Lies My Parents Told Me
Jun. 5th, 2007 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxFor fanfic writing purposes, I'm rewatching BtVS Season 7's "Lies My Parents Told Me". Frankly, it has been ages since I've seen the episode.
* The second Nikki is a really, really bad actress. Funny how the first Nikki in "Fool For Love" had nothing to say and yet made a far stronger impression. When I think of Nikki, I think of FFL Nikki not the glammed up one who can't act in Lies My Parents Told Me. Why-oh-why did they recast her?
* Little Wood is adorable. Adult Wood continues to creep me out (and not just because he made a wholly craptacular President on 24.) Gripping the stake so hard he bleeds? Difficult. Seriously, how do you do that unless you have a HUGE splinter stuck your hand? Then the flirting with Buffy while comparing her to his... mother ::shudder: Not healthy. Not healthy at all.
* Punk Spike? Still hot. And that was a really good fight scene even if it was the second best Nikki.
* I want Buffy's shirt in the school scene where she's talking with Wood. Pretty shirt (and generally that was a good day for SMG. She was looking good.)
* I didn't remember this part: Giles only met Wood at the beginning of this episode?! So Giles meets Wood and decides-- Hey, I'm gonna conspire with this total stranger I just met to kill Spike all in one freaking day! Does Giles not remember things like Ben is Glory? You don't trust people you just meet. Certainly don't trust them enough to go completely counter to the Slayer. (And I'll insist forever that had Giles decided that Spike must die, then Giles would have killed him himself. Giles was quite capable of that, and I'd buy it... and respect him much more for it than conspiring with Wood... who he just met! Pod Giles indeed.)
* Still don't know why Buffy thought the trigger no longer worked--just 'cause. But then, Buffy was great on instinct, not so great on logic.
* If I can criticize AtS for a moment. Spike is consistently very, very, VERY reluctant to reveal the source of the First's trigger, not wanting to reveal his issues with his mother, yet the next season we're to believe he'd blithely blurt it out to the world? Lightly?! Sorry. Still don't buy that. This wasn't easy for him. If it had been, the First couldn't have used it as a trigger.
* Oh, but I have affection for batshit Dru. And Spike/Dru always retain a quality of hotness mixed with something quite disturbing.
* And, again, damn, Spike is hot with Dru.
* I have to laugh at all the talk of the First having a plan and was just waiting for the right moment to use Spike. The First had a plan? Seriously? Because, looking at the season as a whole, it sure as hell doesn't seem that way.
* Wood's Silence of the Lambs work room filled with crosses is also creepy as hell. And we were to root for this guy to hook up with Faith? I still don't understand that one. Wood has issues. Creepy issues and quite frankly, Faith deserved better.
* It also seems odd that Wood seems to say that Spike isn't the monster that killed his mother (because of his soul). Odd in that I really didn't expect that, though I should have-- Watcher educated, after all.
To follow along Watcher teachings, he should believe that Souled Spike and Unsouled Spike are different people. (Though I still think that's ridiculous). But his openly stating that he doesn't want Spike, he wants "the monster" makes clear that he knows what he's doing and he realizes that it's vengeance. It sort of reminds me of an old Bill Cosby joke where Cosby announces that "Parents aren't interested in justice, they just want quiet." In this case, Wood isn't interested in justice, he just wants revenge (which is what The First is exploiting with Wood all along... and this goes back to the First not having a plan. If The First's "plan" was to use Spike in some big way (as Giles and Wood claim in the previous scene), why in the hell is the First also provoking Wood to kill Spike? The First seems to be rather contradictory, and I still say, that it had no plan whatsoever (and really, Mutant Enemy didn't have much of one either.)
* They certainly do harp on impotence. Both Nikki and vamped Anne call Spike "limp."
* There is a strange dichotomy in Wood's words about who Spike is and the flashbacks we are seeing. Wood is harping on Spike not caring about anyone, yet it seems the entire flashback has Spike actually overattached to someone. More than once, Anne says that Spike is too sentimental and 'tender'. (Which, in certain ways, both Wood and Anne are correct. There are aspects of Spike in both of these accusations, and yet neither fully encompasses him).
* I enjoy Spike kicking Wood's ass far too much.
* I think that there was supposed to be some connection between Anne and Nikki in that in the child's eyes a mother is just a mother. For a child that link was born there, it's the way they experience it. There is a point that a mother truly is the child's whole world. I think there was some point in Anne's accusations of Spike clinging to her apron strings and her inner demon expressing dissatisfaction with being defined (bound) by her role as mother, that perhaps the point is that a woman isn't just defined by being a mother, that she has her own identity and that mother is only part of it. Perhaps there were parts of Anne and Nikki that should be defined as something else. It's probably part of Jossian feminism in that respect. I don't think, though, that either Anne or Nikki lacked love for their child, just that a parent's understanding of the bigger picture sometimes demands that, for the child's welfare, the parent has to think of concerns other than simply what a child wants. I'm not sure that this aspect of the story was developed much. It seems muddled and, even now, I feel as though I'm grasping to understand Anne's and Nikki's true emotions. Then again, in both Anne's and Nikki's cases, we only view them through their son's eyes, and those eyes are decidedly biased.
* You know, I don't think when Spike is explaining Nikki to Wood, saying that she wouldn't walk away for [Wood]...I don't think that Spike is describing objective truth but is instead describing Wood's feelings and issues...and I think Spike realises it (and perhaps using it to his advantage). Spike is describing both Wood's and his own lingering hang-ups about their mothers. It's the latchkey child's plaintive wail when Mom has to go to work. Mommy don't go! Stay here with me!!!
The objective truth may be that the mother has to go to work, that by going to work she is supporting the child (or in Nikki's case making the world a better place with fewer vampires). A mother bird may push a baby bird out of the nest, and this may feel like abandonment, but the mamma bird is trying to assist the child's maturation, wanting the child to take flight and soar... as are Anne's efforts to see William gain his own life outside of taking care of her.
I think when Spike fights back in the scene with Wood, he is describing the thoughts in Wood's head, the thoughts which make Wood so angry and vengeful (and had made both Spike and Wood vulnerable to The First and to violence). Spike isn't describing some universal truth about Slayers. Spike is voicing the child's (in this case, Wood's) view. [Mommy went to work. Mommy didn't stay with me! Mommy must not have loved me, then] Spike isn't really saying that Nikki could have chosen whether or not she was the Slayer. He knows that it is a calling, Spike is doing what he often times did for Buffy -- he's describing the feeling... a feeling that they're unwilling to admit to themselves (and one that is informed by his own feelings about his own mother. Feelings he was trapped in for well over a 100 years, and which triggered his own violence and rage. And, well, if Spike believes that Slaying makes some people hard, he can be forgiven a bit of that interpretation. It doesn't seem to be wholly wrong, at least in the case of the Slayer he knows best). Anyway, I think that is what Spike is struggling with and what he's pushing Wood toward is an epiphany that Wood is clinging to the childhood view of Nikki (which was understandable when Wood was four, but for a man in his thirties is creepy)... and Spike, when he turned Anne, had been doing much the same thing -- clinging too hard to the child's view of the parent. When Spike realizes in the present that he was clinging too hard, he can again realize that Anne did love him. In a somewhat abstract and fuzzy way, it's an adult recognition of a parent's identity as an autonomous figure not purely an adjunct to themselves, acknowledging a parent's individuality with responsibilities of their own. And, in the release of the child's view of the parent, a person can move into an adult's view, which in many ways is more accepting of flaws, mistakes, and moments when Mommy wasn't there. It's a more human view, or rather humane view.
Mother's have responsibilities that are wider than a child's understanding of the world. Sometimes taking care of a child means going to work to earn money to take care of the child or cutting the apron springs to allow a baby bird to soar -- that IS love. An adult can recognize that even though a child doesn't. And, upon recognizing that, it's possible to forgive things that a child may have felt miffed about. It's gaining adult perspective on the whole parent/child relationship.
I suppose that Buffy is doing the something similar, but in a far more disillusioning vein, with Giles. (But, damn, he's really pushing Buffy into a cold, dark place with his insistence that she be able to sacrifice anyone to the greater good. Really, Giles has become someone quite hard and unbending in the final years of BtVS. He became the Watcher he would have resented in early Season 5).
But, like many things in the episode and the season as a whole, it doesn't feel developed. There's the potential for these themes in the story, but I don't think they're as realized as they might have been. And I'm not claiming that this is necessarily what Mutant Enemy was going for, because there are many times over the series when I don't know what in the hell Mutant Enemy was going for.
* And, yeah, Spike isn't particularly benevolent. In fact, he's royally pissed and his taunting and biting Wood is really summed up by his being royally pissed off. After being ambushed and mindraped, I'll give him royally pissed off. It's not like he killed Wood, after all.
* Buffy returns home to check the injured Dawn immediately after having said that it's the mission that matters. Perhaps it's an echo of the whole mother being a mother and having wider responsibilities as well? But, then I often feel that I'm reaching with BtVS themes. Is it there or is it not? I can't always tell with Mutant Enemy. But, it's at least a somewhat possible reading of the story.
* And with the Buffy/Giles ending, it still feels like we didn't get the deserved payoff with Giles having to acknowlege that Spike did indeed do something. Giles was wrong. Spike managed to save the world.
* The second Nikki is a really, really bad actress. Funny how the first Nikki in "Fool For Love" had nothing to say and yet made a far stronger impression. When I think of Nikki, I think of FFL Nikki not the glammed up one who can't act in Lies My Parents Told Me. Why-oh-why did they recast her?
* Little Wood is adorable. Adult Wood continues to creep me out (and not just because he made a wholly craptacular President on 24.) Gripping the stake so hard he bleeds? Difficult. Seriously, how do you do that unless you have a HUGE splinter stuck your hand? Then the flirting with Buffy while comparing her to his... mother ::shudder: Not healthy. Not healthy at all.
* Punk Spike? Still hot. And that was a really good fight scene even if it was the second best Nikki.
* I want Buffy's shirt in the school scene where she's talking with Wood. Pretty shirt (and generally that was a good day for SMG. She was looking good.)
* I didn't remember this part: Giles only met Wood at the beginning of this episode?! So Giles meets Wood and decides-- Hey, I'm gonna conspire with this total stranger I just met to kill Spike all in one freaking day! Does Giles not remember things like Ben is Glory? You don't trust people you just meet. Certainly don't trust them enough to go completely counter to the Slayer. (And I'll insist forever that had Giles decided that Spike must die, then Giles would have killed him himself. Giles was quite capable of that, and I'd buy it... and respect him much more for it than conspiring with Wood... who he just met! Pod Giles indeed.)
* Still don't know why Buffy thought the trigger no longer worked--just 'cause. But then, Buffy was great on instinct, not so great on logic.
* If I can criticize AtS for a moment. Spike is consistently very, very, VERY reluctant to reveal the source of the First's trigger, not wanting to reveal his issues with his mother, yet the next season we're to believe he'd blithely blurt it out to the world? Lightly?! Sorry. Still don't buy that. This wasn't easy for him. If it had been, the First couldn't have used it as a trigger.
* Oh, but I have affection for batshit Dru. And Spike/Dru always retain a quality of hotness mixed with something quite disturbing.
* And, again, damn, Spike is hot with Dru.
* I have to laugh at all the talk of the First having a plan and was just waiting for the right moment to use Spike. The First had a plan? Seriously? Because, looking at the season as a whole, it sure as hell doesn't seem that way.
* Wood's Silence of the Lambs work room filled with crosses is also creepy as hell. And we were to root for this guy to hook up with Faith? I still don't understand that one. Wood has issues. Creepy issues and quite frankly, Faith deserved better.
* It also seems odd that Wood seems to say that Spike isn't the monster that killed his mother (because of his soul). Odd in that I really didn't expect that, though I should have-- Watcher educated, after all.
To follow along Watcher teachings, he should believe that Souled Spike and Unsouled Spike are different people. (Though I still think that's ridiculous). But his openly stating that he doesn't want Spike, he wants "the monster" makes clear that he knows what he's doing and he realizes that it's vengeance. It sort of reminds me of an old Bill Cosby joke where Cosby announces that "Parents aren't interested in justice, they just want quiet." In this case, Wood isn't interested in justice, he just wants revenge (which is what The First is exploiting with Wood all along... and this goes back to the First not having a plan. If The First's "plan" was to use Spike in some big way (as Giles and Wood claim in the previous scene), why in the hell is the First also provoking Wood to kill Spike? The First seems to be rather contradictory, and I still say, that it had no plan whatsoever (and really, Mutant Enemy didn't have much of one either.)
* They certainly do harp on impotence. Both Nikki and vamped Anne call Spike "limp."
* There is a strange dichotomy in Wood's words about who Spike is and the flashbacks we are seeing. Wood is harping on Spike not caring about anyone, yet it seems the entire flashback has Spike actually overattached to someone. More than once, Anne says that Spike is too sentimental and 'tender'. (Which, in certain ways, both Wood and Anne are correct. There are aspects of Spike in both of these accusations, and yet neither fully encompasses him).
* I enjoy Spike kicking Wood's ass far too much.
* I think that there was supposed to be some connection between Anne and Nikki in that in the child's eyes a mother is just a mother. For a child that link was born there, it's the way they experience it. There is a point that a mother truly is the child's whole world. I think there was some point in Anne's accusations of Spike clinging to her apron strings and her inner demon expressing dissatisfaction with being defined (bound) by her role as mother, that perhaps the point is that a woman isn't just defined by being a mother, that she has her own identity and that mother is only part of it. Perhaps there were parts of Anne and Nikki that should be defined as something else. It's probably part of Jossian feminism in that respect. I don't think, though, that either Anne or Nikki lacked love for their child, just that a parent's understanding of the bigger picture sometimes demands that, for the child's welfare, the parent has to think of concerns other than simply what a child wants. I'm not sure that this aspect of the story was developed much. It seems muddled and, even now, I feel as though I'm grasping to understand Anne's and Nikki's true emotions. Then again, in both Anne's and Nikki's cases, we only view them through their son's eyes, and those eyes are decidedly biased.
* You know, I don't think when Spike is explaining Nikki to Wood, saying that she wouldn't walk away for [Wood]...I don't think that Spike is describing objective truth but is instead describing Wood's feelings and issues...and I think Spike realises it (and perhaps using it to his advantage). Spike is describing both Wood's and his own lingering hang-ups about their mothers. It's the latchkey child's plaintive wail when Mom has to go to work. Mommy don't go! Stay here with me!!!
The objective truth may be that the mother has to go to work, that by going to work she is supporting the child (or in Nikki's case making the world a better place with fewer vampires). A mother bird may push a baby bird out of the nest, and this may feel like abandonment, but the mamma bird is trying to assist the child's maturation, wanting the child to take flight and soar... as are Anne's efforts to see William gain his own life outside of taking care of her.
I think when Spike fights back in the scene with Wood, he is describing the thoughts in Wood's head, the thoughts which make Wood so angry and vengeful (and had made both Spike and Wood vulnerable to The First and to violence). Spike isn't describing some universal truth about Slayers. Spike is voicing the child's (in this case, Wood's) view. [Mommy went to work. Mommy didn't stay with me! Mommy must not have loved me, then] Spike isn't really saying that Nikki could have chosen whether or not she was the Slayer. He knows that it is a calling, Spike is doing what he often times did for Buffy -- he's describing the feeling... a feeling that they're unwilling to admit to themselves (and one that is informed by his own feelings about his own mother. Feelings he was trapped in for well over a 100 years, and which triggered his own violence and rage. And, well, if Spike believes that Slaying makes some people hard, he can be forgiven a bit of that interpretation. It doesn't seem to be wholly wrong, at least in the case of the Slayer he knows best). Anyway, I think that is what Spike is struggling with and what he's pushing Wood toward is an epiphany that Wood is clinging to the childhood view of Nikki (which was understandable when Wood was four, but for a man in his thirties is creepy)... and Spike, when he turned Anne, had been doing much the same thing -- clinging too hard to the child's view of the parent. When Spike realizes in the present that he was clinging too hard, he can again realize that Anne did love him. In a somewhat abstract and fuzzy way, it's an adult recognition of a parent's identity as an autonomous figure not purely an adjunct to themselves, acknowledging a parent's individuality with responsibilities of their own. And, in the release of the child's view of the parent, a person can move into an adult's view, which in many ways is more accepting of flaws, mistakes, and moments when Mommy wasn't there. It's a more human view, or rather humane view.
Mother's have responsibilities that are wider than a child's understanding of the world. Sometimes taking care of a child means going to work to earn money to take care of the child or cutting the apron springs to allow a baby bird to soar -- that IS love. An adult can recognize that even though a child doesn't. And, upon recognizing that, it's possible to forgive things that a child may have felt miffed about. It's gaining adult perspective on the whole parent/child relationship.
I suppose that Buffy is doing the something similar, but in a far more disillusioning vein, with Giles. (But, damn, he's really pushing Buffy into a cold, dark place with his insistence that she be able to sacrifice anyone to the greater good. Really, Giles has become someone quite hard and unbending in the final years of BtVS. He became the Watcher he would have resented in early Season 5).
But, like many things in the episode and the season as a whole, it doesn't feel developed. There's the potential for these themes in the story, but I don't think they're as realized as they might have been. And I'm not claiming that this is necessarily what Mutant Enemy was going for, because there are many times over the series when I don't know what in the hell Mutant Enemy was going for.
* And, yeah, Spike isn't particularly benevolent. In fact, he's royally pissed and his taunting and biting Wood is really summed up by his being royally pissed off. After being ambushed and mindraped, I'll give him royally pissed off. It's not like he killed Wood, after all.
* Buffy returns home to check the injured Dawn immediately after having said that it's the mission that matters. Perhaps it's an echo of the whole mother being a mother and having wider responsibilities as well? But, then I often feel that I'm reaching with BtVS themes. Is it there or is it not? I can't always tell with Mutant Enemy. But, it's at least a somewhat possible reading of the story.
* And with the Buffy/Giles ending, it still feels like we didn't get the deserved payoff with Giles having to acknowlege that Spike did indeed do something. Giles was wrong. Spike managed to save the world.
