Klytaimnestra's Review of "Conversations with Dead People"

by Klytaimnestra

Wow.

For the first time in forever, I have this strong urge to go hear some spoilers. All the spoilers I can get. Anything to tell me that I didn't see what I saw. I mean, oh my sweet Lord. Oh my. Merciful heavens.

However, I will be strong.

What a brilliant episode.

Favourite lines: all spoken by Andrew and Jonathan. Especially "It eats you beginning with the bottom." Stick to Klingon, Andrew ...

I can't remember when I have been really terrified by a Buffy episode before, but that entire scene with Dawn petrified me. And the knocking - shades of "the monkey's paw"! Did anyone else think of Dawn's attempt to raise her mother from the dead, and what might have come back if she'd succeeded? And Dawn's response to someone else saying "Get out!" was genuinely heroic. (Especially since I would have been right out of there ...)

The conversation between Buffy and the vamp psych major? Incredible. Everything I ever wanted her to say. She was a monster to her last boyfriend; she's done terrible things; she knows he really loved her in his own (sick, soulless) way; but she didn't want to be loved; she felt as if she was beneath everyone (i.e. including him). This is the apology I always wanted from her.

The conversation between Willow and Cassie? I did kind of wonder. Especially when Tara didn't show up. Why not use Tara? I was puzzled. Perhaps Willow would have picked up that something was off more easily if it had been Tara - easier to see when someone you love and know intimately isn't behaving quite 'right'.

I'm still in shock about the multiple endings. First: killing Jonathan? I could see Andrew dying, but Jonathan? Not surprised to see Andrew still in league with the Darth Vader wannabe. But killing Jonathan? And his blood soaking into the sacrificial whatsit, that can't be good? (Especially since I strongly suspect he was a virgin ...)

Right, I'll stop babbling and see what I can do by way of analysis, which is not much, believe me, since all I want to do is gibber. Uh, let's see. No Xander and Anya, a little surprising since they were in the opening "previouslies". Five other characters have conversations with the dead.

The Scoobies are separated in this episode. Five characters each, separately, have conversations with the dead. The Scoobies begin and end the episode alone. The last word in the episode (on the soundtrack) is "alone" ("can I spend the night ... alone.")

Buffy walks into a cemetery alone, and I honestly thought she was going to go visit her mother's or Tara's grave; but her calling, well, calls, and she's there to stake the vampire who shows up. She winds up talking to the newbie - who is a surprisingly good fighter for someone just risen - and who has to spend half an hour reminding her of who he is. And I had the strong impression that she was just pretending she remembered him in order to be polite ("oh, yeah, yeah, you dropped the lighting unit on my foot, I remember now ..." I don't think so, not really.) He induces her to trust him by persuading her to talk about herself. She confesses her fears, hopes, secret doubts, and her entire previous relationship with Spike, once he guesses that her last guy was a vampire. Then he tells her that Spike was the one that turned him.

Willow's in the library, dozing, alone. The newly dead Cassie shows up and induces Willow to trust her by telling her that Tara is there with her, and persuading her this is true by reminding her of the song she and Tara sang on the bridge. She is willing to act as dead spirit medium for Tara, who couldn't be with us tonight because Willow has been so bad. Tara apparently forgives Willow for murdering people but, Cassie says, warns Willow she's going to kill everybody if she ever does a single other spell. Willow objects that Giles warned her against quitting cold turkey. Well, says Cassie, your only other option is to kill yourself.

Dawn is home alone. She spends a little time playing with her sister's weapons and pretending to be Buffy, before things get weird. She hears what she trusts is her mother's voice on the radio. She then sees a demon trying to strangle her mother. She fights truly heroically, conquers her fears, stays in the house when every nerve must have been screaming to run; and she wins. She defeats the demon. She hears the roar of defeat and sees the demonic blood spatter on the walls. The amount of effort she has had to expend to free the mother she believes is trying to talk to her induces her to trust the mother who then appears to her. Her mother tells her that her sister will betray her when it truly matters.

Jonathan doesn't know he's alone. He thinks he's with a friend. Andrew talks to the dead Warren, who leads him and Jonathan to the sacrificial evil goatheaded pentagram whatsit. Warren tells him that if they succeed they'll be gods. Andrew tells Jonathan that really he is alone, since none of the people he cares about care about him. That doesn't matter, says Jonathan, he's there for them anyway.

I love Jonathan. What a mensch. I can't believe he's dead. I can't believe they did that. I'll miss him so very much.

Warren stands over Andrew as Andrew kills Jonathan.

And the last conversation, entirely silent. Spike is sitting silently and morosely in the Bronze. An unnamed blonde woman who looks like a cheap version of Harmony (now there's a frightening thought), blonde, Spike's type, comes and chats up the dead Spike. She is smoking and sets down her cigarettes in front of him - offering him cigarettes, by implication - though we never see him smoke. We see them walking along a street, Spike's hands in his pockets, shy, nerdlish, tentatively enjoying the conversation with this new girl who seems to like him, and do we see the poor boy smile? We do. I checked. She invites him up to her apartment, and we see him stepping back, no, thanks, got to be getting on.

And then we see him rip her throat out and turn away, wiping a stray drop of blood from his lip and licking it off his finger. Still in game face.

And finally Buffy kills the psych major. Cue music: can I spend the night - alone.

Reading back over the entire episode from Willow's unmasking of Cassie. Cassie tells Willow to commit suicide and Willow, the smartest of the bunch and the one who knows the most about evil, finally clues in. "Who are you?" she asks; something the others should have done, but they're too invested in the answer. Buffy wants absolution; Dawn wants her mom, and wants to believe that she can fight evil (demons) as well as Buffy can; Andrew wants to be back with Warren; Spike wants a nice girl to treat him like a real boy. All of them accept the gift offered by their unexpected companions. Only Willow turns down the gift of reunion with Tara, because she recognizes, at last, that this is not Cassie.

And neither are any of the others what they seem. That was not Warren; that was not Joyce Summers; that was not a random vampire who happened to know Buffy from high school, could offer her a fantastic fight right out of the grave, could guess that her last relationship was with a vampire, and could tell her Spike had turned him.

It's the last conversation with the dead that's the most troubling to this list. But here it wasn't the dead guy - Spike -who was the masquerader. It was, like the other conversations, the one who showed up. That was no nice girl who just took a shine to Spike.

How do I know? The cigarettes. This is standard Joss-speak. She was evil.

How do I know Spike hasn't gone evil? He didn't accept a cigarette. Or an offer of sexual activity for that matter. Okay, so he ripped her throat out. But nobody's perfect. (And incidentally: either his chip isn't working, which I guess is what we were supposed to think, or she wasn't human, and he just did a Very Good Thing. My bet is b).)

This whole episode was the Yoko Factor writ large and deadly. Separate the team members, play to their worst fears, offer them their secret desire. And get them where you really want them to be.

So what does this episode tell us? Ultimately, it tells us what the Big Bad really wants, by showing us what it separated the characters from (or tried to). The Big Bad wants Willow either never to use magic again, or to die. It wants Jonathan, I'm sorry, to be dead. Or at least to bleed all over the mystical weird thing. It wants Dawn not to trust Buffy. It wants Buffy (and possibly, when word gets out, everybody) not to trust Spike. And it wants Spike not to trust himself; his own ability to control his vampiric impulses.

Which makes me extremely hopeful for the season. Okay, so maybe this is flailing fanwanking, and I swore I wasn't going to do that again after last year, but frankly, that conversation in the graveyard proves that all of us were right all along - Buffy WAS behaving like a monster, we were SUPPOSED to think that, we were right all along. And yes she knew he loved her, we were right about that too.

So maybe a little fanwanking is okay about now, since it turns out that we were right about everything else. And it seems to me that now that we know what the Big Bad wants, we know what the Scoobies have to do to defeat the Big Bad.

Willow has to trust her magic. Dawn has to trust Buffy. Buffy has to trust Spike. Spike has to trust himself. And Jonathan has to not die.

So we may already be down one, since Jonathan sure wasn't looking too healthy.

But that's not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is,

We have to trust ME. AAAAAAAHHHHHH .....

I want next week's episode NOW, no fooling around, I cannot stand the suspense ...

Kly

p.s. Did I mention that I really hope that Jonathan isn't dead? A gamefaced Spike licking blood off his fingers over the body of his latest victim I can stand for some reason. But poor sweet redeemed Jonathan dying that way? Please no ...