Forever (Marti Noxon)
Willow's behaviour is outrageous but in character. Someone is in pain and she wants to fix it for them. Or at least help. What she doesn't consider is the consequences. The divide between Willow and Tara is stark and sets up their estrangement.
"This is different. Magic can't be used to alter the natural order of things." "But all you do is mess with the natural order of things. You, you make things float, and disappear, and..." "But we don't mess with life and death. Dawn, I know how bad you hurt." "You don't. They put her in the ground." "They did, and it's awful and unfair, but this isn't the way." "I'm not even sure it's possible, Dawn. I mean, I've seen things on resurrection, but there's books and stuff. But I guess, the spells, backfire?" "That's not the point." "That's not the point. The, the point is it's bad, because..." "Because witches can't be allowed to alter the fabric of life for selfish reasons. Wiccans took an oath a long time ago to honour that."
Willow just doesn't see it like Tara does. She is dangerous.
The first half of this episode makes sense but the second half doesn't. Dawn steals the books ridiculously easy. My biggest problem is that I don't get why Spike helps Dawn to resurrect her mother. The explanation he gives isn't good enough: "I just don't like to see Summers women take it so hard on the chin, is all." Not only does it seem stupid of him, it also leads to one of the poorest fighting monsters somewhere underground scenes in a long time.
Ben's pathetic attempt at murdering Jinx is also an extremely weak plot point. There must have been a better way of revealing the key is human to Glory.
There is also a terrible scene between Willow and Tara which may be badly written or directed or edited or all three. Willow is behaving so obviously guilty that Tara's apparent inability to pick up on this seems bizarre. It feels like Alyson Hannigan was reading one draft while Amber Benson was reading another and it was cut together.
The Monkey's Paw ending is creepy and moving. And I do like that when it comes down to the knock at the door, Buffy does want it to be her mother.
The thing that annoys me about this episode is that they *directly* contradict the central premise only a few episodes later, at the beginning of season 6.
I know they dabble a little bit with the "did she come back wrong" idea and clearly it's meant to be a real sign that Willow has gone off the deep end, but ultimately there doesn't appear to be any meaningful consequence to what they do. Beyond that, it's just frustrating in what it says about their opinion of the "bit characters" like Joyce compared to more important folks. Everyone knows it's a bad idea to bring back Joyce but they go ahead and do it for Buffy because...well...it's her name on the title of the show.
I was hoping that season 7 was going to be the ultimate payoff, with the implication that the reason why the First Evil is able to get a foot in the door is because Buffy disrupted the flow of things by coming back - but they only hinted at that vaguely and never gave us anything else.
So many lost opportunities...
I can only agree. That was one of the reasons I chose that quote as a title. I know they weren't guaranteed a season six but there are so many ways that Buffy could have been resurrected that didn't involve this contradiction. And, of course, many other ways that Willow could've gone dark.
Or, you know, Willow could have not gone dark because that storyline? Sucked.
I find the Dawn/Spike storyline rather tiresome and unbelievable; however, I think the ending is very moving with Buffy wanting her mother to be at the door and Dawn realizing that she must let her mother go. Nice work by both SMG and MT in that scene.
Even though that tentacle-ly thing that Spike "fights" for the egg is about as menacing as a wilting dandelion, I always thought that Doc was pretty creepy.
Heh. A world of agreement.
I continue to congradulate you, Hazel, on the recaps.