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Never Leave Me (Ep. 7.9)"Promises in the Dark" Part 2 of the Spike's Crisis arc, "Never Leave Me" hits like the inevitable morning-after hangover - sobering and painful. Like Buffy's session on the couch in "Conversations With Dead People," this episode is largely devoted to laying the ghosts of Season 6 somewhat to rest... and it's a good thing too, because now is the time when the Big Evil chooses to swing into serious action. And yes, we finally have a name to put to it. (Let's just say that if you've been reading our reviews so far, you won't be too surprised...) And no, we don't find out what happened to Giles this week... but there are bigger problems at Watcher home base. . . . Casa de Summers. Last episode, we saw Buffy defer a death sentence on her ex-lover-turned-unwitting-serial-killer with the puzzling proclamation, "I'm gonna have to get close to Spike." No, not like close like last year - this, it turns out, is a code phrase for a fact-finding interrogation set to take place in the private sanctuary of Buffy's bedroom. In the pre-credits teaser, we see her lash Spike's arms to a chair with ropes (for safety's sake, although given their history, this can't help but come off as a little "ooh, kinky!") while apologetically rambling, "We're gonna get to the bottom of this. We just can't take any chances." Which, if I can make sort of a meta-comment here, is a rather depressing state of affairs. In "Something Blue," the joke was that the manufactured intimacy caused by Willow's spell didn't actually replace the couple's normal dynamic - they still fought, after all - but with We're Getting Married! as the new context, they both behaved like they figured two people getting married should. That is to say, in love. Buffy is still Buffy, but affectionate, doting, considerate, bubbling with excitement over wedding plans, anxious to share her happiness with everyone. Spike is still recognizable as Spike - snark fully intact - but with all his lover's facets turned on full force. He's downright courtly (Buffy gets a formal, bended-knee will-you-marry-me? proposal, complete with ring), but also adoring, sensual, flattering, jealous and, most surprisingly, agreeably helpful. Together, they made an uncannily believeable couple - good-naturedly arguing, and then passionately making up. Although that too seems to be one of the main thematic threads here - in "Never Leave Me," nearly every character is shown bluffing, posturing, stonewalling. There are several scenes of characters meeting clandestinely, talking in hushed voices. It's an episode of hidden things revealed, secrets uncovered. The season's shapeshifting Big Evil fits into this pattern too, and the challenge to the viewers is to sort through all this and somehow find the truth. Is what happens in private, perhaps, more "real" somehow? (And what does that say about Buffy in S6?) But the info-gathering interview in her bedroom doesn't give us much to work with on the emotional front. When the topic turns to how Spike got his soul back, Buffy's demeanor turns chilly. He tells her that he "went to seek a legend out," submitted to "trials, torture, pain, and suffering." And as in "Beneath You," he doesn't bother to conceal the fact that he did all this for her. "I saw a man about a girl," he shrugs, as if it were a joke. This is not information she really wants to hear. Buffy's closed-down reaction to this angsty material is hardly new (Sarah Michelle Gellar's unhelpfully blank Season 6 face is back again, offering few clues to the viewer as to how to interpret her supposed feelings), but Spike's semi-confrontational attitude is. Having "slaughtered half of Sunnydale," he's no longer "worried about being polite" to Buffy. In fact, he's actually bitter. He tells her that falling in love with her has caused him to "redefine the words 'pain and suffering.'" "You hated yourself, and you took it out on me," he realizes. In "Sleeper," we got our first real images of what a non-insane, souled Spike might be like, given time - a generally okay guy with what appears to be an honest conscience, if a bit of an ego, and enough of a sense of self-worth to defend himself against Buffy's accusations. But now, having found out that he's still a killer despite his best efforts to change, that self-worth has all but vanished. "Feeling sorry for yourself?" Buffy snipes at one point. "Just feeling honest with myself," he answers dully. Gaining the soul has become just another failure, an attempt at proving himself that now seems pretty pointless. This all sounds kinda profound when written down, but to be honest, interpreting any of this is a challenging exercise for the viewer. What we see onscreen is very tough to relate to - the script has the terse quality of a debriefing, possibly for the benefit of occasional viewers, and both performers go for an equally lifeless tone, leaving the audience adrift, with no emotional anchor to hook into. (Seeing James Marsters play Spike as completely unreadable can perhaps best be described as unsettling - more disturbing, in an odd way, than any emotional extreme.) What's more, watching these two interact with such a complete lack of passion brings such a severe wave of longing for the old Buffy-and-Spike banter that it almost feels like a physical cramp. Will this agony never end? The ensuing confrontation outside in the alley is a bluffer's paradise: Andrew first professes to be good and misunderstood. Called on it ("why do you need lots and lots of blood?"), he switches tune: "I am bad. I'm bad. I'm evil. But I'm protected by powerful forces. Forces you can't even begin to imagine, little girl..." He rambles on some more in this vein until Willow jumps in with some full-scale intimidation of her own, played only slightly as parody (or are her threats real?): "Don't interrupt me, insignificant man. I am Willow. I am death. If you dare defy me, I will call down my fury, exact fresh vengeance, and make your worst fears come true." Having seen DarkWillow in action, Andrew decides to fold his cards. He backs down. And "bad cop" Anya continues the bluffing theme - she gleefully showcases her acting skills by playing on the now-defunct idea that she likes to cause pain, and gives him a couple of good slaps to prove it (although she does seem to enjoy those); "good cop" Xander offers false empathy to Andrew in place of his true emotion, irritation (well-earned by Andrew: about Anya, he blithely offers, "Once I saw her having sex with Spike" - Xander gets bonus patience points for not overtly reacting). Xander's sympathetic guise also contains a thinly disguised tale of his own lonely depression, couched as a (fairly unconvincing) scary story of Anya's vengeance. Outmatched by the other players, if merely on strength of material, Andrew doesn't take long to cave. This is the moment, however, when the main plot point from "Sleeper," Spike's hypnotic trigger, chooses to make its reappearance. During Buffy's brief absence to check on the new prisoner next door, Spike is once again visited by the shapeshifting Big Evil wearing his own mirror image and singing the catalyst song. The real article's response is dramatic: he snaps the ropes holding him, knocks Buffy across the room, and smashes directly through the wall between Buffy's room and Dawn's to sink his fangs into the hapless Andrew. Only by kicking Spike unconscious is Buffy able to stop Andrew from being silenced permanently. Startled, Buffy automatically refuses. In response, Spike employs exactly the same tactics we just saw displayed by Willow and Anya - he puffs himself up, puts on a cold, ruthless tone, and paints a vicious portrait of himself as an unrepentant killer, divulging just enough nauseating detail about his vampiric career to give both Buffy and the TV audience chills. He knows the exact amount of blood loss that will keep a victim weak, but not unconscious, for unspecified fun and games. "'Cause it's not worth it if they don't cry," he explains, voice trembling. To make sure she understands this horrifying word picture, he blusters to Buffy that she "got off easy." "This is me," he insists. "You have to kill me before I get out." I could go into the significance of Spike's multilayered reactions here, and speculate how much of his vampire history lesson consists of bluffs, but it's not really all that necessary. His reasons for demanding a death sentence from Buffy are pretty much the same as in "Sleeper" - a mixture of guilt and terror at the idea of causing even more harm. The only new wrinkle is the note of real disgust in his voice when he accuses Buffy of being unable to kill him, "despite everything I've done to you, to your friends," because "you like men who hurt you... You need the hate we give you to do your job." It's a harsh read on Buffy's motives, yes... but is it true? The Slayer's own confession that her relationship with Spike was about wanting to be "punished" would surely seem to support this idea. In fact, it's about the only hypothesis available at this point, especially once the most obvious other option has been eliminated. "It's not love. We both know that," Spike practically spits. Buffy's subsequent attempt to "rationalize" her reprieve ("you fought by my side, you've saved lives, you've helped...") is angrily brushed off. No trite, morally acceptable excuse is going to do the job this time. Soulful Spike has already done the brutal math. To protect others, he obviously has to die. Just like the climactic scene in "Sleeper," this scene pushes both characters forward simultaneously. Spike is, for the second (or is it the third? or fourth?) time now, shown to be willing to die for his crimes. Buffy, for the second (or third?) time, is shown refusing to pass judgment on Spike, even though he's repeatedly proved her worst suspicions right. In S6, she'd consistently mocked the idea that a soulless vampire could change, despite the fact that Spike had by that point racked up a number of canon-defying selfless acts (e.g., withstanding Glory's torture in "Intervention," helping the gang fight vampires and protect Dawn during the summer Buffy was dead, etc.). Her change of heart now, for whatever reason - the soul, or because his continual masochistic cry for punishment strikes a chord with her - gives Spike something he's never had before. The knowledge that someone - and more amazingly, Buffy, the most important person in his life - actually believes in him. It's a well-timed confession, as it turns out. Buffy's heartening revelation is immediately followed by the window-smashing entrance of ominous hooded figures wielding knives. Buffy races upstairs to help the Scoobies defend the house in a fight that leaves the Summers living room littered with corpses, after which she finally recognizes the robed figures' horribly scarred eyes, and identifies the goons as Harbingers, priests of The First Evil, the villain of Season 3's "Amends." (Yes! We called it way back in "Lessons"!) Finally, the gang knows what they're up against. So here's the run of images we're left with: a helpless Spike, ratcheted up to the ceiling on the torture wheel, bleeding onto the seal, the seal opening and releasing a particularly nastly, bestial, fanged monster specimen who roars up at us for all he's worth. "Wanna see what a real vampire looks like?" The First Evil gloats to its captive. So this, apparently, is it - the monster underneath all evil, bloodsucking things. How ironic is it that Spike, a vampire himself, was used to raise it, in place of a human, and I wonder if this means we'll get a vampire origin story now, and explain the whole dual nature of vampires, their missing souls, blah, blah, blah. Hmm...
So the season's Big Bad has at last been revealed, and it's a villain that carries a number of key questions along with it. If The First Evil's agenda is similar to the one it had in Season 3's "Amends," then its plan is actually to attack Buffy, and Spike is simply its convenient tool to do so. Angel had been its target in "Amends" - The First tormenting the souled vampire with his century-plus of evil deeds until he was driven to attempt suicide. With Spike - yet another souled vampire - it's taken almost exactly the same approach, driving him insane him with voices and apparitions, feeding his already intense guilt. Which begs the question of whether The First simply has a particular thing for vampires with souls, or if Spike's decision to gain a soul might have actually provoked The First Evil, unseen since S3, to reappear? It begs another question too - why would it consider an attack on Spike to be an effective way to get to Buffy? If we can take Buffy's "I believe in you, Spike" statement at face value, then we can now assume that she does feel something for him - if only concern or a sense of responsibility. But even that issue is fairly irrelevant if her reaction boils down to the same thing she experienced with Angel - a sense of panic over being unable to affect what's happening no matter what she herself feels. Having Spike be taken prisoner right under her nose only accentuates this loss of control. But to retake command of the situation, Buffy will be forced to do something she's always avoided until, possibly, this episode - actually make up her mind about how much Spike does or doesn't mean to her. Does she care enough to want to rescue him, no matter what her friends may think? And what if the whole world relied on that?
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