Notes on Buffy 1.06: The Pack

[maggie2]

Standard disclaimer: I'll often speak of foreshadowing, but that doesn't mean I'm at all committing to the idea that there was some fixed design from the word go -- it's a short hand for talking about the resonances that end up in the text as it unspools.

Standard spoiler warning: The notes are written for folks who have seen all of BtVS and AtS.  I'll be spoiling through the comics as well.  Basically -- if you are a spoiler-phobe and haven't seen or read it all, read further at your own risk.

The Pack, aka Buffy’s love life, Part 2, in Which Xander Becomes a Possessed Hyena in a Pack.

Strudel steals the introduction:  I'll get the surface issues out of the way first.  While Buffy is trying to get Giles to believe Xander is possessed, Giles brushes it off.  "Boys can be cruel.  They tease.  They prey on the weak."  The metaphor of the cruelty that kids are capable of when operating in packs is painfully thin in this story.  The demonic behavior -- at least initially -- that the pack displays in this episode is all too un-supernatural.  Of course, they spiral out of control from there to much darker territory, which is a good place for Maggie to pick up the story:

Xander’s turn at bat.  Buffy has absolutely no romantic interest in the guy at this point.  He really isn’t on her radar.  Hyena!Xander lets loose with every feeling he’s got about her.  Hot for her.  Jealous of Angel.  Pegs Buffy as the girl who wants the guy who is dangerous and mean.  We already knew every particle of it. 

So if Hyena!Xander is just very upfront about the feelings Xander always has, what do we make of Hyena!Xander’s dissing of Willow?  As I observed in Welcome to the Hellmouth, the trope of the nerdy guy who ultimately gets the hot chick is slightly undermined by the fact that the nerdy guy is completely unattracted to the nerdy girl who’s into him.  Here it becomes text.   He tells Willow he would never settle for her while Buffy is around.   Max interjects: Actually, he tells *Buffy* that he would never settle for Willow while Buffy is around, though he implies something similar to Willow.  So Xander’s turn as an evil Hyena guy reveals some of the darker undercurrents of his relationship with both Buffy and Willow. 

Willow and Xander. Max: The hyena in Xander (focused on basic drives like eating, mating, and, er, general cruelty) isn't interested in Willow the way he's interested in Buffy, suggesting that he has no sexual feelings for Willow.  But he does love Willow and, when restored to himself, risks his life saving her from the zookeeper.  He makes a big show of his affection for Willow at the end in order to try to undo the damage his hyena may have caused.  But we also get confirmation here that Xander knows that Willow is into him; we could have guessed that before, but Xander tends to pretend not to notice Willow's pining.  He wants Willow around but he doesn't want to deal with her inconvenient feelings, so he ignores them.

On Willow's side, when Xander is cruel to Willow, she gets extremely upset.  Buffy says that Xander's behaviour has nothing to do with Willow, but Will adds with a touch of barely concealed jealousy that Xander isn't being mean to Buffy, "he's just sniffing you a lot."  She doesn't seem to blame Buffy-the-person, but she does feel that Xander's behaviour towards her is because he no longer needs Willow with Buffy in his life.  She says that Xander has never treated her this badly, but she is much more willing than Buffy to consider the possibility that this is really Xander being so cruel to her.  On the other hand, Buffy has known Xander for all of a few weeks, but she is able to piece together that he's not himself--because *she* isn't already convinced, as Willow is, of Willow's intrinsic worthlessness. (We see also a spectrum in terms of emotional responses to Xander: Willow is too emotionally invested to see clearly, and Giles is too emotionally disconnected to see clearly. Buffy is in the middle, in the best position to see that something is up with Xander.  On the subject of Giles' interactions with the kids, I like when Buffy & Giles save Willow from Xander and the pack, Giles instinctively hugs her to protect her.)

Later on, Xander is locked in the book cage while Willow obsessively watches hyenas devouring prey (Willow seeks comfort in knowledge, even the bloody kind).  Xander then tells Willow that he's still Xander.  He wants her to let him out, so he preys on what he thinks is Willow's weak spot: Buffy.  He insults Buffy, suggests that she has ruined the careful dynamic that Xander and Willow had, insinuates that she treats Willow like a lackey ("You did what you're told"), and suggests that she really doesn't care about either of them (leaving Willow alone with dangerous Hyena!Xander).  Willow defends Buffy, but we've seen before in this very episode that she's jealous of the attention Xander pays Buffy--so Xander isn't wrong to suspect this will have an impact.  Willow, looking particularly helpless, approaches, keys in her pocket.  Xander continues soothing her with promises about how much she means to him, and when Willow gets just close enough he lunges for the keys.  Willow jumps back, smiling broadly.  "Now I know!" she says, certain now that he is possessed.  Willow hates her nerdy, helpless side, but she also knows how to use it to her advantage, in somewhat the same way she got revenge on Cordelia with "deliver"--it goes without saying that this is something worth tracking.

So on both sides of Xander & Willow we see some real insight and some distortion.  Willow is quick to believe that Xander thinks ill of her or would be cruel to her, because of her own insecurities.  But she is dead certain that the real Xander wouldn't try to trick or (physically) hurt her.  Xander is admittedly under demon possession so conclusions on what Xander knows about Willow are a little more tenuous, but assume for a moment that Hyena!Xander is acting off the same understanding of Willow that Xander has.  Xander correctly pegs that Willow is jealous of Buffy, and feels uncomfortable about her intrusion into the Scoobies, though (probably being a demon) he misinterprets the degree.  But he misses that Willow is only playing helpless--and then Willow, on another level, correctly guesses that Xander will fall for her trap.  (Also worth tracking is how frequently Willow's friends notice when she uses her helplessness to her advantage.)  In a few minutes we have a great interplay showing the depth and complexity of the core relationships in the Scoobies, in which both characters use the information they think they have to try to manipulate the other.  In this instance, Willow comes out ahead.

The demon made me do it.  This is our first dry run at excusing a character’s darkness on demonic forces.  How much of this is Xander and how much is it the possessing demon?  Hyena!Xander does and says some things that don’t seem to reflect real truths about him.  Saying he can’t stand to be Willow’s friends, for instance, or enjoying mocking other kids.  (Though even here, they might.  Xander loves Willow as a friend, but the part of him that is attuned to social standing is aware that she's a drag on his upward mobility.  That same normally very submerged interest in social status could also manifest in enjoying mocking other kids.  Still, the hyena would be drawing on impulses in Xander that are not very important to his overall make-up)  So does that mean that Xander is off the hook for trying to rape Buffy?   There’s no doubt that normal Xander would never do such a thing.   But I do think we’re supposed to walk away knowing that Xander has a potential for darkness that we wouldn’t have guessed.   First, upon learning that Xander wasn’t with the Pack when they ate Principal Flutie, Giles is relieved.  It would have been hard to come back from something like that demonic possession or no.  Second, Xander is embarrassed enough by it to lie about remembering it.  If it were not him in any way shape or form it wouldn’t matter what the demon did while in possession of Xander.  It does matter if the demon is bringing to the surface feelings that are really there.  BTW, this is just the first time a character coming back from demonic possession will claim to not remember it.  It’ll happen again in Becoming II.  Third, Giles keeps Xander’s secret rather than try to tell him that it’s nothing to do with him.  Finally, Xander’s posture in the closing shot looks defeated or shamed.  His stint as a hyena revealed things about Xander.  It’s interesting that Willow and Buffy choose to ignore (or try to) what they learned about him.

Strudel, scratching his head, wonders why Maggie doesn't dwell more on the attempted rape issue, or at least flag it for future consideration when we get to Spike's notoriously controversial attempted rape of Buffy.  It is more than just interesting that Willow and Buffy are willing to sweep this little detail under the rug, but as Maggie undoubtedly knows, it will be more interesting to talk about these choices later on.  Maggie replies:  I think it's more worth flagging when we take up Xander's reaction to the events of Seeing Red.  The sojourn into hyena!ness is just that -- a sojourn.  It tells us something about Xander, without requiring that we tag him with the label of attempted rapist.

Max: I will add that Buffy's ease of brushing it off actually reinforces that Buffy has no romantic feelings for Xander at this point--Xander doesn't represent a threat to Buffy emotionally or physically, and so it's easy for her to brush the whole event off.  She won't always be as emotionally insulated as she is here.

Maggie:  The demon serves as a window into the dark part of ourselves that we certainly want to keep secret from others and all else equal would rather not acknowledge to ourselves.  Bear this in mind when we get to the Angel/Angelus split.

Max: Speaking of the dark part of the characters, this is (I believe) the first time we see the library cage in action, when Hyena!Xander is locked inside.  The library cage will later house Oz's full moon self and Vampire Willow, so it seems to be a recurring symbol associated with the dark sides of Scoobies.

Pushing boundaries.  Four students eat the principal, a character we know and expected to be around for a while.  That’s out of bounds for the these sorts of stories, a signal that the show is not going to respect the conventions of the genre.  Max: Not to mention that Buffy tosses the zookeeper into the cage with the hyenas, after which he's promptly killed.  It was very definitely self-defence of course. But this is the first human life Buffy (arguably) has on her hands. Maggie replies: For some reason that aspect of the episode keeps slipping from my mind.  The episode itself breezes right past it, in a way that makes me think that it's an artifact of the plot rather than an important plot point.  We'll encounter this problem later on -- most notably in OMWF when we plainly aren't to think hard about Xander's choice to invoke the singing demon and then conceal that information when it could have been used to save lives.  Max responds: Another significant similar situation is the deaths of the Knights of Byzantium whom Buffy kills in self-and-sister-defence in "Spiral".  Anyway, Buffy does actually run to try to save the zookeeper as he falls in the cage.  I think Buffy's ethically in the clear, but I agree that it is odd how little focus it gets.  I'll try to refrain from talking about the OMWF demon-summoning until we get there, but I have some theories about it (none of which are entirely satisfying).  

I just want to add how funny/poignant the shot of Flutie's framed photo of himself is, as the hyena-students tear into the real Flutie.  This is a guy who tried hard to be both friend to his students and to discipline them, and was never convincing while trying to do either.  So he got eaten alive.  Moreover, we see that he has no family, no connections, no one to miss him when he's gone.  It's pretty sad for a man to have a picture of himself on his own desk.  It's very bleak humour, and typical of this show, that we get reminded how pathetic Flutie is at the moment when we are most horrified by his death.

Buffy and Angel.  Willow does some serious cheerleading for B/A; but Buffy at least says she’s reserved.  Angel is hot, but he’s never around.  I think this plays mostly as her not wanting to fall for him until she’s got clearer signals from him that he’s interested in her. 

Strudel, pretending he is wise in the ways of young women, notes:  The way she jumps when she thinks Willow sees Angel shows that she's not as reserved as she'd like to think. 

Buffy and Bad Boys.  This seems like a total cliché, but I actually think Xander is right.  Buffy wants a bit of demon in the guy.  Season 8 seems to want to tell us that this is for sure the case.   I’ve long argued (link to Buffy’s Dance with the Vamps) that this is an important structural element in Buffy’s seven year journey.  This is the first time the theme gets openly mentioned.

Poor Xander.  He may be right about Buffy's deep-seated interest in the Big Bad, but alas, his version of the same provokes nothing more from her than a professional clobbering on the head with a desk. 

Max adds: It's not just Buffy who likes bad boys (or girls) though.  The camera does too.  Bad boys (and girls!) as "cool" gets played out in this episode.  Xander and the pack get a big power ballad walk, ala the opening credits to Reservoir Dogs or the end of the Boxer Rebellion sequence in Fool For Love/Darla.  And in all cases, the characters may be bad guys, but damn--they're so cool!  Of course part of it is that we're in the "bad guys'" own POV.  But film in particular lends itself to the glorification of power, with ethics not entering much into it.  Something to watch out for in Buffy's attraction to bad boys (and Xander's attraction to bad girls, and...) going forward. 

Xander as a demon magnet watch: Max: This is also the second time in three episodes that Xander attracts either a demon (Miss French) or a demon spirit (the hyena spirits here).  Not all of Xander's demon-magnetism is romance-related.

Bottom Line: Xander as a temporary demon sets up the big reveal that Angel really is a demon.  Stay tuned for Angel, aka Buffy's Love Life, part 3 

 

Comments

[vampmogs.livejournal.com]

I love The Pack so couldn't wait to see all your thoughts on it. My only disappointment is that we didn't get any Xander/Cordy interaction as I think that could have been *very* interesting.

I agree with you about the attempted rape and could never use that label on Xander. Whilst it's true that the Hyena possession does rely on real feeling/urges I never even remotely get the feeling it’s something Xander would ever, ever do.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Always glad to see you in these parts!

Hadn't thought of how cool it'd have been to see Xander/Cordy in the Pack. But it would have been.

Although I think Xander isn't guilty of AR, and agree he'd never do it -- there's a teeny piece of him that would, and I think that's part (only part) of why he's so judgmental about it later on. We're often hardest on others about faults we have niggling in ourselves somewhere.

What bugs me more is that he lies about remembering. I can see why he does, but...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I can understand why he denies remembering and don't really blame him for denying it, but I think it is the easier route for him as opposed to owning the memory or at least the implications of it.

Still, I understand why he chooses willing amnesia on the subject.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I totally understand it. I even have sympathy for it when he's so young. It's just a bit grey, especially given his proclivity to judge others. But we all have some grey somewhere.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

As i said over at Gabs LJ (in a discussion about "Go Fish" and casual jokes about gang rape), Giles speech about (male) teenagers acting less than human, as well as Xander's hyena personality, as well as Xander's amnesia at the end are part of what i call a "commentary on social norms/behaviour (especially at school)" which runs through most of the "high school/college seasons".

It feels like a comment on something (the said behaviour) we (and the writers) don't have an immediate answer to, but clearly feel is wrong. Thus, it gets commented on BtVS, but with no ultimate conclusion but the reaction "it is wrong!". Since it is difficult to go on when knowing that there is a severe problem in existance without a "simple" solution at hand, BtVS goes satire: Laugh when You feel like crying. That's what the jokes about grave situations are, to me: not a shallow joke but but a satirical "laugh when you wanna cry".

"Cool" and cruel (male) teenagers are reality. Machism and "might makes right" is a prevailent ideology.
In this episode we get the contrast between Xander and "could-be-Xander": NOT acting on this social prosthesis is what makes (Xander) a better person.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it's so much a commentary on "here's a phenomenon and it's wrong" as it is a commentary on "here's the human condition -- how do we cope with it". The metaphor of the pack may be thin, but that of itself is interesting. We do have instincts for hierarchy (which involves putting down weaker members of the tribe) and sexual predatorship. It's part of the human condition. The question is how we domesticate it.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Ah, You know me and my clumsy way with the english language. "It is wrong" was indeed worded clumsily. It is more pointing the finger to a phenomenon which doesn't mesh well with the story we're telling ourselves and our children: We are civilization! We are not like that!

It also points out a real problem - we try to reach for an egalitarian society with our political beliefs (democracy), but not our social beliefs (we like our hierarchy, our pecking order, boss <-> employee, teacher <-> student, football star <-> nerd girl).

We do have instincts for hierarchy (which involves putting down weaker members of the tribe) and sexual predatorship. It's part of the human condition. The question is how we domesticate it.

I don't think so. It is the society we shaped for the now. We have 150.000 years of human society, all kinds of societies, with different outlets, goals and foundations. To put the flaws of our society into the "instinct" camp is like saying "it's inevitable" (i know You don't mean that, since You call for domestication). I firmly believe that we, as humans, are free to choose how to live together, what kind of society we want to build. (I have to believe that - otherwise there is nothing i could put up - philisophically speaking - against what my grandparents did).

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Well, not the place to get into deep philosophical debates about human nature! My read is that the vast majority of human cultures are hierarchical one way or another. But I'm sure there are exceptions, and yours is certainly the more hopeful view!

[lusciousxander.livejournal.com]

I really, really love this episode. It's probably the first complicated BtVS episode. While I agree that the hyena brought out Xander's darkest side, I'm not sure if we can blame him for it. If all that darkness is inside Xander, he gets a lot of points for keeping it in there, even though some of his ugly side slips out once in a while.

Xander raping Buffy: He had the chance to do it in BB&B, but didn't. Same goes for Willow. I don't think he'd do it; he respects Buffy and Willow far too much to do something like that to them.

Lying about not remembering: I like what eowyn315 said about it: The only thing I think we can hold Xander accountable for is lying about remembering - and even then, as others have pointed out, it's really a matter of self-preservation and protecting their friendship from unnecessary conflict. What good would it do for Xander to confess, "Yes, I remember trying to rape you"? He'd obviously apologize, even though it wasn't really his doing, and Buffy would accept it, and then, whether they want to or not, they'd both probably feel awkward about the whole thing. This way, they can pretend it never happened, which is what they both obviously want to do. Remember - Xander asks flat out if he did anything else, giving Buffy the opportunity to speak up if she was bothered by the attack. She lets him off the hook by saying nothing happened. Really, the best thing for their friendship is to forget it and move on, which is what they do.

As a Xander fan, I'd love to see Xander paying the consequences for his actions, see a serious storyline with him asking for forgiveness and redeeming himself, but not in this episode. I'm talking about something Normal Xander did, no possessions whatsoever, I'm talking about the infamous lie and summoning Sweet. Alas, though.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

I think You have it backwards:

Hyena!Xander is not here to remind us what kind of darkness exists within Xander (because, that's a given: That we all are able to commit the worst imaginable atrocities given the right circumstances), but to show us that Xander is not like this. He's different from the male teenage jerk, he's Buffy's "girlfriend" (instead of "boyfriend"). So, in a way, hyena!Xander is the mirror "this could be Xander - let's be glad he's not".

About lying about remembering: I'm of the opposite school of thought: Unveiling the circumstances is what brings civilisation forward.

Since we are back to the surface level of this story, i don't hold that against Xander - he's a teenager! No need to act more mature than Snyder. *snicker*

[lusciousxander.livejournal.com]

You're right. It's not the matter of having darkness inside as much as not acting on it. It's about choice, and in this episode Xander doesn't have it. But it was Xander's choice to lie to Buffy in Becoming, his choice to summon Sweet, his choice to grab and axe and try to kill Spike. That's Xander being weak, giving in to the darkness instead of fighting it.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I would at least like the OMWF thing treated not as a joke. It's not a matter of forgiving Xander or not. I'm predisposed to forgive. I just have a difficult time of it being treated as a joke when it's more serious than that.

[lusciousxander.livejournal.com]

I hated that, too. I still think Joss chose Xander to summon Sweet so that he could tell the joke about Xander being his queen. Xander was just a plot device. I hated that.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I think it's more complicated. I was wait on this (and maybe by OMWF this will be more refined). But Xander's summoning Sweet, in-story, is about Xander/Anya, and how, even though he knows on some level that the marriage is going to be a disaster and people will get hurt, he keeps himself in denial about it until the very minute when he has to confront it. People die in OMWF because figuratively he and Anya get extremely hurt in Hell's Bells. And OMWF amps everything up to 11. Note that Sweet is a demon that's there because of Xander's insecurities--just like Anya was, indirectly, in "The Wish", her being there because he cheated on Cordelia--and that Xander was, almost without realizing it, required to marry him. I've always felt his refusal to say something points at the real, major problems the Scoobies have this year--it's not fun and games anymore. But he, and the rest of the Scoobs, still go into denial. (Xander is explicitly written as being in denial--"Are we sure these things are connected, the singing and dancing and burning and dying?"--as if grasping at straws that this isn't his fault consciously while subconsciously he's sure it is.)

Besides, the musical is so very story-on-top-of-story; at the end Joss basically tips his hand and says, no, this doesn't make complete sense anyway, as part of the way the general episode tears down romantic musical conventions while simultaneously holding them up. Xander is the audience-surrogate (WE wanted this musical, and look what distruction it wrought!) and author-surrogate (same). It's so ridiculous (though it does have some in-story meaning) that we're kicked out of the story, and reminded that it is just a story, right when we gear up for the earnest/fake Buffy/Spike kiss. So I think we're supposed to take Xander's summoning the demon simultaneously seriously (what does this reveal about Xander?) and non-seriously (it's just a story, you should just relax). Which, of course, is just my take--and I admit fully it's a problematic one. Nine years after the musical I'm still working on figuring it out.

That said, in the story in my head Xander really owned up to what happened after his denial of his own dark side stopped post-"Selfless."

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I agree. Joss did it for teh funny. I in no way believe that Xander would have done it on purpose, nor do I think he would have been blithe about it afterwards. So, yeah, I think Joss did Xander a disservice there.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I like Max's answer to this. My own is less nuanced -- it's a plot device. An artifact of the plot. Insofar as Joss's stories routinely remind us that they are stories, I think it's more a feature than a bug that not everything makes sense 'in story'. We're to be kicked out from time to time.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

In the box set, Joss has a list of his favorite episodes and this is the first on it, precisely because it is the first time we see that we're in a complex world.

The point for me isn't that Xander is dark. It's that Xander is human, and all humans have dark. Xander's dark is probably pretty normal dark for a teenage boy, and part of his quality as a character is that he so little succumbs to it (when in possession of his higher faculties).

So for me it's not about judging Xander and saying aha! he's dark! It's looking at the story and saying "go Joss! you're letting us see that your protagonists are not exempt from the darkness that plagues us all."

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Because I apparently can't stop talking, one more observation I just thought of today:

The zookeeper and Giles have a moment where they excitedly bond over what books they have. They're both intellectuals, and have similar builds and glasses. The zookeeper wants to be possessed by a demon. Giles' ability to spot this suggests that Giles might in fact know a little something about this.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Good observation!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

This is the only one of the high school episodes that actually reminds me what it was like then (and one of my kids has just transferred into a mainstream Secondary which brings back memories too). American high schools or at least the ones on TV are so different from what I remember, too glossy, too not 50% portacabin. But this, the unthinking cruelty, the knife edge between cool kid and not cool. The dodgeball scene. That especially because although children can be cruel it was never just them them. there were always some adults that fed of it, some part of the system that supported it.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Yup. I like the observation that it's not just the kids.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

This episode is so appropriate considering Season 8.


It’ll happen again in Becoming II.

I never thought Angel was lying about that. As shown in Becoming Part I when he first gets his soul restored, he's very confused about what's happening. I think it takes a while for him to get his bearings. So the comparison doesn't quite play out for me. Xander is clearly lying while I think Angel is genuinely bewildered, but will remember if given enough time.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I agree Angel is more bewildered than lying. But that bewilderment is part of the story about him not being Angelus, and both he and Buffy are complicit in letting that distinction stand. And that's what does happen here. The mechanism isn't precisely the same, but the effect is identical.