Into the Woods

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
SEASON SIX

June 9 2004

"This is a dark ride."

The thing about Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, it should come with a warning sticker. Of the seasons of the show, it's the one that's tonally the least like any of the others; it strikes a radically different mood from its first moments to its last. I have also found it to be among the most rewarding cycles of the series to visit and re-visit: this is daring, balls-out storytelling. It's little wonder that the fans became so divided over this season; you can't take chances like this without pissing off a lot of people.

It's the year when all the characters make disastrous errors in their attempts to grow up, the kind of mistakes which, naturally, open the true road to adulthood and lock youth in the past forever. This lingering malaise and doubt soaks the entire year in darkness; emotional, metaphorical, even literal. The lighting itself seems dimmer than usual, and most of the scenes are played in shadow. Sunlight - such as the golden penumbra that Buffy and Spike share in the closing moments of "After Life," or the harsh afternoon rays that witness Warren's shooting of Buffy and Tara in "Seeing Red," or the heavenly glow that closes "Grave" - plays a very specific thematic role in Season Six, and makes its presence known only rarely.

This was the only season of the series to begin with a 2-hour TV movie, "Bargaining," but this episode is really only the first two thirds of what is actually a 3-part mini-series, "Bargaining" / "After Life," which deals with the seemingly insurmountable task of bringing Buffy back from the dead, after her self-sacrifice in the Season Five closer, "The Gift." It's a slow and cautious entry into the season, taking measured steps to put everything properly into motion. As such, it can seem a bit dry on the first go; you need to know where the series is going to really appreciate the groundwork that these episodes lay. As Joss Whedon has repeatedly said, you don't make an event like Buffy's resurrection happen without serious consequences, and this is a notion that circulates not only through the real-world process of writing Season Six, but within the Buffyverse itself. Spike makes the promise in "After Life," and it's the mantra for the whole year: "There are always consequences." Mistakes, and their ramifications, are the central movers and shakers of the season. They work their way through everybody - Spike, Xander, Dawn, Anya - but, of course, have their biggest and most valuable engagements with Season Six's parallel hell-chasers: resurrected Buffy, and bound-for-darkness Willow.

Willow's arc is the one that the season will be remembered for by most fans, and it's ballsy, gripping storytelling. Willow - largely thanks to Allyson Hannigon's personality - is the heart of Buffy; she's the character who is most keenly a cypher for the audience. To turn her first into a potential threat, then a dangerous addict, then a hollow recoveree, and finally a Big Bad, all in the course of a season, is a major arc for the show to plot, and for the most part, it works like gangbusters. "Wrecked" is a particular highlight, and the season's final four episodes - the "Dark Willow Saga," from "Seeing Red" to "Grave" - are among the best of the whole series. Allyson Hannigan is simply outstanding in this year, painting more colours into Willow than we ever thought possible... and she makes a truly kickass Big Bad. I absolutely love how Dark Willow echoes some of the notes played by Vampire Willow in Season Three's "The Wish" and "Doppelgangland," suggesting that evil - in any universe - will always find its true form.

As a Spike fan, I am of course more interested in Buffy and Spike's arc through this year than I am even in Willow's. No season of Buffy since Season Two has done so much to define the Slayer... only this time, the definition isn't particularly flattering. Buffy's return from the grave isn't cheap, and it isn't easy; it has major consequences that play out throughout the year (and even into next year). Like Hannigan, Sarah Michelle Gellar gives us more range within Buffy than we've ever seen, playing the note-perfect comedy of "Life Serial" with the same deft touch that she applies to the brutal darkness of "Dead Things."

The latter is the lynchpin of Spike and Buffy's relationship, which is outstandingly etched by the series' writers to avoid the usual traps of making such a morally-ambiguous romance too one-sided. Spike and Buffy, paired together, make a fascinating couple. Spike is, unrepentently, undeniably, evil - his shenanigans in "All the Way" notwithstanding, he has proven by "Seeing Red" that there is a satanic level of violence within him that he simply cannot resist. At the same time, however, he is legitimately straining to be more than he is. Where Angel had to be cursed with a soul and spend a hundred years in anguish over his sins, Spike is besotten with a chip and then discovers that really, he's not missing much. When he think the chip has malfunctioned in "Smashed," his attempted return to his old way of life is surprisingly reluctant, tied (of course) more to his hurt feelings about Buffy than any real blood lust. By forcing him not to kill, the chip has forced Spike to recognize that he doesn't really need to; that he could be a better man. So, he does what even Angel could never have thought to do, and quests for his own soul - an act of self-definition that will pay great dividends in Buffy Season Seven and Angel Season Five.

Buffy, on the other hand, is ostensibly the good guy, yet spends the entirety of Season Six straining towards a heretofore-unseen darkness. In "Wrecked," Spike pins it on her - he may be the vampire, but in their relationship, she is the blood-sucker. Therefore, as horrible as it sounds, Spike's attempted rape of Buffy in "Seeing Red" can actually be understood logically within the context of their relationship, a relationship that is built in its entirety on alternating cycles of uncontrollable passion, and intense physical and emotional abuse. This is the Buffy, after all, who beats Spike, literally, into a bloody pulp in "Dead Things," an act of spousal abuse so graphic that I remain astonished that it was permitted to air on television. This is the couple whose first sexual encounter could only come after a fistfight so violent, they actually destroy an entire house, before rutting like bunnies in the rubble. Abuse - of the self and of the other - is the core of Buffy and Spike's relationship in Season Six. It is only because Buffy and Spike are, legitimately, heroes, and capable of learning from their mistakes, that they are able to reverse this cycle of violence - he, by questing for his soul, and she, by mentoring him in Season Seven - once they both understand that the violence has gone too far.

A fantastic element of Season Six is how the writers use the season's two major cycles, Buffy and Willow, though theoretically separate from a narrative point of view, to subtly underscore one another. When Willow gets on the wagon in "Wrecked," her words about addiction unknowingly echo Buffy's feelings about her relationship with Spike, and although Willow does not know it, Buffy signs a pact to give up Spike, just as Willow is to give up magic. Although Willow remains successfully on the wagon until "Seeing Red," Buffy's resolve crumbles immediately, quietly warning the audience that while Willow may seem to have licked her addiction, it just isn't going to be that easy. Similar things happen later in the year, when Buffy breaks up with Spike in "As You Were." It is not long before the symbolism has reversed, and it is Willow's turn to dark magic that is underscoring the notion that Buffy doesn't quite have Spike out of her system yet, either.

So yeah, it's a grim year. Fortunately, it's not without its lighter moments: "Gone" is a delightful little episode, as is "Tabula Rasa," both of which drag the Buffy comedic stylings out for some much-needed air. I'm very fond of "Older and Far Away," which not only contains some great comic moments towards the beginning, but also some surprising character revelations as the stress of being trapped at the Summers house begins to work on each person in a different way, especially Anya.

And it's great to see Riley again in "As You Were," and thankfully, he tosses Buffy onto the road to redemption, so much so that in the episode's closing moments, as she is breaking up with Spike, Douglas Petrie goes an extra step and dresses Buffy in a Season Two costume, reverting her makeup and hairstyle to the designs of that year, provocatively suggesting a new beginning for the character.

But for most fans, and rightly so, Season Six can be broken down into one, 51-minute slice of glory: "Once More, With Feeling." This is the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the Buffyverse, an episode which fans adore with undying passion. It's also the final lynchpin for the seven-year series, making the previous episode ("All the Way") probably the last point at which an outsider can come into the show for the first time. From "OMWF" onward, Buffy is a hermetically-sealed environment, lost in its own deep code, too far gone to be accessed by anyone but the already-initiated. But who cares? The first moment that Buffy opens her mouth and bursts into glorious song is probably one of the single greatest events I've ever seen on television.

"OMWF" is countered nicely by my other favourite of the year, "Dead Things." I don't even know where to start with this one. It contains some of the most powerful images of the entire series: Buffy and Spike on the catwalk above the Bronze, Buffy breaking down in Tara's arms, Buffy beating Spike nearly to death outside the police station. This is the episode where all the light drains out of Sunnydale, seemingly forever, and everything that was funny and cute for the first half of the year gets reinvested with horrible, dark meanings. The Nerds of Doom cease to be a comedy act with Warren's attempted rape, and subsequent murder, of Katrina. Buffy's relationship with Spike ceases to be distracting titillation, as Sarah Michelle Gellar lets fly with an extraordinary performance, showing Buffy completely destabilizing in the wake of realizing that she has no excuses for behaving as she is. As outlined above, it's also the key to the entire Spike/Buffy relationship, as we see just how dark - and how dangerous - Buffy has become in her time back on earth. "Dead Things" isn't for the faint-hearted, and is a paradigm episode for the whole season, as the magic and metaphor of Buffy get shifted uncomfortably sideways, in favour of real-world threats that do not allow us the same comfortable level of distance. In so doing, it becomes an anti-mission statement episode for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, revealing the dark undercurrents of violent reality beneath every goofy monster plot we've been watching for the past five seasons.

And Adam Busch's performance as Warren is simply the most unsettling portrayal in all of Buffy's seven years. It is absolutely impossible, as a viewer, to re-encounter his first appearance in the goofily comic "I Was Made To Love You," after having seen episodes like "Dead Things" or "Seeing Red," without feeling a terrible dread. Warren seems like just another funny little Buffyverse mainstay until you've seen just how far he goes; once you have, you can never laugh at him again. Adam Busch must be pretty brave for playing this character to this pitch; he's one of the few actors in the world that I might actually be compelled to slug, through no fault of his own, if I ever met him in person. Warren is simply too disgusting and upsetting to even contemplate.

The year funnels downward towards its natural conclusion, beginning with "Seeing Red," the Big Scooby Death we all knew was coming, but which remains one of the most tragic and surprising events of the saga. It is a great credit to the writers that they managed to make Amber Benson's Tara so popular a character, given that was was replacing an already über-popular love interest for Willow, Seth Green's Oz. Tara's death introduces one final veil of reality into this all-too-real year of the Buffyverse: the gun. Twice this year - in "Life Serial" and "As You Were" - Buffy has cracked wise about guns, saying that they're never useful. What is so shocking about Warren's murder of Tara, then, is that guns are useful - they are, of course, the most effective method of murder in our world, yet have never really deigned to descend upon the Buffyverse until now. (When Buffy resorts to the use of a rocket launcher in "Innocence," it's a big joke.) Warren has tried to play by Sunnydale rules, conjuring demons, magic, and science fiction gizmos, and has failed on all fronts; it is only by resorting to that most vulgar, real-world weapon - the gun - that he is finally able to dent the Scooby Gang.

I love this year. It's dark as all hell, seriously moody, and puts the characters through their paces in a way unseen since Season Two. Everybody changes bigtime, and that can't help but make for wicked drama, progressing the arc of Buffy in terrific ways and fleshing out themes and ideas from previous seasons with new and interesting subtexts. It's telling, then, that the final moments of "Grave" close with Sarah McLachlan's "Prayer of St. Francis," echoing the use of another of her songs, "Full of Grace," in the final episode of Season Two. The second season of the series ends with Buffy abandoning her life and her friends after devastating loss; appropriately, the second-last season bookends this beautifully by seeing Buffy re-embrace her life and companions in the first real moment of recovery from the horrific losses of Season Five. It is the first step on the journey that will unfold on the largest Buffy canvas to date, in the series' final season.