3.16: "Doppelgangland"
3.17: "Enemies"
3.18: "Earshot"
According to dictionary.com, a Doppelgänger is "a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart." The episode "Doppelgangland" refers back to the events and alternate reality of episode 9, "The Wish": the plot revolves around demon Anyanka, the "patron saint of scorned women" known to those at Sunnydale High as Anya.
In "The Wish," she hears Cordelia (recent victim of a painful break-up with Xander) exclaim, "I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale!" Naturally, Vengeance Demon Anya grants the angry desire, and immediately Cordelia is transported into an alternate reality in which Buffy moved to Cleveland rather than Sunnydale. At first, Cordelia relishes her near-celebrity status at the gloomy high school, but quickly learns that something is very wrong, and that not all of the changes are for her or anyone else's good. All the things that were really important to her have been lost or destroyed. Everyone dresses in blacks, browns, and grays, avoiding the brighter hues that were so trendy in her former life, and no one has fun anymore; the Bronze is off-limits, and half her classmates are dead (or worse). The reasons become clear: the vampires succeeded in take over the Bronze and releasing the Master, as they attempted to do in Season 1, and it is clear that Sunnydale will never recover. Since Buffy never came, Angel has been imprisoned by the Master, and only Giles and a small band of students (including Oz), the "White Hats," have managed to gain any ground against the forces of evil. Xander and Willow have both been turned, and not only are they now at the Master's beck and call, they are two of his most destructive and cruel accomplices. The vampire Willow is particularly disturbing, because her demeanor as she heartlessly tortures Angel or complains that killing helpless humans isn't "fun" is just as calm and straightforward as the old, normal Willow who was Buffy's best friend.
Back in normal Sunnydale, this image of Willow becomes twice as disturbing. When Anya deceitfully enlists Willow's help to return to the other dimension, Willow (unused to such dark and powerful magic) accidentally alters the spell so that HER alternate self comes through to their world. Willow's Doppelgänger wanders the streets, lost and perturbed, before she begins to wreak havoc. While there is the plus side that while the human Willow would have been killed by the Mayor's vampires, the vampire Willow has nothing to worry about—though then, of course, she rapidly presses them into her service and organizes an attack on everyone hanging out at the Bronze.
The episode begins with Willow being basically commanded by Principal Snyder to keep Sunnydale High's main basketball star from flunking history. This is closely followed by Buffy greeting her as "Old Reliable," and Xander's insensitivity to her feelings of having been reduced to the role of beleaguered, one-dimensional scholar. Throughout the episode, her resentment at being treated as a mere academic instrument increases before she gains a sense of closure on the subject—thanks to her evil "twin." While the vampire Willow does threaten the security of Sunnydale and its inhabitants, she attacks Percy West (the basketball player) at the Bronze, unwittingly giving the real Willow a major head start in the tutoring department by scaring him into actually doing his assignments. The "good" and "evil" Willows finally meet, and while one is appalled and the other bored, they do manage a sort of unspoken connection by the time Giles sends the vampire and Anyanka back to the alternate reality. The real Willow must briefly pretend to be her evil "twin" (and, dangerously, vice versa) and while she does not dive completely into character, she does use the opportunity to get the "Old Reliable" image out of her head and off her chest. The vampire Willow also projects a twisted sort of childlikeness that is reflective of the human Willow's demeanor. Her coolness and deceptively bemused behavior are unnerving, in that they are both reminiscent of the human Willow and yet, at the same time she is completely lacking in the optimistic innocence and candor that define her real counterpart.
Further on down the line, Buffy's life gets more difficult. (Both "Enemies" and "Earshot" are really fantastic episodes, not only because of the great stories but because they are both so perfectly, almost classically, self-contained. These three episodes have been my favorites this entire season—perhaps even every season thus far.) "Enemies" deals, once again, with Faith, this time focusing on her double agency with the eccentric and loathsome Mayor. Faith's character's femininity is highly emphasized in this episode: the Mayor sicks Faith on Angel, intent on enleashing the monster again by seducing him into that "moment of true happiness" by which he would once again lose his soul. Of course, the plan fails—not because Faith's attempt is particularly lacking, but because of Angel's undying loyalty to Buffy. Even in the episode "Wishes," when the "tougher, meaner" Buffy finally appears in the alternate Sunnydale, Angel was even then aware of Buffy and says her name as he dies. As he tells her in "Helpless," he loved her from the first moment he laid eyes on her, because he could see her heart so clearly. Of course, Faith knows nothing about any of this, and she does her best—only to be completely "owned" (as runs the vernacular).
Buffy's naturally feminine insecurities about her relationship with Angel aren't aided by the sting she, Giles, and Angel set up to bring Faith's duplicity into the light, and are not to be set at a more comfortable rest until the end of "Earshot." While Angel does occasionally take advantage of his charade as the "evil Angelus" (for example, slugging a truly irritating Xander), even his assurance that his acting opposite Faith is not enough. Buffy needs "a break," while still promising him that she'll always be his girl. At the end of "Earshot," Angel explains to Buffy that he had been with bad girls before and is done with that sort of woman; it's a "good girl" who fights on the side of the daylight that he wants; Buffy, to be precise. As he says, "In 243 years, I have loved exactly 1 person."
Dr. Rose says:
ReplyDeleteA couple of you have referred to Faith's femininity, when I think you mean her pretty blatant sexuality -- two very different connotations, for me -- and it's her sexuality, not her femininity, that is foregrounded.
And since the idea of "doubling" is so prominent in these episodes (esp. Doppelgangland), it might be helpful to consider other, more subtle, ways that the idea of a shadow self is being explored. Other characters? Other set-ups? What do you think?
Yes, her "blatant sexuality" is definitely at work, but in this particular situation I think the fact that she IS female is very important. Angel is one of the few vampires on the show who does not seem pan-sexual (as far as I have seen). Both Faith and the Mayor knew that there was no real way for her to overpower him physically, as she had Xander (unless she planned to kill him), and the less direct approach of an underhanded very feminine seduction was the only way it might have worked. Faith plays up her feminine "vulnerability"—not unlike Buffy at the end of Season 2 when she had to confront Angelus—playing up her misgivings and working to bring out Angel's sympathy due to their similarities. There’s no question that everything Faith does is marked by the driving force of her casual sexuality, but I found in her relationship with Angel in the episode “Enemies” that she was discovering a certain angle ON that sexuality that she had never fully explored up to that point. It’s an old cliche that men can’t resist a woman’s wiles, the “femme fatale” motif, etc. . . . But that makes it even more fortunate that Angel is an uncommon “man.”
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