From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #126 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Sunday, June 4 2000 Volume 02 : Number 126 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/restlessmap3 ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/restlessmap4 ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/restlessnotes ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 01:16:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/restlessmap3 IV Giles' Dream (time ca. 6:00) DP: Buffy, Giles, Olivia, Spike, Willow, Xander, Anya SCENE 1: Giles' apartment Giles' torso, in a suit, with a pocketwatch swinging in front of it. Stop thinking, he says quietly. Extreme closeup of Buffy's face. "Let it wash over you." Buffy thinks this is very old-fashioned. She's sitting in a chair in the otherwise-furnitureless apartment. This is how women and men have behaved since before time: "Look into the light," he says. Buffy laughs. SCENE 2: The fair A topiary elephant with tiny lights. Buffy, in red shirt and overalls (--> "Helpless"), hair in braids, acting like a small child, is afraid they'll miss the good stuff. "Come on!" Olivia walks next to Giles pushing an empty pram. Is Buffy always so eager to train? she wonders. She doesn't know the fable about patience, says Giles...and the fox. Buffy stops at a "Count Drac" booth, where a large puppet bobs up and down saying "I am a vampire!" Buffy throws a large yellow ball and misses badly (--> "Helpless"). Giles chides her about her birthright to protect mankind; Buffy is abashed. Her elbow, Giles reminds her. The second time she hits the vampire ("You staked me!") and spins around, her face childishly bright. No treats, says Giles (--> "Bad Girls," "I get a cookie!"). Olivia thinks he should go easy on her. A vendor hands Buffy cotton candy; Giles worries she'll get it all over her face. Buffy turns; blue goo covers her entire face, forming a mask. The image goes color-negative. (--> Buffy's Dream) "I know you," says Giles, a doubled afterimage and his voice echoing. This time it's Spike agitating that they'll miss stuff; Giles follows into a small sidebuilding... SCENE 3: Spike's sideshow Olivia is sitting in the background, crying, looking pregnant. Don't push, says Giles, he has a lot to do. Spike (shot in black&white) has hired himself out as an attraction, striking vampire poses to oohs and ahs and flashbulbs. Giles should make up his mind--time's wasting--he should figure it out with his big squishy frontal lobe. Buffy should have killed him, Giles says. He gets up to leave, and encounters CHEESE MAN, slices on his forehead. "I wear the cheese, it does not wear me." Appalling people, Giles mutters. SCENE 3: The Bronze Giles walks through into the Bronze; apparently this is where his furniture went. Willow and Xander (with "sucking chest wound") are sitting on Giles' couch, researching in old books. He apologizes for being late, lots going on...just so, says Willow. They're at death's door, pointing to Xander, who fears he's going to be pushing up the daisies on Anya's big night. Anya is onstage attempting laboriously to tell a joke ("Wait--there's a duck.") She warns a heckler he'll miss the humorous conclusion. Giles thinks she's doing well. It's Giles' fault, says Willow. He's busy--a gig himself, Giles replies. Something's after them--some primal animal force, Willow points out. Used to be us, replies Giles. Xander accuses Giles of going linear. Anya finishes her joke (the man who goes into the doctor's office with a duck on his head and the duck says "there's a man attached to my ass."). Everyone (especially Xander) laughs; It was the duck who spoke! says Anya delightedly. Willow says, "Rupert"(!!), and reminds him to focus and find an explanation: if they don't know what they're fighting they have no chance. Giles begins to sing! Not like anything they've fought before, but familiar, he croons, as he takes the stage microphone to a rock song; the spell they did together must have released primal evil-- Willow should check the =Chronicles= about a warrior beast--Buffy could be next, she should be warned (Willow and several others are holding up lighters)--Willow and Xander should be sure not to bleed on his couch. "Wait!" he says; there's a squeal of feedback and the band stops. Giles follows the microphone cord around the corner on his hands and knees, and in a pile of cords he finds...the pocketwatch. Obvious, he says, he knows who it is (in a flash of lightning we see the 1st Slayer standing over him). I'll defeat you with my intellect, he says, cripple you with my thoughts (the 1st Slayer grabs his hair, starts to scalp him with a huge knife [--> "Puppet Show"]), you underestimate me because you never had a Watcher... Blood runs down his head. In the living room Giles' hand trembles severely. [BLACKOUT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 01:19:17 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/restlessmap4 V Buffy's Dream (time ca. 9:15) DP: Anya, Buffy, Tara, Joyce, [Xander,] Riley, Adam SCENE 1: Buffy and Willow's dorm room Anya, from Willow's bed, is whispering frantically for Buffy to wake up. From her own bed, Buffy retorts she's not in charge of that; besides, she needs her beauty sleep. She rolls onto her back...and sees a flash-vision of the 1st Slayer in chains hanging from the ceiling. She starts awake in her room at her mother's house. SCENE 2: Buffy's bedroom Her own voice comes from offscreen: "Faith and I just made that bed." (--> "This Year's Girl") Cut to Buffy standing at the doorway. Cut back to the bed: empty but rumpled. Tara's voice wants to know for whom (they made the bed). (Tara is standing near Buffy.) Buffy was hoping Tara was there to tell her; but Tara is silent. Are the guys here? They were going to hang out and watch movies... You lost them, says Tara. No! replies Buffy, they need me to find them. She looks at the clock: 7:30. So late! she laments. The clock is all wrong, Tara assures her, and hands her the =Manus= "tarot card." Buffy replies she's never going to use those. "You think you know--what's to come?" says Tara. "What you are? You haven't even begun." (--> Epilogue) The bed is made. Buffy takes her leave. "Back before dawn," says Tara after she goes. SCENE 3: The college halls Buffy asks a random student where her friends are; they just wouldn't disappear, she avers. While walking and looking, she notices a hole in the wall about head-high; peers in. "Mom?" Joyce, at the hole, greets her brightly, she's fine, it's not so dirty, she's made lemonade and is learning to play mah jongg, Buffy should run along and find her friends. Buffy, perturbed, thinks they're in danger. Joyce laughs, blames it on a mouse tickling her knees. Buffy, telling Joyce she shouldn't stay there, catches sight of Xander in the distance going up the stairs; Joyce, as Buffy leaves, supposed Buffy could break through the wall... We see Buffy's sandalled feet walking from left to right (to the future?) SCENE 4: The Initiative Buffy enters a kind of "war room" where Riley sits at a table with another man. Riley greets her as "Killer." He's back? Never left; debriefing was great, they made him Surgeon General. He didn't tell her! They could have celebrated! Well, they have a plan for world domination. "The key element? Coffeemakers that think!" Buffy wonders if that's "a good." A dramatic shot from under the glass table on Riley and a gun resting on the top. "Baby, we're the government. It's what we do." The other man speaks. At some point in the scene we realize he's Adam, in fully human form. She's "uncomfortable with certain concepts," he says. Understandable; aggression is a natural human tendency; though he and Buffy (addressing her) come by it a different way. A shot of Buffy, the 1st Slayer behind her like her literal shadow. "We're not demons," she insists. "Is that a fact?" says Adam, very pointedly. (The return shot of Buffy shows the 1st Slayer gone.) Riley says they have things to do, filing, giving things names... Buffy looks at Adam and asks his name. "Before Adam?" (The lights go out.) "Not a man among us can remember." A mechanical female voice says the demons have escaped, run for your lives. Riley and Adam jump up. Trouble; build a fort; get pillows. They rush off. Buffy, very apprehensive, doesn't move for a moment; looks at her feet, and sees her slaying bag. "Wait!" she whispers plaintively. "I have weapons!" All that's in the bag, however, is a layer of blue goo. She works her hands into it and carefully spreads it on her face for a masklike effect; the color-negative effect happens again (--> Giles' Dream). Riley is back. He calls her "Killer" again, and says rather sharply that if she's looking for her friends she's on her own. He leaves. SCENE 5: The desert Buffy's sandalled feet walk right to left this time (to the past?), from floor to sand, and she passes the last bit of wall and onto a steep slope in a desert landscape (boulders, brush); we hear SlayMusic as the camera pulls back until Buffy is a tiny figure in a large landscape (--> =X-Files= movie?). Cut back to a tight closeup on Buffy's face. "I'm never going to find them here." No, says Tara, walking in several jump-cuts from a distance. Buffy says Tara is not in her dream, but Tara says she's borrowed, to speak for "her." She should speak for herself, Buffy says, it's what's done in polite circles. We now get our first good look at the 1st Slayer, coming from behind Buffy and circling to face her, crouched in hunterlike stance. She looks aborigine, at a venture; white goo making a mask of her face, dreadlocks, thin white muslinlike stuff wrapping some of her body, clawlike fingernails. She doesn't speak, but gestures in concert with what Tara says for her. Why is she following Buffy? She shakes her head. Where are Buffy's friends? Wrong question. Buffy insists she speak. "I have no speech," says Tara. "No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am Destruction, absolute, alone." It dawns on Buffy. "The Slayer?" "The First," Tara replies. (--> "Amends"?) Buffy is holding tarot cards; on the top one we see a moving picture of her and her friends gathered at Joyce's. Not alone, she affirms. "The Slayer does not walk in this world," says Tara for the 1st Slayer. "I walk," replies Buffy. "I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm going to be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones. Now give me back my friends!" The 1st Slayer struggles to speak herself, in a raspy whisper. "No...friends. Just...kill. We are...alone." CHEESE MAN leans in, waving two slices. "That's it, I'm waking up," Buffy says decisively. But the 1st Slayer attacks, and they fight. Cut to a couple long shots, in absolute silence. Buffy tells the 1st Slayer that it's over, we don't do this anymore. 1st Slayer attacks again, and they roll over and over down the long slope, left to right (back to the future?) Buffy's voice comes in: "ENOUGH!" SCENE 6: The living room Buffy wakes up on the floor of the living room, as though she's rolled off the couch in her sleep. (Her head scar from "Primeval," absent throughout the dream, is back.) She struggles to get up... ...and the 1st Slayer jumps on her, and stabs several times just beside her head. Buffy rolls her eyes and asks if she's quite finished. It's over, she's ignoring her, she should go away, get over the primal power thing, "you're not the source of me," and as for the haircare question... ...in midsentence Buffy awakes on the couch. Giles, Willow, and Xander are stirring awake around her. EPILOGUE (time ca. 2:00) DP: Willow, Xander, Giles, Buffy, Joyce The 1st Slayer! says Willow, wonderingly. Giles muses that their joining with Buffy and invoking the essence of Slayer power was an affront to the power's source. Should have said so before they did it, grumps Buffy. He said there could be dire consequences! He says that about chewing too fast, retorts Buffy. Joyce comes in, sure she's missed the fun. "The First Slayer tried to kill us in our dreams," says Willow. Oh. Anyone want cocoa? Xander be my carrying buddy? replies Joyce. Stumblingly, Xander first calls her Joyce, then "Buffy's Mom." Buffy assures a concerned Giles that she's OK; never thought about the 1st Slayer. It was intense...as they all had a taste. Buffy should keep her Slayer friends out of their dreams, Xander insists. At least they didn't dream about CHEESE MAN, Buffy says, leaving them exchanging bemused glances as she goes upstairs to get in the shower. She pauses by her bedroom door; the shot is from the head of the bed so the white bedspread dominates the frame, and we hear Tara's voice again: "You think you know--what's to come? What you are? You haven't even begun." [BLACKOUT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 01:22:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/restlessnotes Yeah, I know, that got really long (and took me forever to get around to); but once I started it seemed necessary, this once, to do the whole synopsis thing to get all the facts (tropes) down in order. Now for some "marginal" notes going through, and some longer comments later. - --Seem to be the usual 4th season series credits. Anyone notice any difference? - --The episode credits run on the Prologue, finishing during the last image with "Written and Directed by Joss Whedon." Guess he wanted to keep the credits off the dreams themselves, which might explain flopping the series credits and the "teaser." - --Note Xander's double entendre about Joyce, "in the clinch." (--> Xander's Dream) - --Wonder if it's significant that the Buffy/Faith dream had a cat in it, who was Faith's double. Is the slow-motion cat-without-a-name Tara's double (Tara casting doubt on her real name)? And how about the cat (a symbol of "animal force" [--> Giles' Dream] taking an interest in the 1st Slayer lurking outside? And Tara later (--> Buffy's Dream) speaking for the "nameless" 1st Slayer? (We'll get into Tara's role more later.) - --We assume that the constant topic of what people will "find out" about Willow is her relationship with Tara. This impression remains most of the dream. - --Oz' appearances in Willow's dream are oddly uncomfortable; she apparently feels ambivalent about how he feels about her. - --=Another= double entendre from Xander. - --Is Vapid Buffy (who nearly was a Cordelia-crony) a double of Harmony (who =was= a Cordelia-crony)? - --Silence falling seems to be an important motif. - --Another motif seems to be gender conflict (Flapper Buffy's speech). More on this later. - --Typical of Willow to worry that it's something she hasn't done that's after her. - --Clever hint where what we don't yet know is the 1st Slayer attacks Willow through the curtains, then the current Slayer (Buffy) reaches out to her through the curtains. - --Near the end we discover that what Willow's worried about is that people will find out she's still a nerd! (--> Percy calling her a nerd in "Doomed") Fundamentally, in the end it's a classroom anxiety dream. - --Wondering what the sudden aging of Willow's face signifies. - --On to Xander. His is the longest and most episodic dream. - --Each dream starts with the dreamer in a safe place: Willow at Tara's, Giles in his apartment, Buffy in her bedroom(s). Xander doesn't have a safe place (certainly not his basement!), so his dream's safe start is in the living room; it's the only one that's ambiguous as to whether it's a dream or not; we're not =absolutely= sure until Xander goes upstairs (though the "new car smell" flavor is a betraying detail). - --Loved Giles' comment that it's "all about the journey." Self-reference alert... - --Remember Telepath Buffy's question to Xander (--> "Earshot") if sex was "all he ever thought about"? This dream illustrates the truth of that rhetorical question; he has "thoughts" about all the women in his dream, I believe. - --Nice rule-of-three patterning of Basement Interludes, early, middle, and late; essentially identical, or rather all three increments of the same "scene." - --The whole "triangle" of Giles, Spike, and Xander is quite curious. Spike a Watcher?? Like a son?? And what does Xander mean that he was into that for awhile? Son, or Watcher? - --I think Willow's dream is the only one where the dreamer isn't "doubled" somehow along the way. Nice trope where Xander is watching himself across the playground, and it makes a smooth scene-change. - --=Really= cool, eerie flash-forward to Buffy's Dream. - --Xander's resigned "Brother" to Buffy indicates (not otherwise obvious) that he has "thoughts" about her, too. It's a very interesting exchange altogether, with the typical riff of Xander worrying about Buffy (and wanting to help), and Buffy replying she's got it covered (--> all the way back to "The Harvest"), and then the very long (never broken, in fact) rather intense stare. - --And if Xander is Big Brother...does that make Buffy Little Sister? (We've got too many candidates already.) (--> Faith referring to herself as Big Sister in "Graduation Day I.") - --Anya is absolutely hilarious in both Xander's Dream and Giles' Dream. - --What's with the no-lips-moving routine? Guilty feelings on Xander's part? - --Willow's way ahead of Xander, too. (But not his Little Sister.) Probably just Xander's perennial left-out anxiety. - --Note Joss Whedon meekly following the WB's mandate and keeping Willow and Tara kissing offscreen. - --Why French? (--> "Primeval" for Giles' linguistic knowledge, and Buffy studying French instead of Sumerian.) - --Xander (soldier, not Slayer) briefly has a "native shadow" (--> Buffy's Dream), and an "echo self" (--> Giles' Dream) - --I'd love to know from someone who knows =Apocalypse Now= how much (if any) of Snyder's speeches are from the movie. Especially the "whipping boy" one. (Otherwise, it's about Xander being "the Zeppo.") - --Very curious that Xander's father (whom we've never seen, or heard) doubles the 1st Slayer, and Xander (a soldier, remember) doubles both Adam and Riley (with the "power source" pulled from his chest). If he's Big Brother...is he somehow a double of the Slayer, too? (Last of the line?) - --And now Giles. Odd his furniture being moved to the Bronze...maybe it's just that he's feeling more comfortable with, or longing for, a musical career. - --Giles hypnotizing Buffy, and thinking of himself as a father-figure, is of course --> "Helpless." - --And note Spike "doubling" Buffy (--> Xander's Dream). - --Childe Buffy "staking" Count Drac at the fair booth is a hilarious "translation" of her training with Giles. - --Olivia pregnant? pushing a pram? Might be this is just Giles' parental-issue anxiety dream. - --Why is Spike filmed posing in black&white? Are his poses Bela Lugosi references? (It's not "silent": Spike hardly shuts up the whole time.) - --It becomes clear here that the four dreams are consecutive, not simultaneous; furthermore they form, as a group, a "typical" =Buffy= episode: Something's Lurking/Let's Research/Buffy Faces Alone. This obviously is the Let's Research portion. - --I've been wondering if the duck joke is not random: does it refer to the Buffy/1st Slayer pair and the question of who speaks? - --Not sure what it means that Willow addresses Giles as "Rupert." - --Tremendously clever to have Giles' "expository lump" (done as a silent overhead-projector presentation --> "Hush") be a musical number! - --I think each dream has a cry of "Wait!" at a significant juncture. - --Hey, Bob, how about those lighters? - --Nice "rhyme" to have the pocketwatch show up again at the end...but what does it mean? How does it signal Giles that it's the 1st Slayer? - --On to Buffy. Note that the Slayer, the most experienced dreamer, is the most aware of the four that she =is= dreaming. And prima donna enough to insist on deciding herself when she will wake up. - --The 1st Slayer manifests earliest in Buffy's Dream. (Second earliest in Willow's, later in Xander's, very late in Giles'.) - --I'm bothered by the scene that echoes Faith's version of the Buffy/Faith dream (--> "Graduation Day" II, "This Year's Girl"); it implies more "leakage" between the dreams than I've been willing to allow. But it's a spooky linkage; essentially the "same" dream, the bed made, the blind reference to Little Sister (whom the bed's made for, the "730" reference), Buffy's sudden need to leave. - --Tara stands in for Faith, here, as she does for the 1st Slayer later; what's =that= all about? - --Note that Buffy rejects her "tarot card." More on this later. - --More later also on Tara's repeated oracular oration. - --Any guesses what the "back before dawn" comment means? - --It's very significant that (except for that little Xander bit) the other three dreamers do =not= appear in Buffy's Dream. (She appears in all four; Xander, Willow, and Giles all appear in each other's.) - --Anya has small roles (larger in Xander's) in all four dreams. Tara is in all but Giles' rather short dream. - --Repeated viewings make me surer that Buffy's walking in different directions (and the rolling down the hill near the end) are symbolic of past and future. - --The Riley/Adam scene is intensely interesting; right from the start there's a distinct current of unease between Buffy and Riley (him calling her Killer, her accusing him of "forgetting" her), which only gets worse when Adam (Riley's double) gets into the act: the "not demons"/"oh yeah?" exchange is well worth pondering. Obviously Buffy is still anxious about Riley's military connection, and fears she could still lose him to soldiering. And remember Buffy's previous dream (--> "Hush") where Riley turned into a Gentleman! Riley ending up being nasty to her at the end of the scene has several interesting resonances. - --The blue goo and the special effect. Very bizarre and eerie; obviously it's a connecting motif between Buffy and the 1st Slayer, though we don't know that at first. - --I'm kind of speechless myself in the face of the climactic scene in the desert. Multiple viewings have not diminished its effect. I probably went overboard reproducing so much of the text, but it floors me every time. And I'm going to pause here, because what else I have to say about the episode ties into issues I have things to say about at length. - --Oh, one last thing: it's all about the bedspread. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #126 *****************************