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Lies My Parents Told Me (Ep. 7.17)"Baby Love Child" It's time to get Freudian, for as "Lies My Parents Told Me" informs us, at the root of all psychological problems are Mommy Issues... or, in Buffy's case, Daddy Issues. However, that's only the most obvious message. More interesting is a subtext that builds on Giles' statement from the season opener: "In the end, we all are who we are. No matter how much we may appear to have changed." "LMPTM" proves this statement out, in more ways than one. . . . The episode opens with a flashback: Robin Wood, four years old, remembering his mother. It's a rainy Manhattan night, and we witness what appears to be the first meeting between '77 Slayer Nikki Wood and a full-on punk mode Spike. It's a fight, of course, albeit not nearly as good as the one we saw in "Fool For Love," partly because the direction is less dynamic (the action mostly framed in stiff medium shots), and partly because the new actress isn't even close to as kick-ass as the original stuntwoman who played Nikki. In fact, the only reason she avoids succumbing to a fanging on this occasion is because her little boy knocks over a trashcan, providing distraction. Lame. But violence isn't the real point here: there's some not-exactly-opaque sexual subtext going on that's clearly meant to prefigure Spike's later interactions with Buffy - he tells Nikki that he's been looking for her (i.e., stalking her), refers to the fight as a "dance," comments that he's going to "ride [her] hard" before killing her, calls her "luv." Nikki's retort picks up on the metaphor, only she's not biting: "I ain't your 'luv,'" she retorts, and adds a wisecrack that he looks "wet and limp." Nikki don't play that, check. But thanks to this, we're now reminded that, unlike Nikki, Buffy habitually played up to Spike's sexually charged banter, particularly in Season 4, in which both parties practically pant with the kind of distorted attraction Amanda described in "Potential" ("See, if a guy picks on you, is it weird to think he's cute?"). Not going to bother analyzing that one at this point. The combatants part, to-be-continued. "Love the coat," Spike sing-songs on his way out. Nervously eyeing the spot where her opponent vanished, Nikki bends down to tell her scared son that she'll take him someplace safe, that he can't stay with her, she's got work to do. "Always gotta work the mission," she insists. Okay, I know. This is big drama. Wood's gonna get revenge on Spike for killing his mother, yadda yadda. But I swear, all I could think of when I saw this onscreen is, "What's he got in that hand, a jelly donut?" The "blood" oozes in a flood reminiscent of a ballpark ketchup spill. I laughed all the way through the commercial break. Definitely the best cheap prop gag since the fake finger in "DoubleMeat Palace." We also get a reminder of Giles's character at his most basic - the Season 1 librarian who disdains the digital revolution because "knowledge comes from crafted bindings and pages... not ones and zeros." (He's so distressed over the computerized state of the new Sunnydale HS library that he's willing to ship his own "backup library" from England to put things to rights.) This also re-establishes Buffy's attitude vis a vis this kind of stuffy behaviour: when the talk turns to Spike's trigger, Buffy claims her only memory of the song is that "It was boring, old, and English, just like y..." She catches herself in time to try to turn the sentence into something else, but the viewer gets the point. This is core Buffy/Giles interaction, the bookish disciplinarian and the inconoclastic, quippy student. Put a pin in this; we'll come back to it later. From here, the burrowing creature traces the source of the trigger to a very old memory, and we get taken on a tour of Spike's past... or actually, William's past. These flashback scenes are interestingly handled - Spike sees the scene come info focus in front of him, as if he's a spectator at a play, watching his human self engaged in reading his latest composition to his needlepoint-sewing mother in a Victorian drawing room, lit by a cheery fire. (Later scenes put him directly into the action, not outside it.) The version of William the Bloody Awful Poet we see in this flashback is different from the one in "Fool For Love," and it's not just the changed hairstyle (an unassuming comb-down, suggesting that the previous Beau Brummel curls were a festive special effort). The William of "Fool For Love" appeared to be a shy, unattached young man; the William of "Lies" looks almost a little too old to be a bachelor, especially given the time period (the effect of James Marsters having aged a couple of years between episodes). Without a word being said, we have a new idea to chew on: that William's single status is not wholly due to a mere lack of social skill. Yep, all else being equal, he'd just as soon stay home and take care of dear old mum. To his adoring one-person audience, of course, it's wonderful. (And to be fair, it does sound better presented with full flourish, read in twittery high prose by Marsters; maybe even the infamous "effulgent" verse would have sounded better if recited as intended.) Mom is quick to pick up on the romantic overtures as well - she asks after "this Cecily of whom you write so often." William's response is a bashful denial that he wouldn't "presume." This is new info. Suddenly, Spike comes off as not so much a clueless suitor, but one with priorities. His mother is the "woman in my life"; taking care of her comes before anything else. "I will always look after you, mother. This, I promise," he tells her. Mom's happy blush at this is interrupted by a coughing fit. William offers to "send a coach for Dr. Gull," which is both a wry in-joke and a timecheck for the period - according to current theories (adapted into comic form by Alan Moore in From Hell), Dr. Gull, a.k.a. Sir William Gull, is the No. 1 candidate for having been Jack the Ripper, who would indeed have been active in 1880... and apparently, also a family doctor. William's mother declines medical help, preferring to have her son sit at her feet while the fit passes, taking up her stitching once again, and singing the folk song that's causing all this trouble... ...which produces the expected result back in the present day. Spike's trigger goes off, and in an instant, he's more feral than we've ever seen him before, vamp face on, muscles corded, literally roaring in rage. Buffy, hovering over him in concern, gets grabbed by the throat and pitched across the room. Dawn is brought down next, catching his flung camp cot in her forehead. The chains hold him back from doing more damage, and after a few more seconds of howling fury, the fit passes. The magic stone slides out and drops to the floor. Then comes the fallout. The Potentials upstairs are horrified to realize that they've been living and training right alongside an unleashed killer. "How could Buffy take this for granted?" one of them yelps. Anya clarifies it for them: "Spike's got some sort of 'Get Out of Jail Free' card that doesn't apply to the rest of us," she speculates, reminding us of her own frathouse slaughter in "Selfless," and Buffy's extreme reaction to that. In Anya's estimate, it's pretty obvious that Spike is getting special treatment. And yeah, actually, he is. Mark this page as well; we'll come back to it later. This much is obvious. Revisiting his memories has made Spike agitated, tense. "I am calm," he hisses tightly at one point. Clearly there's more to this than just an old lullaby. And we soon find out what, in another flashback that shows newly vamped William returning to his Victorian home with undead lover Drusilla... to collect mother. "You want to bring your mum with us?" Drusilla queries, wide-eyed. "You'll like her," he enthuses. Early in Season 6, I'd begun drafting an essay about the nature of vampires in the BtVS universe (which I may still get around to finishing at some point). The theory I was working with was that by losing their souls, vampires lose their natural inhibitions, particularly societally imposed ones, but what's left over tends to be directed by whatever was most important to them when they were alive. This picture becomes clearer with nearly every vampire we see, especially those we get to know both pre- and post-vamping. Vampire Harmony is still pretty much the shallow, popularity-obsessed girl she always was. Vampire Holden was still interested in finding out what makes people tick. And Vampire William still wants to take care of dear old mum. However, this impulse, filtered through his new vampire sensibility, takes a markedly different shape than human concern. A little humiliation payback on society at large is his first agenda item, as he details for Drusilla: "the three of us will teach those snobs and elitists... open up their veins and bathe in their blood." But to his mother, who appears trembling over her walking stick, voicing worries over his days of absence, he pitches vampirism as a cure-all: "No more sickness. No more dying. You'll never age another day... we'll be together forever." He never shows her his fangs - "it's only me," he says soothingly, as he takes her in his arms and leans in to bite her with the reassuring whisper "It only hurts for a moment." This is pretty messed up. It's also not one hundred percent original. During the earlier commercial break, I'd brought my couchmate, Chevy Impaler, up to date on how a similar scenario went down in the Anne Rice universe: the vampire Lestat turned his own mother (also to cure her from a blood-coughing disease), only to find that rather than wanting to share his exciting new life with him, her ideas about what constitutes adventure far outstrip his own - she wants to leave her humanity completely behind, explore jungles, find lost cities. Mother and son end up estranged. Which should give you a tip-off as to how this is going to turn out. Ricean homage actually isn't new territory for BtVS - from its very inception, Angel's Louis-like remorse firmly planted the series in those waters, and only the additional romance angle and his gypsy-cursed soul kept the character from being an outright pastiche. Spike, on the other hand, despite his initial introduction as a sort of ersatz Lestat - "a little less ritual and a little more fun," with interests in the human world beyond blood and gore (music, soccer games, spicy chicken wings) - quickly evolved into something really unique, with no parallel in Rice's universe. The BtVS series has long since moved on. However, parental issues are Rice's main territory: they loom large over all her works. (All her successful ones, that is - her lesser stories tend to get mired in the subverted erotica of bloodletting and thralls; murder as a metaphor for sex.) Even attempting to tackle parent and child issues in the context of vampirism automatically plants a story firmly in Rice's realm - the whole process of siring a vampire plays on parental imagery. "I'm the other that gave birth to your son," as Drusilla tells William's mother. From here, the action splits into two major fronts - Wood lures Spike to his place to carry out his revenge, while Giles takes Buffy to the cemetery to revisit "the basics." Essentially, to keep her out of the way. Like the stuffy librarian we saw earlier, Giles's betrayal of Buffy's wishes is based on something that's always been part of the character. His most obvious offense - caving into Council orders to inject Buffy with drugs (S3's "Helpless") - is not actually the reference point for this particular action. The real touchstone is his Season 6 walkout on Buffy at the height of her depression ("Tabula Rasa"). By getting rid of Spike, Giles is doing what he honestly thinks is best for Buffy, regardless of her own ideas on the topic. It's fatherly concern rationalized through Watcherly authority. Wood's argument - Spike is an integral part of The First's plan, eliminating him would be a "greater good" - is thoroughly rational, easy to justify on a strictly tactical level. However, this is only part of the argument Giles uses to (slowly and obliquely) explain his decision to Buffy during the cemetery outing: he insists that Spike is a "liability," and reminds her that "Angel left here because he realized how harmful your relationship with him was. Spike, on the other hand, lacks such self-awareness." This is a loud echo of his sentiments from "First Date": "Your feelings for him are coloring your judgment... and that way lies a future filled with pain. I don't want that for you." Giles's real motivations have less to do with wartime strategy and more to do with removing an undesirable love interest from his surrogate daughter's field of vision. Now, here's where it gets interesting, because along with parent and child issues, we now also get a distinct male vs. female vibe. "Lies My Parents Told Me" is seen almost entirely from the male perspective. Women are viewed as either idealized figures of worship (William's mother, Wood's mother) or overly emotional children in need of protection (Buffy). They don't get a vote in any of this. William doesn't give his mother a choice about becoming a vampire. Giles disregards Buffy's wishes regarding Spike. Wood acts on his dead mother's behalf without bothering to wonder if she would agree, or consulting the current Slayer in office. And hello, feminist show - ideologically, this is all way, way wrong. And all these ideas finally coverge, as Wood escorts Spike to his workroom "sanctuary," a converted garage cum paranoid hellscape - the walls are literally covered with handmade crosses (visually, it's very reminiscent of Sam Neill's sanitarium cell in In the Mouth of Madness.) Wood spells out his objective: he wants to kill "the monster who killed my mother." To facilitate this, he fires up iTunes on his shiny Mac G4 and produces the fateful folk song. Spike obligingly produces said monster. And the fight begins. William is shocked. "I only wanted to make you well," he protests. Mother sees his killing bite another way. "All you ever wanted was to be back inside... you wanted your hands on me," she hisses, seductive. "I love you. I did. Not like this," he pleads, finally choosing to stake her once he sees her monstrous face. The recovered memory of this horrible encounter is enough to snap Spike out of his trigger-induced daze. His human face returns, and he slams Wood across the room, then explains how he sees the difference between the two of them. He doesn't apologize for killing Wood's mother. "She was a Slayer. I was a vampire. That's how the game is played," he tells the principal. Nikki Wood wasn't a victim. She "knew what she was signing up for." Her calling came first, before her son. She didn't love her son enough to walk away. Spike seems to be getting at something about the nature of love here - the idea that real love isn't about doing things just for yourself. He made a selfish decision by vamping his mother, and "set loose a demon," one that expressed the kind of seething resentments his human mother never would have admitted to, or even consciously thought of. That she chose to be a doting mother to him despite possibly having such feelings deep down proves to Spike that she really did love him, enough to sacrifice herself. It's a bit of a saintly take on motherhood, but hey, whatever works for you. However, it's hard to get a complete handle on this because Spike himself seems so unique in the vampire world. The vampire that spent a century overcompensating for his insecurities by becoming the rough, brawling Slayer of Slayers is also the same attentive Spike of "School Hard," to whom caring for a sick Drusilla took precedence over establishing his demonic dominance over the Sunnydale vampires. "You two stink of humanity. You share affection and jealousy," the Judge rumbled to Spike and Drusilla in Season 2. The anomaly of his capacity for a kind of selfless love, even as a soulless vampire, makes it hard to gauge whether his read on his mother is accurate or not. But as mental breakthroughs go, this one does the job - the trigger no longer works. He's a free man. This leaves the soul, which Buffy in "First Date" told Giles would "stop him from hurting people," as Spike's last restraining influence... and for a moment, it looks like this isn't going to be enough to save Wood. After giving the principal a good scare, Spike decides to let him live "because I killed his mother." But, as he tells Buffy when she arrives, panting, at the last second, Wood is history if he "so much as looks at me funny again." Check. The soul will only stop him from hurting people to a point. Saintly he's not. The episode ends with a final word on parental relationships: Buffy coldly shuts her bedroom door in Giles's face, cutting off his claim that she still has much to learn. "I think you've taught me everything I need to know," she frosts. Buffy has her own ideas about right and wrong - she's become her own woman, the adult Giles wanted her to become when he left her to fend for herself in S6. The time to play Father Knows Best has long since passed. Buffy has grown up. And Giles doesn't get a vote anymore.
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