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Potential (Ep. 7.12)"Running with the Night" Well. If "it's all about power" is indeed the watchphrase of this season, then "Potential," focusing on the evolution of power as illustrated by the Slayers-in-training, should by all rights be one of the key episodes of the season. And it is... sort of. As a followup to the uneven "Showtime," the equally erratic "Potential" covers a fair amount of emotional ground if you're willing to read between the lines quite a bit. There is much establishment of What It Means To Be A Slayer. The undercurrent of class consciousness that I've been detecting as a regular thread throughout this season sends up loud signals as well. If power - who has it, who knows how to use it - is a key theme, then by definition the lack of power, who doesn't have it, is just as relevant. What separates the powerful from the powerless? And as Buffy tries to pass on her knowledge to the next generation, what kind of message is she really sending? . . . A Sunnydale cemetery at night. Teen Slayer wannabees Vi (who will otherwise be known here as "Hat Girl") and Rona (the chick who just arrived by bus last ep, and will heretofore be referred to as "Dreadlocks") are on the prowl, stakes in hand. Nervous. Amateurish. Not at all ready for a sudden attack - by Spike, in full vampire face. I'll save you from the suspense and point out that it's a training exercise. Duh. Dreadlocks is knocked on her ass. Hat Girl gamely takes a swing with her stake, and for her effort gets the full treatment - arm around her throat, fangs at her neck. Eyes screwed shut in panic, she makes the high-pitched squeal of somebody sunbathing poolside who's just been splashed with cold water. It'd almost play like a parody of a slasher film except that she still has all her clothes on. But instead of biting down, Spike devamps with a displeased expression and raps out a terse inquiry: "These two are dead. Why?" Dreadlocks grumps, "'Cause the black chick always gets it first?" Ahem. Funny she should say that... but more on that point later, because Schoolmistress Buffy chooses this moment to take over the lesson. Remember folks, It's All About Power. To illustrate, she orders Spike into action, telling him to rush her, and demonstrates a deft judo-style dodge in lieu of blocking his attack. His own momentum carries him headfirst into a gravestone, and Buffy follows up with an expert straddle-and-pin manuever, lecturing to the gallery all the while. Things then take a weird left turn. Still sitting astride Spike, hand at his throat, stake pressed to his chest, Buffy notices that he looks a bit pained. Forgetting about her audience entirely, she suddenly exudes fussy concern, pulling up his shirt to get a look at his still-healing ribs despite his feeble protests that he's fine. As a followup to the private emotion we saw in last episode's cave rescue, this little vignette seems to be meant to establish that Buffy is no longer shy about showing public concern for Spike's welfare. This is a far cry from "Normal Again," where she rushed to come up with excuses just for being seen talking to him. Now she doesn't even bother to get flustered over a display that's clearly sending the message that There's Something Going On. "That's hot," observes Dreadocks; "Are we supposed to make out with them or something?" asks Molly, a.k.a. Accent Lass, pencil poised over her notepad as if she means to take Buffy's answer down for posterity. It's the viewer who's supposed to be taking notes here, I think. This little scene is a harbinger (pardon the pun) for the next phase of the Buffy/Spike relationship. With the Summers house operating as Command Central, gathering all the characters under one roof, the stage has been set for the ultimate trapped-in-a-small-space story - all personal dramas will now be played out in the public arena. Whereas last year Buffy was able to conduct a secret life completely free from comment or criticism - "Older and Far Away" in particular established just how separate the Scooby gang's lives had become - this year, all of her actions will be open to the scrutiny of nearly everyone she knows. And won't it be interesting to see what kind of effect that will have? Faced at last with an issue she's thoroughly qualified to address, does Buffy offer advice? No, just a distracted babble that showcases her at her self-involved, denial-y best: "Sometimes that's how people relate... even mortal enemies... and that leads to no good, absolutely no good. And much confusion. A-and then it's over. Absolutely, seriously, definitely over. And that's confusing too. The over part. Which it is. Over!" "Potential" drives home the lesson that outside her immediate circle of witches, ex-demons, and assorted creatures of the night, Buffy is indeed "weird." Back in "Conversations with Dead People," Holden the vampire brought us up to date on what people thought of her back in high school: "mysterious... dating some really old guy... heavy religious" or "gay." Amanda later tells Dawn that these days a lot of people think her sister is a "high-functioning schizophrenic." It's not a bad diagnosis. Buffy shows at least three faces in this episode alone: General Buffy, confident and in charge of her army; Counselor Buffy, a "charming, endearing, loveable" ditz who "relates" to the students, if ineptly; and Compassionate Buffy, an as-yet ill-defined phenomenon. This isn't even counting some of the other Buffies we've seen over the years - the cold, impersonal enforcer of "Selfless"; the passive/aggressive sexual "animal" of "Dead Things"; the stereotypically babbling blonde who's intimidated by authority ("Flooded," "Life Serial," "DoubleMeat Palace," nearly any confrontation involving a high school principal, etc., etc.). You could argue that since being called as the Slayer, Buffy's double life has demanded this kind of emotional partioning... but it's hard not to think that true psychological health would lie in knitting all these personas into a single, stronger whole. (Buffy being repeatedly pointed to as a possible mental patient - a running gag by now - would seem to be a signpost for this). That synthesis, however, still seems a long way off. She then goes into Speech No. 2. Topic: death. "Death is what a Slayer breathes, what a Slayer dreams about when she sleeps. Death is what a slayer lives... my death could make one of you the next Slayer." Okay, okay. Slayers deal in death. Hence the job title. Check. She also imparts a bit of plot-specific info here, as part of their tactical briefing. Since Buffy dusted the UberVamp, The First has been "in remission" for awhile, which explains (sort of) why it hasn't been "pulling Spike's strings," and getting him to go all kill-tastic on the Scoobies and the rest of the household. Okay, glad we got that cleared up. But, as Buffy points out, this means a breather, not a victory - The First will likely come back from its rest period even stronger. "The odds are against us. Time is against us. And some of us will die in this battle. Decide now that it's not going to be you," she says, following up with the inspirational coda that they're "all special." "Most people in this world have no idea why they're here or what they want to do. You do. You have a mission, a reason for being here. You're not here by chance. You're here because you are the Chosen Ones," she tells them. Okay. Dawn being next in line for Slayer makes a sort of sense ("Remember that thing about they share the same blood or whatever?"), but any awe at the inheritance of "womany power" endorsed by Wicca Willow and a gobsmacked Andrew is quickly squelched by Anya's straight-up recounting of the mixed bag of gifts that comes with the Slayer mantle: "It's like one second you were this klutzy teenager with fake memories and a history of kleptomania, and then suddenly you're a hero... with a much abbreviated lifespan." Not to mention the "unfulfilled potential" if she never comes online. Dawn does her best to keep it together, but she's clearly reeling - she insists that no one tell Buffy, remembering the warning she received from ghostly Joyce. She heads off into the night to think (exiting via her bedroom window, just like Buffy used to do at her age), and runs smack into Amanda, the girl we saw earlier in Buffy's office. This is a nice coincidence - Amanda was asking earlier if she was "weird," and now Dawn is wondering the same thing about herself - if she's "chosen... special." The two nervously talk for a minute. Dawn can't help but notice a bloody scratch on Amanda's forehead, and asks her about it. A confused Amanda tells her story: "I was at school late... then there was this guy - or thing. And it was - it scratched me, and I kinda dodged it, and it kinda hit its head... it was messed up. In the face... I trapped it in a room and it's still there." Then she came looking for Buffy because she heard that Buffy "could help with this kind of thing." Recognizing the signs of a vampire attack when she hears them, Dawn decides to test her own "potential" status instead, and goes with Amanda back to the high school. The earlier cemetery scene raised questions about the line between Slayer and vampire ("are we supposed to make out with them or something?"). This bar scene follows up by blurring the line between Slayer and demon as well. Buffy's stern instruction: "I come here, it's 'cause I gotta wring some information out of some large, scary, drunk with a room full of friends who don't care much for the Slayer... there's not a being in here wouldn't gladly rip your throat out" is undercut by the appearance of Clem, whom she greets with a squealy hug and the endearment, "You look great, so toned!" The girls eye each other and, sotto voce, wonder if Buffy "dated him too." ...and once again, we arrive at those class issues. Buffy being seen by the Potentials as an obvious demon-fraternizer reminds us that she has indeed stepped outside the socially approved order, a little fact that can't help but give her lectures on demon treatment a wildly hypocritical air. When she loudly lectures, "You come to a place like this, you wanna be seen. You wanna scare someone, or make contact," she sounds like a white beat cop in a Harlem nightclub. She's trying to indoctrinate the girls to be automatically suspicious of demons just because of what and where they are, when they can see all too well that she's crossed those tracks more than once herself. On the other side of this fence, we have Spike, who is automatically accepted by the demon crowd as one of them. "Spike! Long time. Nice of you to bring snacks!" a demon greets him. Spike corrects this assumption with a threat, an exchange which works as a subtle comment on his status; likewise his embarrassed aside, "nice job blending in, girls," to the Potentials. Spike is the girls' native tour guide to the underworld, a lower-class denizen showing the upper class around; pick the racial or economic parallel of your choice. (Think I'm reaching? Remember "School Hard," where Spike himself called Angel an "Uncle Tom" for fighting alongside humans against vampires?) Don't think so: the Potentials automatically question their instructor by turning to their own Vampire Exhibit A, Spike, for confirmation. Where did he used to live, what was it like? After some cute dithering about whether his old crypt could be described as "posh" or, as Buffy puts it, "comfy" (which again raises the girls' eyebrows on the whole predator-prey relationship), Buffy changes the subject to learning to identify a vampire's nest "on sight." But duh, Buffy, didn't we just establish that vampires can live anywhere, any way they want? How's that work? There isn't time to hash this logic out, however, as the girls find a body that promptly wakes to unlife as a vampire. Buffy steps into position to take it on, with Lecture No. 3. Topic: know thyself. "The question is never 'what do you think,' it's always 'what do you know?' You gotta know it... in the hands of a Slayer, everything is a potential weapon.... when you're fighting, you have to know yourself, your brain, your body. Know how to stay calm, centered." She harps on the importance of getting everything exactly right: "if you make one mistake, it takes just one vampire to kill you... Every move is important, every blow's got to be part of your plan 'cause you make that one mistake, and it's over." If you detected a running theme of "I'm trying to explain to you that I can't really teach you anything; you just have to know it for yourselves," then you got the same message I did. Buffy's credo is, simply put, sink or swim. To demonstrate this, she then performs the exact parallel to throwing a child into the deep end to figure out how to tread water by dropping her stake and leaving the room, taking Spike with her. The pair lock the girls inside to figure it out for themselves. Harsh! ...and incidentally, it's also the exact same thing that Giles did to her in "Helpless," when he took her powers away on orders from the Council. Only that was bad, and Buffy's action is... good? Uh.... However, to Dawn's credit, she quickly swallows her disappointment, hands off the flagpole to Amanda with a short, inspirational speech about her destiny (much more effective than Buffy's, mostly for simply being concise), and watches as Amanda turns and kicks butt like she was born to do. After this, Amanda is taken back to the Summers H.Q. to excitedly conference with the other girls, who also managed to survive under pressure (no thanks to Buffy). As the new group of Chosen Possibles leaves the room, chatting over their evening, Dawn and Xander are left alone for a moment. And now, we get the one speech of the evening that really means something... from Xander. Watching Dawn move around the room, he takes in her carefully applied I'm-a-good-sport attitude, and confides something I've always wondered about: what it's like for him as the one member of the group who has no special powers. "They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't chosen," he tells her. "To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You're not special. You're extraordinary." Dawn smiles and tells him "Maybe that's your power. Seeing. Knowing." Maybe it is. Xander's words to Dawn here are all-important because as the season opener made more than clear, It's All About Power. Who has it. Who knows how to use it. But does that mean that only the powerful count? Or that there are different kinds of power, and the key is just knowing how to use it? Maybe "normals," like Xander and Dawn will matter more than it may at first seem. Because after all, we still haven't seen any evidence that strength of the Slayer variety will have any effect on The First at all. To my mind, it's more likely that the battle will be fought on an emotional front. This is the level where Buffy's being shown up as being less effective than her sister, as evidenced by the difference between Buffy's tiresome, repetitive speeches and Dawn's instinctual rapport with Amanda. Dawn was able to actually motivate her friend to embrace her power with a few choice words. Buffy, after lecturing the Potentials for hours, had to resort to putting her charges under threat of death to get them in gear. Which method is better? Which brings us back to the many faces of Buffy issue - is Buffy, by trying to teach the Potentials, giving them anything they can use, or like her advice to Amanda in her office, is she just working out her own issues with her mouth open? The latter, I think - Buffy has power just by being the Slayer; she knows instinctively how to use it, and so do the Potentials. Yet she gives them a narrow-minded manifesto on vampires and demons that doesn't hold up under close examination, and I get the feeling it wasn't meant to. The Buffy that "knows" and the Buffy that "talks" seem to be two entirely different people. Healthy? Don't think so. But isn't it nice to feel so proud of Xander again? Aww....
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