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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Oct 10, 2004 2:00:30 GMT -5
I wanted to chime in on the "burning baby fishes" discussion:
In Triangle, Willow references the fish in The Cat In The Hat. In that story, the fish is the voice of conscience and keeps telling the children what they should and shouldn't be doing. In the Buffyverse, the soul is conscience/ability to feel remorse. So this would be another reference that supports the fish=soul side of the debate.
The only reason I'm not entirely convinced by this is because, when FFL was written, I don't think ME had decided to give Spike a soul yet. Or if Joss was planning on it, I don't think Doug Petrie knew, since there was a lot of effort to keep the soul thing a surprise.
I also agree with everyone who was blown away by Spike going from utter dejection to murderous rage in the alley. And the ending takes my breath away everytime; Spike realizes that despite everything, he really doesn't want to kill her, accepts his feelings, and just goes with it. Perfect.
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Post by SpringSummers on Oct 10, 2004 9:52:22 GMT -5
I wanted to chime in on the "burning baby fishes" discussion: In Triangle, Willow references the fish in The Cat In The Hat. In that story, the fish is the voice of conscience and keeps telling the children what they should and shouldn't be doing. In the Buffyverse, the soul is conscience/ability to feel remorse. So this would be another reference that supports the fish=soul side of the debate. The only reason I'm not entirely convinced by this is because, when FFL was written, I don't think ME had decided to give Spike a soul yet. Or if Joss was planning on it, I don't think Doug Petrie knew, since there was a lot of effort to keep the soul thing a surprise. I also agree with everyone who was blown away by Spike going from utter dejection to murderous rage in the alley. And the ending takes my breath away everytime; Spike realizes that despite everything, he really doesn't want to kill her, accepts his feelings, and just goes with it. Perfect. I definitely think Joss was planning to return Spike's soul to him if he was given enough time (which he was.) I think we get the mega-foreshadowing in New Moon Rising in particular, but elsewhere as well. Spike, I think, is one of the "new moons" of the title. Having said that, I agree that Doug Petrie didn't necessarily know - but Joss does do "script-doctoring" so the "fishes" line could have come from him, or from any of the writers. Interesting thought on the fish in The Cat in The Hat. Cats eat fish. I have no idea if that is significant, but it just popped into my head. YES! I love the ending of FFL also. Both actors are just perfection in it - the dialogue, the look of the scene - perfect is the word.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Jan 26, 2005 18:29:42 GMT -5
I definitely think Joss was planning to return Spike's soul to him if he was given enough time (which he was.) I think we get the mega-foreshadowing in New Moon Rising in particular, but elsewhere as well. Spike, I think, is one of the "new moons" of the title. Having said that, I agree that Doug Petrie didn't necessarily know - but Joss does do "script-doctoring" so the "fishes" line could have come from him, or from any of the writers. Interesting thought on the fish in The Cat in The Hat. Cats eat fish. I have no idea if that is significant, but it just popped into my head. YES! I love the ending of FFL also. Both actors are just perfection in it - the dialogue, the look of the scene - perfect is the word. I think I'm revising my opinion about when they planned out Spike's storyarc. Harsh Light of Day and In The Dark, his reintroduction to the series, seem to pretty clearly lay out what's going to happen to him, follow in Angel's footsteps (foreshadowed in In The Dark) and that he's going to get there via Buffy love (foreshadowed in Harsh Light of Day). So...I'm thinking JW at least had the soul thing planned already and I think the "burning baby fish" line does refer to that. Fish=soul imagery does seem to be pretty consisent: in Passions Angel kills Willow's fish as a sign of his desire not to have his soul back (and Willow does eventually rensoul him, hmm...), in Enemies the Book demon is trying to pack his fish in his bag and in the same episode there's the question of whether Angel lost his soul or not, in The Prom Buffy talks about killing her goldfish during the break up scene and Angel is deciding to leave partially so he won't risk losing his soul, in Triangle there's the reference to the fish (voice of conscience) in the Cat in the Hat, and in Soul Purpose there's the "I kill my goldfish" line repeated and the fish symbolizing Angel's soul in the dream. There may be other references, but the connection seems pretty clear to me. Anyway, that's my two cents.
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Post by williamtheb on Oct 30, 2013 0:10:03 GMT -5
Hi Spring! Just watching season five in the first time in forever. I had some thoughts related to some of the material in your analyses.
The Buffy/Spike material in this episode is dizzying and so amazing that I probably won't even talk about it right now. Just extraordinary all around. One note -- this episode, and the series overall, undermine Spike a lot, but especially in his claim that Buffy has ties to the world which (it is implied) the other slayers did not. The Chinese slayer had a mother, but Spike couldn't understand her language. Nikki has a son Spike doesn't know about. That Chinese slayer's last thought being about her mother recalls William saying his mother is expecting him, and Buffy's depression brought on by her mother's approaching death.
It occurs to me that the teaser and first act of the episode do a very good job of establishing Buffy's entire romantic/slayer history, before she goes to Spike. First, she is out patrolling, feeling confident. (Incidentally, she asks him "did you smell this bad when you were alive?" which is a pretty similar question to her later "were you always this big a pain in the ass?" to Spike.) The vampire stabs her with her own stake. Buffy reaches down, shocked, impaled, and there's a shot which lingers for a moment on her looking at the blood on her hand. She seems down for the count, and then Riley enters and saves her.
If this is about Buffy's heart and slayer history (pretty closely related), I'd say: Buffy thought she knew what she was doing, but suddenly she got a huge chest wound -- i.e. heart wound -- from Angel. Who turned her own "stake"/calling against her, by eventually forcing her to kill him. She has blood on her hands -- which makes me think both of guilt at killing Angel, and about her killing Faith. And then Riley comes in when she's nearly dead.
What's Riley's role? Riley gets into a fight with that vampire (shades of "The Yoko Factor" fight with Angel). The next scene, Riley patches Buffy up so that she can look presentable before her mom and normal life. Riley says "I still think you need to see a real doctor" -- which makes me think of your analysis connecting "the doctor" as the guy to heal Buffy emotionally, and how that is Spike. Dawn bursts her way into Buffy's room against Buffy's desires -- but she ends up in there to see Buffy's wound and ends up helping her out. And then Buffy goes to Giles and then to Spike. Dawn's bursting in without Buffy's wanting her to really hits how Buffy somewhat reluctantly comes to care for Dawn so deeply and powerfully. And Riley -- well, he saved her at a time when she was badly wounded, but besides temporarily patching her up there's not much more he can do.
I was just thinking, though: I'm not sure that Spike is the only "doctor." Buffy brings up the Scoobies to Riley; Riley may like them (especially Xander) but sees them as an annoyance on patrol, which Buffy's more rigid side kind of does too (some of the dialogue when she lets loose in "When She Was Bad" and "The Yoko Factor" suggests this). It's probably just a (happy) coincidence, but I was just thinking about this dialogue from "Killed by Death":
Ha! I love this -- because, yep, in "Bargaining" Willow and Xander do play doctor, and Xander doesn't have the heart to tell Willow she's doing it wrong (or the heart to agitate for caution strongly enough). But it's not just Willow as the one who brings her back from the dead -- because Willow is also the healer other places, too, especially "Weight of the World" and her creating the antidote in "Normal Again." I think we can add "Get it Done" for rescuing her from the other dimension. And she performs the spell to end Buffy's alone-ness. Even her dark rampage ends up bringing Buffy's pain back to the surface so that it can be exorcised and she can be reborn by crawling out of her grave willingly. It's also cool/interesting how in most of these examples Willow is paired with Spike in some way -- the Willow/Spike parallels you mentioned in WotW; Spike is the one who delivers the antidote Willow created in "NA"; in a turnaround, Willow "delivers" the demon Spike brought her to bring Buffy back in "Get it Done"; and Spike and Willow are the two bathed in light, Willow ending Buffy's spiritual aloneness (slayer sisters!) and Spike ending her romantic/loving aloneness ("I love you"). As befitting her role as spirit, Willow's, er, doctoring (for good and ill) are more spiritual/intellectual, and Spike's are more physical/emotional.
Anyway, it's a very minor point -- but I think it's interesting and cool that while Riley is much friendlier with the Scoobies than Spike is on the outside, Riley resents Buffy asking him to team up with them and doesn't respect their contributions to the patrol, and Spike states clearly, later in the episode, that they are part of the ties to the world that keep Buffy tethered. We see in "Listening to Fear" how little Riley values the Scoobies as a demon/alienhunting unit. It makes me sad for Xander -- given how much he has invested in Riley, and how cool he thinks Riley is.
(There's a lot of doctor stuff in season five itself, especially -- Ben, Dr. Isaacs, Doc. Lots of medicine this year. Ben and Doc, though, are both followers of Glorificus. And the way Ben chooses to practice medicine is by summoning aliens to kill mental patients which his alter-ego has caused. Yikes.)
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