BtVS: "Fool for Love"

It sounds sacreligious, but once upon a time I actually did compare Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Star Trek Voyager.

Once you've winched your jaw back up / launched your missiles at me / excommunicated me, let me explain. See, in Voyager's fourth season, a member of the stock villan race (in this case, the Borg) unwillingly joined the good guys. Seven of Nine immediately got the closest equivalent to character exploration Voyager ever accomplished; her backstory was fleshed out, and blah blah blah. All this happened about half a season in, blah blah.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fourth season, a member of the stock villain race (in this case, vampires) unwillingly joined the good guys. Spike had to wait an entire season before we got his backstory. The delay is intriguing, but understandable; the way Buffy treats Spike is considerably different from the way Janeway treats Seven (outside of fanfiction). For the entirety of Season 4, she didn't trust him, didn't like him, had no reason to want to hear his backstory. And so we had to wait.

There are two other things I should mention about this episode before I actually dive into it. First, as most people know, it's the first part of an unofficial two-parter with Angel's "Darla," which aired immediately afterward. In both episodes, we see flashbacks to London, 1880 and China, 1900, but from Spike's perspective in the first episode and Darla's in the second.

Second, this was the first Buffy episode I saw, the first Whedon episode I saw, the only Whedon episode I actually saw on television (as opposed to DVD) until Dollhouse, and one of only three Whedon episodes (the other two being Angel's "In the Dark" and Firefly's "Our Mrs. Reynolds") that I saw out of chronological order. So it's a fairly important episode to me.

The episode opens with Buffy on routine patrol, doing what she always does, fighting a vampire and making quips, but this time it goes wrong and she gets stabbed. The vampire gets away. I like that it was just a normal vampire (in the sense that the vamp is a one-shot who dies later in the episode) rather than a recurring villain. They're making a point; by Season Five, vampires had become the equivalent of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars; the only way they were ever going to win a fight was through sheer numbers. And yet Buffy slips up in a one-on-one fight and barely escapes with her life. There was nothing special about this particular vampire (except that he was a Heavy Metal fan - more on that in just a moment); Buffy just slipped up and got a chilling reminder of her own mortality.

I think that's what the writers were going for, and the commentary seems to back it up. But they undercut it just a little bit by making the vampire a metalhead. There's a Season Three Angel episode where a pop band gets infected by a demon virus and goes all metal, so it's not just a one-time occurence; someone on the Mutant Enemy staff just went ahead and automatically equated metal with evil. That kind of annoys me, but I digress. They convey "metalhead" by giving the vamp a leather jacket and long hair. Both of these also say "badass," which does kind of undercut the notion that this was just an ordinary vamp that nearly killed Buffy.

Anyway, she decides she wants to know how some of her predecessors died, so she won't make the same mistakes she did. Unfortunately, Giles doesn't have that much for her, so she goes to the only person she knows who has actually killed a Slayer. Exactly one season ago, Spike was captured by Buffy's equivalent of Torchwood and implanted with a microchip that prevents him from harming humans (how exactly that chip works is a bit of a mystery, as at one point he uses it to test whether another character actually is human. Man, if only they had that sort of thing on BSG...) Still able to fight demons, he began a reluctant transition to Buffy's side, and I do mean that it more ways than one. This episode comes near the beginning of the "Spike loves Buffy" arc, which may have been created to help explain why he's actually willing to fight on the side of good by the end of the season.

Anyways, back in his bad old days, Spike killed not one but two Slayers; one during the Boxer rebellion and one in New York in the 70s. Buffy asks him to recount these fights and see if she can glean any information from his story.

But Spike's not content to just do two scenes; instead, he starts his story on the evening of his transformation from bloody awful poet to badass creature of the night. Once upon a time, (specifically in 1880) he was a poet named William who inexplicably thought he could come up with a rhyme for "effulgent." (Watch the episode to find out what he went with.) Mercilessly mocked by some people, he storms out into the night, bumps into someone (who we find out in "Darla" was, um, Darla), and then encounters Dru, who turns him.

As a new vampire, Spike doesn't quite understand the whole "stealth" thing. He goes on a rampage that very nearly gets the entire Fang Gang (Angelus, Darla, Dru, and him) killed. Angelus warns him that he'll attract the attention of a Slayer, but this only piques his interest.

Fast forward to 1900. It's the Boxer Rebellion. Spike is losing a fight against the Chinese Slayer until an explosion knocks her off-balance. Spike capitalizes on the situation and kills her. Then it turns out that Slayer blood is an aphrodisiac to vampires (as if That One Scene at the end of Season Three wasn't suggestive enough), so Spike and Dru start to get it on. They then re-unite with Angel and Darla, who both look uncomfortable for reasons that "Darla" will reveal, but the astute Buffy fan will have already figured out (hint: 1900 is after 1898). Spike boasts about killing a Slayer.

Buffy interrupts, understandably not really wanting to hear about Spike getting his jollies. (Give it a year, Summers...) Spike correctly deduces that Buffy's interested in his story because she got hurt, and thinks he can give her some sort of insight. They go outside and, with the aid of a pool cue, re-enact the second fight.

It takes place on a subway carriage, and once again, Spike is losing until the lights go out, at which point he promptly gains the upper hand. He reveals every Slayer has a death wish, and that all it takes is luck, or as he puts it, "one good day." Buffy didn't lose that fight because the metalhead vamp was faster or stronger; she lost it because she slipped up. Her friends help tie her to this world, but there's part of her that just doesn't want to play the game anymore.

Of course, that's not all Spike says. "I'll slip in. Have myself a real good day." Doesn't take a genius to figure out what he's talking about. Buffy storms away, affronted.

Privately, Spike remembers what happened in South America in after the events of "Belonging." Dru leaves him for a Chaos demon, insisting that he stinks of the Slayer.

The titular fool for love is Spike. He loved Dru, but she left him. Now he has feelings for Buffy, but she treats him like dirt. He loads up a shotgun, intending to kill her, but he finds her sitting on her back porch, upset about something, and his resolve shatters. Buffy just found out that her mother might have brain cancer. Spike sits on the porch with Buffy. Roll credits.

This is really the first time that Buffy lets Spike in. Okay, that sounded wrong. This is the first time she opens up... no, that's not any better. That doesn't happen until Season Six. But it's worth pointing out that, just as Spike will be the first one in Season Six to learn that Buffy was in Heaven, here Spike is the first one to find out that something is very, very wrong in Buffy's personal life. The balance of power is just beginning to shift.

The notion that any old vampire could have offed Buffy was an interesting one. Of course, it wasn't actually going to happen, and when Buffy does die at the end of the season, it's during the season finale and the entire Universe is at stake. The "death wish" concept is introduced here to help set that up. But clearly the notion of "just a normal, pointless death" stuck with the writing team...

9 out of 10.

(Yes, I slipped up in my schedule. "Darla" will still be up this evening.)

Thursday: BSG: "Water"
Friday: BSG: "Bastille Day"
Saturday: DS9: "In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light"
Sunday: Doctor Who: "A Good Man Goes to War" and a River Song retrospective