Because it's all about the Spike
Oct. 17th, 2002 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiper Okay, so I'm definitely grooving on the whole Spike thread this season. Of course, I am a documented sucker for strong male characters having themselves put into unexpectedly vulnerable situations, and I'm also a sucker for Bad Boy Gets Redeemed plots, so I'm getting double amusement mileage out of this thread so far.
Of course, it's not hurting in the slightest that James Marsters is apparently extremely good at making pitiful faces at Sarah Michelle Gellar. ;) Especially when he's delivering lines like "Stay and help me be quiet..." and "William is a bad man!" I'm totally in awwwwww mode.
I'm definitely liking that Spike's teetering back and forth between complete loopiness and pulling himself together enough to come help Buffy fight when he needs to. And that one of the apparent big things driving his current state of insanity is remorse over what he did to Buffy last season; it satisfies my sense of drama (not to mention justice) that, having attempted to assault Our Heroine, he must do some form of penance for it. And that he's taken to referring to himself as "William". Still answers to "Spike", but when he's in babble mode, what comes out is "William".
I'm liking Buffy's current response to him, too. She was obviously thunderstruck by discovering he has his soul back; her expression at that relevation was to me pretty clearly "OH MY GOD I have absolutely no concept of how to deal with this". (And the episode transcript up on Psyche's Transcripts actually describes a tear rolling down her cheek, but I'm not sure I see such a thing; the scene is shot really dark, so I might have just missed it.) Most of what she seems to be feeling dealing with Spike the last couple episodes, too, has been anger and irritation, which is totally appropriate. Some impatience, especially in last night's episode, when her obvious priority was to deal with the threat to Cassie...
And yet, I'm wondering if I'm imagining just a fractional, miniscule, tiny little bit of gruff concern. Like when Spike started freaking and hitting the (what was it? Cabinet?) he was hunched up beside, and Buffy caught his fist -- she looked like she was about to deck him until she realized he was freaking about having attacked her, at which point she seemed ever so slightly less cranky. And plus, her parting comment of "I think it's worse when I'm here." Hard for me to parse that... Buffy was obviously in "respond to imminent threat to helpless victim" mode, but that she said that to Spike on her way out rather than oh, say, "I don't have time for this" or "I'm not about to help you, you tried to rape me, you bloodsucking bastard" suggests that there's at least a microscopic grain of concern in there somewhere for not making things worse for him than they already are. ;)
And I'm good with that! If the show is aiming towards a real Buffy/Spike pairing, a goodly amount of time IMO needs to be spent developing him into someone she can actually genuinely trust. He's not there yet, and I'll not be surprised if it takes the whole season to make things change between them.
But I'm all torn now! I want to see it happen, right NOW NOW NOW, and I also want to see all the little bits and pieces that are just going to have to be put into place to actually make it happen.
This is gonna be fun.
Of course, it's not hurting in the slightest that James Marsters is apparently extremely good at making pitiful faces at Sarah Michelle Gellar. ;) Especially when he's delivering lines like "Stay and help me be quiet..." and "William is a bad man!" I'm totally in awwwwww mode.
I'm definitely liking that Spike's teetering back and forth between complete loopiness and pulling himself together enough to come help Buffy fight when he needs to. And that one of the apparent big things driving his current state of insanity is remorse over what he did to Buffy last season; it satisfies my sense of drama (not to mention justice) that, having attempted to assault Our Heroine, he must do some form of penance for it. And that he's taken to referring to himself as "William". Still answers to "Spike", but when he's in babble mode, what comes out is "William".
I'm liking Buffy's current response to him, too. She was obviously thunderstruck by discovering he has his soul back; her expression at that relevation was to me pretty clearly "OH MY GOD I have absolutely no concept of how to deal with this". (And the episode transcript up on Psyche's Transcripts actually describes a tear rolling down her cheek, but I'm not sure I see such a thing; the scene is shot really dark, so I might have just missed it.) Most of what she seems to be feeling dealing with Spike the last couple episodes, too, has been anger and irritation, which is totally appropriate. Some impatience, especially in last night's episode, when her obvious priority was to deal with the threat to Cassie...
And yet, I'm wondering if I'm imagining just a fractional, miniscule, tiny little bit of gruff concern. Like when Spike started freaking and hitting the (what was it? Cabinet?) he was hunched up beside, and Buffy caught his fist -- she looked like she was about to deck him until she realized he was freaking about having attacked her, at which point she seemed ever so slightly less cranky. And plus, her parting comment of "I think it's worse when I'm here." Hard for me to parse that... Buffy was obviously in "respond to imminent threat to helpless victim" mode, but that she said that to Spike on her way out rather than oh, say, "I don't have time for this" or "I'm not about to help you, you tried to rape me, you bloodsucking bastard" suggests that there's at least a microscopic grain of concern in there somewhere for not making things worse for him than they already are. ;)
And I'm good with that! If the show is aiming towards a real Buffy/Spike pairing, a goodly amount of time IMO needs to be spent developing him into someone she can actually genuinely trust. He's not there yet, and I'll not be surprised if it takes the whole season to make things change between them.
But I'm all torn now! I want to see it happen, right NOW NOW NOW, and I also want to see all the little bits and pieces that are just going to have to be put into place to actually make it happen.
This is gonna be fun.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-17 12:32 pm (UTC)Though again -- not necessarily anything we haven't seen Spike do before! After all, he did let Glory beat the living crap out of him and didn't give Dawn away to her either.