At the climax of What’s My Line? Part Two, Drusilla rises from the ashes of a destroyed church, restored to full strength in a floor-length black dress – a true gothic phoenix. She carries Spike in her arms, Pieta-style, in the same manner as he carried her back in Part One, which makes the meaning of this scene very clear – she has replaced him as the Big Bad. Just as Spike rose from the literal ashes of the Anointed One, so too Drusilla rises from Spike’s less literal ones.
This was originally meant to be Spike’s death, of course, if not for James Marsters’ performance and the popularity of his character convincing Whedon to keep him around a little longer. He survives thanks to this, but the structure of the season still demands that Spike is no longer a physical threat or a driver of the plot. So from here on he must be consigned to a wheelchair, restricted mainly to making catty comments in the background. This is not particularly a bad thing – it’s where Marsters shows his aplomb in making catty comments. That will be the purpose he is brought back for in season four. But it is an indication of his position as somewhat of a loose end for this section of the season. The writers don’t really work out what they’re doing with him until the moment he knocks out a cop in Becoming.
So for this episode, Drusilla takes centre stage as the Big Bad. And it really is just this episode – neither Spike nor Drusilla feature between What’s My Line and Surprise, and the next episode will bring Angelus firmly into the role. Juliet Landau grabs the chance by the horns though, and delivers a performance full of giddy insanity – stalking Buffy in her dreams, dramatically tearing roses, threatening to poke eyes out with flourish, and putting into action a plan to burn all humanity off the face of the Earth. As far as Big Bads go, it’s not a bad return.
We have already discussed Drusilla’s status as Buffy’s mirror, and potential future self, and this episode goes to lengths to drive that home. They share the same birthday, and their two parties shape the course of this episode, as do the gifts that they receive from their vampire boyfriends (Spike’s gift of the Judge driving the plot, and Angel’s gift of the Claddagh ring driving the emotional centrepiece). In Buffy’s second dream, she and Drusilla both wear the same white silk dress. At the climax, when Buffy and Angel are captured, Drusilla tells them that she dreamed they’d come – indicating that she was having similar prophetic dreams to Buffy, if not the exact same ones.
“I only dreamed you’d come.”
Drusilla, 2×13 Surprise
Drusilla is not a Shadow Self of Buffy – she does not represent repressed desires or personality traits that the protagonist must incorporate into her conscious self – but rather she is a dark reflection. An inverted imprint of the hero, and a potential tragic future. The mental anguish that Buffy must overcome in the second half of the season is the same mental anguish that Drusilla was not able to overcome – insanity inflicted by Angel in the name of obsessive love and passion. Just like Darla in season one, she has shades of Vampire Buffy – a look at a hypothetical vampiric version of her, where she does not overcome the emotional challenges that the show throws at her.
The main weapon that Drusilla possesses in this episode, as far as Buffy’s emotions are concerned, is not her world-ending build-a-demon, but the stake that she drives into Angel’s heart. She threatens to kill him, which is something Buffy, due to her love, cannot abide. But Drusilla is Buffy, and we know how this season will end. Giles suggests in this episode that not all her prophetic dreams come true, but this one does – in Becoming, when Buffy drives a sword through Angel’s chest.
In What’s My Line, Drusilla was restored by Angel’s blood – the same blood that gave her this curse of eternal life originally, the same blood that will awaken Acathla at season’s end. And since we are in 1998, before Fool for Love’s well-advised retcon, technically the blood that sired Spike too. Angel’s blood creates every Big Bad that exists after the Anointed One. He is the key to this entire season – constructing all the strife that exists within it.
In this episode, he is captured, strung up, his blood is drained from him in order to resurrect a great evil. Helpless until his girlfriend/champion comes to rescue him. He is the classic virgin sacrifice – a double subversion on the trope due to both his gender and his existence as an unholy, corrupted vampire. It is a smarter and subtler version of what Teacher’s Pet did with its “virgin sacrifices”. And it is very interesting to keep in mind as we head into this episode, which is all dealing with the subject of Buffy’s rapidly diminishing virginity.
The entire concept of virginity is, of course, a constructed patriarchal notion; a mythical dichotomy that attempts to sort women into two disparate states of being: Virgin and Non-Virgin. They can be transferred between this state by the brief presence, or lack thereof, of a penis inside a vagina. It is a transparently ridiculous notion, yet one that is ingrained, both in our culture, and in our media language. It is used as equivalent shorthand for innocence .vs. degeneracy, for purity .vs. corruption, for white .vs. black, for childhood .vs. adulthood. And so we need to acknowledge the way in which sex and virginity are used in this episode to speak to those themes. As feminists, we must know that virginity is bullshit. As television analysts, we must know that this episode is about virginity, and that matters.
This theme is made as obvious as the Drusilla/Buffy parallels, and the symbolism used buys into all the aforementioned outdated notions. The meaning of the repeated shots of Buffy in a pure white dress is obvious, as is the choice to literally name the next episode Innocence. Slightly more obscure is the symbolism in the breaking plate – but as it is paired with the question “do you really think you’re ready?” in an episode all about sex and virginity, I am unfortunately fairly confident that the plate is meant to represent a hymen. Which is very gross and innacurate, but does contribute towards this theme. More entertaining is the running joke in this episode about Buffy and Angel – how after every fight, whether it be by rain or jumping into the harbour, they always seem to end up wet.
Most delightful of all is the visual reference in the final Buffy/Angel scene, which is directed to look like Marianne Stokes’ Death and the Maiden piece. This motif was a common recurrence in renaissance art, depicting a young woman (implicitly a virgin) alongside a personification of death[3]. It was an erotic twist on the Danse Macabre genre; a genre used to express the universality of death. It is an appropriate inspiration for this scene between a girl and her vampire lover. Sex is as much as inevitability for them at this stage as death is for everyone. It is as present in their interactions as death always is for Angel, the living dead man. Sex and death are both omnipresent.
We are reminded of both in Buffy and Angel’s first scene together. Their constant lust, expressed in uncontrollable kissing, interrupts first Buffy’s worries over her prophetic dream and possible vampire threats, and then later interrupts her attempts to go to school. Both sides of Buffy – Slayer and Girl – are being interrupted by her passions. Her accidental innuendo of stating that she wants to see him “at bed time” is obviously a sexual reference, but also a reminder of Angel’s vampiric status. His life is backwards – first thing in the morning is bed time for her. If they are to meet in intimacy, they have to meet from opposite ends.
This scene leads into Buffy’s talk with Willow, where she expresses her desire to have sex with Angel. It’s a fairly mature and honest moment from Buffy, and I think it disproves any notion that Buffy rushed into anything with Angel, or that she was blinded by passion. In fact, it gives us an indication that even before the events of Innocence, Buffy is prone to censoring her own desires.
“Will, what am I gonna do?”
Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg, 2×13 Surprise
“What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know. I mean, ‘want’ isn’t always the right thing to do. To act on want can be wrong.”
A lot of Buffy’s actions in her sexual and romantic relationships later on in the series stem from her tendency to feel guilt and shame over her own desires. We see this largely in her relationship with Spike, most clearly expressed in her breakdown at the end of Dead Things, where she is repulsed with herself largely because she is having sex with Spike, and that she wants to have sex with Spike. It can also be seen in the way she constructs a relationship with Riley that does not seem to give her adequate satisfaction, or in the way she denies Faith’s clearly true statements about slaying being tied to sexual desire in season three (and, I would argue, represses her attraction towards her). Much of this can be traced back to the initial trauma, of her first sexual experience turning out about as bad as it is possible for a sexual experience to turn out. Yet this line shows us that it goes deeper than that. Buffy always held an instinct to censor her desires. She possesses a guilt-laden belief that acting on want can be a moral vice (rather than the morally neutral act it actually is).
Willow reminds her of her own previous advice – calling back to Welcome to the Hellmouth – to seize the day, and embrace her desires. Willow takes this advice herself – making conversation with Oz and inviting him to Buffy’s surprise party. They strike up some healthy two-way communication – Oz warning her in advance that he is going to ask her out, and Willow warning him in advance that she will say yes. On the opposite side of this functional relationship spectrum are Cordelia and Xander, who have no healthy communication. The latter struggles to coherently ask out Cordelia in actual words, and the former immediately turns to insulting him in response. Despite having had the physical intimacy that Willow and Oz have not yet had (and that Willow will express a want for in the next couple of episodes) for five episodes now, they have not yet established the healthy expression of emotion that Willow and Oz already possess.
“I’m gonna ask you to go out with me tomorrow night. And I’m kinda nervous about it, actually. It’s interesting.”
Oz and Willow Rosenberg, 2×13 Surprise
“Oh. Well, if it helps at all, I’m gonna say yes.”
“Yeah, it helps. It-it creates a comfort zone.”
“Um, so, uh… You’re going, and, and, and I’m going. Should… we maybe… go?”
Xander Harris and Cordelia Chase, 2×13 Surprise
“Why? (…) Well, of course you wanna tell everybody. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I, on the other hand, have everything to be ashamed of.”
Both these relationships exist to frame our main romance – Buffy and Angel. Xander/Cordelia possess growing physical intimacy but no communication skills, while Willow/Oz possess communication skills and no physical intimacy. Buffy/Angel show signs of having both. Just having either one would not be a complete relationship for them. In the episode’s climactic scene, they must use both. Buffy allows herself to act upon her desires, and communicates clearly to him that this is what she wants.
“Buffy, maybe we shouldn’t…”
Angel and Buffy Summers, 2×13 Surprise
“Don’t. Just kiss me.”
This episode holds two major twists that shape the direction of two intertwined characters. The first of these pertains to Jenny Calendar, who we discover is in fact Janna Kalderash, a member of the Romani tribe that originally cursed Angel with his soul. This was not part of the original plan for Jenny’s character, as Robia LaMorte confirmed at a convention in 2016[1] (credit to dreadfulcalendarwoman on tumblr for locating this titbit) – and in honesty that is fairly transparent. There has been little foreshadowing for this revelation; no ambiguity presented over her motives, no previously unexplained behaviours. Jenny does not seem to have put much effort into keeping Buffy and Angel apart, or getting closer to Angel in any way. Under a Doylist lens, we understand that this is because of the late decision to add this part of her backstory. Under a Watsonian lens, we must conclude that Jenny is either the greatest spy ever, or the worst.
The handling of Romani representation here is, as is always the case with issues of race in the Buffyverse, mixed at best. The show consistently uses a slur they have no right to reclaim to refer to Romani people throughout its entire run, in a total lack of self-awareness, and the actual depiction of Romani characters is little better. Nikolina Dobreva (who, despite Google’s confusion at them sharing the same actual name, is definitely a scholar and not Canadian actress and star of The Vampire Diaries Nina Dobrev) calls out the problematic nature of the way these characters are othered, with “irrevocably forgeign” dress and speech, and association with vague mysticism and spookiness[2]. Yet she also does praise the character of Jenny herself – calling her one of the most positive representations of a Romani woman in several decades. The representation could certainly be better, and yet this is perhaps better than having no representation at all. (Perhaps. There are no easy answers here.)
The second of these twists, and irrevocably related to Jenny’s eventual fate, is the awakening of Angelus at episode’s end. We do not see Angelus himself – we are simply left with the cliffhanger of Angel screaming Buffy’s name in the rain – but as rewatchers we know that this is the moment. It is the first of three twists in the series that have a formerly heroic character turn heel and become a Big Bad (all three of which come after a night of literal or metaphorical sex, which is its own can of worms). Most importantly, it is the first big twist period. The show becomes so adept at shifting gears and taking a sudden, radical new direction mid-season, and apart from arguably the revelation of Angel’s vampirism in Angel, this is the first instance of that.
Fans are not universal in their perception of when exactly the show comes into its own – Grows the Beard as TVTropes would say – but few point to any moment later than this. We stand on the threshold, on the cusp of greatness, about to enter the show’s Golden Era – not necessarily the show at its best, but the show at its most uncontroversially beloved. The next season and a half define what many people think of when they think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are at the top of the rollercoaster, about to barrel down. And in spite of all issues of representation, handling of sexuality, and vampire cowboys we have endured rising up to this point – that is more than a little exciting.
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References:
[1] https://kathubs.tumblr.com/post/161010761332/happy-birthday-jenny-calendar-heres-robia
[2] Dobreva, Nikolina Ivantcheva, “The curse of the traveling dancer: Romani representation from 19th-century European literature to Hollywood film and beyond” (2009), pp. 209–213.
[3] https://eclecticlight.co/2020/01/05/paintings-for-our-time-death-and-the-maiden/
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