Honey, you're home: Or, I finally saw "Chosen"!

[selenak]

So, back from Italy (and why doesn't it surprise me it has rained within the first hour of me arriving in Munich?), I rushed to my computer, downloaded…and about a week late, managed to watch "Chosen". Let me tell you, staying away from everyone's reviews these last days was torture. But worth it. So worth it.



For if this finale resembles any of the others, it's not "The Gift", and not "Becoming" (though there are of course echoes), but the end of season 3, when the Scoobies fought side by side with the entire graduation class. And, this, too, was a graduation. Buffy's idea to share her power with ALL the potentials, providing a great pay-off not just to this season's "power" theme, complete with use, abuse, isolation, choices, connections - and the general idea of the show, of what made Buffy an unusual Slayer to begin with: she's able to change the rules. Even the most basic of rules.
When I watched "Get it Done", I found the scenes with Buffy and the Shadow Men, with their eerie "Restless" atmosphere, fascinating and disturbing in their implication of the Slayer as human sacrifice for the community, created against her will. Complete with obvious rape imagery; both the First Slayer and Buffy in chains, violated by the demon mist conjured up by the original Watchers. How infinitely satisfying to see Buffy, at the end, turn this archaic origin upside down, change it from human sacrifice to sisterhood and choice. The end of "Same Time, Same Place" when she shared her power with Willow to help Willow heal was a foreshadowing, as was her entire difficult, intense relationship with Faith, culminating, imo, in two scenes: Buffy asking Faith to protect and lead the others at the very end of "Empty Places", and their conversation in "End of Days", with the scythe, the symbol of power, wandering to and thro between them.
(Side note: Did Chris Beck come back to score "Chosen"? Because the music in the "empowering" sequence was gorgeous.)
As far as personal relationships go, I bet there will be some disgruntlement we don't get a "make-up" conversation between Buffy and the Scoobies. I thought this was the right choice. Their interaction shows how deeply they care, but a group hug a la "Primeval", or a mutual apology session would have rung false. They'll always love each other, but they can't go back; only forward, as symbolized in the walk away through the empty high school floor watched by Giles, connecting past and present, for they are, and are not the children of yesteryear and their mentor.
Since I'm in the rare position of having liked both Buffy's relationship with Angel and her relationship with Spike, as a viewer, I'm happy with the resolutions (or not) we get for both. Buffy's early scene with Angel made it clear he'll always be incredibly important to her, but it also showed she's not any longer that teenage girl who wanted to die when he kissed her. She's moved; she doesn't swoon. Actually, she comes off as the mature one, affectionate and amused, and this time she's the one to make the decision to send him away. Angel's final exit, fading away in the dark, is very fitting, echoing both his early season 1 persona and his exit from BTVS as a regular, in "Graduation Day": Buffy's first love, her mysterious vampire bringing warnings and helpful gifts. (A bauble for a cross.) Only this time he doesn't leave her back entranced, wounded, jealous or angry. Perhaps it's as simple as this: she's not a girl anymore, she's a woman. Her simple admission re: Spike - "he's in my heart" - is worlds away from her angry outburst re: Riley in "Sanctuary". But finally, it's not about Buffy ending up with this vampire or that vampire (hence the cookie speech, the last of Buffy's colourful babblings on this show); it's about her being at peace with her feelings, no longer ashamed or torn. Which she is.
(Sidenote II: On the flippant side, I'm also not surprised Buffy has imagined Angel and Spike wrestling, oiled and err, ready.)
(Sidenote III: And Spike being just as immature as Angel about The Other One was fun to see. Methinks we'll hear a version of "Someone wasn't worthy" next season in L.A.)
(Sidenote IV: Speaking of Los Angeles - obviously Lilah, or the Senior Partners, meant for either Angel or Buffy to perish while shutting the Hellmouth.)
Buffy and Spike: of course every viewer will have her or his own interpretation as to whether or not Buffy meant what she said, or whether it was a last-minute-imminent-death-thing. Given the way she said it and the rest of their scenes in this episode, I think she did. Her earlier phrasing in the conversation with Angel - "he's in my heart" meant essentially the same thing, and as I said, she's at peace with it. However, it was the right storytelling choice by Joss not to give Spike a Han Soloish "I know" reply. In "Lies My Parents Told Me", Spike made his first Buffy-independent moral choice; in "Touched", he told her he didn't expect her to love him back; from the last minutes of "End of Days" onwards, this statement was put to the test. If he had done what he did believing an "I love you" would be his reward, it would be tarnished; as it is, I think he reached the zen-like state Buffy did at the end of "The Gift". And it was fitting for the character that he did so laughing. The end of a Yeats poem came to my mind:
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come, seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
This being said, the image of Spike's and Buffy's burning hands clasping each other a moment earlier, palm to palm - which evoked not just Yeats but a jumble of the medieval idea of courtly love and Shakespearean imagery for me - , will stay in my mind as one of the most heartbreaking romantic Joss the director has ever come up with. And yet this isn't "Becoming", when Buffy had to sacrifice her lover to save the world, for in this season of choices Spike made his own choice, not out of shame and anger and frustrated desire as he did a season earlier when being ensouled, but in the above mentioned state, and she accepts it.
And so we end with an image which couldn't be further from "Becoming" but is close to "Graduation Day": Buffy surrounded with her friends. The day is won, she's silent after having said Spike's name to Giles as she was, mostly, in "Graduation Day", and, to paraphrase the GD motto shown at the end of season 3, the future is theirs. Buffy's uncertain tiny smile breaking out of her tear-streaked face as she realises she has the freedom of choice now is the perfect, final image for this show.

Scattered observations:

- loved, loved, loved all the little references and tidbits, from Giles bringing up the other Hellmouth in Cleveland (last heard of in the alternate reality of "The Wish") to Andrew's brother Tucker in his Oscar acceptance style speech
- Anya; bunnies; sniff…
- That last moment when Andrew tells Xander was perfect, too
- Willow getting long white hair a la the Guardian during the spell was intriguing; I take it that means she was accessing the female power said Guardian had spoken about?

And now, off to watch it again. And again…

Comments

[cbrownjc]

I didn't write a review of "Chosen," but you said pretty much what I would have. From the story, to the music (the "empowered" sequence music still takes my breath away) to Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Spike, to the final moments (the burning hand clasp being the most beautiful and heartbreaking of all), I loved "Chosen" as well. It really did echo "Graduation Day" as far as Buffy finales went.

Welcome back Selena. :-)

[thran.livejournal.com]

Welcome back! Nice review, you seem to have had a reaction rather similar to mine. :)

Bunnies. Sniff.

[celestialfray.livejournal.com]

I wish Christophe Beck had done it, just because his work is always beautiful and powerful.


But Chosen was done by Robert Duncan. He still did wonderful.


I just wish buffyverse.de was still up because they'd have the scores available for download.

Thanks for the info!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I'll have to remember Robert Duncan then - maybe Joss will employ him again, say, when he manages to get "Firefly" flying once more in one form or the other? As for Buffyverse.de: you and me both.