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marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer · 7 years

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MTVS Epic Rewatch #173

BTVS 6x19 Seeing Red

Joss Whedon, you sneaky, twisted, evil bastard…

Trigger warning for everything that’s wrong and awful in this world, btw.

DISCLAIMER: Rewatching this episode felt a whole lot like self-inflicted torture. Two of the most horrible events in the show’s run happen in the space of twenty minutes. Two of the most questionable writing choices in the show. I had been putting off my review for this episode precisely because of it. And I could only stomach dissecting one of the aforementioned events. I was kind of drained by the time I got to the second. This recap is not an invitation to spark off a debate. We all know what happened in this episode. I think it’s safe to say we all hate it. I know I won’t write anything here that hasn’t been written or said before. I know no one will be enlightened by what I had to say on the bathroom scene. I definitely don’t want to stir up a debate and I don’t want to answer any questions about this episode. This is my polite way of asking you not to send me any asks. Read on at your own risk.

1) OMG, I 100% recommend watching this opening scene…

…with headphones on… I can’t believe I’ve been missing on all that moaning and giggling before the camera pans out on Willow and Tara for so long!

WILLOW: Mmm, I forgot how good this could feel. Us. Together. Without the magic. TARA: There was plenty of magic.

ME:

3) Sorry, but hadn’t Willow arrived at this conclusion in the previous episode when she saw Buffy’s look?

WILLOW: I know this is going to sound crazy, but... I think something might be going on. With Spike and Buffy. I mean, she looked so hurt when she saw him with Anya. I think maybe- TARA: They've been sleeping together. WILLOW: No. I wouldn't go that far. TARA: No, I mean she told me they've been sleeping together.

WILLOW: How could she hide something like this from me? TARA: I think she was afraid of the look you'd get on your face. Kinda like the one you're wearing now.

Tara is right, and Buffy would admit this herself during her conversation with Xander. The bigger issue was, neither Xander nor Willow wanted Buffy to talk about how she was feeling. I mean, not really. I mean, she had opened up about her depression after they had pulled her out of heaven, but they never truly approached her to see how she was doing. Granted, everyone was dealing with their own shit, but Buffy was the only one dealing with a pile of shit others had burdened her with. If she had told them she was having casual sex with Spike, they would’ve questioned her reasons. And that’s the part they couldn’t handle - the knowing that whatever Buffy was going through was their fault - and Buffy was all too aware of it.

5) Dawn’s precious face when she realizes Tara had slept over…

6) Still one of the most badass Buffy moments in the show…

7) At least Anya’s one-night-stand with Spike gave her a new outlook and she could relate to the people on the other side of the vengeance gig...

ANYA: I know how you feel. Maybe I can help. CRYING WOMAN: How could Carl do that to me? That bastard! ANYA: He's a man. Look no further. CRYING WOMAN: But with my sister? She's not even pretty. ANYA: Well... it isn't always about looks. Or a beating heart. Sometimes intimate sweaty relations with the wrong person just seems like a good idea at the time.

8) Well, if there’s something good Spike-related to come out of this episode is that Spike was also a Tara/Willow shipper, right? I mean, look at his face when he finds out they’re back together…

8) This is the moment when things start to go wrong. See, I applauded Buffy on my latest recap about being upfront with Dawn as regards her relationship with Spike. But there was no follow-up to their conversation in the backyard right after Buffy saw Spike sleeping with Anya. And Dawn was left with some bits and pieces, and her youth and ingenuity lead her to believe that if two people are sleeping together, then they must love each other; and if her sister was hurt when she saw Spike with someone else that must mean she loves him. Things aren’t always that clearcut, especially not with Spike and Buffy. On top of that, Dawn had hardly ever seen Spike’s darkest side. What she knows about him is that he always protected her, that he always seemed to speak to her in a more earnest way than other grown-ups, and that he cares about Buffy. She’s definitely not privy to how dark and twisted the relationship between him and her sister was, and she probably would have been scared if she knew. So whether she thought she was doing both of them a favor or if she was just there to try and vindicate her sister and throw salt in his wound, that was hardly the end result. Of course, leave it to an evil blood-sucker to take a 14-year-girl’s words to heart when it comes to adult relationships. But we can tell Dawn’s words made a dent and thoughts of getting Buffy back – which might have been festering for a while – came to the surface…

DAWN: You're not going to be coming around anymore. Are you? SPIKE: It's complicated, Nibblet. DAWN: Everybody's been saying that. SPIKE: Must be true then. DAWN: (...) Do you love her? (...) Do you really love her? Then how could you do that to her?

SPIKE: Oh, right, 'cause Big Sis was treating me so well up until that point. Must still be a bit of the evil left in me after all. DAWN: I don't know what happened between you two. But what you did last night... If you wanted to hurt Buffy, congratulations. It worked.

In Spike’s twisted misconception of love, he believes that hurt/pain = love. So if Buffy is hurt, that must mean she loves him. He’s clearly misguided, but we shouldn’t forget that’s the only kind of love he ever knew and the one he was taught.

10) So… not only did Xander slut-shame Buffy, but she is the one who is the bigger person and takes the first step to make amends…

11) What does he mean by this?

BUFFY: She loves you. You know that. Anya was just... She was hurting. She was... hurting and, and she did this really stupid thing. XANDER: With your boyfriend. BUFFY: He's not my boyfriend. XANDER: I know why Anya... I understand, I do. But you...

He didn’t seem to understand why Anya slept with Spike hours ago, so it seems he’s only saying this to make Buffy feel worse? Like, “I expected better of you”. So where does that leave Anya? Gross on two accounts.

12) She’s so damn right, though… and you can tell because he’s pretty much judging her from his high horse until she brings this up and then he looks away…

BUFFY: You don't know how hard it's been. XANDER: What, lying to me? BUFFY: Being here. After I was brought back. You have no idea how hard it is just being here.

XANDER: You could have told me. BUFFY: You didn't want to know. XANDER: So you went to him instead?

13) I love this.

14) So… this is the super fatal blow that leaves Buffy weak and helpless to fend Spike off...

Yeah, I’m still not buying it. We’ve seen Buffy get kicked around like this (or worse!)countless times, and she ALWAYS walked it off. I get why they needed her to be vulnerable (Spike wouldn’t have been able to force himself on her if she hadn’t been hurt…), but maybe they should’ve put more thought into this scene since it would turn out to be pivotal to the development of the rest of the episode…

15) And so the bathroom scene begins…

I hadn’t seen this scene in a very long time, and it doesn’t start horribly wrong. It doesn’t seem like Spike arrived there with the idea to take things that far. I don’t know if I’m in the minority here, but I believe Spike didn’t go to Buffy’s with the idea to rape her. I kept thinking how does all go to shit? I mean, they were having an honest talk…

SPIKE: I'm sorry. Not that it matters anymore, but I needed you to know that. BUFFY: Why? SPIKE: Because I care about you. BUFFY: Then you might want to try the not sleeping with my friends. SPIKE: I didn't go to Anya for that. I was looking for a spell. BUFFY: You were going to use a spell on me? SPIKE: It wasn't for you! I wanted something. Anything to make these feelings stop. I just wanted it to stop!

SPIKE: You should have let him kill me. BUFFY: I couldn't do that. SPIKE: Why? BUFFY: You know why. SPIKE: Because you love me.

BUFFY: No. I don't. SPIKE: Why do you keep lying to yourself?

BUFFY: How many times... I have feelings for you. I do. But it's not love. I could never trust you enough for it to be love. SPIKE: Trust is for old marrieds, Buffy. Great love is wild... and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes. BUFFY: Until there's nothing left. Love like that doesn't last. SPIKE: I know you feel like I do. You don't have to hide it anymore.

Buffy has definitely grown out of her delusional view of love in which love does not require trust (remember her “I love you. I don’t know if I can trust you” in Angel?) Spike, however, hasn’t outgrown his twisted view of love because that’s all he’s ever known, and can a vampire really mature and grow when he’s stuck at the same age forever? (food for thought)

16) And we get to the scene I’ve been dreading pretty much since I started my rewatch. I don’t know if you could tell, but I haven’t been very active on Tumblr lately, and it was partly because every time I logged in I remembered this was the next episode I had to watch.

I’m not going to post pictures of the bathroom scene because I think it’s unnecessary. If you’ve seen Buffy, you’ve seen the scene and it’s probably seared into your memory forever. Whether you feel indifferent to, like, love, or hate Spike, I think the utter revulsion for this scene is unanimous among the fandom.

I had to check how long the scene lasts because it felt to go on and on forever. It’s only one minute. It definitely doesn’t feel like it, and it’s probably the most unsettling minute in the entire show.

It’s easy to tell why it is so. Rape had been referenced in the show before. Hinted at, suggested, toyed with. There had been plenty of rape “metaphors” – some of them with results even as questionable as, if not more, than the attempted rape scene in this episode (Xander in The Pack, The Trio and Katrina, Faith abusing both Riley and Buffy in Who Are You?, Willow erasing Tara’s memory and sleeping with her at a time Tara wouldn’t have probably consented to have sex with her because of their fight…) But this scene always feels so much worse – more terrifying and more abhorrent. It’s the definitely the first scene that pops to mind when talking about rape in the Buffyverse.

Like I said, it’s easy to tell why.

This feels too real, too close to home. There’s nothing supernatural about this scene. This could be you, or me. It could be any of us in that bathroom, in Buffy’s shoes, struggling to fight off the man trying to rape us.

Spike is not in a vampire face – which was obviously a deliberate choice. Much like they made sure Angelus was in vamp face when he was doing the nastiest things so that fans wouldn’t resent Angel for Angelus’s actions, here the writers wanted the fans to understand that it was the man doing this, not the vampire. They wanted to remind you that Spike was pure evil, that whatever shred of humanity we thought was left in him was corrupted and heinous.

Buffy is also semi-deprived of her slayer strength. She was in a weakened state at the beginning of the scene (from a fall that normally wouldn’t have caused her a scratch, but never mind that) and then she hits her back again when Spike starts forcing himself on her. She is also emotionally exhausted from the previous night’s events and her conversation with Xander.

For all intents and purposes, she’s just a girl. Like us. She’s just a girl trying to fight off her ex-boyfriend who’s trying to rape her.

The cinematography doesn’t help either. There’s no music, no sound other than Buffy’s cries, the shower curtain as Buffy rips it off the rod, Buffy’s back hitting the bathtub, the screeching of her shoes scraping the bathroom floor and the tearing of her robe as Spike tries to rip it off of her. Every pull, every push, you can hear it. You can hear everything, and everything is awful. Our point of view changes from the aerial shot of both of them on the bathroom floor as Buffy struggles to escape from him to close-ups of her struggle – her feet, her hands, her face.

It’s all too real. And it feels like it doesn’t belong on a show like Buffy. But that’s beside the point.

What I always end up going back whenever I rewatch this scene or whenever someone brings it up, is…

WHY?

The writers have provided an answer. “We needed to remind people that Spike was evil” “Spike needed to do something awful enough to warrant him going on his soul quest” SPIKE. SPIKE. SPIKE. SPIKE.

The writers were so focused on Spike’s journey that didn’t really stop and consider what this scene would mean for Buffy as a character, or even for her relationship to Spike beyond this point. I really don’t think they thought anything beyond this scene and Spike going after his soul. Again, it’s all centered around Spike and his journey. In the process, they had their main character be subjected to one of the most atrocious things a woman can ever be subjected to, and her journey was never explored. Her coming to terms with what had happened and almost happened was never shown. Her feelings and fears and trauma were never addressed. They made it all about Spike.

So I ask again, why?

I mean…

WHY?

17) This moment brings up another issue with the whole attempted rape scene…

SPIKE: What have I done? Why *didn't* I do it?

That’s a good question. Angelus would’ve done it. And for all intents and purposes, they are the same: demons without a soul. Yet Spike didn’t do it (and it wasn’t just because Buffy stopped him, he could’ve easily tried again, I mean, that’s what a true soulless monster would do, right? Go on and on until he’s had his way with her…) But Spike had been on an interesting journey for a very long time, without a soul. He went from enemy to ally to almost-friend to confidant to enemy-with-benefits. He’d shown empathy and sensitivity towards different characters. He’d always been in touch with his humanity, and I get that having a vampire be good would kind of mess with the show’s mythology. But what if his quest for a soul wasn’t about doing something terrible but about wanting to be good?

The writers could’ve also chosen to go down their usual “metaphorical rape” route and have Spike bite her. (That was the earliest rape metaphor in the show - the vampire bite.) But I guess it would’ve lacked the shock factor.

18) Now, you see what I mean about Buffy’s earlier injury being unrealistic? Here she is, having suffered not one but two back injuries AND an attempted rape, and she’s in tip-top shape…

19) Bless you, Jonathan. I knew there was some good still left in you.

JONATHAN: The orbs! Smash his orbs

20) At least there’s one good thing to come out of this episode…

20) Andrew, I love you now, but you so deserved this.

21) Also, how did Spike get from Sunnydale to Africa on a fucking motorbike? Yeah, right…

22) NO NO NO…

23) See, Xander, why didn’t you open with this? I can get behind this…

XANDER: I thought I hit bottom, but... it hurt. That you didn't trust me enough to tell me about Spike. It hurt. BUFFY: I'm sorry. I should have told you. XANDER: Maybe you would have, if I hadn't given you so many reasons to think I'd be an ass about it. BUFFY: Guess we've all done a lot of things lately we're not proud of. XANDER: I think I've got you beat. BUFFY: Wanna compare? XANDER: Not so much.

XANDER I don't know what I'd do... without you and Will.

BUFFY: Let's not find out.

24) FYI, if you’re a writer, this is so not the way you should end an episode that had an attempted rape scene as one of its major story points…

25) At least the bullet didn’t get Willow, everything will be f…

Oh.

#Buffy the Vampire Slayer #BTVS #Joss Whedon #Buffy Summers #Spike #Spuffy #MTVSepicrewatch #BTVSrewatch2015 #mine #recap #Seeing Red #tw rape #rape tw #btvsrecap

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