"I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
Oooh boy. There's so much to say about this episode. My notes are a hell of a lot longer than usual. This is a superb piece of television. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it's beautiful. It's a kind of magic spell, I suppose. Spend several episodes setting everything up, just add Spike, and watch as devastating things happen.
It's pretty much been obvious from what happened between the two of them last episode that the Willow / Xander thing would get out in the open here, but it happens in the most devastating circumstances possible. Both Cordelia and Oz are set up as being wonderful and caring lovers early on: Cordelia had pictures of Xander in her locker, while Oz gives Willow a little witch pez which is, er, really romantic. They're in firm occupation of the moral high ground, all ready to catch their partners in the act. And both Willow and Xander are horrified by what's happening and desperate for it to stop. Unfortunately, this is the time when Spike returns, and he's quite the catalyst.
Spike's arrival, of course, references his first appearance as his car hits the Sunnydale sign. But this is a different Spike- lovelorn, desperate, and drinking spirits from a bottle. Drusilla has dumped him and, yes, this is so played for laughs. We're already seeing the slow change in the character from out-and-out baddie to ambiguous character. He gets scenes in which he tells Buffy and Angel the unpalatable truth that they can never be just friends and (funniest scene ever!) he visits Joyce just so they can have a nice little chat.
And yet… he also kills an innocent person. And the scene in which he threatens Willow with a broken bottle and seems to be about to metaphorically rape her ("I haven't had a woman in ages") is extremely and deliberately disturbing. The character is actually very, very well-written; he's the sort of very dangerous "bad boy" that lots of women somehow find attractive and really, really, shouldn't. Bad boys like that might seem alluring but they offer nothing but darkness. In fact, the implied Sid- Vicious-ness of the character is made explicit in the final scene, as Spike sings along to the post-Rotten Sex Pistols' version of My Way (which is, incidentally, my karaoke specialty…). Sid was the ultimate bad boy and, well, it was probably Rockets Redglare and not Sid that actually killed her, but look what being with him did for Nancy.
Spike's Nancy may have dumped him for now, but the, er, refreshing experience of a spot of violence convinces him that all he needs to do is to get a little kinky. He ends the episode with his love life seemingly looking up.
Buffy, meanwhile, has unexpectedly great SAT scores, and suddenly the world is her oyster. She can go to college everywhere, and with Faith around she doesn't necessarily have to stay in Sunnydale. Even Giles thinks so. But… is it really just Angel who makes her reluctant to leave? The sudden realisation that she actually has a future is disorientating for her and, like all teenagers with a reflective bent, she feels more than a little angst at seemingly being on a carrier belt. God knows I did when I was her age. Teenagers may not actually experience the stress that we adults do, but they're far less confident and experienced at handling stress, and so it's far more overwhelming for them. That (and hormones, and the fear of dying a virgin) is why being a teenager is so existentially horror.
Speaking of existentialism… I notice that Angel is seen reading Sartre's La Nauseé. Books read by TV characters on screen are always, without exception, symbolic, and it's not hard to figure out what we're being told about Angel. He's self-aware and, unsurprisingly after what has happened, deeply conscious of the awful significances of the choices he makes. And yet, he, like Buffy, needs to be told by Spike, of all people, that the two of them can never be just friends. And it's her, not him, who is able to accept this and end their relationship.
When Willow and Xander are seen having a long, slow, rather enjoyable-looking snog by their respective horrified partners, it's actually the one time out of all of their smoochings that you could almost, but not quite, excuse them. After all, they could be about to die. But the result is heartbreaking, especially as the episode plays a cruel trick on us by injuring Cordy immediately after she's seen her boyfriend being unfaithful, and then cuts to a funeral.
Cordelia seems to reject Xander very, very firmly, but everyone and everyone else has been properly shaken into bits. It's anyone's guess where the pieces are going to land.
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