Hullo, I haven't really been around the Buffyverse lately, but have
wandered by now and then to see how the reread is going. This caught
my eye:
On Mar 10, 12:40 am, Arbitrar Of Quality <tsm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Season Seven, Episode 7: "Conversations With Dead People"
> Writers: Jane Espenson and Drew Goddard
> Director: Nick Marck
>
> CWDP is an odd one. It's well known by now how it was slapped
> together and all the collaboration-without-interaction and last-minute
> changes that went into it. The end result is strangely unified. I
> still think it's a rather brilliant premise for a concept episode,
> kicked off by a candidate for best teaser on any of Joss's shows (I
> could probably watch just that opening over and over). "Here we go."
> Not everything works perfectly. Dawn's segments are loud and
> screamy.
It startled me to learn that this episode was cobbled together,
because with the exception of Dawn's conversation with her mother, it
runs seamlessly through the interwoven stories to a dramatic
conclusion. It's a tribute to how success the "exquisite corpse" or
round-robin way of collaborating can be, in which each contributor
writes his or her bit, without interacting, and then patches them
together. (OK, partly I just wanted to get "exquisite corpse" into
this sentence.)
Among the things I like about this set of stories is that each "Dead
Person" is different--they aren't just parallels of each other. Holden
is a vampire masquerading as a friend, one of many people staked by
Buffy who might otherwise have been her friends; Cassie is an
incarnation of Willow's longing and then avatar of The First, Joyce
is...either herself or an avatar of The First, or both; and Jonathan
is both an avatar of The First and something like a traditional ghost,
haunting murderer. Only the end of the episode, when The First takes
off its Cassie suit, do we begin to understand that the other three
haunts or spirits are also It. Maybe. So at this point in season 7,
The First as an archvillain is still full of, er, potential. It has
the chance to be truly worse and more dangerous than Glory, or any of
the other apocalyptic monsters because it comes from within the main
characters themselves and is quite literally generated by them. Alas,
as the season progressed, this idea proved too hard to sustain, and
The First became a Big Baddy in the Basement, with the usual army of
orcs and a taste for cross-dressing.
But in CWDP It is still completely terrifying in a way that harks back
to the atavistic terrors of the Gentlemen in Hush: creatures of our
own dreams.
> Buffy allegedly opening up mostly just seems like her re-
> telling stories we've already heard. The Buffy/Holden thing is the
> big part that doesn't quite do what it's meant to, being simply an
> entertaining conversation and not the introspective (super)human drama
> that's needed to be the base of a mood-piece episode.
I get more from this part. Perhaps I like it so much because it's just
plain good writing and good acting. Holden isn't as overwrought as
many guest stars on BTVS (frex, Caleb, one of my least favorite
performances in the whole run). His quiet, laconic style is eye-
catching, and he was clearly written by someone with firsthand
knowledge of the way a shrink can toss zingers at a patient in the
nicest possible way. Plus, there is something delicious about the idea
that a really perceptive shrink, one who knows all your foibles and
catches all your tricks of denial and self-delusion (and who therefore
does some real good), is of necessity a cold, heartless bastard, whose
whole bloodsucking profession is vampiric.
> the superiority/inferiority complex thing, which is apparently the big
> punchline of that part of the story, is particularly revealing or even
> lays much foundation for Buffy's future actions. The result is that
> Holden mainly exists as a font of one-liners and a mechanism to reveal
> the plot point about Spike. But enough works that it clicks often.
I guess I didn't see the superiority/inferiority thing as the big
punchline. What came through for me was Buffy's hunger for someone to
talk to--someone who would listen without judging her, would
sympathize without neediness, and who would have a sense of what her
life as a relentless killer was like. Holden is, potentially, her
friend. Perhaps the only friend she is ever likely to have who doesn't
want anything from her, or need anything from her, or expect anything
of her. Holden is a natural friend in just the way that Angel or Spike
is a natural lover for Buffy. No one else can relate to her in that
narrow space between superiority and inferiority where she lives
alone.
So I see the punchline as the literal moment in which Buffy kills her
shrink, thereby ensuring that she will never be cured. (Being Buffy,
she finds another means of cure later on, but we don't know that yet.)
CWDP is the first indication in S7 that the series might really end on
a tragic note, with Buffy sacrificing herself once and for all.
> Sure, the actors are on top of their game, and the jokes have a high
> success rate (I kinda want to see the longest version of the "check"
> scene that Strong and Lenk were able to manage, as mentioned on the
> commentary). And sure, Willow's part is quite heart-wrenching, and
> the twists at the end (all of them, but especially Spike) are real
> shocks. There's more to it. The teaser's tone persists through the
> whole thing, because the way the four storylines are cut together lets
> them balance each other out. One would think the screechiness of the
> Dawn part in particular would clash horrifically with the pensive
> Buffy and Willow sequences, but as some people have pointed out, the
> haunted house provides the episode with an infusion of action.
I disliked the haunted house for two reasons. Dawn is at her most
childishly screechy and helpless; that song has been sung once too
often. And the gore and monsters and broken glass are mere
distractions from what should have been truly interesting and
terrifying: the return of Joyce as an instrument of evil. Alas, with
all the blood dripping on walls and whatnot, there isn't much doubt
that this is Evil!Joyce. Her attempts to drive a wedge of distrust
between Dawn and Buffy are lame, and never amount to much. (Would that
they had: it might have provided more plausible motivation for Dawn
later agreeing to evict Buffy from the house.)
~Mal
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