Just Stake Me! Episodes - Conversations With Dead People

Conversations with Dead People (Ep. 7.7)

"Building a Mystery"

This is an unusual episode. Granted, that's a pretty weird thing to say, given that we're talking about a monsters-and-fairytales-based show that regularly ventures into the realm of gimmick to express itself (no dialogue, "Hush"; singing and dancing, "Once More, With Feeling"). But "Conversations with Dead People" is less a gimmick than the oldest type of pure drama out there - a stage play, nearly all dialogue, just as the title advertises.

Also, "CWDP" occupies the same story position (seventh episode of the season) as last year's musical episode. Given that BtVS seasons tend to break into three roughly equal "acts," it's no stretch to say that "CWDP" performs the same pivotal function that "Once More, With Feeling" did - to clue us in on what's happening in everybody's heads while setting up the next story arc.

So last year, they sang. Mostly to themselves, but they sang. About their feelings. Now, this year, they talk. Still not to each other.

Looks like we're nowhere near done with the walking "alone in fear"....

. . .

The stage is set for our players by an unusual music video style opening. The characters are established in their own little isolated locales - the empty cemetery, the deserted Summers' house, the hushed UC Sunnydale library, a car on a lonely road, even the crowded Bronze. This mood-setting interlude ends with the image of a hand bursting through gravesoil as a crouched Buffy watches, a nicely applied visual signal that the time for silent introspection is over. "Here we go," Buffy sighs.

Conversation 1: A Message For Willow
At the college library, a drowsy Willow toils over textbooks. Her sleepiness vanishes, however, when Cassie - the same girl we saw drop dead of a heart attack in "Help" - appears, claiming she bears tidings from the great beyond... from Tara.

Willow is at first spooked, then eager - the lure of receiving messages from her dead lover too irresistible. While the (very solid-looking) apparition is at first sympathetic, soothing Willow's expressions of grief ("You're strong, like an Amazon"), the main purpose for the visit is cautionary. "The power is bigger than you are," Cassie's shade warns, and insists that Willow musn't use magic again, ever.

Puzzled, Willow conveys what she learned during her summer in England with Giles - that control, not quitting cold turkey, is the answer. "I'm gonna be okay," she asserts. A worried-looking Cassie relays Tara's response: "you're not going to be okay... you're going to kill everybody." Then it offers Willow a way out of this Catch-22 - suicide. "Be with her. Everybody will be safe, and you'll be together again.... It's just like going to sleep," the shade coos.

Alarmed, Willow instantly realizes the ruse. She demands to know what she's really talking to. Cassie shrugs off the failed gambit, her tone mocking, and reveals herself to be a manifestation of the big evil from which the "From Beneath You, It Devours" warnings seem to have originated. Uh-oh. That's bad.

Willow stares at the specter in horror as it lays out its cringe-inducing agenda. "This last year's gonna seem like cake after what I put you and your friends through, and I am not a fan of easy death," it gloats, adding that "the whole good-versus-evil, balancing the scales thing - I'm over it. I'm done with the mortal coil." It smiles - far too widely - promises a "big finish," and... turns inside out (ew!), collapsing into thin air, leaving a shaken Willow in its wake.

Conversation 2: Andrew Thins Out The Nerd Herd
Although DarkWillow's rampage last year resulted in the skinless and barbequed status of robot-building Warren, two of the evil nerd trio survived - the generally okay magic-using Jonathan and the morally ambiguous demon-summoning Andrew (brother of the rather better-remembered Tucker). The former villains have also been receiving the cryptic "From Beneath You, It Devours" warning via nightmares (albeit in Spanish which, filtered through their high school level language skill comes out to the hilarious "It Eats You Starting With Your Bottom"). Unsettled by this (and who wouldn't be?), they've returned to Sunnydale to join the fight against the overwhelming badness.

But instead of going straight to Buffy with their information, Andrew persuades Jonathan that they need evidence first, pitching it as a heroic quest that will make up for their past misdeeds. "We find it. We alert the slayer. We help her destroy it. We save Sunnydale. Then we join her gang and possibly hang out at her house," Andrew wheedles.

Andrew, we soon find out, is the one in this grouping who's having the conversation with a dead person - Warren. Unseen by Jonathan, Warren's shade guides Andrew to a room in the high school basement - the same one that Spike had been living in, and that the "manifest spirits" had been trying to prevent Buffy from finding in "Lessons." Digging up the floor, they discover a demonic-looking symbol. Coincidence? Not too likely.

At this point in the episode, it's not clear what Cassie is. For all we or Willow know, she could be a legitimate ghost. Warren, on the other hand, we can't help but be suspicious of, since we've seen him appear in the school basement before - to Spike, in "Lessons," when he was obviously a manifestation of the Big Evil. So is the Big Evil talking here? Pretty likely.

To back up that theory, Andrew's discussion with his invisible friend comes off downright sinister. Warren claims that his death was "all part of the master plan" and that he and Andrew will "both become gods" if Jonathan pulls off his end of the deal. And that sounds bad for Jonathan, considering their last plan involved deserting him to take the fall with the Slayer and the Sunnydale cops. And those nagging fears do indeed pay off - Andrew plunges a dagger into Jonathan's stomach, Julius Caesar-style, and lets his body fall into the freshly dug hole where his blood spreads over the demonic symbol... which then begins to glow.

Okay, this looks bad....

Conversation 3: Dawn's Exorcise Regimen
Arriving home in the early evening, Dawn is greeted by a note from Buffy informing her that both she and Willow will be out late, and to get dinner for herself. No pizza! the note claxons, in double-underlined script. So much for Buffy's commitment to better big-sistering.

However, Dawn seems less resentful of being left to her own devices these days, thank god. She immediately springs for an anchovy special ("Anchovies, anchovies, you're so delicious. I love you more than all the other fishes," she sings to herself, waving a pizza slice) and dances around the house like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, getting tomato sauce on Buffy's shirts, knocking holes in the walls by monkeying around with Slayer weapons, and generally running up the phone bill by yakking with her friends. Ah, youth.

However, Dawn's Home Alone hijinks are interrupted by a genuinely creepy ghostly visitation, which manifests itself via squalling electronics and strange knocking sounds in the empty house. Freaked, Dawn takes an ax to the sirening video equipment and to the TV (no doubt thinking that she doesn't need to see The Ring on top of everything else, thank you very much), then hauls out the magic supplies to open a line of communications with the spirit.

After much chanting and powder-sprinking (did Dawn get magic lessons from Willow?), the haunting spirit is revealed. It's Dawn and Buffy's deceased mother, Joyce Summers. Or... is it?

During the haunting, we see Joyce's body flicker into sight in brief flashes, like something out of Blair Witch 2. In one memorable moment, she's shown just behind Dawn, sprawled across the couch in the exact spot in which she died.... but there's also a dark, lurking shape hovering over her. Is this presence the source of the haunting? Is it interfering with Joyce's real spirit and her attempts to speak to Dawn? Or is it another manifestation of the Big Evil, using Joyce to put Dawn off her guard?

Whichever option is true, the ghostly visitor finally delivers its message. In a pyrotechnic scene reminiscent of The Exorcist, Dawn manages to expell the malevolent spirit - or at least seems to - destroying the Summers living room in the process with high winds that blow out the big picture window. As Dawn sits dazed and bloodied in the wreckage, Joyce manifests as a glowing, white-gowned specter, bearing the warning that, "things are coming," and that Buffy "won't be there for you. When it's bad, Buffy won't choose you. She'll be against you." The vision fades, leaving a terrified Dawn to consider her words.

Conversation 4: Buffy On The Couch
During her nightly Slaying rounds, Buffy interrupts the rising of a fresh vampire, who turns out to be someone she knew in high school - Holden "Webs" Webster, a personable guy whose pre-vamp persona was that of a psych student doing internship time at the local nuthatch (guess Sunnydale would have one of those, wouldn't it?). Caught off guard by the attack turned friendly greeting, Buffy pauses to exchange a little polite conversation with her former schoolmate, and the talk turns into an impromptu analysis session... of Buffy.

Just why Buffy decides to suddenly share her inner feelings with the undead is an interesting exercise in living room sofa analysis. "There's some things you can only tell a stranger," Holden sympathizes, only to have Buffy rebut that he's "not a stranger," even though it's established at length that she didn't remember their acquaintance at all. "I was afraid to talk to you in high school, and now we're, like, mortal enemies," a pleased Holden grins, adding "wouldn't it be cool if we became nemeses?" There's a weird affinity between predator and prey being implied here, and it's hard not to think what's being suggested is that Buffy feels comfortable talking to Holden because of it, simply because he's a vampire. I'm not even going to touch that one.

But whatever the reason for Buffy's sudden urge to vent, Holden does an impressive job of zeroing in on the psychological pressure points of his new "mortal enemy." He quickly identifies the Slayer's issues as an impossibly complicated tangle of self-worth problems. She's isolated by her calling, and reinforces that isolation by her predictably doomed relationship choices. In a vicious, impossible cycle, she sees herself as both "superior," above her friends and "boyfriends" because she's the Chosen One; and beneath them, unworthy of their love, because she was given power that she feels like she doesn't deserve. "Even though they love me, it doesn't mean anything 'cause their opinions don't matter... They haven't been through what I've been through," she explains. "And I thought I was diabolical," the newly risen vamp muses.

The discussion goes in some telling directions when Holden attempts to trace back Buffy's attitudes toward men and relationships. Does she blame her dad for her parents' divorce? Yes, even though she's nowhere near sure if he was really the one at fault or not. Holden presses further: does she blame men automatically, choose the ones she knows are going to fail her, because she believes they're ultimately not worth it? "Maybe you think you're better than them?" he wonders.

It's a good theory. Buffy's own random statements support it. "Men. I know how to pick 'em," she sours. She insists that she's not afraid of commitment, but that: "it never lasts... I just target the impossible ones, with deadly accuracy."

What's strange is, it's fairly obvious throughout this conversation that Buffy is including Spike in her mental list of failed relationships - one of the "impossible ones" she'd targeted. And after a few thinly veiled references to the intimate details of vampire unlife, Holden catches on. "Your last relationship - was it with a vampire?" he prods. Caught out - and apparently grateful for an impartial listener to tell it to - Buffy spills out the story of herself and Spike for his scrutiny.

This true-confessions moment is full of odd notes. Sounding sad, she admits that "the joke is... he loved me... in his own sick, soulless way, he really did care for me." But, she says, love wasn't what she wanted. "It's like I wanted to be punished. I wanted to be hurt like I thought I deserved," she glooms. Huh?

Since we viewers have been denied any real access to Buffy's interior world for a year or more, finally hearing some explanation of her thoughts on this topic ought to be a long-overdue relief. But in reality, Buffy's big revelation basically comes down to a hefty dose of self-pity. She admits that she "behaved like a monster," yet describes her involvement in a puzzlingly passive voice, in which she "let him do things" to her. "I let him completely take me over," she mopes, more a little reminsicent of her sobbing to Tara in "Dead Things": "Why can't I stop? Why do I keep letting him in?" Good question. Why did she?

In fact, the only thing we can be certain of in regard to Buffy's motives is that she hates being questioned about them. When Holden suggests that Buffy is "protecting herself," that it isn't so much a case of her "reaching out" and the men not coming through, she whines by way of rebuttal: "You're confusing me. This is insane troll logic... I think you're confusing me because you're evil." Uh-huh. Is Buffy really a self-hating glutton for punishment? Delusional? Naive? All of the above?

Conversation over, the pair say their goodbyes before commencing a final deathmatch (like their initial meeting, this plays like a parody of two accquaintances having chanced to meet each other on the street). During this sendoff, Buffy lets Spike's name slip - something she'd omitted mentioning earlier. To her horror, Holden then proudly identifies Spike as the vampire who "sired" him... who killed him.

Conversation 5: Spike Falls Off The Wagon...?
The final "conversation" of the evening is viewed from a distance - seen, but not heard. Spike is sitting along at the bar of the Bronze, lost in his own world, not unlike Buffy in "Tabula Rasa." An attractive blond woman takes a seat beside him, offering a pack of cigarettes. They talk. He walks her home. They pause on her front porch. Perhaps she's iniviting him in, or maybe they're just saying goodnight, but in the end it doesn't matter, because in the next moment the woman is dead. Spike slides into vampire face, drains her in one quick motion, lets her body fall and licks the blood from his fingertips. It's fair to say that nobody saw that coming.

The episode leaves us here, reeling in this string of revelations. What next?

Of the five "conversations" we witnessed, two of them were confirmed as tricks - Cassie was an admitted agent of the Big Evil, and Warren was undoubtedly so as well. What then of the others? What did Dawn see? Who did Buffy really talk to? Was the Spike we saw launch into killing action really him?

Of these three, Dawn's haunting was the most ambiguous. It could easily have been geniune, and just as easily not. Buffy's encounter, however, is less easy to dismiss. Holden did not offer his devastating information about Spike until prompted - surely if his goal was to upset Buffy he would have mentioned it sooner? And although at this point it's nearly impossible to believe Spike would return to the killing fields of his own volition, what if he were not in his right mind? Given that we're talking about someone who was recently seeing "invisible people," might not he still be seeing them? There is doubtless more here to tell, starting with why the chip didn't fire to stop Spike from attacking. Does he believe he's not hurting anyone? Or is it not even him?

So here we are, wondering what it all means. Buffy has, as Clem would say, "issues." Dawn now has doubts about her sister. Willow has been warned not to use her magic, which could mean that she's a danger to the Big Evil, able to hurt it, since it so badly wants her out of the way. Or perhaps that doesn't matter - maybe it just wants to cause her pain and distress for its own amusement, since that too seems to be part of its evil agenda. Spike is a completely unknown quantity, someone who - based on what we've seen so far - seems to want to be good, but for a host of possible reasons may well be failing at that task.

And with that cliffhanger...

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