The Spike Thing
Dec. 8th, 2008 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird_ljSo, my sister and I were discussing what happens when tv shows start going in a completely different direction to what the writers were expecting. She was mainly talking about House/Cuddy, but I brought up Spike (and especially the Spike/Buffy relationship), and she asked for more detail.
I tried to explain to my sister (a non-Buffy watcher, with very little idea of the overall plot) exactly what I meant when I said that Spike took all the writers completely by surprise.
Which worked, but wasn’t very detailed.
And I said, that if I got bored enough, I might write out the whole thing in a bit more detail for her.
Thought I’d post it here too (f’locked to prevent general insanity), in case anyone is interested.
Here’s what I came up with…
- - - - - - - - - - -
(okay, so I really did get bored)
Here’s a timeline of events for interested parties:
THE EVOLUTION OF SPIKE, AND THE WONDER THAT IS SPUFFY
Season 1:
The show begins.
The character of Angel is introduced, very clearly as a future love interest for Buffy, in a they-are-so-completely-destined-for-each-other way. Think Ross/Rachel, Dawson/Joey, and most of all, Romeo/Juliet.
Season 2:
The writers need some villains for an early episode, and promptly invent Spike and his girlfriend. Their job is to show up, be evil, and be killed by Buffy.
However, as soon as they start writing the episode, they realise that these characters are actually a lot of fun. So the one episode becomes four episodes - at the end of which, Spike will die, and his girlfriend will hook up with the newly-evil Angel.
Then James Marsters arrives.
He acts the role of Spike so entertainingly that his death soon gets changed to ending up in a wheelchair.
He even gets a happy ending – driving off into the sunset, girlfriend in tow, never to be seen again.
Until, that is…
Season 3:
A mid-season episode is written, purely as a chance to have Spike show up and be fun for an hour.
Which he does. And it’s fun. And then he disappears again.
Meanwhile, the writers are slowly beginning to think that this Romeo/Juliet thing is getting old. They decide to send Angel off to his own show, and let Buffy move on with her life.
Season 4:
Angel is sent to LA, thus paving the way for Riley, Buffy’s new well-adjusted, all-American, perfect boyfriend.
Of course, losing half their characters to a spinoff means they need some more – fast! Clearly, they should bring back Spike.
Spike, in his new, not-quite-so-evil role, is basically there to sit around and be snarky. In a very fun way.
The Shippy Three:
Mid-season, there are three episodes in a row, each focusing on Buffy’s relationship with a different guy.
Episode 1: Buffy/Angel
The final climatic ending to their epic romance. They get a wonderful, romantic episode, filled with shippy goodness, followed by a reminder of their doomed Romeo/Juliet thing, and much heartfelt sobbing.
Episode 2: Buffy/Spike
The comedic episode. Because, clearly, the idea of Buffy and Spike being together is insanely silly.
But the writers decide to throw a bone to all the shippers of one of the most unlikely pairings imaginable, and put Buffy and Spike under a love spell.
The two of them spend the entire episode cooing over each other and picking out curtains, not to mention being extremely snuggly. Note: most of this snuggliness is not actually in the script, and is actually the invention of Sarah Michelle Gellar, in collaboration with James Marsters. They were clearly having a lot of fun.
The episode arc centres around Buffy’s attitude to men. She begins by wanting another “bad boy”, and ends by concluding that bad boys are over-rated, and what she clearly needs is a relationship with a nice, sensible, well-adjusted, all-American boy. It’s almost as if the writers have someone in mind…
Episode 3: Buffy/Riley
Having disposed of the Buffy/Angel relationship, and given a nod to the Buffy/Spike supporters, it’s now possible to move on to the guy Buffy’s going to end up with.
This episode, at the halfway point of the series, includes Buffy and Riley’s first kiss, Riley learning about Buffy’s secret life as a vampire Slayer, and much romantic music. The idea (as explained in detail by the composer) is that the music is a more “mature” theme, demonstrating that Buffy is over the massive-high-school-crush thing, and is now ready for a real relationship.
And the whole thing is settled.
The torch has passed, from Angel to Riley, and in a few years the new couple will dance off into the sunset, not a care in the world…
Complications:
Unfortunately, the writers forgot about a few things.
Namely,
1) That Riley is so well-adjusted that his relationship with not-at-all-adjusted Buffy is actually quite lopsided – and Riley is in fact, occasionally, pretty boring.
2) That James Marsters tends to take over every scene he’s in, just by being so interesting.
3) That Smidge (Sarah M-G) and James Marsters have incredible onscreen chemistry, even when they’re just beating each other up.
4) That this is a sci-fi show, and weird things are prone to happen.
Weird things like…
The Body-Swap Episode:
In which Buffy’s body is taken over by the excitingly evil slutbomb Faith, who spends most of the episode interacting with all the other characters, still pretending to be Buffy.
The writers write this using the standard episode writing shortcut: figure out how each character would react to Faith, and how she would react to them, and then let the plot emerge naturally from that.
This technique works just fine. She hangs out with the whole gang, is subtly rude to Willow, is extremely rude to Xander, and so forth…
And then she meets Spike.
This bit is just fannish speculation – but we know that, at some point quite close to this episode, Joss (in his own words) “realised that Spike was in love with Buffy”. Most fans pinpoint this episode as the point when he realised it.
You see, Faith hits on Spike. And he looks rather… intrigued.
Even though Buffy is his absolute worst enemy, and he quite frequently expresses his fervent desire to kill her – painfully.
Just picture the writers’ room, with them all trying to decide how Faith would react to Spike, figuring out that she’d hit on him, and then slowly realising that Spike wouldn’t actually mind…
(Note that we have now had TWO episodes with a fake Buffy/Spike relationship shown onscreen.)
For the rest of the season, pretty much every time Spike and Buffy are in the same location, there’s some very subtle flirting going on – as Joss tries to figure out if this dynamic will actually work.
Season 5:
Clearly Joss decides that it will. Because, just a few episodes in, Spike dreams about Buffy, and wakes up to the horrified realisation that he is indeed in love with her.
So, for pretty much the entire season, Spike moons after Buffy, and she’s blissfully unaware of the fact. It’s extremely entertaining, and played almost entirely for comedy. After all, the idea of Buffy and Spike actually having a relationship is still ridiculous in the extreme.
(That being the case, although this is still entirely a one-sided thing, there are several Spike fantasies, plus another actual fake Buffy/Spike relationship with its own episode. They have now had THREE of these episodes.)
This is also the season where the writers start having a fair bit of disagreement about the whole Spike/Buffy thing. But I’ll get to that later.
The writers do, however, agree that the Buffy/Riley relationship really isn’t working as well as it was supposed to. And Riley is shipped off to the jungle.
Season 6:
Buffy is extremely depressed. No, really. INCREDIBLY depressed.
Cue an exciting, pulse-pounding, and really quite destructive relationship between Buffy and Spike.
And this is where the writers’ disagreement really gets going, full steam.
Jane Espenson thinks it will end in true love.
David Fury thinks Spike is evil incarnate, and the whole thing will end in disaster.
Marti Noxon thinks it’s a good vehicle for exploring unhealthy relationships in real life.
Drew Greenburg thinks it’s hysterically funny.
Doug Petrie is still wishing Riley was around.
And Joss Whedon is busily playing with his shiny new show, Firefly, and is only vaguely aware of the dissent in the ranks. Mostly, he’s wondering why no-one realises that Buffy and Angel are soulmates.
The whole thing gets more and more heated – because, remember, all of these writers are responsible for individual episodes, each depicting the Buffy/Spike relationship the way they personally think it should go.
The relationship gets more and more sweet and innocent, and more and more incredibly screwed up and destructive, and more and more romantic, and more and more horrifying…
…and eventually, near the end of the season, the whole thing culminates in Spike attempting to rape Buffy AND giving up everything (and I really do mean everything) so that he can be the kind of man she deserves IN EXACTLY THE SAME EPISODE.
The writers have apparently gone insane.
And so do the fans.
Season 7:
Final season of the show.
This year, Joss is walking a fine line. You see, not only does he have to spend most of the show dealing with a whole bunch of other stuff (what we like to call the “plot”), but he also has to deal with Buffy’s love life. And find some way to wrap up the Buffy/Spike relationship in a way that will satisfy all the writers (including himself – and he still wants Buffy with Angel), and not alienate a huge section of his viewers.
So: Buffy and Spike have to fall in love (because he did this incredible, life-altering, sacrificial, awesome thing for her).
They can’t kiss or hold hands or anything like that (because he tried to rape her, and the fans will scream).
He’s got to be kind of almost evil (to satisfy David Fury).
He’s got to be incredibly noble and lovely (to satisfy Jane Espenson).
They’ve got to be really entertaining and awkward (to satisfy Drew Greenburg).
Buffy’s got to be deeply in love with Spike (to satisfy pretty much all the other staff writers).
But she can’t say she’s in love with him (to satisfy Marti Noxon).
Plus, the series has to end with the Buffy/Angel relationship being all lovely and romantic, and the Buffy/Spike relationship being all lovely and romantic. At exactly the same time.
This is all slightly complicated by Smidge, who is given the line “Why does everyone still think I’m in love with Spike?”, and promptly gets in front of the camera and reads it as “Why does everyone think I’m still in love with Spike?” …which has a rather different meaning.
No wonder they were all glad the show ended when it did.
I tried to explain to my sister (a non-Buffy watcher, with very little idea of the overall plot) exactly what I meant when I said that Spike took all the writers completely by surprise.
Which worked, but wasn’t very detailed.
And I said, that if I got bored enough, I might write out the whole thing in a bit more detail for her.
Thought I’d post it here too (f’locked to prevent general insanity), in case anyone is interested.
Here’s what I came up with…
- - - - - - - - - - -
(okay, so I really did get bored)
Here’s a timeline of events for interested parties:
THE EVOLUTION OF SPIKE, AND THE WONDER THAT IS SPUFFY
Season 1:
The show begins.
The character of Angel is introduced, very clearly as a future love interest for Buffy, in a they-are-so-completely-destined-for-each-other way. Think Ross/Rachel, Dawson/Joey, and most of all, Romeo/Juliet.
Season 2:
The writers need some villains for an early episode, and promptly invent Spike and his girlfriend. Their job is to show up, be evil, and be killed by Buffy.
However, as soon as they start writing the episode, they realise that these characters are actually a lot of fun. So the one episode becomes four episodes - at the end of which, Spike will die, and his girlfriend will hook up with the newly-evil Angel.
Then James Marsters arrives.
He acts the role of Spike so entertainingly that his death soon gets changed to ending up in a wheelchair.
He even gets a happy ending – driving off into the sunset, girlfriend in tow, never to be seen again.
Until, that is…
Season 3:
A mid-season episode is written, purely as a chance to have Spike show up and be fun for an hour.
Which he does. And it’s fun. And then he disappears again.
Meanwhile, the writers are slowly beginning to think that this Romeo/Juliet thing is getting old. They decide to send Angel off to his own show, and let Buffy move on with her life.
Season 4:
Angel is sent to LA, thus paving the way for Riley, Buffy’s new well-adjusted, all-American, perfect boyfriend.
Of course, losing half their characters to a spinoff means they need some more – fast! Clearly, they should bring back Spike.
Spike, in his new, not-quite-so-evil role, is basically there to sit around and be snarky. In a very fun way.
The Shippy Three:
Mid-season, there are three episodes in a row, each focusing on Buffy’s relationship with a different guy.
Episode 1: Buffy/Angel
The final climatic ending to their epic romance. They get a wonderful, romantic episode, filled with shippy goodness, followed by a reminder of their doomed Romeo/Juliet thing, and much heartfelt sobbing.
Episode 2: Buffy/Spike
The comedic episode. Because, clearly, the idea of Buffy and Spike being together is insanely silly.
But the writers decide to throw a bone to all the shippers of one of the most unlikely pairings imaginable, and put Buffy and Spike under a love spell.
The two of them spend the entire episode cooing over each other and picking out curtains, not to mention being extremely snuggly. Note: most of this snuggliness is not actually in the script, and is actually the invention of Sarah Michelle Gellar, in collaboration with James Marsters. They were clearly having a lot of fun.
The episode arc centres around Buffy’s attitude to men. She begins by wanting another “bad boy”, and ends by concluding that bad boys are over-rated, and what she clearly needs is a relationship with a nice, sensible, well-adjusted, all-American boy. It’s almost as if the writers have someone in mind…
Episode 3: Buffy/Riley
Having disposed of the Buffy/Angel relationship, and given a nod to the Buffy/Spike supporters, it’s now possible to move on to the guy Buffy’s going to end up with.
This episode, at the halfway point of the series, includes Buffy and Riley’s first kiss, Riley learning about Buffy’s secret life as a vampire Slayer, and much romantic music. The idea (as explained in detail by the composer) is that the music is a more “mature” theme, demonstrating that Buffy is over the massive-high-school-crush thing, and is now ready for a real relationship.
And the whole thing is settled.
The torch has passed, from Angel to Riley, and in a few years the new couple will dance off into the sunset, not a care in the world…
Complications:
Unfortunately, the writers forgot about a few things.
Namely,
1) That Riley is so well-adjusted that his relationship with not-at-all-adjusted Buffy is actually quite lopsided – and Riley is in fact, occasionally, pretty boring.
2) That James Marsters tends to take over every scene he’s in, just by being so interesting.
3) That Smidge (Sarah M-G) and James Marsters have incredible onscreen chemistry, even when they’re just beating each other up.
4) That this is a sci-fi show, and weird things are prone to happen.
Weird things like…
The Body-Swap Episode:
In which Buffy’s body is taken over by the excitingly evil slutbomb Faith, who spends most of the episode interacting with all the other characters, still pretending to be Buffy.
The writers write this using the standard episode writing shortcut: figure out how each character would react to Faith, and how she would react to them, and then let the plot emerge naturally from that.
This technique works just fine. She hangs out with the whole gang, is subtly rude to Willow, is extremely rude to Xander, and so forth…
And then she meets Spike.
This bit is just fannish speculation – but we know that, at some point quite close to this episode, Joss (in his own words) “realised that Spike was in love with Buffy”. Most fans pinpoint this episode as the point when he realised it.
You see, Faith hits on Spike. And he looks rather… intrigued.
Even though Buffy is his absolute worst enemy, and he quite frequently expresses his fervent desire to kill her – painfully.
Just picture the writers’ room, with them all trying to decide how Faith would react to Spike, figuring out that she’d hit on him, and then slowly realising that Spike wouldn’t actually mind…
(Note that we have now had TWO episodes with a fake Buffy/Spike relationship shown onscreen.)
For the rest of the season, pretty much every time Spike and Buffy are in the same location, there’s some very subtle flirting going on – as Joss tries to figure out if this dynamic will actually work.
Season 5:
Clearly Joss decides that it will. Because, just a few episodes in, Spike dreams about Buffy, and wakes up to the horrified realisation that he is indeed in love with her.
So, for pretty much the entire season, Spike moons after Buffy, and she’s blissfully unaware of the fact. It’s extremely entertaining, and played almost entirely for comedy. After all, the idea of Buffy and Spike actually having a relationship is still ridiculous in the extreme.
(That being the case, although this is still entirely a one-sided thing, there are several Spike fantasies, plus another actual fake Buffy/Spike relationship with its own episode. They have now had THREE of these episodes.)
This is also the season where the writers start having a fair bit of disagreement about the whole Spike/Buffy thing. But I’ll get to that later.
The writers do, however, agree that the Buffy/Riley relationship really isn’t working as well as it was supposed to. And Riley is shipped off to the jungle.
Season 6:
Buffy is extremely depressed. No, really. INCREDIBLY depressed.
Cue an exciting, pulse-pounding, and really quite destructive relationship between Buffy and Spike.
And this is where the writers’ disagreement really gets going, full steam.
Jane Espenson thinks it will end in true love.
David Fury thinks Spike is evil incarnate, and the whole thing will end in disaster.
Marti Noxon thinks it’s a good vehicle for exploring unhealthy relationships in real life.
Drew Greenburg thinks it’s hysterically funny.
Doug Petrie is still wishing Riley was around.
And Joss Whedon is busily playing with his shiny new show, Firefly, and is only vaguely aware of the dissent in the ranks. Mostly, he’s wondering why no-one realises that Buffy and Angel are soulmates.
The whole thing gets more and more heated – because, remember, all of these writers are responsible for individual episodes, each depicting the Buffy/Spike relationship the way they personally think it should go.
The relationship gets more and more sweet and innocent, and more and more incredibly screwed up and destructive, and more and more romantic, and more and more horrifying…
…and eventually, near the end of the season, the whole thing culminates in Spike attempting to rape Buffy AND giving up everything (and I really do mean everything) so that he can be the kind of man she deserves IN EXACTLY THE SAME EPISODE.
The writers have apparently gone insane.
And so do the fans.
Season 7:
Final season of the show.
This year, Joss is walking a fine line. You see, not only does he have to spend most of the show dealing with a whole bunch of other stuff (what we like to call the “plot”), but he also has to deal with Buffy’s love life. And find some way to wrap up the Buffy/Spike relationship in a way that will satisfy all the writers (including himself – and he still wants Buffy with Angel), and not alienate a huge section of his viewers.
So: Buffy and Spike have to fall in love (because he did this incredible, life-altering, sacrificial, awesome thing for her).
They can’t kiss or hold hands or anything like that (because he tried to rape her, and the fans will scream).
He’s got to be kind of almost evil (to satisfy David Fury).
He’s got to be incredibly noble and lovely (to satisfy Jane Espenson).
They’ve got to be really entertaining and awkward (to satisfy Drew Greenburg).
Buffy’s got to be deeply in love with Spike (to satisfy pretty much all the other staff writers).
But she can’t say she’s in love with him (to satisfy Marti Noxon).
Plus, the series has to end with the Buffy/Angel relationship being all lovely and romantic, and the Buffy/Spike relationship being all lovely and romantic. At exactly the same time.
This is all slightly complicated by Smidge, who is given the line “Why does everyone still think I’m in love with Spike?”, and promptly gets in front of the camera and reads it as “Why does everyone think I’m still in love with Spike?” …which has a rather different meaning.
No wonder they were all glad the show ended when it did.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 02:08 am (UTC)Oddly enough, while I was sure the original line was as I wrote it above, the shooting script lists it as: "Does everyone in this house think I'm in love with Spike?"
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 03:32 am (UTC)I'm convinced Spuffy makes more since than Bangel or Rangel (or Biley or Bboring or whatever the ship's name is). My primary reasoning: Angel and Riley were just too bloody tall. Spike was the only one who could kiss her without bending over.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:46 pm (UTC)Hee! Excellent point!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:57 am (UTC)Sad that you feel you have to flock this, though I quite understand why.
And everything you wrote about season 6 made me laugh. So true.
And I'm glad SMG fudged that line.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 02:03 pm (UTC)I loved the thoughts about the rape - really great perspective there!
My favourite, though, was your list of complications in series 4.
Thanks for that - I enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 05:26 pm (UTC)I especially liked your take on the writers’ disagreement in season 6 and how Joss had to walk a fine line in season 7 to make everyone satisfied. You hit the nail in the head! :D
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:49 pm (UTC)Glad to see you found it interesting...
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 02:03 am (UTC)*curious*
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 02:25 am (UTC)F'locking something means that only people I've friended can see it...
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 02:44 am (UTC)flist!
Such fun new words.
I had vaguely seen a 'flock' thingy on ninemsn, where you vote on articles, or something.
But this is not the same.
Very wise choice- lest you be spammed by people who do not agree with your Spikey views...
no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:12 am (UTC)I'm planning to spend a week of Christmas holidays lying around watching Farscape and Stargate...
(You're going back to Canada?)