Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Pangs

"It's a ritual sacrifice. With pie."

So, a Thanksgiving episode. I have a vague idea about what thanksgiving is about through stuff I've read in books, but only a shaky grasp of all the cultural stuff. Like Giles and Spike, I'm descended from the little piggies who stayed at home.

It's a brilliant episode, though. It's Jane Espenson, so obviously the dialogue is brilliant. But the structure and the themes are so cleverly intertwined, too, what with all the ethical debate about the legacy of Manifest Destiny and the taking of Native American land being in the context of a plot that's straight out of a western; we end up with Buffy and Giles, alone in the fort under attack by Indians, waiting for the cavalry to arrive. By, er, bicycle. Definitely a Western, though. A revisionist one, in the case of Willow.

I'm a bit uneasy about the term "Native American", to be honest. Being both British and a wishy-washy liberal type (think a male British Willow, only with longer hair), I'm uncomfortable with the word "native"- it sounds a bit colonial and imperialistic, and a word we Brits generally like to avoid. We have the British Empire, and its various atrocities, to feel rather guilty about, after all. So the one criticism I'd have for this episode, I suppose, is Giles' attitude to Willow's feelings about the Chumash. Yes, he's a non-American outsider, but he's from a country with its own share of past atrocities which should easily give him an empathy with Willow's feelings. To this British viewer watching the British character, it just makes him look very right-wing indeed.

Obviously none of this is a problem with Spike, what with him being evil and everything, even if he might need a bit of metaphorical Viagra to actually do anything evil. So he's the one who gets the great lines about genocide just being what tends to happen when you get a more powerful civilisation competing with a less powerful one for land or resources with their guns, germs and steel. (Incidentally, you might want to have a look at Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. It's most interesting, whether you agree with its argument or not.)

On the subject of Spike, this is the episode where James Marsters gets promoted to the opening titles. It looks as though Spike is going to be staying with the Scoobies for a while, making amusing yet annoyingly true comments from the sidelines. We can also probably expect a bit of actual character development, but there's also a bit of a risk that the character might end up emasculated. It'll be interesting to see.

In other news, Xander now has a job as a construction worker- a skilled occupation- and Anya seems officially to be his girlfriend, so things are looking up for him. Plus, I love Anya, and I demand more of her. Also, Riley is from Iowa, "one of the ones in the middle", which means certain stereotypes are in play.

Oh yes… Angel is in this episode. And Buffy is in the next episode of Angel, which I'll be reviewing tomorrow…