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Bargaining, Part One (Ep. 6.1)"Inner Circle" Night in the cemetery. A vampire the size of an NFL linebacker is sprinting through the cemetery, the Scooby gang in hot pursuit. That is to say, Spike is hauling ass at a good clip, Tara is doing a pretty good job of keeping up (in a bitchin' red leather coat!), and Giles is huffing and puffing along as best he can. The stake-toting duo of Xander and Anya is advancing on the action from a different angle, and from high atop a strategically placed crypt, a commanding Willow surveys the grounds like a field marshall, directing the group's movements via telepathy. They wisecrack, work as a team, and generally kick ass. Apparently, this is a typical night at the vamp-races for the now Buffy-less gang. Except that the gang isn't totally Buffy-less. A leather-clad Buffy arrives on the scene, gets in a healthy quip... and is tossed aside by the oversized vamp. The rest of the gang moves in to take over, and after a hard struggle finally manages to dispatch the troublesome creature. Buffy manages to stake a second vamp, pronouncing brightly, "that'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!" Yeah, okay - it's the Buffybot. The 'bot's appearance is hardly a big dramatic surprise - Season 5 ended with Buffy in her grave, and it's fair to say that nobody expected the show to just pick up as if the main character's death had simply never happened. So obviously, here we are again with the robot. The chirpy machine - last seen minus a head from in her bout against Glory - has been fixed by Willow for the purpose of filling in for the now-deceased Buffy over the summer. It does a pretty good job of it too, except for that pesky talking-to-people problem. ("I was trying to program in some new puns and kind of ended up with word salad," Willow apologizes for the 'bot's bizarre speech patterns.) The nail-biting tension we have to work with here is... what if the Sunnydale monster population realizes that the Slayer-in-residence is just a mechanical fill-in? What if the 'bot says the wrong thing to Dawn's father on the telephone? What if - horrors! - it screws up in front of everyone on Parent-Teacher Day? "Bargaining Part One," the first half of the two-hour Season 6 premiere, establishes the gang's post-Buffy status as not all that different from the beginning of Season 3, in which we find Buffy had dealt with her trauma of sending Angel to hell by running away from home to work an an anomymous waitress in a grimy city diner. Her friends, not knowing if she was alive or dead, filled the gap left by Slayer-gone-missing by forming a team of fearless vampire killers complete with teamwork, code names, and walkie-talkies (interestingly foreshadowing Season 4's Initiative, incidentally). With Buffy dead and buried, the core group's reaction is once again to circle the wagons and pretend all is well in Sunnyhell. Rather than one of the female members of the group posing as the Slayer (as they did with Season 3, where Willow put on a tough-girl pose to fool night creatures), the 'bot is a ready-made stand-in, and its reactivation and the success of its masquerade is all that stands between Dawn and the threat of being spirited off to a foster home. Willow is now leader of the gang - officially via vote, over the summer, it seems ("You made her that little plaque that said 'Boss of Us' - you put on sparkles," Tara reminds Xander at one point). Willow keeps the robot functioning, she plans their manuevers; she and Tara have even moved into Casa de Summers to look after Dawn. On the surface, everything seems to be operating smoothly. But Willow plans to bring Buffy back from the dead with magic, and she's managed to convince Xander, Anya, and Tara to help her. The episode title, "Bargaining," is a reference to the five famous emotional stages of coping with death (from the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross book On Death and Dying): Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. The message that comes across loud and clear is that the gang has spent the summer deeply in denial. The existence of the Buffybot has allowed them to treat the situation as something temporary, putting off their need to cope with the long term. Xander hasn't told anyone about his and Anya's engagement. Giles has remained in town, going through the motions of training the synthetic copy of his Slayer. Dawn continues to go to school, trying her best to act as if nothing had happened at all. But as the driving force behind everything the group does, the elected "boss," Willow is the undisputed captain of this particular ship on the river of denial.
Yet not all the Scoobies are on exactly the same page with their grief process. Anya is eager to get on with life. She wants everyone to know about her engagement to Xander. She's eager for Giles to leave so she can take charge of the Magic Box in his absence. "I was being patient but it took too long," she explains to Xander, frustrated at the continued inaction. "I mean, I miss Buffy, I do. But life shouldn't just stop because she's gone." It's probable that this is why Anya agreed to participate in the resurrection spell, rightly realizing that until the gang deals with Buffy's death one way or another, the status quo is unlikely to change. Why Tara, normally such a strong moral voice, agreed to help is less clear. When Xander uncomfortably comments that the idea of raising Buffy from the dead "feels wrong," Tara clearly states "It is wrong. It's against all the laws of nature and practically impossible to do, but it's what we agreed to." Aside from wanting to show support for her lover, Tara's convoluted argument in favor of the raising is hard to figure out. (It's wrong, but we agreed to it? Huh?) Other last-ditch concerns are raised in an impromptu summit meeting between the conspirators. Xander offers the most obvious scenario: "We raise Buffy from the grave. She tries to eat our brains. Do we A: Congratulate ourselves on a job well done...?" Willow refuses to even consider this possibility, appealing to the group's knee-jerk emotions, claiming that given the mystical circumstances of Buffy's death, her soul could be "trapped in some hell dimension like Angel was, suffering some eternal torment that we can't even imagine just because she saved us.. I'm not gonna leave her there." Moved by Willow's tearful plea, the group agrees to forge ahead. The last of the ingredients are gathered, including the last surviving specimen of an "Urn of Osiris" (the Egyptian god of the dead, who as I recall, was resurrected by his wife albeit with a crucial missing part - Ruh-roh! Foreshadowing?), and "Vino de Madre," which translates to blood of a cute, innocent fawn, collected by Willow herself with a sharp dagger to its heart. Cuh-reepy! The scene in which Willow stabs the deer is filmed in the deliberately sunny soft-focus imagery of a laundry commerical (Whiter whites! Redder BLOOD!), and even Willow seems horrified as she abruptly destroys this pretty scene with a sudden spurt of dark violence. Wisely, Willow conceals where she got this secret "black market" ingredient from the others, realizing that they might not understand. "It must be something pretty intense," Anya frowns. "Black market stuff is all baby teeth and spooky fluids." Willow shrugs off this eerily accurate assesment. "We have to have it to do the spell, which makes it good stuff in my book." In other words, the ends justify the means. Willow also establishes which members of the group she feels should be kept in the dark because they "might not understand" - Giles, Dawn, and Spike. That Willow would want to hide their shenanigans from Giles, the group's surrogate father, or Dawn, the little sister, is no surprise... but why would she want to exclude Spike? As a vampire, he's already familiar with magic (remember his instant recognition of Dawn's attempt to resurrect Joyce, and his subsequent assistance), and likely to have a better idea than they do what could be done to bring Buffy back. The only reason I can think of for Willow's shutout here is downright disturbing - he's on the excluded list for the same reason as Giles. He just might have too good of an idea of what kind of spell would be needed to bring the resurrection off. Willow is stepping over a dark line to bring her friend back, and she doesn't want any witnesses that might recognize just how far she's gone. Oddly enough, of all of Buffy's survivors, only Spike seems to have reached the "acceptance" stage of the grief process. Clinging to his promise to Buffy to protect Dawn "until the end of the world," he's stoically hung on to help the gang over the summer, hunting down vamps and demons, watching over Dawn, even offering her advice that he thinks would reflect Buffy's wishes. His first response to Dawn's recap of the Buffybot's success at Parent-Teacher Day is to snipe that the teachers loved the 'bot because it's "predictible" and that schools exist to turn out "mindless automatons," but quickly backtracks with "who go on to become very productive and valuable members of society, and you should go, because Buffy would want you to." However, promise or no promise, Spike is not a natural to selfless behavior, and shows more than a few signs of chafing against his new, self-imposed role. He allows Giles to receive an extended choking while he leisurely lights the vamp doing it on fire during the opening hunt. "Oooh. Poor Watcher. Did your life pass before your eyes?" he jokes even as he offers Giles a hand up. When Dawn tries to tell him she doesn't need a babysitter because "it's not like anyone's coming after me... it's over, remember?" he reacts violently, startling Dawn by slamming a deck of cards on a table, and tersely grinding out, "I'm not leaving you to get hurt. Not again." Later, when the malfunctioning Buffybot shows up at the house needing repairs and addresses him with cheery adoration, he turns ice cold, telling Willow to "fix it," and stalking out of the house. "I think Spike stopped liking me," the robot says sadly. He can't even look at the machine. The Buffybot is an unwanted reminder of his failure, and Dawn's guardianship is a sort of prison sentence, the reality of which no amount of good behavior is going to change. Dawn has problems of her own dealing with the robot. The Buffybot is amply provided with all the positive reactions it is supposed to have re: Dawn, and is wincingly enthusiastic in its affection for her. "You're my sister!" it chirps, giving Dawn a big, squeezy hug. That Dawn has to look at the Buffybot every day, live alongside it, laugh with it in public in order to maintain the illusion that Buffy is still alive and well is nothing short of heartbreaking. At night, while the 'bot recharges, Dawn sadly creeps into bed alongside the inert machine and lays her head on its chest, drawing whatever comfort she can. Ironically, it's the robot that finally convinces Giles of the need to get on with his life. "I did what every good Watcher does. I got my Slayer killed in the line of duty." he reflects during a "training session" with it at the Magic Box. The robot doesn't understand the grief in his words. "Then why are you still here?" it asks innocently. It's this question that finally makes Giles realize that he's been putting off accepting his Slayer's death, and he promptly books his flight to England. The soon-to-be-spellcasting members of the Scooby gang plus Dawn receive his farewell note just in time, and show up at Sunnydale airport (Sunnydale has an international airport?) for a teary farewell. They load him with cheesy going-away gifts hastily purchased at a gas station and a handmade banner and card, and see him off. Giles' departure is sad, touching, and (deservedly) given quite a lot of time. (Sniff. Giles. Sniff.) It's also astoundingly abrupt - like Joyce's sudden death, Giles is just gone, very nearly without a goodbye, clearing away the last vestige of adult supervision. His influence becomes especially significant by its sudden absence - the gang is now free to make its own decisions, good or bad... and the uneasy impression is building that the spell will be of the bad. Meanwhile, the secret the gang has worked all summer to hide has finally leaked out. Alerted to the ruse by the vamp who managed to short circuit the Buffybot, a gang of motorcycle-riding demons (their leather jackets read "Hellions" - heh, that's funny) decide Sunnydale is the place to be. "No place like the Hellmouth for a party!" they cheer before roaring onto the road on their choppers to the sounds of White Zombie. That chaos has to come calling just in time to coincide with the fateful spell is a little convenient, but...whatever. A little action for the second part, I guess. Onward. Pacing-wise, "Bargaining" really suffers from its two-part structure - there's too long a wait to get to the meat of the matter, Buffy's resurrection. It feels like a tightly plotted one-hour extended to two. Part One, focusing heavily on preparations for the spell and comedy bits with the Buffybot, doles out the emotional scenes with Buffy's survivors sparingly - a real disappointment after the long summer break. I would have loved to have seen more about how the gang dealt with their grief, and how they handle their new group Slaying regimen and Dawn-looking-after responsibilities. Without these details, the Scoobies come across as unflatteringly manipulative and secretive, covertly discussing the upcoming spell even as they see Giles off at the airport. That said, I actually really enjoyed the Buffybot whenever it was onscreen (Sarah Michelle Gellar had quite a lot to do for someone whose character is actually dead). It's kind of heartrending the way it just wants to make everyone happy, greeting all of Buffy's friends with sunny smiles. Ironically, it's the machine's own hard-wired eagerness to please that makes it such a poor substitute for Buffy. It's like a version of Buffy that never existed - a childlike, cooperative innocent with none of the original's complexity, confusion, stubborness, or ability to grow. You can't help but feel sorry for the poor thing as it's circled by the newly arrived motorcycle demons. "You're nothing but a toy," the group's leader, Razor, gloats as he slashes through the robot's chest with his bladelike fingers. "A pretty toy." Yes, that's exactly what it is. I couldn't help but think of the poor 'bot from "I Was Made to Love You" here: "I'm only supposed to love him... if I can't do that, what am I for? What do I exist for?" The poor Buffybot exists to maintain the illusion that Buffy is alive. Now that the masquerade is exposed, its reason to exist is gone, and I doubt it's long for this world. This is just plain sad. The injured robot runs, straight toward Willow, just like its homing beacon tells it to. Deep in the woods, the conspirators gather around Buffy's tombstone with black candles, the flames casting spooky shadows on their faces. Willow, dressed in a velvet-flocked black gown for the occasion, paints her face with blood, annoints the grave with the liquid from the urn and begins to recite the spell, calling on "Osiris, keeper of the gate, master of all fate... here lies the Warrior of the People. Let her cross over!" A wind whips up. The spell seems to be working. Willow is "tested" by phantom knives that slash her flesh and weird nodules that ripple under her skin. A huge, black snake comes out of her mouth. Any doubt that this counts as black magic? No? Check. Eldritch energy swirls around Willow as the others look on, frozen with their candles, unable to move for fear of breaking the momentum of the spell. As it turns out, they needn't have worried. Chaos came calling with no help from them. The motorcycle demons arrive in hot pursuit of the hapless Buffybot who bursts into the clearing with the cry, "Willow! I need service!" Harleys skid across Buffy's grave, crushing the fragile urn and shattering the spell. Willow collapses with a scream and the coalescing energy is gone, just like that. The choppers continue to chase the robot while the Scooby gang scatters into the woods to hide, Xander dragging a semi-conscious Willow to safety. "Did it work?" she gasps before fainting in his arms. "I'm sorry," Xander tells her. In the abandoned clearing, the camera lingers on Buffy's grave. It then travels into the ground, right into Buffy's coffin, where we get far too good a look at her decaying corpse laid out on its satin pillow...just as magical energies cause it to regenerate, erasing the death rictus, flesh smoothing out. As eyes appear in her empty sockets, we see Buffy gasp and look around her in terror. She's back.
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