I just saw the episode where Angel tells Buffy he has a soul on FX last night. Yeah, there was a passing resemblance, but I don’t think Spike was acting Angel-like at all. I saw the episode where Angel comes back from Hell, and the ones following. He never seemed “bug-shagging crazy” (I love that phrase, BTW. Can I borrow it sometime, pepperlandgirl.?) the way Spike has been… Mostly, he seemed broodily incoherent. I don’t think David Boreanaz could have pulled off the insanity scenes that James Marsters has been doing these last two episodes. Oh, and is it me, but did it seem like Spike was not so much hunting that rat as he was trying to engage it in conversation?
I think the “And she shall look on him with forgiveness…and he shall be loved” wasn’t so much a *line *from a poem as it was Spike waxing poetic, as he is sometimes wont to do. I think William the Bloody would be more inclined to try to find a word that rhymes with “effulgent” than to spontaneously say something poetic. I think that was the problem with his poetry- he was too hung up on the construction and phrasing to be able to convey any real feeling.
And I didn’t think the smoking cross scene was cheesy at all. It didn’t have that “these go to eleven” feel to it…In Christian theology, the cross is a powerful symbol of forgiveness and love, and Spike was trying to embrace that, to lean on it for support, and being burned by it from the outside the way his soul was burning him from the inside, and asking,
I dunno. I’d feel terrible if an ex inflicted pain on himself for my sake, but it wouldn’t make me love him again. This puts a huge moral burden on Buffy, and I could see that causing a lot of resentment. If she’s responsible for Spike seeking a soul, then in a lot of ways, she’s responsible for him now that he has one. She’s already dealing with one big moral responsibility that she didn’t ask for–Dawn–and I’m not sure she’ll welcome another.
I took it as stalking- ala Angel after he got his “filthy soul” back. Remember the part about him living on rats. Maybe simple coincidence on that point though.
What touched me about Spike’s scene was the implication that he’d gotten his soul back so that he’d be the kind of man who wouldn’t hurt Buffy. I don’t think that it was to win her back; he wanted to be sure that the attempted rape scene would never play out again.
I think you’re right MrVisible. He wanted to give Buffy what she deserved…she deserves someone who would never hurt her like that again. “I wanted to be the kind of man who’d never…a kind of man.”
I don’t think she is responsible for Spike seeking a soul. One thing about Spike is, he does what he wants to do, and bugger everybody else. He realized that he did something unforgivable to the woman he loves, and he took the only step towards fixing that. If he was doing it just to get Buffy back, he could have left after As You Were (Worst. Episode. Ever.) and came back by Hell’s Bells and say “Look, you can love me now, I’m all soulfull like the great broody one.” It’s obvious he knew where to go and how to get there, because it did it pretty quickly.
But he didn’t.
No, that’s not what I meant. Spike put on his pretty blue shirt (his costume) and decided to act like he was all together again, no more insanity. This is when he started acting angelic. He goes and says to Buffy he just wants to help, she even asks him “Since when are you the Champion of the People”? I think that’s a direct reference to Angel. So, he was a vampire with a soul who just wanted to help the slayer save the world. (Who of course, still loves the slayer.) Sound like anybody else we know?
Of course, the costume didn’t work, as Spike says when he takes off his pretty blue shirt.
As for the “bug shagging crazy”, isn’t that how Spike describes himself when he talks about what happened in the basement?
elf6c- well, ya gotta eat somethilng, and if rat is all that’s available, or you’ve gone bug-shagging crazy and are living in the basement of Sunnydale High, well…
That wouldn’t be an Angel thing so much as a desparate, starving vampire thing- the rat-eating thing pops up a lot in vampire fiction- Anne Rice has Lestat drinking rat blood, there was a Forever Knight episode that centered around a plague that was decimating Toronto’s undead population that started when a vampire snacked on a rat that had escaped from a laboratory, etc.
Anyhoo, I still think Spike was more interested in chatting the rat up than he was in eating it.
burundi, I wasn’t referring to Spike inflicting pain on himself. One of the major points of friction in the Buffy/Spike liason was that Buffy didn’t believe that Spike was capable of real love because he didn’t have a soul. She also felt that she couldn’t love him for the same reason. Remember the scene in “Dead Things” when she’s pummeling him, saying “You’re cold and dead inside. There is nothing good or clean in you”. So, now that Spike has got his soul back, Buffy can see him as being capable of love, as well as being worthy of her love.
Of course, we have to get his mind put back together first. Willow, where are you?
pepperlandgirl, I don’t think Spike is being Angel-like in helping the Slayer save the world. I think he’s just being, well, good. But yeah, he does look pretty in that blue shirt (even prettier without it).
Now, care to speculate on why Spike was so determined through most of the episode to conceal the fact that he has a soul? 'Cause I’m completely baffled here.
Because he got his soul for himself and his own reasons. He got it so he could be good enough to never hurt Buffy again. He didn’t do it to go to her and say “I have a soul, now you’ll love me.” Besides if he came out and said it she probably wouldn’t have believed him.
Definite speculation to follow, since I’m never right when I guess what Joss is up to.
Spike’s whole plan to get his soul back has kind of gone kerflooey. He’s got his soul back, but it is nothing like what he expected. He probably imagined at some level that he would become Angle Mark II, the vampire with a soul and a heart of gold whom Buffy would instantly love. Instead, if anything he is in less control of himself than he was before. Telling Buffy about his soul would have meant admitting what he was trying to do, and what a failure it was (so far).
He tried to get his soul back to prevent another attack like last season’s. He might have been worried that she would figure that out, and the presence of his soul might have only served as a reminder of what he tried to do to her. He might have wanted to keep it a secret for awhile, put some time between that attack and his trying to get his soul back, so she wouldn’t make the obvious connection between the two.
He’s just plain wacky right now and his reasons for doing anything don’t make sense.
Thea, I think burundi nailed why Spike didn’t want Buffy to know about his soul:
I think that when he went to get his soul, he thought that would make Buffy love him, that she would “owe” him her love after the trials and tribulations he went through “for her.” Now that he has a soul, he can see just how stupid and manipulative that idea was, and is embarassed about it. As well as being ashamed over, well, pretty much everything else he’s ever done to Buffy.
FWIW, I think there’s a really good chance that Buffy isn’t, and is never, going to fall in love with Spike. Because at this point, that would be the worst possible thing that could happen to Spike, and this is Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, where the only possible romantic outcome is the worst possible romantic outcome.
That was supposed to be “Angel”, BTW. Angle Mark II is next season’s Big Bad, a giant robot that Dawn the Vampire Slayer must somehow defeat. Sorry about the spoiler.
OK, all of this explains why Spike wouldn’t just tell Buffy straight out that he’d gotten his soul back, maybe would want to keep it a secret until, oh, five or six episodes into the season, give Buffy and the Scoobies a chance to see that he really had changed on some fundamental level. But what is really puzzling me is his reaction when he realized that Anya could see his soul. He could easily have just let it come out that way, without it seeming like he was trying to feed Buffy (and Xander, for that matter) a line. Alternately, he could have pulled Anya aside and said, “Look, Buffy doesn’t know and I’m not ready to tell her yet, so keep quiet, will you.” Instead, he went all fangy and grrr and violent, to the point where he preferred to have Buffy think he was still evil than to let her find out he had a soul. Of course, that could have been the insanity breaking through. but it seemed calculated. Not that insane people can’t be calculating in a psychotic sort of way.
Also, are Buffy and Xander really that thick, that they wouldn’t have suspected something was up when Anya looked into Spike’s eyes and went all ecxtatic, asking “How did you do it, how did you get it?” Well, OK, yeah, Xander is that thick, but I wuold think it would have occurred to Buffy to wonder…
You’re looking at this from a sane, outsider’s POV. Spike is well…if not insane, he’s something. I think his personality is fractured (like I mentioned before, all of his ‘characters’ showed up). He says he’s hearing voices, them, him, it…he’s not stable, he’s tried self-mutilation, he’s wearing a costume to hide from something or someone, and you think he’s going to have the precense of mind to calmly pull Anya aside and explain carefully why he doesn’t want her to reveal the soul? If nothing else from Ep 2, I think the audience got a pretty good idea that Spike is barely hanging on and could only keep up his sane facade for only so long.
Also, this is Spike we’re talking about. He’s impulsive, sure, but he’s not stupid. If that was “it”, his demon, coming through, then it should appear calculating because that’s what demon Spike is all about…finding the slayer and figuring out the best way to kill her. Also, we don’t know what sort of outside forces are acting on him.
elf6c, the official word is that yes, Spike did indeed go off looking for his soul, and the speech he gave to Buffy at the end pretty well backs that up. But I also think that there was a “monkey paw” element to it. He thought he wanted the chip out, wasn’t quite ready to admit to himself that what he really wanted was his soul.
However, we are talking about Spike, here- yes, he was bitter at the end of “Seeing Red”. But he was working on a couple of different levels. On the surface, he was trying to convince himself that his emotional conflicts were caused by the chip. But on a deeper level, he still loved Buffy. He was angry, but I think more angry at himself for what he had done to her, but, being Spike, needed to project his anger outward. Also, if you manage to catch reruns of “Two to Go” and “Grave”, as he goes through the trials, his tone gradually softens. (I didn’t actually notice this until I saw in in summer reruns, when I already knew the outcome.) At the very end of “Grave”, when the Uber-Demon tells him he has successfully endured the trials, he says, gently “…Now make me what I was before, so I can give Buffy what she deserves.” Up until that point, he had always referred to her as “the Slayer”.
That demon knew what Spike really wanted, and, deep down, beneath the anger and bitterness, Spike knew. I just don’t think he realized what he was getting himself into by getting his soul back.
This is actually something I’ve been wondering about off and on since season six: do we know what Spike has been living on since he got the chip in? I know that he was dependant on Buffy and Xander while they held him captive, but what about after that? I honestly don’t recall them saying or showing us anything about it. He doesn’t seem like the type to borrow from blood banks for some reason…
There is a moment in “Jonathon’s the Coolest Guy in the Universe” when Buffy talks about how Spike is depending on butcher’s blood and how a word from Jonathon–well-respected by butchers near and far–will shut off that supply. Yes, the dialogue was from a World Without Shrimp but presumably Spike in the mainstream Buffyverse would come up with the same idea. Angel also bought blood from Sunnydale butchers.
I never thought about it before, but I think somewhere, we learn that he drinks pig’s blood. I’ll try to find the exact reference (though it may just be that all the fanfiction I’ve read has clouded my brain.)
