Why I'd like to partially return The Gift

[rebcake]

There's been a lot of love on my f-list lately for The Gift. You know, the season 5 closer of that classic television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer? There is a whole bunch of really marvelous stuff in that episode. First among them is the wonderful riff on the St. Crispin's Day speech, perhaps my favorite moment ever between Spike and Giles:

GILES: "We few..."
GILES/SPIKE: "we happy few…"
SPIKE: "We band of buggered..."

There's the terribly sweet moment when Buffy and Spike head back to the house for weapons. There's the very cute opening with Buffy going back to basics protecting the hapless guy in the alley. Anya gets to shine in a way that just makes me wish she'd had the chance more often. Willow needing "courage" and Spike's response always cracks me up, as does the bit in the shop with the troll hammer. All those things are great — but it really isn't one of my favorite episodes. For late-season 5, I prefer Checkpoint, Intervention, and even Spiral to the finale.

I have my reasons. As a general rule, I don't count the episodes wherein my darlings die as "favorites". Since Buffy — the lead, the heroine, my girl — meets her end in this, I can't really love it. Also, Dawn being so thoroughly endangered is not enjoyable to me. But the real reason I'm not as enthusiastic as some is that I can't made sense of the ending.

Yeah, yeah. "It's Summers blood." "The monks made her out of me." "Death is your gift." "It's always gotta be blood." I get all that. But...Buffy's blood is NOT Dawn's blood. Buffy is NOT the Key. If she were, Glory could've gone for her, and she didn't. So I just don't buy that Buffy's literal life's blood is interchangeable with Dawn's, however much she might wish it. The ending that would have made sense to me is Buffy thinking she had figured it out and making the ultimate sacrifice...but being wrong. That she wasn't wrong is sort of unbelievable. I've read fic wherein Spike drains or almost drains Dawn to make the blood stop flowing, and I can see that. Buffy jumping? Very heroic and tragically beautiful, but not actually sense-making.

Also, if Buffy dying at this point had been the end of the series, I would not be such a fan. That's not a satisfying finish for me, not as the end to a hero's journey and certainly not a female hero's journey, since those stories are so rare. She comes back in 147 days, so it's moot and I won't belabor it. But I would have been very cross, and disagree with people who wish the story had ended there, just as I disagree — on different grounds — that the show should have ended at Graduation Day.

Obviously, other people have different opinions about this episode and every other thing to do with BtVS, and power to them. I'll just continue on preferring other things about the show.

Comments

[next_to_normal]

Also, if Buffy dying at this point had been the end of the series, I would not be such a fan. That's not a satisfying finish for me, not as the end to a hero's journey and certainly not a female hero's journey, since those stories are so rare.

This is exactly why I could never wish "The Gift" was the series finale. I do love it as an episode, and even as a season finale, but if the show ended with Buffy dying? No, thank you. It ends the show on a failure - Buffy saved the world again, sure, but for all that she was special and different, she still died in battle, just like every other Slayer before her. It negates everything Buffy represented as a feminist hero and a symbol of female power.

I think "Chosen" is actually worse on the sense-making front, but thematically, it's a much better ending to have Buffy overthrowing the patriarchal paradigm rather than succumbing to it.

[rebcake]

Oh, heck yeah. Most definitely agree that Chosen has the better, more exciting, more satisfying conclusion for BtVS, even if it has a few "construction" problems.

In Chosen you've got all this stuff (scythe, guardian, amulet, Buffy's magic pointy boots of Mercury) that got pulled out at the last minute, and they just sort of throw everything at the problem and hope it works...but it does. I can buy that the Scythe can be used to share power — it's a mystic object that brings the whole crop in. I can buy that the amulet amps Spike's awesome to 11 — it's a mystic object that does something powerful. It's clunky storytelling to pull out all these deus ex machina in the last two episodes, but at least the machina is understandable for the most part.

The Gift does a better job introducing things earlier (Daigon sphere, troll hammer, Buffybot), but the last bit upon which everything turns doesn't...quite...make it...into a shape that I can makes sense of. And Buffy dies a martyr's death. Boo.

Buffy-as-victim is pretty much never the story I want to see on the screen.

[slaymesoftly]

Hmmmm - stuff I haven't thought about on here. Not that I do a lot of deep thinking about anything... :) There were so many things about the episode that I liked - not the least of which was the whole scene at Buffy's house when they go back for the weapons - that I don't think the unlikelihood of "it's the blood" thing ever crossed my mind. I just went with the explanation offered. I loved much of Season 5, but mostly because it was a great set up for the two following seasons. The beginning of the relationship really shines in this episode and the fact that Joss trashed it later on really can't detract from that for me.

[rebcake]

Hoo boy! Yeah. There's a lot to love, much of it Spike-related. I even like the "When you say you love ALL of us..." exchange. I can't find fault with any of the Spike bits, actually.

It's just that they've spent the whole season discovering that Dawn is this unique being with powers beyond imagining. Buffy's been working her tail off (they all have, really) to protect her, and now, in the last 5 minutes, Buffy is fully qualified to step in as a substitute for a millennia-old energy matrix. Wha? They lost me there. Perhaps I'm too picky.