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Bring on the Night (Ep. 7.10)"Hurts So Good" 'Twas the week before Christmas, and a loosely wrapped present in the form of a new Buffy episode was delivered for our enjoyment. I say "loosely wrapped" because "Bring on the Night" is kind of a grab bag - on one hand, the scattered, toy box quality of the goings-on here went a long way toward easing the nonstop grimness of the previous few weeks. Primarily, though, this is what on The X-Files would be called a "mythology" episode, full of small details that seem like they're meant to be important, even if they're kinda boring, annoying, confusing, or trivial-seeming at the time. What you get out of this one are mostly clues and portents for future reference... either that, or red herrings and sleights of hand. "I like mysteries," says the enigmatic Principal Wood. Don't we all. . . . We pick up, from the looks of things, not too long after the events of "Never Leave Me." The Big Ultimate Mr. Creepy Vampire who was raised by all the elaborate blood ritual from the "Seal of Danzalthar" (and whose official name seems to be "UberVamp") is dragging a semi-conscious Spike by one ankle to an isolated location - an underground cave. All the better to continue torturing you, my dear. The First Evil is there with full gloat-on, first in mirror-image Spike mode, instructing the UberVamp to deliver a right kicking to its charge, and then in Drusilla form, in which The First remains throughout the rest of the episode. Meanwhile, at Summers HQ, a tense Buffy is readying to mount a rescue operation. Yes, she actually uses the word "rescue." Twice. Time out for a sec: remember the last time Spike was kidnapped by the season's major villain (S5's "Intervention")? At that time, the only person interested in "rescuing" him was the programmed-for-lovin' Buffybot. Hmm. And there are other pointed differences between these two episodes, two years apart. "Bring on the Night" adds yet another instance of the gang's seemingly conscious decision to hold their tongues on the entire subject of Spike, at least to Buffy's face. Their close-mouthed reactions here are a sharp contrast to their nervous conferencing in "Intervention" when, as the title implies, their first and foremost concern was to talk some sense into their friend, who they wrongly assumed was boinking the Big Bad. Now, with the Buffy/Spike sexcapades a firm fixture of their history, no one is willing to comment on any emotional implications, especially when Buffy's reminiscences of her initial confrontation with The First puts both Angel's and Spike's names together in the same sentence. If the Scoobies are freaking out about this, they're keeping it to themselves. Instead, busywork is the action of choice. Xander fixes the front window ("it's like the mummy hand - I'm doomed to replace these things for all eternity" he grumbles); Dawn and Anya alternate between research and contemplating how to wake the unconscious Andrew; Willow surfs the 'Net. Buffy is tired. If the last few episodes have been a continuous string of events, then she has had little or no sleep in days. But mere exhaustion doesn't stop her from forging ahead to the high school, where Andrew leads the group to the now-deserted hidden room with its abandoned blood-soaked torture wheel and exposed Seal of Danzalthar ("check out the goat-heady badness!" Xander wows). But although The First and its Harbingers are long gone, the basement still has one occupant - Principal Wood, apparently on another burying mission with a shovel over his shoulder. Buffy and Dawn, similiarly equipped, bluff their way out of a confrontation, but both sides are now suspicious of each other. Later, at the school, Buffy and Wood have another strange exchange that only deepens the mystery surrounding the principal - "Once you see true evil, it can have some serious afterburn, and then you can't unsee what you saw. Ever," Wood says. Eh? What does he know? Is he another agent of evil? Something else? What? Back at the old homestead that night, Willow sets up her candles and chants for the next step, a location spell. But magic is not going to be any help this time - her incantation is promptly taken over by The First, the incense from her magical summoning sailing straight up her nose (if you're playing our magic addiction drinking game, the drug analogies aren't over yet!). Xander smashes Willow's censer to dispell The First's chortling cloud form, but the damage has been done. Willow's faith in her abilties is in pieces. She sobs in terror that she doesn't want to hurt anyone; she can't help. Buffy makes soothing sounds that it's okay... but in reality, Willow's removal from the playing field means that Buffy no longer has any backup with any real power. She's on her own. Recap time: remember when we last saw Buffy's erstwhile Watcher? He was in London, and a Harbinger was aiming an axe directly at his head. So that he's standing here, looking quite hale and hearty in Sunnydale, would seem to indicate that he got out of that situation all right. Right? Sure. Not like we've seen any ghosts or anything lately. Not. The unavoidable uneasy feeling that Giles might not have gotten out all right is supported by some fairly broad hints. The Watcher is unusually twitchy, standoffish. He doesn't hug Buffy on arrival, nor does he touch anything in the house. Instead, he hovers with his hands in his jacket pockets as he reveals the fate of the Watcher's Council (ker-BOOM!) and his own theft of vital records. Hmm. I'd hate to believe that Giles is another manifestation of The First, although it's certainly possible. If so, however, how odd is it that Giles himself gives the gang the information they need to detect his ruse, if that's what it is? The First is "not corporeal," he tells them, "it only appears in the guise of someone who's passed away... it can't touch or fight on its own." I'm now wondering if Giles might not be another a sleeper agent, like Spike - at news of the bombing, Anya assumes that Giles blew up the Council himself, and his reaction to this accusation is flustered. Could Anya be channeling what's usually Xander's job here, to make the right guess that everyone ignores? Whatever the mystery surrounding Giles is, he isn't alone. In his train are three teenage Slayers in training: Molly, Annabel, and Kennedy, rather nondescript white girls of British and/or American origin, based on accents. They've been brought to Buffy's house for protection - The First, through its Harbingers, has been systematically killing trainees around the world, angling ultimately to wipe out the entire Slayer line. Now, Giles says, it's up to Buffy to save them - she's their only hope. "But no pressure," Xander adds drily. Admirably holding back panic (so far), one of the girls questions the logic of (a) hanging around the Hellmouth where The First is currently encamped and (b) counting on one person, no matter how strong, to guarantee their safety. Buffy agrees: they "need more muscle. That's why we need to find Spike." Anya digests this odd logic with a shrug, agreeing that Spike is sure to help "if he's not crazy or off killing people or dead... or all of the above." I hate to get into the illogic of trying to drown a vampire here, although it's pretty hard not to - the show has previously detailed undead physiology quite clearly. Spike doesn't really need to breathe. (Didn't Angel just spend the entire summer at the bottom of the Pacific?) Unless we're meant to simply accept that swallowing a gallon of water is just plain uncomfortable for anyone, either something specific is being implied about Spike here, or (and this is my personal take) it's symbolic. Normally, I would not make large hay out of image symbolism in BtVS, as it's usually used in a fairly plot-specific, connect-the-dots sort of way, not in a note-the-larger-mythos-underlying-this-concept literary meme. But this season differs from the usual BtVS standard in that I've been getting a sort of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight symbolic vibe right from the very beginning, and the imagery just keeps on coming - from the ghosts of victims past in the season opener to the Christian symbolism in "Beneath You," to the unbroken march of death and sacrifice and penitence in every episode since. We are seeing cycles, circles. "It's all connected," Willow says in "Lessons." Symbolically, drowning has two major connotations - sacrifice or baptism. I think both meanings are being used here, just as they were in Season 1, when Buffy died the first time in "Prophecy Girl." The Master's bite was only perfunctory; Buffy actually died by drowning. But instead of being weakened by the experience, it left Buffy feeling strong, confident - her death was a baptism, a clear dividing line between the unsure girl who thought of killing vampires as a sort of part-time job and the girl who embraced her destiny as the Chosen One, the Slayer. That we're meant to draw a connection between Buffy's death experiences and Spike's new "rebirths" is, I think, invoked in S6's finale, "Grave," where the image of Buffy finally emerging from the grave she spent all year trying to pull herself out of leads directly into Spike's soul restoration. "And in death we are born/to eternal life", as Sarah MacLachlan sings. But that's not all the extended scenes of Spike torture deliver: in point of fact, they serve two very important, more directly revelant functions. First, there's the not-insignificant erotic element. Scholars of sexual politics often point to a predatory "male gaze" as directed at women in fiction; in BtVS, there's a predatory "female gaze" at work, and the voyueristic quality to these torture proceedings is darn near impossible to ignore. Co-writer of the episode Marti Noxon virtually introduced the whole "pain and chains" aspect of BtVS with Angel, back in Season 2 in scenes that were obvious in their soft-core allure. Buffy's true love was hung from chains, kidnapped, burned, and poisoned; his broad bare chest was splashed with holy water on two separate occasions ("What's My Line, Part 2," "The Wish"). Likewise, we've by now seen Spike chained, burned, cut, stabbed, tasered, savagely beaten, drowned, thrown from a hundred-foot tower, and tormented with crawling insects. Yikes. So yes, on some level, we're being invited to enjoy (or not, depending on your level of kink) the spectacle of a shirtless James Marsters being tied up and beaten, in a sort of gender-reversed approximation of Forties-era pulp paperback covers. ("You look a lot better with your shirt off," The First-as-Buffy panted to a helpless Spike in "Never Leave Me" as the Harbingers wound up the torture wheel.) But while Angel's bouts of agony seldom resulted in more than artful burns, Spike often gets worked over to the point of disfigurement, an illustration of how far the show has come from the realm of metaphor since Angel's time. There is no soft-focus mode for Spike, for either sex or pain. It's all damaging, all real. It leaves scars. The second point all this serves is to assure the audience that Spike is indeed going to pay in full for his hundred years of soulless sins, in the harshest possible terms. There are a number of implications locked up in this. Is Spike being put through all this Old Testament-style retribution in order to convince the viewership that he's finally worthy of Buffy's respect, maybe even her love? Or is this just more symbolism, lining us up for the previous item on my literary checklist, sacrifice? The scale could easily tip either way. So here's a thought. Why would the UberVamp by repelled by the sight of its boss? This would seem a check in the column toward Giles not being a manifestation of The First. But if he were a normal human, just Giles, even if mind-controlled, why would the vamp be repelled? The plot thickens... The pair limp home and share the news of their disappointing outing with the trainees. (The girls have been conducting a rather grim sort of slumber party in their absence, one of them flirting rather obviously with a wide-eyed Willow.) In full-on exposition mode, Giles explains that the UberVamp is a sort of Neanderthal of vampires, "an ancient and entirely different race," and gives it a Lord of the Rings-sounding name. Well, there goes my theory that it was the First Vampire, which would have been a lot more scary in my book. An evolutionary dead end? Not so much.
Mom again tells her she needs to rest, and that her friends "put too much pressure" on her. "There's some things you can't control," the Joyce apparition tells Buffy, "No matter what your friends expect of you, evil is a part of us. All of us. It's natural. And no one can stop that. No one can stop nature." Joyce's statements reinforce the symbolic, it's-all-connected vibe in a huge way. "Evil is always here. Don't you know? It's everywhere," she tells Buffy. Irregardless of whether this is a malicious entity or not, it is handing us large hints about the shape of what they're facing - not a monster to be eliminated, not a villain to be fought, but something natural, part of a larger pattern. Perhaps the ultimate answer to this problem is not force, but balance - dark and light maintained as two parts of a whole. "The sun always goes down, the sun always comes up," Joyce says. This possibly zen direction to things is supported by Andrew's plight, which is rich with dry irony. As a neutralized villain with possible useful info, he spends the episode tied to a chair, very much an intentional parallel to Spike's situation in S4's "Pangs." Andrew is, after all, the guy who idolized Big Bad Spike as his role model, right down to the lookalike leather coat. We're even invited to do a funny compare-and-contrast to Spike's current character arc when Andrew claims that he's on the road to redemption. But actually, Andrew has never made a clear enough choice (yet) between either dark or light to reliably come back from either. As a gray zone resident whose only preference toward good or evil seems to be his own lazy convenience, Andrew's karma at this point only allows him to reprise Spike's old role of all-around inappropriate bigmouth and Scooby kick-toy. The lesson seems to be that, in the BtVS universe, this is what you get for being ambivalent. This choice - good or evil - seems to be what The First seems to be aiming for in all its Spike-beating fun as well. "Choose a side. Our side. You know it's delicious," The First-as-Drusilla coos. Spike rolls a swollen eye in her direction and tells her to get bent. That Spike is able to resist this invitation is no surprise - you could easily argue that he'd already made his choice back in Season 5, during "Crush," when he was forced to decide between Drusilla and Buffy... and he chose Buffy. But unlike then, Spike has more than his own fevered hopes to hang onto. "What makes you think you will ever be any good at all in this world?" The First rages, frustrated. "She does," he croaks. Buffy's belief in him has become his anchor. Well, okay... Buffy's not that bad. She tries to Jackie Chan her way out of the fight by collapsing tons of steel girders on the NeanderVamp's head; he shrugs them off like pixie sticks and throws Buffy straight through a brick wall. Her friends find her later, unconscious in the rubble, looking more dead than she did in "The Gift." Things have reached what could charitably be called a low point. Battered and bloody, Buffy listens from the next room while Giles and the others discuss their options... or more properly, how they have none. Buffy was their last hope. She's been beaten. What can they do now? Buffy enters the room on unsteady legs and tells them. They're going to fight. They're not waiting for The First to come to them. The Slayer and her Slayettes are going to war. "From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out," she grits. "We will find them, and cut out their hearts one by one until The First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself." She glares around the room. "Any questions?" With this inspiring display, Buffy reclaims her own power, at least verbally. She's done being conflicted, dithering about what she deserves, or wringing her hands about whether or not she's better or worse than other people. Their fight may indeed be hopeless. Maybe there is nothing she can do to stop The First. But she can try. At the very least, she can go down fighting. Which leads us again to the question of what they're really fighting against. What is The First Evil? What do you need to fight it, especially if it's "everywhere," if it's "natural"? Perhaps, like the real story behind the Key, we're not meant to know... but, as I previously mentioned about the symbolism, I think things are different this time. The plot here is taking a turn for the downright cosmic, which is a very comic book-like development... and I mean that in the very best way, seeing as the creators are all comic book fans. Like Alan Moore's "American Gothic" story arc in Swamp Thing, the battle lines are being drawn for an ultimate showdown of Good vs. Evil. I have a hunch about the way things are going, and I'm going to follow Buffy's example, throw caution to the winds, and try to make a guess about what the gang will ultimately face. (But I can't take total credit for it - the bulk of this theory comes from my couchmate Chevy Impaler.) What is the root of all evil? Fear. ...now how do you fight that?
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