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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Buffy Season Six, final episode - "Grave"

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:00 / 08.06.04
I'm sure that I loathe the phrase "jump the shark" nearly as much as Jack dislikes me. It's such an ingorant, anti-art way of looking at things.

It's cute that Jack The Bodiless is the guy who gets to decide what's 'canon,' and not Joss Whedon.
 
 
Triplets
18:19 / 08.06.04
Maybe some of you were just upset to see the tone change, I don't know. Whatever happened, it was for the better. Truly.

This sentence invalidates any opinion you have made or will make about Buffy. Ever.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
20:02 / 08.06.04
Ex's post sums up a lot of what I disliked about seasons 6 and 7 very well, and I'm glad, because for some reason discussion about this chunk of this show in particular seems to a) make tempers run very high, and b) lead to readings of what happens in the show that have me picking up my jaw in horror and disbelief, even when the person doing the reading falls on the same side of the nay/yay divide as I do.

(But nothing is as horrifying as Patrick's apparent suggestion that there's a form of rape that's not soooo bad...)

I'm going to cross-post my main problems with season 6 as written elsewhere.

1) Everything seems to go so slowly - I'm not talking about a lack of 'events', so don't mistake this for the kind of criticisms that were aimed at season 4 of The Sopranos - what I'm talking about is the way the dialogue and plotting of individual episodes really seems to kinda dry up. People start to talk in circles, and it drags. Plus there's a lot of repetition: Dawn feels neglected and Buffy is distracted by her own depression, and then Buffy promises to snap out of it and pay more attention to her sister, but this doesn't happen. You could argue that this is true to life, but it's very annoying to watch and also means that when Buffy promises to "show the world" to Dawn at the end of 'Grave', it sounds empty. Why should this time be any different?

2) A lot of the subtlety goes out the window. Dawn feeling neglected is a good example of this - we have to be told this over and over and over. The angst and misery just gets piled on in such a heavy-handed way that the show can no longer sustain its previous balance of comedy and tragedy/horror. (It's also just not where the strengths of these particular writers/directors/actors lie.) I also preferred it when Buffy's feminism was more subtle: she should be fighting male authority figures and institutions who dismiss her as just a girl (the Major, the Initiative), but not necessarily guys who say "I hate women! I hate those sluts!" all the time just in case you don't get it (Warren, and even worse, Caleb from season 7). Speaking of lack of subtlety, Whedon & co's trick of killing one half of a couple just after they've got (back) together was great the first time (watch Season 2, I beg you), but it's a bit too familiar when it happens to Tara.

3) One thing I find very hard to forgive, and where I kind of lost faith in the show, is the 'trick' that's pulled on the viewers in the last few episodes with Spike. In case you didn't know, James Marsters was told that Spike was going to get the chip out, or to play it that way - which is the way it's written: "The bitch will see a change", "I want you to make me how I was". Yes, there are a couple of ambiguous ones in there too - stuff about him wanting to give Buffy "what she deserves", but it's very hard to interpret the way he acts and what he days to mean anything else. And then it turns out that he was after his soul - or rather, that's what he says in season 7. Misdirection is one thing, but I think this is just a lazy and confusing way to surprise the audience - I for one came away thinking that Spike had just been fucked with by the demon he went too for help, who'd given him his soul as a joke. It's a bit like the fact that Xorneto doesn't quite work because we see Xorn's face in the Annual, only worse. Maybe it's more like when Warren Ellis denied that Elijan Snow was the Fourth Man...

I do like a couple of episodes from this season. 'Tabula Rasa' and 'Normal Again' spring to mind. Bear in mind also that when I was just reading the summaries and other reviews, before I actually saw the season, I was in the "this sounds great" camp. So my problems with the season are all about the execution, not the ideas, and I don't think you can put me in "doesn't get the change in tone" camp. I'm normally all about the aftermath and the disillusionment and the soap opera, that's why it annoys me so much that they fuck it up!

Just a quick thing re Spike, flamey demons and 'making amends': I think what you have to fanwank it as in the end is even though soulless vampire Spike doesn't have a soul, he's developed a tiny bit of a conscience, and he also realises after the attempted rape that he will always revert to being evil unless he gets a soul... What's really troubling is that unlike Angel & Angelus nobody seems to treat him like a different character once he gets his soul back (which by lore he is), and yet he gets held to account much less than Angel.

Season 7 starts off very well but gets slow and plodding in the middle, and then stops making sense completely. I think the biggest handicap is the writers made a lot of decisions they decided not to follow up on. They decided they wanted to make the show less bleak than season 6, but didn't quite know how to have the characters deal with what had happened and move on: so Willow just seems weak and whiney all the time, Buffy reverts to being a sanctimonious as halfway through, Xander is mostly redundant, Anya gets a good arc at the beginning but... well. I'm not going to spoil it. Other examples of not following through on decisions would include giving Buffy an intangible enemy and then making it first tangible and then, shockingly, just sort of pretending it had been destroyed even though we don't see it or even have it really suggested. And giving Spike a soul which would make him a very different character, and then having him more or less revert to the same character he was in 5 & 6.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
20:54 / 08.06.04
Misdirection is one thing, but I think this is just a lazy and confusing way to surprise the audience - I for one came away thinking that Spike had just been fucked with by the demon he went too for help, who'd given him his soul as a joke.

I never thought the way you did on this, Fly - as soon as that happened I presumed that the soul was what Spike had been after all along, and I think it works in the context of the rest of Spike's S6 actions. Where it doesn't work is with the show's original telling of what vampires are. For the purposes of the first four series, they're demon souls inside a human body - the memories of the human life that once occupied the body are still there, but there's nothing of the emotion or humanity that made that person. At some point during S5, they become something else, and something very muddled indeed - tainted human souls inside their original bodies (except they aren't supposed to have souls, hence the muddle).

Spike's decision to get his soul back works with the second reading - there's even a clumsy attempt to write him feeling guilt over the attempted rape - but not with the first.

But then, a lot of the show's bible seemed to get rewritten willy-nilly after S3.
 
 
Seth
21:54 / 08.06.04
But then, a lot of the show's bible seemed to get rewritten willy-nilly after S3.

Hence why it is not canon. There was a council held to ensure that the only true episodes were the ones that adhered to the original mythos. You guys must have missed the memo.

Apocrypha loving heretics.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:23 / 08.06.04
It just strikes me as a bit daft and careless to create a show that quickly becomes all about the continuity, then let your scriptwriters screw up some of the more fundamental points. Especially when you've spent the better part of an entire season effectively taking the piss out of recons in other television dramas.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
22:24 / 08.06.04
I'll be starting season 3 pretty soon (I skipped the first two seasons because the synopses weren't as interesting to me). I'm totally open to loving the earlier episodes (I want to like them), but it's really hard to imagine the show being as good without Anya. I really like Anya! And Dawn too!
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:35 / 08.06.04
It's hardly essential that you watch S2 before S3, but I'd recommend it. For me, it's got the best ace:iffy episode ratio out of all of them. Some of the best writing out of any of the series, some great character stuff and some nice surprises. A lot of which will already have been spoilerificated by having seen the later series, but are still extremely well done.

Nasty, vicious stuff in there, too. I'm thinking of roses on a staircase and a doomed older woman/younger man relationship, in particular. Got to be my favourite season by far.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
23:06 / 08.06.04
This is why I stopped watching ER.

When really bad things happened in the early years of Buffy, they were rare and advanced the story on (see the two parter where Angel get's his soul back, or the aforementioned and frankly brilliant 'Passion') By mid season five, pain was de rigeur, and it lost it's meaning. By mid season six I didn't really care any more, then Joss killed one of the few characters that wasn't stuck up their own arse.

It's very strange with seasons four and six that here were themes which were not allowed to develop in a show which had become one of the most sequential shows on telly, where this weeks episode very definitely followed last weeks episode and preceeded next weeks, compare and contrast with something like Voyager which didn't need to be watched in such a way. Yet the themes of the Scoobies as family or 'the hardest thing in this world is to live in it' were resolutely kept in place, beyond all logic (in the case of the latter, I felt at the time that 'Once More With Feeling' was the logical place to bring to an end Buffy's malaise, she tried to commit suicide and is saved by Spike of all people, the rest of the season should have been her digging herself out).

I agree with Fly that the last season of Buffy was cocked up. I realised something was up when mid-season the show became the 'weekly torture Spike hour', 'this week, we invite the headmaster with the shady past to beat the crap out of Spike'.

I also feel that towards the end Buffy was refusing to grow up. I mean, I would have been around twenty when it started and twenty six when it ended, so growing out of it's target audience, but I feel it was aimed at sixteen year olds when it began, and fourteen year olds when it ended. So there are episodes like that rather daft one all about those nasty, nasty men (see, nasty men again! ) who created the first Slayer, against her will of course because being just a woman the first Slayer wouldn't have volunteered for this, and being the Slayer is such a downer and it's more important that it's made Buffy's life difficult than she's been put in positions to stop the world ending. Oh to be able to reach into the TV and slap her and shout "It's not about you!". But then I'm an evil, evil man. So I naturally covet female power wherever I see it.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
23:07 / 08.06.04
Sorry, insomnia make head not work good.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:00 / 09.06.04
Buffy and souls is a really complex problem. We start off with the idea that the vampire is just using the body of the human - "it isn't your friend; it's the thing that killed him". That is then developed a little to suggest that vampires, although demonic, are a demonic presence filtered through the personality and memories of the victim - so, whereas Jesse becomes a love machine, a goofy guy can become an equally goofy vampire, and vamp Willow reveals her bisexuality (so does vamp Xander, but never mind that)... Put a soul back into a vampire, and you get a body that is motivated by a human soul, but still also has the demonic presence - like Angel, who is *not* the same as Liam. There's the interesting possibility here that your soul doesn't actually affect your personality - it's a purely metaphysical distinction - but that doesn't seem to be quite born out by the case of Angel. Having said which, there is a century that begins with Angel trying to behave like Angelus - possibly we have to factor in natural personality development - Liam was a good-time boy and so, in his way, was Angelus, whereas Angel is in some ways at least grown up.

However, Spike is a bit of an interesting case. He's always been a bit *off* for a vampire - the Judge identifies him as afflicted by a human's love - but this is not in itself unique - see the Spike knock-off in "Heartthrob", who again had a romantic relationship in a way that Angelus and Darla didn't. He's a romantic - in fact, that's one thing that remains constant. William and Spike are different characters, but we can see that this is a conscious process of self-recreation rather than necessarily the effect of not having/having a soul. Rather, you could see Spike as being a bit weak-willed and imitative - in middle-class London society, he is effete, with Angelus he becomes a roistering hellraiser - he goes Sex Pistols whereas the ensouled Angel goes Manilow, a choice that *Angelus* shows disgust for ("Orpheus"). Then, when he is spending time with Buffy and the Scoobies, he starts picking up on their behaviours (note the khakhis and jumper combo in Series 5), partly because he is in (messed-up) love with Buffy, but also, I think, for want of anything better to do.

Which sort of explains the bit between Series 5 and Series 6, where he is helping out the Scoobies. He is no longer motivated by simple love/lust for Buffy (since she is dead), so is his only motivation a desire to secure the Scoobie's protection against any hostile humans? But the Scoobies could not realistically kill a human in order to save his life *anyway* - a human life, even an evil human life, is significant, in a way that a demon life is not (Finch in "Bad Girls") in the moral structure of the show. So why is he still there? I think this is something that *could* have been developed more in 6 - the way that actually one can develop a desire to do good for good's sake, to mature as a person, to fight the good fight, at the very least to care about people and want to protect them (as he did Buffy in Series 5), *without* a big magical reensouling - that you can develop what is generally referred to as a soul in the Buffy view through personal development rather than through enchantment. The Riley episode is a bit of a problem with this, though... where he is pictured as still Mr. Evilplan in his spare time.

Any-way. Assuming that Spike *did* want his soul back, which I think is probably him lying to try to impress Buffy - opposed to "I wanted to be able to rape and kill you without compunction, love", it's a bit of a winner - it *is* a bit odd that, whereas Angel both is treated as and is a different person to Angelus, souled Spike, after a bit of blee-blah-bonkers, is basically unchanged. Is that because he had done the soul-developing groundwork in Series 5 (see para above), or because you start from where you are and develop from there (so it isn't that Angelus is a different personality, but that he has just not developed in the last century, since he has had no agency), and/or, which I quite like, that Spike is just a pretty uncomplicated and incredibly self-involved person - he processes having a soul, feels a bit guilty about all the bad things he has done, feels better gets on with it.

However, for future reference, if you think attempted rape is "atoned for" by draping yourself on a hot thing and asking the victim if you can rest now, then you probably want to check yourself. That's not "atoning", it's "making it all about me, while sizzling gently".
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:04 / 09.06.04
Which sort of explains the bit between Series 5 and Series 6, where he is helping out the Scoobies. He is no longer motivated by simple love/lust for Buffy (since she is dead), so is his only motivation a desire to secure the Scoobie's protection against any hostile humans? But the Scoobies could not realistically kill a human in order to save his life *anyway* - a human life, even an evil human life, is significant, in a way that a demon life is not (Finch in "Bad Girls") in the moral structure of the show. So why is he still there?

I assume you mean that Spike wants to protect the Scoobies from hostile non-humans - he still has the chip - but that this could have been a drawback were they ever attacked by humans, against whom Spike would be more or less defenceless... Spike's motivation between 5 and 6 seems pretty simple to me: he's protecting Dawn specifically, because he promised Buffy he'd do this shortly before she took a long dive off a high place. So this still isn't necessarily an altruistic motivation: it's mainly part of his wannabe Casanova schtick.

It's true to say that William, evil Spike, chipped Spike and souled Spike are consistently romantic, but you can be motivated by 'romance' to do terrible, terrible things (stalk people, scheme to help destroy their relationships, attempt to rape them, etc...) as well as good ones. So Patrick's that he was an "essentially good person" all the way through is one of the wackiest I have ever seen. As is, for that matter, the idea that Spike was one of the noblest characters, with a strong moral centre in season 5: he has no moral centre as we understand it. He tells a demon where he can find babies to eat! When Spike abstains from doing bad things or does good things in season 5, it is almost always motivated by things he wants: he wants not to feel the pain the chip inflicts, he wants to have the enjoyment of getting into fights despite this, he wants Buffy to stay alive so she can sex him one day, he wants to stay in her good books as much as possible for the same reason.

If anything, the problem is this is still consistent in his behaviour after he gets a soul back. It took season 5 of Angel to address this: Lindsey accuses him of previously doing good deeds only "to impress women", and we are shown that this strikes a nerve, in fact it's only through Lindsey's suggestion (and guilting) that Spike takes up Angel's old 'dark avenger' role. Additionally, Spike doesn't chase after Buffy because he'd rather she think he sacrificed his life for the world - in other words, he acknowledges that since he didn't do that after all, he's not exactly a hero yet (and without spoiling the end of Angel too much, Spike eventually shows that he's willing to do it all over again if necessary).

Oh, and yes, Spike didn't spend all the time Angel did feeling guilty about his past and trying to make up for it. That's because he's a bit of a dick, which is also acknowledged by season 5 of Angel, in 'Damage': he basically comes out and says at the end of the episode "I never really thought about all the killing I did either beforehand or afterwards", and while we're given a nice explanation on why he and Angel reacted differently, it's made pretty clear that Spike realises he hasn't acknowleged *enough* blame for the things he did.

Should we take further thoughts this to the 'heretical musings' thread? Because I'd really like to talk about how the Angel/Angelus thing is treated in Angel S4, but that's nothing to with this thread, really... (Oh, and because I love that thread. Hey, have we ever had an 'only your favourite Buffy/Angel episodes and why' thread? That might be fun.)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:46 / 09.06.04
Ah, no - I meant the protection *of* the Scoobies, to protect Spike against humans, because he would be unable to save himself against vampire hunters. But the romantic "I made a promise to a lady" schtick is not unconvincing...

Agree entirely that Spike's romanticism basically makes him a total nightmare, but I don't think you're being *entirely* fair about his motives in S5 - He's apparently prepared to die rather than rat out Buffy (whom he can't sex if he's dead) in "Intervention", isn't he? I think it's him being romantic again, but it's self-absorbed rather than selfish... but could still fit into the "you only did it to impress girls" model. But yes, to describe Spike as "noble" is pretty on crack, but it's a trap that others (Marti Noxon, we are looking at you) have fallen into as well.
 
 
PatrickMM
03:18 / 11.06.04
Just to clarify, because I'm getting rhetorically slaughtered here, Spike's rape attempt was awful, completely soulless (in the colloquial) act, and probably the low point of his character arc for the entire series. I don't in any way mean to defend it, or even justify it, it's just that, after hitting this low point, he goes off to get the soul, which isn't so much needed, it's more of a gesture.

One of the most unfortunate things about Spike's "trials" is that, in order to raise tension, the writers had Spike say things like "I'm going to give that bitch what she deserves," rather than give any indication that he felt sorry about what he did. I think that the intention was, the rape repulsed him so, that he felt driven to get a soul, because it was the only thing he felt could redeem him. So, yes, it was a morally repugnant act, but he did everything he could to atone for it, and I don't think Buffy's acceptance of him in season seven is out of character.

And, the show always dealt with really brutal crimes in an offhand, sort of funny way. Look at something like "Earshot" with treats mass murder as a joke, right down to the fact that Xander stops hunting for the person who's going to shoot up the school to look for jello. Or, in "The Initiative," when Spike's attempt to bite Willow is clearly a rape allegory, and yet the scene after he fails, we're treated to one of the funniest scenes in the entire run of the series, when they talk about Spike's failure to perform. The treatment of the rape is consistent with this sort of dismissive attitude towards heinous crimes. And, that leads me to believe the writers never meant it to be as grave an offense as people on the board here consider it. In real life, rape is clearly unforgivable, but in the context of the show, it took a lot, but it was eventually forgiven.

And giving Spike a soul which would make him a very different character, and then having him more or less revert to the same character he was in 5 & 6.

The thing about Spike, that makes him different from Angel, is he'd already went through the adjustment portion of getting the soul, namely, adjusting to not being able to kill humans, and even fighting for what's right. Just based on their characters, Spike is the sort of person who wouldn't be as tormented by what he'd done in the past as Angel was.

I think the major thing that makes Angel feel so awful once he gets the soul is he realizes that the person he was before Angelus was almost as bad as Angelus himself. So, he can't blame everything he did on the vamping, he feels personally responsible for what he did. Spike doesn't have this dilemma, because he was a good person before he was vamped. Also, I think he dealt with a lot of the soul issues around Crush in season five, when Drucilla came back, and he chose not to go back with her, even though it would mean humans to eat.

So why is he still there? I think this is something that *could* have been developed more in 6 - the way that actually one can develop a desire to do good for good's sake, to mature as a person, to fight the good fight, at the very least to care about people and want to protect them (as he did Buffy in Series 5), *without* a big magical reensouling - that you can develop what is generally referred to as a soul in the Buffy view through personal development rather than through enchantment.

I think this is basically what was done. By the end of season five, Spike was doing as much good as he did with the soul. There isn't that big a difference between Spike with soul and Spike without soul, because through conditioning, he developed the morality that is generally thought to come with the soul.

The Riley episode is a bit of a problem with this, though... where he is pictured as still Mr. Evilplan in his spare time.

I haven't seen the episode in a while, so I'm not sure if this jives with what happens, but I read someone who said that Spike is raising the eggs to make money, becuase he'd heard about how Buffy was struggling with making a living, and wanted to help her out. It wasn't said in the episode, but it makes sense, IMO.

Any-way. Assuming that Spike *did* want his soul back, which I think is probably him lying to try to impress Buffy

"Spike's quest was, and ALWAYS WAS, to get his soul restored for Buffy, despite any misleading leaks we may have put out that you fell for." - David Fury on the Bronze Beta, 11/19/02

"Spike looked into his soul at that moment [the attempted rape], and saw the demon in him, and that's what made him want to go get a soul .... We did a big ole mislead on you all, where we wanted you to think he gonna go get the chip out. We knew, the whole time, from the very beginning he was gonna go get a soul. And when he says I want Buffy to have what she deserves, he means a lover with a soul." - Jane Espenson, Buffy writer
Radio interview on the Succubus Club, 5/22/02

Moderator: "At the end of the finale, I thought Spike wanted to get the chip out, not get his soul back?"
Joss Whedon: "Noooo.... but you were meant to think that. I personally devised something called a plot twist."
At the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences panel "Behind the Scenes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer," 6/18/02

But, the show itself is definitely much more ambiguous than these quotes would have you believe.
 
 
PatrickMM
03:30 / 11.06.04
I'm going to stand by my claim that Spike was noble, one of the primary story arcs through the series is the redemption of Spike. In season five, it's logical to say that all of Spike's many good deeds, were due to his love for Buffy. But, I don't see much logic in Flyboy's claim that protecting Dawn was part of his "casanova schtick." Unlike the viewer, Spike would have no hope that Buffy would return, and yet, he still fights evil, and still cares for Dawn. Dawn is the first real bond we've seen him develop that isn't based on the desire to have sex with someone. Sure, he's immortal, so three months isn't a lot of time, but I don't see any indication that he would lapse back into his evil ways, and then indicates a major turning point in his character arc. He was doing good, free of a desire to help himself as a result.

Season six, he does lapse a bit (and no, I don't consider the rape a "little lapse," I think that's been covered enough already without going into it here), which is attributable to either bad writing, or the fact that having St. Spike as a character doesn't really work in the long term. You can see this in the character change from the end of Buffy season 7 to his reappearance on Angel season five.

The two most important scenes for Spike in season seven are when he lays with Buffy the whole night, without having sex with her, or even trying to force the issue in any way, and when he uses the amulet, and sacrifices himself for the world, despite knowing that Buffy doesn't love him. He does it because through her love he has been redeemed.

The soul is incidental to all this, it's the fact that, as he says in The Gift, "I'm a monster, but you treat me like a man."

Now, admittedly, Spike was my favorite character, so I may be a bit biased, but hopefully, you can still find some sense in these really long posts.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:37 / 11.06.04
But does Spike even know what the Amulet is going to do? I think most people would assume that if a 'champion' is going to wear it in an important good v. evil battle, it's going to give them magical superpowers, not incinerate them... Once that process starts, it doesn't look like something anyone could stop.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
20:42 / 11.06.04
Shall we continue this discussion in the heretical musings thread, as it seems to be somewhat more germain? And 'cos I also love that thread.
 
 
Rev. Orr
21:18 / 11.06.04
The treatment of the rape is consistent with this sort of dismissive attitude towards heinous crimes.

Of course, yes. Just like Willow didn't spend half a season terrified of using magic again after Tara's death triggered a minor apocolyptic episode. Equally Faith's 'friendly fire' stake/Finch interface had no lasting effects on her character, role within the group, level of consciousness or anything. How did she end up on 'Angel' again?

Now, admittedly, I loathe Spike. Rather, I think he was a fine villain and a vital counterpoint to both the souled and unsouled Angel in season two. I find it hard to swallow that the popularity of the actor (or his cheekbones) caused the character to be kept on long after it's use-by date, but TV shows live or die by their ratings so I have to be content to grumble. What just does not work, for me, on any level is the attempt that was made to develop Spike from swaggering, amoral, shallow evil to tortured, suffering hero.

Season six, he does lapse a bit ... which is attributable to either bad writing, or the fact that having St. Spike as a character doesn't really work in the long term.

I have to agree with much of Flyboy's analysis of Spike in seasons 5 and 6. If we accept the canon view that turning a human into a vampire fixes and exagerates existing character traits then some coherance can be found. William, as we are shown, is a callow, inadequate, profoundly juvenile, grand romantic. Death, or unlife, prevents him from ever developing from this point. Thus, as a vampire, Spike is prone to flamboyant, Anne Rice-style acts of both violence and what he believes to be love. He serial obsessions with Drusilla and then Buffy are examples to immature passion and a deeply selfish understanding of relationships.

In other words, I don't see these episodes as 'lapses' in his rehabilitation, but rather evidence of his true nature. By the time of 'As You Were', Spike has adopted the grand scheme of acting worthy of Buffy's love so that she might notice him. Much like a knight's quest in medieval romance (as a Victorian poet would be well aware) he has accepted a grand task of sacrificial self-improvement in ceasing to take human life. The superficial nature of this act is two-fold; firstly, Spike is unable to see that causing death indirectly (by selling on the demon eggs) invalidates his lack of direct action. Secondly, his so-called sacrifice is little more than the rationalisation of an enforced act of behavioural modification. How much should we (or Buffy) applaud the 'choice' not to kill humans when the chip makes such an action physically impossible?

In these terms, Spike's choice to continue to help the group after Buffy's second death is rather less noble. To this point, we have been shown Spike as feeling a genuine bond with Dawn. Whether this is fraternal, quasi-paternal or medium-term grooming we don't know, but until this too falls by the amnesia wayside that is season 7 , we have no reason to assume that he would leave her as soon as her sister was out of the way. Equally, he promised Buffy shortly before her death, that he would protect Dawn. As the last wish of his 'beloved' and a solemn oath to the love of his unlife, it would run counter to his fairy-tale perception of courtly love to fail to uphold this. In effect, remaining in Sunnydale and continuing to 'fight the good fight' at this point is critical to the creation and maintainance of Spike's self-image.

The crux of the matter is that early Spike was potentially a figure of genuine evil. Season 6 marked the point of no return in his portayal as amoral, not evil. Season 5 Spike can still be read as fucked up by forced behavioural modification. Season 7 Spike is an adolescent character, written adolescently. The season 6 arc was the point at which the writers chose which way to go.

Redemption for Spike would have required a genuine development in his personality and understanding which might have impinged on his role as eye-candy for the jail-bait generation. They chose to leave him amoral, pretty and vacant. Quasi-evil. Not evil enough. The double-standards to which he and Angel were held by the production team and series 'powers-that-be' hurt the end of both Buffy and Angel the shows. And it still fails to address the simple fact that one of the key images of the end of Buffy as a whole was our feminist heroine finding that the only place were she can find peace and unconditional support is lying in the arms of her rapist. Ain't symbolism a bitch.
 
  

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