Addendum to Notes on Helpless: Slayer Mythology (by Max)

[2maggie2]

Addendum to the notes for Helpless

Comments

[angearia]

Back in Prophecy Girl, she told the Master proudly that she’d flunked the written. Here, Quentin informs her with a condescending smile that she passed the test.It seems necessary as a building point to Graduation Day. Your remarks on how Buffy and Kralik are alike reminds me of Buffy and Giles, how they began as adversaries with Buffy seeking to fully rebel. The Buffy that said she flunked the written in Season 1 was still prepared to walk away at the threat of dying. This Buffy is more fully in the game. And just as Giles has softened to Buffy, Buffy's gotten so much closer to Giles. At this point, Buffy doesn't really understand what it means to have a Watcher she doesn't trust and she thinks of the Council as boring stuffed shirts. Not realizing that the grandmother is as much a wolf as the vampires she hunts -- a wolf fighting on her side, but feeling no loyalty or affection for her personally

[local_max]

Yeah, I agree that this episode is a necessary stepping stone to Buffy quitting the Council. It also has Buffy much more readily risking her life than in PG, and for basically the same reason (to save innocent lives). So there is real progress. We were hoping to get this in to one post originally, so I tried to keep this brief, so there might be a bit of nuance missing. Speaking of PG, there's also an actual connection to Prophecy Girl here, in that Kralik says a line that's almost identical to one of the Master's--"You still don't understand your place in all this?" or some such. The ending plays a lot like PG with Buffy's powers removed, which is why Quentin's line resonated so much with me. Here, the Council plays the role that the prophecy played in that episode; Giles was, in a sense, an agent of the prophecy back then

[ceciliaj]

I agree about the Echo and Alpha parallels, but I'd say the Council is more like a London Dollhouse, with Adelle as Giles, out of her element in sunny California. Rossum is something that the Buffy mythology doesn't really get to, more like Wolfram and Hart...but let me know if I'm misinterpreting your idea.

[local_max]

You're interpreting it correctly! But I think Rossum stands in for the Watchers Council in that Rossum is the one who is creating and then manipulating the dolls. But it's true that they are a broader kind of evil than the Council.