3/12: Helpless

[William the Bloody]

Written by David Fury
Directed by James A. Contner
Air Date: 1/19/99

As Buffy's eighteenth birthday approaches she loses her slayer powers jsut as she must go up against a crazed vampire who has kidnapped her mother.

[beccaelizabeth]

season 3 again
am up to Helpless

so far this season Giles has talked about the two kinds of monsters
we've met Ripper
seen that Mark of Eyghon still clearly on his arm
about where he ends up injecting Buffy? Other side I think.
And injecting - ouch. hates needles. But it has to be some kind of deliberate that they use injections and not magic.
Helpless is right after Gingerbread. Mum tries to burn her, Dad still absent, Watcher sticks needles in. And of course there was fake Watcher lady earlier. Authority figures this year are the big problem.

Ethan tied Buffy up and used a needle on her. To put a tattoo on, save his own life, give her the chance to protect Giles. We just saw Ethan a while ago and he tried the same knock Buffy out trick but Giles protected her.
This time Giles is the danger.

The only reason I can buy Giles acting this way is knowing he was raised to be a Watcher. Also knowing he ran back to it after trying the bad stuff and it all going wrong. (Gingerbread, Cordelia mentioning his juvenile delinquency while he picks a lock). Watchers were safety for him then. He was raised to believe in them, follow them. So there's two generations of father figure here, Giles and the people Giles was raised to look up to. Would Buffy inject someone because Giles said so? Of course. Specially if he said it was for their own good. So Giles does it because his authority-who-raised-him says so. But then rebels. At precisely the worst possible time. Everyone ends up hating him.


I think the music plays with the music from Psycho. Scary movies do that a lot.

Something arrived in the mail that made a thud right when vampire try to break through door. I jump much


The "You don't seem to understand your place in all of this" line was much scarier from the Master. Cause he didn't have the fatal indigestion right after.


Giles stakes a vamp. After he stops doing what the Council says he gets to be physically useful.


The Watchers in this that get dead are called Hobson and Blair. There is a Blair family of Watchers. Tony Blair went to Oxford, St John's, 1975, for a degree in Jurisprudence. Current Labour Prime Minister.
Now of course Real Person Fic is a bit dodgy, but politicians are fair game (they end up in comics all the time for instance). So, Giles was at Oxford at roughly the same time as a guy from the Blair family, who we know are Watchers...
(actually in my universe 1975 was the year Giles wasn't at Oxford on account of being in London being Ripper, but I like the fic ideas in the other version)