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Showtime (Ep. 7.11)"Faith, Hope, and..." Beware of blonds with soft southern accents. What, you've never seen The Faculty? "Showtime" is the episode where we discover that the season opener's tagline, "It's all about power," may have been a bit off. We seem to be delving more into the definition of power - or specifically, where power comes from. "Showtime" implies that it's a case of asking the right questions - no matter how helpless you may appear, everything changes if you have... faith. Well, that does shine a different light on things, doesn't it? . . . "Bring on the Night" promised that more would-be Slayers would be arriving, and so they are - the opening scene shows Buffy rescuing a new one (thankfully non-white - 'bout time!) from a Harbinger attack at the mysteriously deserted Sunnydale bus station (a rather nicely appointed Art Deco-style building, by the way). Apparently, The First's drones keep a close eye-socket on bus schedules. Or the unseen driver is a minion to evil. Whatever. Buffy makes an initial ass-kicking entrance - she dispatches a couple of hooded Bringers with casual, knife-throwing flair - but fails to maintain that strong first impression, instead opting to babble like a ninny the minute the fighting is over. (This is the "warrior of the people"?) Buffy's less-than-awe-inspiring leadership capabilities are made a major point of in "Showtime." If anything, she's backslid from years past. Where once the Slayer was a tower of conviction, she's now tentative and stammering. No doubt part of the problem is that she's being asked to explain stuff she simply has no answers for, such as, What's her plan? How will they defeat The First? Why she's so worried about rescuing Spike? Good questions all. ...but at least she's eschewed the Farrah Fawcett homage hairstyle of recent eps and returned to a reasonable, pulled-back "mom" 'do. That much, at least, is confidence-inspiring. On another front, Willow's room in the scene for girl-talk with Kennedy, who does her best to coax Willow to share the bed with her instead of "bagging it" on the floor. This isn't so much done in a purient way, but... hey, nobody said it was subtle subtext. But the interesting part of the Willow/Kennedy discussion is the revelation that Kennedy is a rich girl - her upbringing featured summer homes in the Hamptons and houses with wings. "So, show me a trick," Kennedy asks offhand, as if Willow were the magic equivalent of a performing gypsy. Lawdy sakes, I do believe we're finally getting back to those class issues I'd previously called out from earlier episodes as relating to Spike and Anya. Maybe it's not just demons who have such issues in the Buffyverse... one hopes. First/Buffy has a different agenda from First/Drusilla. This incarnation is uninterested in forcing Spike to "choose a side." It simply taunts its captive that he's been abandoned, that Buffy won't risk herself to rescue him. For his part, Spike staunchly believes that Buffy will come for him, and repeats the words to himself mantra-like, to stave off despair. Two facts are of note here. The First's patter - "Poor Spike. He still thinks I believe in him... I don't even believe in myself... you need to accept this... You need to let go so we can both move on" confirms that it is fully apprised of Buffy's "I believe in you" statement, the results of their conversation in "Never Leave Me", and even her breakup speech in "As You Were." This implies that The First can pull information out of Spike's head, psychic-reader style. Are his memories an open book because he's "passed away," thus under The First's umbrella of influence? If so, then what about Buffy, since The First can also take her form? Could the enemy know all of Buffy's plans the minute she thinks of them? Or is Buffy exempt from mind-reading now because she came back to life? Hmm. Second, it's empasized that The First is, in fact, a really tedious bore, with a tendency to make long-winded speeches like a blowhard at a party. When Spike ignores its attempts to eat into his confidence with its overly talky Buffy guise, The First seems momentarily dismayed. This is actually a nice parallel of Buffy's similar interruption of its bloviating in S3's "Amends" - "I get it, you're evil," she'd drawled, rolling her eyes. Maybe the key to defeating to The First is just to not take it so seriously. Anyway, threats of Slayer retribution from Giles do the job that proffered Anya-sex didn't, and the pair step through the portal into a black space filled with howling wind and one of the most visually striking supernatural creatures to ever appear on the show. Beljoxa's Eye is an endearingly hokey-looking fleshy blob covered with an overload of blinking eyeballs and umbilical cords leading into nowhere, largely encased in a sort of birdcage contraption that gives the whole scenario an odd Hellraiser vibe. Thumbs up! Some pretentious ramble out of the way, the seer confirms for Giles and Anya that the First Evil cannot be defeated, or at least it never has been. It then explains The First's sudden decision to attack the Slayer line. "The mystical forces surrounding the chosen line have become irrevocably altered, become unstable, vulnerable," it tells them, and gives the source of the disruption to be the Slayer herself. Anya and Giles interpret this to mean Buffy's resurrection, which means that it's the Scoobies - Willow, Xander, Anya, Tara - who are the real reason for The First's offensive. "The world would've been better off if Buffy had just stayed dead," Anya mutters miserably. This is an intriguing turn of events, but is it correct? We don't hear the Eye give its full explanation, just Anya's and Giles's debriefing of it. And Giles, I note, calls out the fact that the Eye made clear, in its own way, that "It's not because she died... it's because she lives. Buffy's not responsible for that." So how does that jibe with Buffy being the reason for the Slayer line being "vulnerable"? Or does "the Slayer" the Eye refers to necessarily mean Buffy? As was pointed out in this episode by the potentials, there are two Slayers. Innnnteresting. Aside from the obvious comic relief - sorely needed in this day and age, when Xander is too busy being Responsible Guy for quippage - Andrew continues to be an object lesson of sorts. His motivations for wanting to align with the forces of good (self-interest, sheer boredom) are startlingly similar to the newly chipped Spike's initial reasons for same, and his treatment by the gang is likewise familiar (irritated tolerance, occasional bullying). With Andrew in place as a tangible reminder of how the gang's previous not-so-graceful handling of the idea of a reforming villain, I expect we'll get a good look at how things have - or haven't - changed over time in episodes to come. Will Andrew prove trustworthy? Or will the gang cut him more slack than he deserves, because Spike's example has confused the issue? Is Andrew redeemable? Amoral? Misunderstood? Simply in need of some validation? We shall see. But at the very least, his dancing attendance on the Scoobies at least guarantees a few geeky laughs. (Love the running gag about Timothy Dalton - hey, I liked him too!) Buffy marches back into her house, and in the presence of the teen potentials orders The First to leave. "Or you'll do what?" First/Eve gloats, but then disappears as directed after promising it will be sending a party over to the house after sundown. First/Eve's presence in the house - days worth, according to dialogue - tells us what the episode is all about. "Just my personal opinion, but I don't think the Slayer can protect us from The First," it told them. Like The First's disheartening chatter to Spike, the point was cast doubt, to smash hope, to make the girls believe there was no point in trying, that they were doomed to fail. The dinner table discussion that follows The First's departure makes it clear that this tactic was working. Too well. Unable to calm the girls down with the usual we-have-to-stick-together entreaties, Buffy, Willow, and Xander leave the girls to their panic and retreat to the kitchen to trade nervous glances. Things don't look so good.
Things turn out better than expected, however. The running fight, the deserted location, the viewing audience - as it turns out, all was arranged by Buffy, Willow, and Xander in the kitchen in a telepathic conferencing session. Dawn realizes the ruse as the potentials monkey into position in the surrounding scaffolding and settle in to watch Buffy go one-on-one with the UberVamp, steel cage match style. "It's showtime," Willow confirms. And thus the name of the episode. Hey, I get it too! Buffy makes the best of her exhibition match, playing to the audience. She appears from a high place - which to anyone who watches Japanese live-action hero shows (such as the Power Rangers) - knows that this is worth at least a plus-10 presence attack. She vaults off the scaffolding, makes with a little taunting ("I'm the thing that monsters have nightmares about"), and announces "Welcome to Thunderdome," a reference which is then thoughtfully translated for the geek-impaired by Andrew: "two men enter, one man leaves," he whispers eagerly, caught up in it. The match offers mixed messages about Buffy's planning methods. She pre-planned for the location of the fight, but brought no weapons other than her own hands. Remember Spike's words in "Fool For Love," - "a Slayer must always reach for her weapon"? Buffy seems to have embraced this axiom as a scavenger hunt challenge, not a handicap - she proves her mettle against the UberVamp not by bringing a rocket launcher to blast its head off, but by a vicious trading of blows, a strength-on-strength confrontation in which she calls on her environment to provide whatever she needs to finish the job - a metal pole, a snapped-off arrow, a hunk of barbed wire with which she garrotes the creature, decapitating it. (Decapitation does seem to work on darn near anything... although in the final analysis, the UberVamp was more like a HenchVamp than a master villain - tough, but hardly memorable.) The audience is suitably impressed. The answer, at least to the last question, comes when Buffy delivers her big speech to the gallery. She looks up at her arena audience and proclaims that the fight against The First will no doubt be tough, but if they're determined, if they do their parts, if they believe, they'll be the ones left standing. "Here endeth the lesson," she finishes. Do I need to point this out? Now she's actually quoting Spike (S5, "Fool For Love"). Huh? Ultimately, the big theme here is belief... or more properly, faith, something that's nearly impossible to quantify, but thematically, this episode gives it a darn good try. It's been pointed out that just because something comes from an evil source doesn't mean it isn't true. First/Eve's arguments about the potentials' survival chances were all sound. The Slayers-to-be have very good reasons to doubt Buffy's ability to protect them. Beljoxa's Eye confirmed this grim outlook - no one has ever beaten The First. Going strictly by logic, the facts would seem to dictate that the Slayer and her gang are simply screwed. But the point of this entire episode is to go beyond logic, to transcend into the unreasonable and unprovable world of faith, where you believe in things you can't confirm. Being from a Catholic background, I recognize this reasoning. Basically, we're getting into a zone similar to trying to justify the existence of god. You can't rely on logic for that. Buffy can beat the UberVamp because she believes she can. She does it in front of the others to prove to them that it can be done, so that she can pass that belief onto them. As with Willow in "Same Time, Same Place," Buffy has so much strength, she's giving it away. (The thousand-dollar question to follow would be to ask where she's getting that strength from, but that's a question for another day.) When Buffy first appears in the cave to cut Spike loose, he thinks she's another apparition - another torment of The First, and takes the opportunity to scoff at it, to tell it, "you can't hurt me." His expression when his freed hand falls on her shoulder, when he realizes that Buffy is real, that she did indeed come for him, is worth the rest of the words in the episode combined. (And James Marsters gets extra credit for working understated miracles here, especially given that he only has half a face available to act with.) Buffy leads the injured vampire slowly out of the cave, supporting his weight, her arm slung around his waist. That was... aww. Okay, you could say that I'm reading too much into this. Maybe it's simply like the torture - Spike has simply gotten used to hanging his entire existence from the slimmest of hopes. Maybe Buffy's concern is exactly what she says it is - a need for any and all available hands to help in their fight against The First. Maybe their mutual belief in each other is nothing more than that. Maybe. But to be honest, to my mind, the quiet emotion in this final scene promises something else. And after all the misery and hard lessons of the last two-plus years, I'd like to think so. Be nice to see things turn out well for a change, wouldn't it? We'll see.
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