early Season 3 (judging from their scene in "Faith, Hope & Trick", she
hid the magic she did over the summer [which she tells Buffy about at
the end of "Dead Man's Party"] from him), despite having two slayers to
Watch.

But when Willow graduates to combat spells in "The Zeppo", Giles doesn't
even seem to be paying attention. While Buffy is triple-checking to
make sure that Willow's okay (awww...), Giles is bitching about getting
fired and losing his sources. And since this is right after MOO burned
some of his books, I think he felt kind of useless and cut Willow loose
to pick up his slack. Mind you, he's still protective of her later,
taking over for her in casting the binding spell on the Hellmouth
Muppet, but once Wesley shows up in the next ep he doesn't seem to be
doing much supervising. We didn't see him have one word for Willow when
he found out about her spell with Anya in "Doppelgangland", and he
barely blinked when she mentioned she'd snuck into his forbidden volumes
in "Enemies". (No wonder Willow, in "Earshot", says that Giles "isn't
doing his best work".) And in "Choices", he's quite content to let her
cast away.

He apparently spent the post-graduation summer drinking and screwing
off, since he doesn't have the books unpacked as late as "The Harsh
Light of Day". His realization that he was letting Buffy down in "The
Freshman" seems to have spurred him back into action, and he's the one
who takes charge of the mystical aspects in both "Living Conditions" and
"Fear, Itself". But when Buffy starts ignoring him (you know, this is
just fertile ground for some B/G 'shipper, now that I think of it), he
dumps it all on Willow--he wants her to handle the truth spell in
"Something Blue" and calls her up for the ionization spell in "The I in
Team", and he defers to her and Tara in "Where the Wild Things Are".
It looks like Willow getting deeper into magic was supposed to be a
consequence of the crisis we never really got to see Giles have in
Season 4.

Of course, how this was supposed to coexist with Giles getting his stuff
back together in Season 5, that I don't understand. But then again, I
don't understand why Mr. "Magic is dangerous, Willow" is running a store
that sells the stuff to anybody who walks in off of the street. (Of
course, the Magic Box is mostly an excuse to keep anyone not named
Joyce, Dawn, Riley or Spike conveniently tucked away out of Buffy's
life, so...I mean don't get me started about "Shadow". Buffy's having
conniptions because her mom has a brain tumor, and Willow/Giles/Xander
are just sitting around in the Magic Box [for the entirety of the ep, in
Willow's case]??? Riiiight, I believe that.)

So I guess all I know is...that I don't know.

Dan