Just Stake Me! Episodes

Selfless (Ep. 7.5)

"She Sells Sanctuary"

As I mentioned in the previous episode's writeup, "Selfless" struck me as the second installment of an unofficial BtVS two-parter. The connecting theme between the pair of episodes were long-overdue insights into what really makes the characters tick - who they are, why they do what they do. "Help" was just what it sounded like - an exploration of Buffy's impulse to help others, and how her Slayer role is sometimes at odds with this. "Selfless" follows up this insight by exploring how Buffy defines her Slayer role, interestingly enough, by drawing a parallel with Anya and her millennium of vengeance. Both, as it turns out, really are "selfless"... and it's not altruism we're talking about.

. . .

Casa de Summers. Like last episode, where the opening scene centered around Buffy's first day facing the kids and their problems, Willow's back-to-school venture is the starter topic. Dawn, in that confident way of teenagers who feel they've got it all figured out, lectures Willow on how to behave, no doubt feeling that the witch's social skills have lasped during her previous semester's detour into evil. "Do what everyone else does, wear what everyone else wears, say what everyone else says... Just nod and smile," goes the scripture according to Dawn. Oh, Dawn. Conformity won't protect you from the weirdness and the cruelty that is life. You're so young. Willow grants her a tolerant laugh.

Xander and Buffy then enter, talking. Subject: Anya. Xander confirms that he hasn't spoken to her since the incident with the worm demon, but is contemplating calling her. "I just worry about her is all... she seems so sad," he says. Buffy cautions him against getting his hopes up, commenting on the "vengeance vibe" she picked up. Xander says, "I don't worry about that. She was hurt and she just turned back to what she knew when I... you know. But that's not her anymore," and reminds Buffy that she took back the worm-demon curse. He feels assured that Anya is "coming around."

Cut to a frat house on Sunnydale campus. Blood is smeared on the walls. Bodies are littered everywhere. And in a corner stands Anya, her dress streaked with blood. "What have I done?" she whispers. Well, from the looks of it, fallen off the "no deaths, no eviscerations" wagon. In a big, big way.

Love In The Time Of Subtitles
From this shocking opening, we cut to a scene of Anya's past, a small village in Sjornjost (I assume Sweden), circa 880, in which she is a simple peasant girl named Aud hopelessly in love with a big, dumb, generally sweet lunk of a guy named Olaf - the same one we saw resurface as a troll in Season 5's "Triangle." This scene is heavy with references to everything we know about Anya, from her bunny phobia (obviously not a factor yet - she is holding a fluffy specimen thereof when we first see her) and the troll we know she eventually turns Olaf into. When he enters their modest hut, he has just returned from a battle with a group of trolls.

Much like Anya and Xander were, Aud and Olaf at first appear to be quite happily in love. "You are my perfect... I could never want for another," Olaf tells her, while her point of view is the rather more intense "I simply love you so much. I feel as though I could burst at times. I could not live without you." Given the dialogue (in Swedish, cutely subtitled in hilariously awkward English) Aud was very much like the Anya with which we are now quite familiar. "You speak your mind, and are annoying," as Olaf puts it, by way of explaining why the villagers don't seem to like Aud very much. He also says it's what he loves about her, but he praises her slim figure too, in constrast to the "large and load-bearing" hips of a particular bar maiden. Hard not to guess how that's going to end up.

Interestingly, the largest difference between Aud and Anya is her commercial sensibility. Of the breeding rabbits, she has the idea to "give the excess out to the townspeople, exchanging them not for goods or services, but for goodwill and the sense of accomplishment that stems from selflessly giving of yourself to others." So much for capitalism! Anya the selfless giver!

But is that really so far off the mark? Think about "Triangle," for instance, when she offered up her life to Olaf rather than see Xander hurt. Or "Two to Go" and "Grave," where she put in her share of above-and-beyond bravery. Or "Same Time, Same Place," where she helped Willow, then Buffy and Xander, all for no reward or thanks. Is Anya still Aud under the surface? Are people, even those who have since become demons, "what they are, no matter how much they appear to have changed," as Giles put it in "Lessons"?

Buffy Bait-And-Switch
The scene then switches to the Sunnydale basement, to another person who appears to have radically changed: Spike. He is talking, and for the first time since "Beneath You," he sounds normal, sane. "I don't trust what I see anymore... it's like I've been seeing things," he explains.... and the camera than moves to show who he's talking to. It's Buffy - a quiet, patient, strangely compassionate Buffy who sits and listens to him with an open, unguarded expression while he spins a memory of Drusilla, and the sorts of things she used to "see," including such charmers as burning cherubs and bleeding heavens. "But she'd see the sky when we were inside, and it'd make her so happy," he remembers, then ducks his head and confesses, "I'm in trouble, Buffy."

"I can help," she says, and tells him it's "different" now.... "you're different." He disagrees. "I could never ask," he mumbles. "After... I could never ask." She reaches out to stroke his hair and offers this achingly touching statement: "Spike, it's me. It's you and it's me, and we'll get through this."

... and this surprising tender moment is abruptly shattered by the appearance of... Buffy, the real Buffy, walking in. Spike is alone, crouched in the corner. No angelic figure is hovering over him whispering soft words. Oh... now that hurts.

Unlike Spike's fantasy dressed in soft white, the real article is dressed in black and stares down at the insane vampire coldly. "This basement is killing you," she preaches, and goes into a list of reasons why he should leave. "This is the Hellmouth. There's something bad down here. Possibly everything bad," she insists. His response is to laugh miserably, no doubt realizing just how far gone he really is. The sympathetic Buffy of his dreams was just that - a dream. The real Buffy does not offer forgiveness or understanding to monsters. The best she can give him is this challenging statement: "You have a soul. Fine. Show me. Get up, and get out of this basement." He looks up at her, lost, the half-smile of utter hopelessness on his face. "I don't have anywhere else to go," he tells her simply.

Who I Killed During Summer Vacation
From this despairing portrait, we are then given a directly opposing example, of forgiveness made easy. Willow, back at Sunnydale University, is nervously trying to explain to one of her old instructors that she's ready to dig right back into the academic grind, only to be surprised by her prof's instant acceptance, based on her past performance as Willow the Wonderful Student. "Of course I noticed that dropoff in your grades at midterm last year, and I was concerned, but then... you turned it around and aced all your finals like, boom. Magic," the instructor says. Willow laughs a little uneasily at this (and what are the odds her grades really were turned around "like magic"?) but is too excited by her teacher's we'll-get-you-caught-up-in-no-time enthusiasm for this irksome trickle of guilt to last.

Bidding farewell to her teacher, Willow spots Anya across the quad, exiting the fraternity house we know to be a bloody crime scene. Buoyed by the unexpected display of support where she'd expected only harsh discpline, Willow cheerfully calls Anya over and eagerly begins to tell her all about it, oblivious to her listener's discomfort and furtive glancing around. Distracted, Anya explains her exit from the frat house as a "new boyfriend" with whom she is "tremendously happy." Willow cheers to hear this, apparently authentically, but can't help but notice a smear of blood on Anya's hand. Anya cuts the conversation short and leaves; Willow watches her thoughtfully, then veers toward the frat house.

Inside, the horrific murder scene tells its own tale. Blood is pooled on the floor. The sound of crying draws Willow to a closet where a girl hunches, terrified, muttering over and over, "I take it back, I take it back." With Willow's prompting, the story emerges. She'd been brought to the frat house as a cruel prank, a bit of public humiliation in front of the entire fraternity. "And I yelled, 'just once, I wish you could all know what it feels like to have your hearts ripped out'... and then it came," she sobs. The answer to what came appears next - a giant black spider-demon that makes a sudden leap for Willow.

Willow is not slow to react. She magically repels the demon with a lift of her hand and a single-word spell, but her eyes goes pitch black with the effort. "For god's sake, shut your whimpering mouth!" she snarls at the frightened girl as the spider kicks and struggles. Finally, Willow magically hurls the demon through a window, and she returns to normal. "I'm sorry," she tells the terrified girl. And no doubt so is the girl. And so is Anya, apparently. Everybody's sorry for something.

We're Looking For A Few Good Demons
Cut back to Sjornjost of the far past. Olaf has now been turned into a troll. "Run! Hide your babies and your beadwork!" the villagers cry, unrecognizing of their own former resident, before extolling each other to "Hit him with fruits and various meats!" Aud watches the results of her work from a distance, impassive. D'Hoffryn, who we know to be the head of all things vengeance, appears and takes a polite interest in her methodology. Emotionless (much like her drained response to wedding disaster), Aud illuminates him tersely with details of the spell, to which D'Hoffryn offers praise and the observation that she is "not fully appreciated" and that he can see her "true self."

D'Hoffryn's recruitment of Anya in this scene is somewhat akin to an introduction to a religious cult. Aud is presented as an outsider to her community ("I don't talk to people much. I mean, I talk to them, but they don't talk to me"). D'Hoffryn offers inclusion in a new "family," complete with a new name, a purpose, and a career. "Anyanka is who you are," he tells her and explains the job he wants her to do, which sounds fairly altruistic at first blush: "help wronged women punish evil men... but only to those that deserve it." The recently scorned Aud opines, "They all deserve it." D'Hoffryn smiles. He has a new convert.

Slayer Siesta
Buffy's office. She's working hard... uh, hardly working. Actually, she's balancing a cup of pencils on her forehead. Gotta keep those Slayer reflexes sharp! The ringing phone shatters her concentration, and she grabs the phone and gets Willow on the line, reporting in with the details of the frat house massacre (although, apparently, not her suspicion about Anya's part in it). The Slayer's tone is downright chatty, considering the news - "ripped out the heart, my god," she muses, then segues lightly into "hey, did you get that physics class you wanted?" What was that theory about constant exposure to violence having a desensitizing effect? Just wondering.

And as a sideline to the above-mentioned scene, why is Buffy so cheery? Given that she's wearing the same outfit we just saw from the basement scene, we can assume that her grim motivational speech to Spike was an earlier item on the day's agenda, one that seems to have left her feeling strangely upbeat. I could construct a nice psychological model here - Buffy seeing herself as finally taking positive action, taking charge of the lurking id monsters in the basement of her subconscious and dragging them out into the open. Literally, in this case. Yay, I guess, for proactivity?

Intervention Intermisssion
In Anya's apartment, a gleeful Halfrek is full of praise for the frat house bloodbath. The old Anyanka is back, she crows. Anya is edgy - she didn't expect to be so affected by the murders. Her fellow vengeance demon offers assurances: "This is perfectly normal," Halfrek soothes. "It's a reflex. You'll get over it in no time, trust me." Grateful, Anya thanks her friend ("I can't tell you how good it is...thank goodness you're here"), but this cozy scene is rudely interrupted by Willow, who marches into the room, looks coldly at Halfrek, and snarls "get out." With an affirmative nod from Anya, Halfrek reluctantly teleports away, and the two women face each other, tense.

Willow tells Anya that she's in trouble, and claims she's there to help. Anya's reaction is a disbelieving scoff, and a reminder that Willow herself is no stranger to dishing out vengeance. ("Flayed anyone lately?") "They got what they deserved!" Anya proclaims, nearly hysterical. "I am a vengeance demon, do you understand that?" Willow says no, she doesn't. "Try!" Anya barks, and then repeats again, as if trying to convince herself: "They got what they deserved."

A Plan Of Action
Meanwhile, in the forest, possibly the one we last saw splattered with Warren's remains, Buffy tracks down the spider-demon with Xander at her side. They quickly stumble upon a dead body, decorated with a large hole in its chest, and some stringly material hanging from a tree. "This isn't springy high-flying fun!" comic-book-reading-guy Xander yells in disgust. The spider-demon then drops from the trees and tries to face-hugger on Buffy, but she quickly throws it off and dispatches it with a flung ax. Goodbye heart-ripping menace. The weary spider-hunters return to Summers HQ to find Willow waiting for them, finally ready to tell what she knows. The demon was summoned by Anya.

Stunned, Xander's first response is anger - how could Willow not have told them sooner? Buffy understands immediately. Voice calm, Buffy states it simply: "She didn't tell us for a reason... she knows what I have to do. I have to kill Anya."

Xander can't believe what he's hearing. "She's not the Anya that you knew, Xander. She's a demon," Buffy tells him, discussing the execution of his former fiancee with the kind of patient tone of someone lecturing a small child about manners. He insists "there are other options," to which Buffy dispassionately replies that she's considered them. "When? Just now?" he wonders. No, Buffy tells him, the thought had occured to her before. Infuriatingly calm, she tells him "I know it's tough for you to hear, but it's what I have to do." Xander insists that "When our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them," obviously referring to Willow, who yelps, "Sitting right here!"

Desperate, Xander appeals to Buffy's emotions - he still loves Anya. "That's why you can't see this for what it really is," Buffy retorts, and explains that "Willow was different" because she's human, and Anya's a demon. Glad we got that cleared up.

During this conversation, Buffy throws in several comments that acknowledge that the situation is not really as cut-and-dried as she makes it sound: "Don't act like this is easy for me, you know it's not"; "I don't want to [kill her]"; "it's always different"; "it's never simple" - but her delivery shows only the brittle, rote speechifying of "Villains" and "Two to Go." Buffy is in recitation mode - she is reading from the Slayer script, and playing the part that's required of her. Feelings - hers or his - are not a factor.

Xander decides that calling Buffy on her own hypocrisy is his best counter-argument, lashing out with the observation that "if there's a mass-murdering demon that you're, oh, say, boning, then it's all gray area." Buffy's answer clarifies that he's missed the point entirely - Spike was harmless, she tells him. He was helping. Anya made her choice - to become a demon, and to kill. "You have no idea what she's going through," Xander proclaims. "I don't care what she's going through!" Buffy shouts back.

Things get uglier. "You think we haven't seen all this before?" Xander rants. "The part where you just cut us all out. Just step away from everything human and act like you're the law?" Buffy cuts him off with "I killed Angel. Do you even remember that?" Her voice trembles with emotion. "I loved him more than anything I had in this life, and I put a sword through him because I had to." She then fastens a steely glare on Xander and delivers the acid comment: "Do you remember cheering me on? Both of you. Do you remember giving me Willow's message: 'kick his ass'?"

Quick break: how many people remember this? In the Season 2 finale, "Becoming, Part 2," Buffy was approaching the mansion for a final showdown with Angelus before he could activate the statue of Acathla and open a gateway to hell that only his blood would close. (Quite similar to the Glory situation, in retrospect.) Outside, she runs into Xander who, instead of telling his friend that Willow planned to give the soul-restoring spell another try, chose instead to lie to her. Five years later, and Buffy obviously remembers this moment like it was yesterday.

Buffy makes sure they get the big picture. "You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the Slayer is always cut off," she tells them, then adds that, "Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law."

I Am My Job, My Job Is Me
This discussion lays out some pretty key points about how Buffy views her role as the Slayer. That she had already considered the possibility of one day having to kill Anya is an eye-opener to say the least. It suggests that Buffy may perform such classifications on everyone she meets - harmless, dangerous, or potentially dangerous. (Which begs the question of how she now views Willow - does Buffy see her best friend as someone she might have to put down someday?) Spike's extended parole from death row is now explained as well. Re-demonized Anya, by spilling innocent blood, has instantly shuffled to the top of Buffy's "must-slay" list, as she is now an active threat to others. Spike, in his chipped, "harmless" state, does not demand a Slayer execution.

There are far-reaching psychological implications here. In the past, Buffy has shown extreme discomfort at the idea of being cut off from humanity. "We help people. That doesn't mean we can do whatever we want... We don't get to pass judgement on people like we're better than everybody else," she told Faith in "Consequences"; "I don't sleep on a bed of bones," she'd told the dream manifestation of the First Slayer in "Restless." But by "Selfless," she's made a complete one-eighty from this viewpoint, telling her friends in no uncertain terms that "human rules don't apply" to her, that she is "the law," essentially paraphrasing Faith's own words from "Consequences": "We don't need the law. We are the law."

Buffy has changed over the years. Radically. After everything - her death, her resurrection, killing her lover, fighting her best friend, she has finally given up trying to resist the Slayer's tendency to become a killing machine. She's realized that in any situation where the safety of world is at stake, her own feelings are the least relevant part of the equation. Her execution of Angel set a precedent: she must be prepared to kill anyone, at any time, and if she can't bring herself to do that (e.g., Dawn), then she must be ready to sacrifice herself instead. Her humanity has literally become a liability to doing her job.

This is true of Anya as well, and the scene that follows makes the parallel clear. A sumptuously dressed Anya sits at a banquet table with a similiarly attired Halfrek and a couple of bloody corpses during the Russian Revolution, circa 1905. Both women sip champagne and chatter, unfazed by the destruction visible out the picture window and a burning victim running by in the background. Reprising the earlier scene in Anya's apartment, Halfrek bubbles with praise over Anya's technique and breathlessly waits to hear what she will do next. The world awaits! Anya, after expressing an amusing confidence in the inevitability of communist revolution and socio-economic paradise, tells her fellow demon that all she's interested in is "wronged women who need my help."

As a vengeance demon, Anya became her job. "It's all work, work, work with you!" Halfrek chides. "I don't need anything else. Vengeance is what I am," Anya answers. Likewise, Buffy has given up trying to maintain a separate identity from the Slayer. Her emotional detachment now reads as a survival instinct - she can't bring herself to truly connect with people she may someday be called upon to kill.

Give Us A Chant
Unable to change Buffy's mind, Xander rushes out the door to warn Anya. Buffy marches to her weapons trunk, arms herself with a sword, and turns to Willow for support. Willow declines - she won't take part in this. Undeterred, Buffy leaves on her mission of death.

Alone, Willow acts quickly. She heads to her room and digs through a desk drawer until she finds D'Hoffryn's talisman (excellent continuity here - she received the talisman in S4's "Something Blue"), and summons the head of all vengeance with a chant. D'Hoffryn is pleased to see her ("Miss Rosenberg. How lovely to see you again. Have you done something with your hair?") and compliments her on her flaying of Warren. "That's not me anymore," Willow insists, and avoids D'Hoffryn's curious follow-up ("Is that right? So, I didn't feel your presence earlier today?") by changing the subject to Anya. D'Hoffryn sighs and agrees to talk...

Sharp Stabbing Pains
Meanwhile, Xander has found Anya back at the fraternity house, at the scene of the crime. Anxious, he tells her that he wants to help. "Everyone is so considerate today. I should've slaughtered people weeks ago," she bitters, and brushes off Xander's warning about Buffy coming to kill her with a similarly fatalist outlook to that of the Slayer: "I have a job to do. And so does Buffy," she tells him. The door bangs open, and the Slayer appears. Both women sharply tell Xander to get out of the way, and the battle is joined.

The fight is an impressive one - Anya is a match for Buffy in strength, but the Slayer is stoically silent, concentrated on her duty while Anya bitterly vents. "This is getting to be a pattern with you, Buffy. Are there any friends of yours left you haven't tried to kill?" she goads. Buffy apologizes for what she's about to do... then stabs Anya through the chest.

Switch to another flashback, set during the musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling." Whilst Xander sleeps, sprawled across a reclining chair in the apartment living room, Anya sings a solo about her upcoming wedding. The song itself is happy, but the lyrics are revealing: I'm just lately Anya/Not very much to the world, I know/All these years with nothing to show/I've boned a troll, I've wreaked some wrath/But on the whole, I've had no path/I like to bowl, I'm good with math/But who am I? The answer to her self-imposed question is: "I'm his missus." No longer the demon ("vengeance is who I am") Anya sings happily about taking on a new name, having a new definition for herself.

Back in the present, Anya painfully pulls the sword from her chest. "Takes a lot more to kill a vengeance demon," she gasps, and prepares to rejoin the battle. Xander keeps trying to intervene. "Stop trying to save me!" she shouts. The fight comes to a halt only when D'Hoffryn appears, apparating in a cloud of smoke.

The vengeance chief surveys the carnage with an approving air, and warns a menacing Buffy off. "Isn't that just like a Slayer? Solving all her problems by sticking things with sharp objects," he notes drily, further referring to her as "Lady HacksAway," then gets down to business. He and Willow had a talk. Willow suggested that Anya would be "better suited outside the vengeance fold." He's come to ask what Anya herself wants. Quietly, Anya says that it is. She wants to undo her vengeance. D'Hoffryn tells her it can be done... for a price: "The life and soul of a vengeance demon." Anya agrees, despite her ex's horrified pleas. She smiles at him sadly with "Xander, you can't help me. I'm not even sure there's a 'me' to help." She turns to D'Hoffryn, ready to accept her fate.

But fate as D'Hoffryn deals it is not the simple tradeoff she expected. Instead of simply killing Anya, he summons her friend Halfrek instead, and burns her alive. Anya watches in misery as her friend vanishes shrieking in a burst of flame. "Haven't I taught you anything, Anya? Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain," he viciously reminds her, and teleports away with the downbeat closing thought that it doesn't matter so much that she didn't die this time: "From Beneath You It Devours. Be patient. All good things in time."

Anya turns and leaves. Xander follows her. "You shouldn't be alone in this," he tells her. Anya disagrees. Her entire life, she has "just clung to whatever came along," whether that's dispensing justice or becoming a blushing bride. "What if I'm really nobody?" she asks. When he says, "Don't be a dope," she looks hopeful. "I'm a dope?" she asks and smiles, "that's a start." Anya then turns and walks away, shoulders squared, wiping her eyes.

Here's To Your Self
This is obviously a breakthrough episode for Anya. She realizes a number of things in quick succession: that vengeance is no longer "what she is"; that she is responsible for her own actions; that forgiveness alone can't absolve her from such responsibility ("all better... thank goodness you got here in time!" she tells Xander sarcastically when he shows up to help). In these realizations, she has discovered her own lack of identity, and identified it as the key problem - to live with herself, she has to know herself. She can't look to her friends or anyone else to tell her who she is.

That Anya's situation is set up in parallel to Buffy's is what's interesting about this episode. Buffy is shown to be just as "selfless" as Anya is - someone whose identity has become subsumed beneath her job. It's suggested that like Anya, Buffy does not really know herself - she's been allowing outside forces to define her, to reshape her into a workaholic supermom who is so busy living up to everyone's expectations that she's forced her own wants and needs completely off the agenda. Where the story chooses to go with this is a good question - will Buffy continue inching toward Robocop-style emotional deadness, ending up an automaton of by-the-book Slayage, or will she, like Anya, realize that she will never be comfortable with herself or her choices until she's learned who she really is, outside of work?

Emotionally, this episode packed an incredible punch. That said, the end was disappointing in Anya's walking away from Xander - although understandable from a story standpoint, given Anya's insistence that she needs to stand on her own two feet for a change, it lets down the part of me-the-viewer who is at this point thoroughly tired of seeing the characters "walk alone in fear." I can't tell you how relieved I was to see Xander defend Anya, to be willing to stand up and admit that he still loves her, demon be damned. Go, Xander. I love you. And I've been waiting for so long to feel that way about Xander again. So yeah, intellectually, I can appluad the reasons for his letting his ex-fiancee walk away in miserable silence instead of comforting her, but I'm a hopeless romantic here. Sue me.

Alternately, I can't help but notice that Willow's role as mediator here was crucial. If Buffy's only contribution to the fight against evil is the impulse to stick things with sharp objects, then Willow, with her interest in/ability to puzzle out non-violent solutions to serious problems (ironically the sort of thing Buffy is supposed to be learning to do in her counseling job), is really the most important member of the team right now. Courtesy of her own trip to the dark side, Willow seems able to summon up the kind of empathy for shady characters such as Anya that the Slayer herself can't bring herself to. In a situation that can't be solved by violence (and I have this hunch that may be exactly what they will be facing at the season's end), Willow's rational approach may end up saving the day. If she can restrain herself from going all "black-eyed baddie," that is.

So, has being the Slayer really turned Buffy "into stone," as she worried in S5's "Intervention"? Right now, it certainly looks like it. But the question is... will she remain this way, or will Buffy embark on a journey of self-discovery like Anya's? Or is it already too late?

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