Living with Plot Contrivances: or how I learned to (mostly) stop worrying and love Spike's story

[maggie2]

So sometimes the plot has to bend around other things the writers are after.   In a seven year run on TV like the one BtVS enjoyed that has to happen a few times.  Seth Green decides to leave suddenly, and the story bends around his departure.   Sometimes the bends work.  Other times they are, shall we say, less than obviously natural to the flow of the story.

There are two that come to mind with regard to Spike's story.   The first is the non-staking of Spike in season 4 and especially in early season 5.  The second is Spike's non-phone call to Buffy in season 5 in Angel.    It's obvious why they had to happen.  In season 4, they wanted Spike on the show and him getting dusted would have interfered with the plan.  On AtS, they wanted Spike to stick around in LA, and they presumably didn't want a Buffy story line to stomp all over the fifth season of Angel's show.   I think both work better than most people think, but I'm not sure I'm entirely satisfied with them.

1.  Spike's non-stakage.  I think this hits on important themes that are already being raised in the show in general and in season 4 in particular.   The presence of the Initiative calls into question whether demons are flat out unprotected by any moral rules at all.  There's storyline pressure, especially around Oz, to say that demonic beings are not without moral standing simply because of their demonic nature.   A simple "kill all demons" rule is inadequte.   That simple rule was also under pressure over on season 1 of AtS.   Once Spike is rendered harmless, the story's own development would make killing him difficult. 

I'd add that there's a meta question floating around about what demons are supposed to be metaphors for.  I've argued this before in my meta on Lie to Me.  If demons stand in for our various traumas, dark emotions and angst, then a story about a girl slaying them is really a story about a girl struggling with life's darkness.  But once demons become persons, the question is raised about what distinguishes a slayer from a killer.  In our actual world, there are no persons who are subject to any kind of "kill at will' rule based solely on what they are.  Even bad guys that the audience might want to see get offed (like, say, Warren) can't be *slain* in a way that's as morally unproblematic as Buffy's routine dispatchment of vampires.  Spike is simply too much of a person to be staked.  And the scoobies don't stake him precisely because they do know him.    They use the rule about not staking unthreatening demons to skate around the hard question of what it would mean to stake a person they knew should he become threatening.

And that, of course, comes up explicitly in OOMM.  By their stated rules, Spike should be stakable the minute he shows that he's actually trying to get around the chip and that he fully intends to do harm the minute he does.  Yet the scoobies still don't stake him.  Nor do they even seriously engage the question.   I'm sure some wank is possible on why this doesn't even come up as a question -- but I think it's a pity, because it's at this point that there's a tension between the rule about non-threatening demons and the ookiness of having to stake someone that they know personally (however dangerous he is).  That does come back up, most notably in Selfless.  But the Scoobies  presumably sidestep it here because the show is more concerned with other themes at that point.

2.   The second that comes up a lot is that the real Spike should have called Buffy at some point in season 5 of AtS, and it's just OOC that he didn't.  I find that all straight-forward to explain.  Spike took some time before calling Buffy.  First he's a ghost and then he's just trying to avoid running straight back to her for a variety of reasons I find compelling.  But he tells Andrew in Damage that he intends to contact Buffy, and then in TGIQ he makes a clear move to contact Buffy.    Moreover, he's told (or at least it's broadly implied) that Buffy knows he's back and has made no move herself to contact him, and has further moved on with someone else with the thought that maybe she'd catch up with Spike at some point down the road.    Andrew doesn't give Spike any reason to think that Buffy feels miffed that Spike didn't manage to call her before Andrew himself spilled the beans.

Now none of these are obvious choices for Spike.  One might expect him to have tried to call sooner.  One might even think he'd be a bit less quick to take Andrew's word for Buffy's non-interest in his resurrection and her unconcern that he hadn't called her yet.   I'm fully persuaded that Spike 100% believes that Buffy doesn't love him.  But they were close enough at the end that he should have at least found it odd that she was 100% blase about his return... not interested enough to contact him or express anger at his failure to contact her.  Still, in the main, it makes enough sense for me to be puzzled when many people think it's really OOC for Spike to not have called, and to be especially puzzled by the fact that it's rarely acknowledged that Spike *did* try to contact her.

I wonder if my relative difficulty with the first plot contrivance and my relative lack of difficulty with the latter isn't pretty tied up with the themes I engage with.  I'm very interested in the line between demons and persons and the distinction between a slayer and a killer.  I find it one of the most fascinating aspects of the verse.  Spike's non-stakage sits on that issue, and it bothers me that the story bends around it most especially at OOMM.  By contrast, I'm a post-Spuffy fan who is post-Spuffy precisely because I don't think Buffy loved Spike, or at least was never going to love him in a way that was reciprocal.   I loved Spuffy in season 7, but precisely because Spike had stopped chasing after Buffy.  And so while I think the details are a bit goofy, I'm perfectly content with a season 5 AtS story line wherein Spike has stopped chasing after Buffy.

It's interesting to ponder what we make of the places where the story bends.  And especially what to do with it when the story bends in a way that does violence to the show.  My meta will always feel like there's a hole around OOMM.  Presumably for some there's a hole in season 5 of AtS.  There are other bends -- Angel's complete lack of assistance in season 5 despite his stated reason for giving up his humanity in IWRY comes to mind.  I like to treat the show as a well-written organic whole.  But there are a lot of places where it just isn't.  It's a TV show subject to lots of different demands and it just doesn't always add up.  Let's just say it makes the whole meta-game challenging!

Comments

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I don't think it's without problems. But I guess my reactions would still be as follows. Whatever the 'reason' for him trying to contact her, Spike *did* try to contact her. I find it pretty plausible that he'd find it easier to try to contact her with an excuse to do so. Especially when we add in a bit of lenience for the fact that the episode in question plays as broad comedy.

I agree that it's odd that Spike took Andrew at his word. Not so much because Andrew is unreliable (again, we've got the whole broad comedy thing going on there to make interpretation difficult), but rather because the story itself is implausible the other way around. I think Spike's sure she doesn't love him -- but it undermines what they did have at the end for him to naturally assume that she could know he's back and be totally blase about it. *That* I find implausible. Or if not implausible, it'd be disappointing that Spike's romantic pessimism caused him to miss the very real and tender friendship that was undeniably mutual, and which would render Andrew's presentation of the situation off in a way that should have gotten Spike's attention.

I part with you most on your last paragraph, mostly because I think Spike stopped with tenacious at Seeing Red. I think it's important to note that he never pushed for anything after that. He presented himself in Sunnydale to be helfpul. He signalled a willingness to move on if he wasn't helpful. Buffy kept him around on the grounds that he was still helpful. She even says she's not ready for him to not be there, which implies that she's getting ready for him to not be there (or at least that's how it would sound to a guy who is clearly getting himself ready for the day when she's ready for him to not be there). The argument about Spike's tenacity doesn't do justice to what I find to be an important development in their relationship.

Like I said, I think our ability to live with these contrivances has a lot to do with what we need from the story at a given juncture. I like the continuity with Spike's willingness to stop the pre-SR sort of tenacity enough to forgive the OOC part where he's too quick to believe she doesn't even care about the friendship part. But I do think the story isn't fully organic. That's why I put in the category of plot contrivance. In this case, it's just a contrivance I can live with.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Especially when we add in a bit of lenience for the fact that the episode in question plays as broad comedy.

I'd say that that's part of my dissatisfaction in that the moment where Spike seemingly attempts to contact Buffy is in a complete crack!episode.

But, then, I kinda dislike TGIQ (and I think I'm the only one in fandom who does).

I part with you most on your last paragraph, mostly because I think Spike stopped with tenacious at Seeing Red. I think it's important to note that he never pushed for anything after that.

No, not relationship-wise. However, he had the balls to go back to them in Beneath You to attempt to help, and he was pro-active in simply being there for Buffy (whether it be donning his old jacket in Get It Done or giving her a pep talk in Touched or spending the last night with her in Chosen). To leave Buffy in the theoretical lurch about his resurrection is at odds with the Spike who loved her unconditionally in S7. He respects her too much not to pick up the phone and talk to her, himself.

Again, I'm not talking about him trying to resume the relationship. But passing on the knowledge that he's alive? Not leaving it up to Andrew to play the middle man? Yeah, I expect better from Spike, so I find it pretty damn OOC.

Oddly, the non-staking of Spike doesn't bother me, though. Even though Buffy totally should have staked him after OOMM. :)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

With you on disliking these all-important issues coming up in a crack!episode. Really with you on that.

To leave Buffy in the theoretical lurch about his resurrection is at odds with the Spike who loved her unconditionally in S7. He respects her too much not to pick up the phone and talk to her, himself.

I don't think he'd see it as leaving her in the lurch. I think he'd see it as letting her off the hook. It bothers me that he waits to renew the friendship because he's focusing on letting her off the hook romantically -- but I buy that he's still in a place where that'd make sense to him. And if he never tried to renew the friendship, I'd think it was really bad. But I think he tried in TGIQ, and all I'm left with is the hole in the plot where he finds it easy to believe Andrew's portrait of a Buffy who doesn't even care about the resurrection of a friend.

So I've still got a mild OOC against your pretty damn OOC.

Love your last sentence. That's the whole point! It's when we have oxes to be gored that the plot contrivances bite. We just have different oxes. (Or better put, I'm so pessimisitic about the Spuffy ox that I just assume along with Spike that it's been long since gored, and deep down I'm kind of glad to have been spared the scene where she tells him that she really didn't mean it).

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Love your last sentence. That's the whole point! It's when we have oxes to be gored that the plot contrivances bite. We just have different oxes.

Indeed. :)

Course, I know that Spike had to stay on AtS and that Joss didn't want to resolve the Buffy/Spike thing (especially on another show), and having Spike directly contact her would lead to some resolution one way or another (and we just can't have that!). So he contrived and twisted and wheedled the plot to accommodate the ambiguous ending, and it ends up just not working for me (and leaving me cranky).