Confusion and more FLASHBACKS! — Lies My Parents Told Me: The Rant
Warning: Spoilerish to the amount of 10.
Keep in mind I’m writing this at 4:30am.
You ever have that dream where you aren’t you, you’re floating over your REAL self’s body? That’s what Buffy seemed like in this episode. There’s a two-way street when it comes to her. She’s right though, she is the general. What she’s wrong about is how she cuts it back whenever it comes to Spike. When she talks about other scoobies — “Sure, when it comes down to it, I’d kill ’em”. When it comes down to Spike — “We need him.” Is there something I’m not getting? ‘Cause if last night was supposed to clear that up for me, it didn’t help. It only made it that much more confusing.
The flashbacks were terrific. But again, I don’t know if they did there job in making me sympathic towards Spike. Let me get this straight – Spike turns his mother into a vampire because he wants to be with her forever, and then slays her because he realizes she isn’t his mother anymore, she’s a demon. What I can’t figure out is, if all vampires become soulless and evil right when they’re changed, why was Spike so endearing? Why was he shocked to see his mother evil? Why wasn’t he really evil? Am I missing something here? Example – Holden Webster had personality and was endearing, but he still wanted to kill Buffy and felt the evils forces at work flowing through him in CwDP. Spike seemed like William even after he had been sired. Again, more confusion.
I loved seeing Drusilla. “You want to bring your mother with us?” That look on her face was priceless.
There’s something that ultimately pissed me off. We saw all of 90 seconds of Xander, Dawn, Anya and Willow. This seems to be a running theme in a season which has 5 more episodes left, and hasn’t utilized the core scoobies in any way. For that, I’m extremely disappointed.
I understood where Wood was coming from, and in many ways he’s right.
But the person who was POINT BLANK RIGHT in his actions and words was Giles. He’s been in the background this entire time, defending Buffy’s reasons for never killing Spike….up until this episode. All he wants to do is make this war as easy as possible, and Spike’s pyschotic and over-the-top antics as of the last 2 years has given him enough cause for concern. You have to look at it from a Watcher’s point of view. Giles has always defended Buffy. Sure, they’ve argued about certain things….killing Dawn to save the world, for instance. But this time he has very good reasons in his argument. And why Buffy continues to defend this as “Spike’s a warrior” really isn’t a good enough answer. Because as we all know, Spike IS a warrior…but he’s a warrior that hasn’t been very consistant in allegiences, being there, or in his thought pattern. So Buffy’s defense is rather weak.
And boy, I was boiling at the end. Walking away from Giles and closing the door in his face seemed not only wrong, but totally disrespectful. I understand she’s upset with him, but this was a moment where I knew where it was going. Buffy will be the odd scoob out. Buffy will have to walk this by herself, because she won’t other opinions in…unless she asks for them. This “I’m superior and I know what’s right” Buffy doesn’t do anything for me, but make me want to go kung fu on her. It’s frustrating to watch her this way.
I’m sure many people disagree with me in my assessment of this episode. I imagine many people loved the character development. I thought the development was lacking in forward progress. It was much more about going back and “graying the line” again. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t matter of fact. It was confused, and unaware.
Final Verdict: The Flashbacks were cool. I’m confused with Spike. I agree with Giles. I’m disgusted with Buffy. And I’m sick of the other scoobies being left out, except for centralized episodes. It’s getting pretty ridiculous. This was a good episode on the whole, but it lacked many an answer, and made more things “gray”. I think the writers simply don’t have an answer for some of these questions, and that’s why they do it. After hearing a few things about “Lies…” before it aired, I imagined it was going to be great. It was good…not great. But I did love the “Oh shit” moments in it.
– Rating: 3 STAKES
Rant Over.
– Mac
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