Ok, I know the answer to this is fairly obvious (and please forgive me if this has been discussed already; if so, please re-direct this thread), but what is the deal with Spike these days? He is virtually walking around in broad daylight all the time. Have the Buffy writers forgotten that he is a vampire and ought to stick to the dark? With recent episodes* such as the one where all the scoobies are stuck at Buffy’s house after the party and the wedding that wasn’t to be, Spike is walking around where there’s clearly sunlight streaming from the windows.
You’d think, since the writers have placed strong emphasis on sunlight being bad for a vamp’s health, that there’d be some consistency in this. In Angel when Groo returns and is fighting the monster** with Angel, Angel is prevented from chasing the monster into the outside with Groo because of the sunlight and must stay back in the shadows.
Am I missing something or are the writers just getting lazy?
*ok, I’m Australian and we’ve only just seen the non-Wedding episode…
**Obviously I’m being very vague here because it’s been a while since I saw the episode and can’t remember the monster specifically…
The explanation is writer laziness. They’ve been doing similar stuff on “Angel”. The rule in the Buffyverse seems to be, as long as the sun is not shining directly on the vampire’s skin, he’s ok…unless they want to break it.
Check out www.slayage.tv for more insight into this- I think bringing Spike out into the daylight is kind of symbolic of his redemption, basically making him a creature of the light, if you will. In the third episode of Season Six, when Buffy runs into him in the alley behind the Magic Box, she comments on him being out in the daylight. His response was “The sun’s low enough. We’re in the shade”. Then when she lets him know she wants to be alone, he starts to walk away from her, until he gets to the edge of the shadow of the building, then has to stop before he hits the direct rays of the sun. He returns to her, and that’s when she confesses to him that while she was dead, she thought she was in Heaven, and her friends tore her out of it, and basically consigned her to Hell, then tells him that they can never know.
As far back as Season Four, Spike has been braving the daylight, usually with a blanket over his head for cover from the sun- in a couple of scenes, the blanket is smoking, which indicates that it really isn’t adequate protection- in one episode, it actually catches fire. And in any daytime scenes in the crypt, it is always light inside- presumably filtered sunlight.
So, I don’t think it’s writer laziness- there’s a method to this madness. It’s a “bringing Spike into the light” thing. I think the same at least partly holds true for Angel. But, yeah, it does seem that vamps in the Buffyverse can tolerate daylight as long as they’re not in direct sunlight.
The writers are also really inconsistent with just how bad the sunlight is. With minor villain vamps, the sun light causes them to burst instantly into flame, sometimes even dusting right away. With Angel and othes, it’s more of a Warner Brothers thing: they don’t catch on fire until they notice that they’re in sun, then slowly get some small flames.
Eh, JSexton, another way you could read that is that vampires get stronger with regard to such things, the older they get. And all the vampires we’ve cared about or been interested in have been very old ones: Spike, Angel, Darla.
Remember The Master? He was probably 1000 years old or older; he was at least already very old when he made Darla 400 years ago.
And he was so powerful that his bones endured, even after Buffy staked the rest of him.
But Spike’s only just a bit over 200 years old- in “Thie Initiative”, when sitting in the dorm talking with Willow about his inability to “perform” when trying to put the bite on her, he claims to be “only a hundred and twenty-six”. And Angel’s, what, two-hundred fifty-two or so? 'Course, the majority of the vamps in Sunnydale seem to be fairly fresh out of the grave (Harmony, for example), so maybe it’s a relative thing.
I’ve also noticed that some vamps crumble instantly when staked, while others manage to get in a bit of commentary before they go all dusty.
Once you’ve seen the rest of the season (or now if you don’t mind spoilers) go to these threads, both of which contain heated debate on Spike’s status as a vampire or otherwise:
I’m more inclined to think that the writers are just getting lazy rather than Spike “evolving”. Despite this, however, the writers do tend to be a bit more stricter with the vamp sunlight thing in Angel . Perhaps the writers are too involved in the big storylines in Buffy to worry about the little details anymore…?
Actually in Joss Whedon’s commentary track on, er, I think it was “Welcome to the Hellmouth” but it mught have been “The Harvest,” he talks about how Angel is clearly standing in direct sunlight in the “Buffy, you shouldn’t go down there” scene in the tomb. He says that this is a perpetual problem for the show and it’s one that they’ve been working on since the beginning. So, yeah, it’s Mutant Enemy’s fault, but they know about it, and they’re trying to fix it.
I just got the 1st two seasons on DVD yesterday, and this very thing stuck me as I was watching The Harvest last night. But more troublesome than Angel being in direct sunlight in a few shots, how did he get there? It was broad daylight and the secret entrance was chained- Buffy didn’t break through the chains until after he appeared. I suppose he could have been hiding in the crypt somewhere since the night before, but…
In the 2nd-season episode “What’s My Line, Part 1,” Angel is locked in a cage at Willie’s bar, pressed against the wall as the sunlight gets nearer and nearer to him.
Willie opened the cage, grabbed Angel by the armpits and “saved” him (to give to Spike) by dragging him through that same sunlight.
Marti Noxon mentions this in her audio commentary. I know there are many technical problems on a show like this, but these seem like they should be easier to fix than others.
