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Season of the Witch, Season of the Bitch

By The Deadly Hook

As challenging a show as Buffy the Vampire Slayer typically is, Season 6 is even tougher than usual to quantify, and believe me, I've spent some quality time thinking about it. Ambitious, yes. Controversial, definitely. Entertaining... well, not always.

Invisibility and memory-loss gimmicks aside, this was an unrelentingly grim run of episodes. The poignant and even romantic tone of the season's first third gradually gave way to a torturous descent into continuous pain that by the end was difficult to watch at best. It wasn't only the characters who experienced a season in hell.

...but then again, this is a show about a girl whose destiny it is to kill things. Should we be expecting sweetness and light? If you take the staff proclamation that "oh, grow up!" was meant to be the overarching theme of the season seriously, then you're faced with the uncomfortable thought that this message was aimed less at the show's characters than at us, the viewers. Ouch.

So maybe "Normal Again," where Buffy began to question if anything in the world around her was real, was actually the defining episode of the entire season. But if that's the case... what is real, as far as the BtVS story goes? Was there a point to all this beyond simple viewer torture? What's the "message" of Season 6?

Finding the Center
Buffy's true importance to the group, beyond her job as hero, was a major touchstone of the year. Essentially, the BtVS series is Buffy's journey: she is the legendary figure, the icon whose tale we are hearing around the campfire. But more than that, she is the glue that holds her gang of friends together. If Buffy, the center, does not hold - and she indeed came apart this year in more ways than one - unraveling entropy is the result.

It's been pointed out that it's because of her friends that Buffy is a stronger Slayer than her predecessors. Her friends and family support her, keep her connected to the world, give her reasons to continue fighting beyond simple duty and obligation. In return, she gives something precious and intangible back to them - an example, a higher purpose. The Scoobies by their very association make each other better people.

So Season 6, in which the characters drift apart from one another and "walk alone in fear," is largely about this: as individuals, who are these people, really? This question was first strongly explored in Season 4, where the tight high school group began to lose its cohesion; its members moving into college, jobs, and new relationships. The dreams of "Restless," the S4 finale, were particularly revealing in that each dreamer - Willow, Giles, Xander - largely defined themselves by how they relate to Buffy, how they fit into her circle. In contrast, their dreamed insecurities were rooted in their own individual doubts about themselves, and their suspicions about how they appear through her eyes. Willow sees Buffy as someone who can spot the geek under her "cool" disguise ("You're still in costume. Take if off!"). To Xander, Buffy is still remote, inexplicable, even as she calls him "brother." To Giles, Buffy is the daughter he never had... but it's a responsibility he's not sure what to do with.

The following year, however, seemed to bring balance. With the largest threat ever facing them, the Scoobies seemed to overcome their insecurities. Even Spike, who in Season 5 began his own flailing search for a new identity, reached a kind of heroic high point. As a team, all were worth more than the sum of their individual parts.

But in S6 all the self-doubt of Season 4 came back in force. Buffy's final fight and death had drawn the group closer together. Her return ironically upsets this balance. "You won't even disturb the air when you go," the vengeful spirit of "Afterlife" claimed as it tries to return Buffy to the cosmos, but it was wrong - Buffy is too huge a force in the Scoobies' lives not to have an effect, either in presence or absence. This is most clearly spelled out in "Bargaining," where the presence of the Buffybot casts a long shadow, and the group seems oddly obsessed with it, making sure it functions properly, that it speaks as it should and only to the right people. Buffy is needed for more than just slaying vampires and demons.

Unrealistic Expectations
The Buffybot is actually quite an interesting character from this perspective. The Scoobies often talk to and interact with it as if speaking to their own inner versions of Buffy herself; the robot as oracle. Giles' sudden decision to leave is triggered by the 'bot's innocent observation, "why are you still here?" The Buffybot's ironic comments on its predecessor's relationships, even simple, automated ones - "you're my sister!", "he's my biological ancestor," "every Slayer needs her Watcher" - are taken at face value, as emotionally real. The machine is still fulfilling fantasy scenarios, albeit entirely different ones than it was originally created for.

Willow, as the technical wizard ("got her head back on, didn't I?") is now the 'bot's caretaker. "I am programmed to go to you," the robot explains. But more than seeking Willow out for repairs when damaged, the robot now looks up to Willow, turns her for guidance, defers to her the way Buffy herself never did. Willow's fantasy is one of A-student accomplishment, recognition for her achievements, specifically from Buffy. She expected praise and gratitude for the resurrection and is crestfallen not to get it.

This dynamic between Willow and the robot is the audience's first alert that the end of the season will contain a falling out between the two best friends. Willow, despite her tearful description of a lost Buffy suffering for their sakes in some hell dimension from which they must save her, nevertheless stoops to shady black magic involving "spooky fluids" - something of which Buffy would never have approved - to effect the rescue. "This isn't the way I want it," Buffy says in "Villains," of Willow's revenge mission against Warren. But Willow had already stopped worrying about Buffy's wants a long time ago.

In contrast, the 'bot's original owner, Spike, is motivated solely by what Buffy would have wanted, having retooled his entire existence around his promise to protect Dawn. He's keenly aware of his own failure, displaying a surprising sense of guilt ("every night I save you", "I'm not leaving you alone to get hurt... not again"). He refuses to interact with the Buffybot. The machine addresses him with contrite worshipfulness; he can't even look at it. With the grief of Buffy's other surviviors jarringly skipped over as old news, something that went down in the summer hiatus, Spike's reaction was oddly the most recognizably human one.

That this character, the soulless vampire, was set up from the start as the easiest for the viewer to relate to is our first tip-off that the old world order was about to change.

Life Lessons of Season 6 Our final sum-up of the season's messages a) It's all about communication b) Honesty is the best policy c) Love is the answer d) Love hurts like hell e) There is no escape from social caste f) Men are all beasts, and then they leave g) Dads are bad

Make Me Complete
The Buffy/Spike relationship, as S6's single largest element, is important on so many levels that it's hard to be sure which one is the most relevant. Early in the season, their new affinity plays very much as a love story, and a classic one at that. Romance novel readers should have no problem recognizing the brash-rogue-changed-by-love-of-good-woman dynamic, as well as the uppity-vixen-who-finally-recognizes-her-true-desire-in-said-brash-rogue trope. All that was missing from this portrait of a romance was for Buffy to discover Spike's poetry-writing past - remember the poetry class Buffy had to drop out of in "Tough Love"? ("I wanted to tell you how much I loved this class... I really like poetry... I wish I had time for it.").

But romance was very much the road not taken here: the relationship we got instead was a complicated mix of power issues that by the end encompassed sexual violence, emotional usury, domestic abuse, and finally, attempted rape. Their early empathy as two people dead-yet-alive fell by the wayside in a round of denials and accusations; their first sexual encounter came at the climax of a raging fight. This was not a relationship built on, as "Randy" states in "Tabula Rasa," "utter trust."

It was, however, built on a long-standing sexual tension. Given the way things turned out, their mutual history is now nearly impossible to see as anything but four years of foreplay. This chemistry was obvious enough that even disinterested third parties have picked up on it: from Season 4 onward, there's been a running trend of Spike and Buffy being mistaken for a couple: by college jerk Parker in "Harsh Light of Day" ("Did you and he used to, like, go out?"); by Glory, in "Blood Ties"; by caseworker Doris in "Gone." "He is not my boyfriend!" Buffy explains repeatedly. Spike is far from alone in his belief that there is "something" between them.

That said, whatever Buffy actually feels for Spike is almost irrelevant to an analysis of S6. It's that we don't know what she feels that's significant.

Historically, our only peek into Buffy's real thoughts and emotions have been her girl-talk sessions with Willow, which the season pointedly did not feature. What's more, post-resurrection Buffy is particularly secretive and evasive. She lies to her friends. She's insincere and flaky. Her emotions range from false-cheery to suicidally depressed - a head-scratching combination that makes you question nearly everything she says and does. This is, of course, the point - the characters and viewers alike are forced to divine Buffy's real feelings via mental crystal ball.

Buffy's cryptic, black box status has catacylsmic effects on all her relationships. Despite their guilty realization of their role in her resurrection misery, her friends view her stoic facade as an all-clear signal, allowing them to ignore any signs of distress. They take her continuing friendship for granted, even though they are hardly acting like good friends. Her secret lover has the opposite problem - he reads too much into her actions, misinterpreting her sudden willingness to walk on the wild side as proof that she cares, refusing to believe that her opinion of him had not changed. This continual divination of the mystery that is Buffy brings us to the other main theme of the season: the gulf between fantasy and reality.

Flesh for Fantasy
The "Trio," the season's main villains, live in a sci-fi world of comics, movies, and action figures. Their manifesto - "wanna team up and take over Sunnydale?" - is to bring this fantasy to life in a revenge-of-the-nerds scenario involving power trips ("god, I thought I'd never stop crying," Warren reminds a high school bully in "Seeing Red" right before wiping the floor with him), sexual domination ("We could hypnotize her. Make her our willing sex bunny"), and riches. Until Katrina's murder, the Troika saw the world and the people in it in video game terms, as toys to be played with, unreal, without consequences. "This isn't some fantasy, you freaks! This is rape!" Katrina screams, throwing the issue into sharp relief.

Likewise, the Buffy/Spike relationship plays very much as a fantasy that spiraled out of control, their sexual games of dominance and role-playing ending up in exactly the same place.

Spike's fantasy version of Buffy had previously been carefully detailed: first in S5's "Out of My Mind," with the dream in which he realized that he'd fallen in love with her; then in "Intervention," in which the Buffybot brought his dream to life in animatronic 3D. In both cases, FantasyBuffy was shown to be a passionate and eager lover... but interestingly, with her moral code still intact. "Darn your sinister attraction!" the robot chirps.

Spike sees Buffy as drawn to darkness; a visceral attraction that's part of her identity as the Slayer. The programmed responses of the robot spell this out clearly: "You're evil," the 'bot bubbles to him, going on to explain that "It excites me, it terrifies me. I try so hard to resist you, and I can't." When this fantasy of Slayer carnal knowledge becomes real, Buffy's Jekyll-and-Hyde behaviour all but confirms his theory.

Weak and Selfish
That Spike insists upon seeing even Buffy's abuse as a sign of affection is admittedly the most generous possible reading of her motives. Like the Scoobies, he has a higher estimation of Buffy than she has of herself. Giles and her friends think she is stronger than she really is, able to pick herself up and soldier on no matter how exhausted by continual fighting and duty. Her lover credits her with better ethics.

It's this fact, that the characters are suddenly not behaving like the kind of people you'd want for friends anymore, that ultimately makes S6 so difficult. As viewers, we're being asked to realize the same things the characters don't want to face, and with good reason. Giles, by leaving Buffy and the Scoobies in the midst of their various crises, added his name to the "deadbeat dads" of the series. Loveable goof Xander became so self-absorbed and judgmental he was almost impossible to sympathize with. Dawn screeched like a brat... constantly. Willow, formerly the best friend anyone could wish for, swung crazily between power-mad witch and pathetic, mooching junkie. Spike, the vampire who seemed to be redeeming himself through true love, ended up so broken and desperate that he actually went crazy. Buffy herself came off particularly badly; it's hard not to compare her treatment of Spike in "Dead Things" with the Willow/Xander confrontation of "Grave." In S6, Buffy herself became a monster. By the end of the season, I agreed with Willow that she needed every inch of her ass kicked.

Worse, most of these were miserably self-fulfilling prophecies. "I know I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man," Spike told Buffy in "The Gift." In S6, this sentence is pointedly reversed. "You're not a man. You're a thing. An evil, disgusting thing," she hurls at him in "Smashed"... but before that, he hadn't acted like one. Xander ruins his relationship with Anya by walking out on their wedding. Would it have happened had he actually told her his fears? Willow destroys her own relationship with Tara with her dishonesty and manipulative behaviour. How much sympathy do these characters deserve?

So here we are, ready to go into Season 7, with a group of people whose relationships are shaky and built on false assumptions. Can they find it in themselves to do the hard work, to talk things out like they should have in the first place, to love, to give, to forgive? I should darn well hope so...I'd like to think this particular trip, and these hard, hard lessons, were worth it.

 
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