With Use of Force or Fear, or Threat Thereof

[I trust Joss Whedon. Really, I do. The heart and mind behind Buffy has given us too many zingy one-liners, memorable one-off characters, brilliant single episodes, epic story arcs, and a whole universe to love (even if you don't hold a place in your heart, like I do, for the real-life town upon which Sunnydale is so obviously based) not to believe he knows what he's doing.]

[But I'd really started to wonder about Those Nerds. For those of you who don't watch (and what's the matter with you - don't you know an essential pop-culture bandwagon when you see one?), Buffy has been beset this season by three jerky males from past seasons who have banded together as a sort of Brotherhood of Evil Geeks, and who are causing all kinds of mischief for our heroine. They've been getting on my nerves from the moment they joined forces. I mean, puh-leeze...each of them was annoying and quite beneath the Slayer's notice when acting alone. Together, their petty little plots have been nothing compared to the various Hellmouth-borne Armageddons the Scoobies have fended off in years past. (Aside: We who have lived in Santa Barbara know where the real-life Hellmouth is, by the way. We're not telling, except that it's actually in Goleta...) I kept hoping that Buffy would squash them beneath her capable Kate Spade low-rise boots, and that would be the end of them.]

[But last night, the reason for their ongoing presence in my TV-saturated psyche slowly became apparent. See, one of them, a worm named Warren, once created an android version of his ex-girlfriend who would love him and serve him unconditionally. Of course the Scoobies discovered the foul plot and destroyed the fembot without too much trouble. (Later eps involved creation of a Buffybot, similarly servile, but its intricate and tragic existence is too much to go into here. See, I told you should be watching.) Warren never seems to have gotten over the need to have a woman do his bidding, and he and his pals introduced last night some sort of magical doohickey that would make any female do just that.]

[The Nerds duly enslave Warren's ex-girlfriend, but the spell wears off just as she's about to go down on the nefarious W. Before Katrina can go to the police screaming rape, Warren busts her head open with a champagne bottle (nice touch) and she dies. The rest of the episode deals with the nerds' attempts at framing Buffy for the murder and her disentangling herself.]

[What got me about the episode, and finally made me hate the Nerd Squad as villains as evil as any the show has put forward, wasn't, oddly, the Squad's actions. It was the juxtaposition of those actions with Buffy's ongoing...affair? fuckfest? with Spike. She hates herself for "letting him do these things to her" (the actual phrase, which gave me goosebumps as she confessed to Tara), while saying it's the only time she feels anything anymore. (Cf. the song "Going Thru The Motions" from the musical episode.) It made me think again about the various flavors of rape, and the less obvious forms of abuse and violence we endure and even glorify around sex. It made me think again of the heated discussion surrounding rape, and its various definitions as they have evolved, in last semester's Criminal Law class. (Thanks, once again, Mulher, for getting me started on a windy diary entry; how's this for a response?) Passion, violence, corruption of innocence, commodification, real adult intimacy, all swirling around in my grippe-inflicted noggin.]

[Every time someone gets that look in his or her eye when you tell him or her you're a "Buffy" fan (as though you just admitted to owning everthing in Britney Spears' oeuvre), just remember that look of heartbreak at the end of last night's ep. Dark shit, and real drama.]

[(N.B. Well, actually, via whatever community property I could claim, I do own everything in Britney Spears' oeuvre. Hmmm...)]

Previously Next