Simple comments on storytelling

[dlgood]

There's been a recurring of the Willow-Spike bedroom scene in "The Initiative", and how it's bothersome to some viewers that an act played as murder/rape suddenly switches to impotence metaphor. The incongruity of considering how a person would likely respond if actually faced with the circumstances. I recognize that argument, though I can think of a large number of scenes in any number of stories that a greater offenders than this one.

Some of the scenes and storylines are not meant to be taken seriously. In this particular case, the metaphor switches rapidly in the scene and it becomes played for laughs. As long as you don't think too seriously about it, or infuse it with much depth, it works. If you take it seriously, and consider what it would indicate about an actual person living within the reality, it becomes a very disturbing thing.

I liked the scene. I think it's funny. In general, it's crafted in a way that I don't think very seriously about it. The challenge, I suppose, is to know when to take characters seriously, and when to look at the show as shallow entertainment. And lets not forget that, sympathetic as Willow seems to Spike's "impotence", she still has the presence of mind to recognize him as a danger and whack him with a vase.

There are far worse offenders on the shallow/deep/glib score than this scene. I do, at times, get disappointed because I do want to see depth, and because it's not always there. It's worse for me when I think the storyteller means for depth to be there, but fails to communicate it. But that's as much my issue as a reader/viewer, as it is a problem with the story itself.

Comments

Re: the Initiative

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Ah, but they needed to deal with the Buffy issue to set up Spike's unwavering support for Angel in the last two eps. Buffy's been a sore spot between them for years

I don't think they did.

By years, I assume, you mean, a few months. Angel and Spike have issues between them, of which Buffy is just another to add to the pile. If Spike was going to bail on Angel, he would have already done so long before.

Also it lets their priorities for the "last day on Earth" in "Not Fade Away" be something other than Buffy.

Again. Not necessary. Based upon S4, we already know that Connor is Angel's largest priority. And as to Spike - if Buffy were truly Spike's biggest priority, he wouldn't have stayed in LA when he's been free to leave for months. That Buffy isn't his top priority doesn't need explaining - he's voted with his feet. What needed to be examined, was this: what are his priorities?

there is an important shift over the course of TGIQ. By the end, Angel and Spike are on the same side -- they're both Buffy's castoffs and the Immmortal's chumps.

I recognize that this can be used to make Spike & Angel feel tighter, but there's no real shift here. Until such time as the Curse gets addressed, that relationship is in stasis -- even if she actually showed up, he'd still turn her away. Beyond which, the situation in TGIQ is no different than it was in S1 when he knew she was with Riley, or at the end of "Chosen" when he knew she was choosing not to be with him.

And for Spike? The primary external obstacle he's faced in pursing a relationship with her is his perception that's she's not "In Love" with him. That, given freedom and hope for the life she wants for herself, she'd choose not to go after him. And he also knows that she's chosen not to pursue Angel.

Whether or not she's actually got someone new is irrelevant at best. (Unless one wants to go back toward playing up William/Spike's troublesome tendency to see his love interests primarily as objects to be possessed rather than as autonomous indivuals -- and which I thought S7 was supposed to show him overcoming.)

Buffy's not there and she's not coming for either of them anytime soon. Which, these characters have fully well known for quite some time. That was all the impetus needed. TGIQ ressurrects a non-existent love triangle (that all parties know is non-existent) in order to wind up (literally and figuratively) expositioning what has already been shown to have happened over the course of the season, but without actually adding, introducing, or revelaing anything new. Beneath the Italian Farce, is an episode that is farcical on a larger scale, and not the advertised "emotional shift" -- which already occurred over the prior months.

A competent fanfic writer could do better than that.

The question becomes "why doesn't Wes tell them now?" and I think that's painfully clear, without being spelled out. Wes doesn't want to know the truth himself, so he decides to let her family have a beautiful lie.

That's not the only question - it's just the easy question.

The real question though, is why Wes ignored her dying request and whether his interactions with other people might reveal some other aspects of his character. Why he won't share his grief.

Not telling Fred's parents, two people that have as much right to grieve her as he does (he can blame Angel and Gunn), allows him to maintain ownership over the greatest pain from her death and enables him to wallow in it. Why is he doing that? What does that show us about his character? It's a darker aspect of his relationship w/Fred, and his character but no less deep than the "beautiful lie".