5x20 “Spiral”Episode Rating = 2
A long-awaited exposition dump, “Spiral”’s job is basically to spew out the closing details of the Glory/Dawn arc, which is does in a tolerable manner, while also attempting to feature a little bit of action and character development. Sadly, this ep ends up bearing the brunt of the abysmal Knights of Byzantium, and their prominent positions are enough to sink its believability (and to a large extent, its rewatchability). While I don’t usually have problems with silly episodes, I also never rate them highly, and this one is so amazingly dense in places that all I can do is laugh at it. However, there are still fleeting bits of cool amidst the ridiculousness, and I’ll concede that it’s entertaining if you mentally disengage from what you’re seeing.
What I Liked about “Spiral”:- It’s a new perspective to have Buffy actively flee from a foe, and it heightened just how hopeless the battle against Glory appears to be. There was a lot of tension in the first few scenes (kudos for picking up right where “Tough Love” left off), and I could understand Buffy’s fear and desperation. The early road-trip atmosphere was good fun, and permitted the show to try something it hadn’t done before.
- Anya has some funny material (the piano; attempting to cook, battering the Knight with her frying pan), all of which was effective.
- Glory’s minions are starting to blur into one another, but the new one here (Gronx) was amusing, both in her toadying for ‘her divine scrumptiousness’ and the flirting (of sorts) with Ben.
- Dawn’s characterisation has been all over the place this season (is she a tolerable-but-annoying little sister? Actively obnoxious brat? Compassionate and thoughtful teen?), but she was likeable here. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was good, but I liked her clear appreciation for what Buffy was doing for her. As I mentioned when reviewing “Intervention”, I wish they’d kept up with this kind of portrayal.
- I don’t think much of what it led to, but Buffy’s slip into catatonia was nicely foreshadowed and very believable.
- After spending so long with multiple arc questions hanging over our heads, it’s good to get the answers. I liked that Glory’s plan wasn’t an active attempt to destroy the world (and Buffy’s incredulous “she’s going home?!” reaction was good), though the impact is lessened knowing that we’ve had tons of build-up for what is essentially a re-write of “Becoming”.
What I Disliked about “Spiral”:- Since when could Glory run at super-speed? Why didn’t she do that on the multiple occasions it would have benefited her before? In addition, the whole bit with the truck and her transforming back to Ben was pathetic, and an obvious contrivance to permit Buffy and Dawn’s escape.
- Giles’ (and especially Xander’s) complaints about Spike were annoying. It’s fine for them to distrust him after his bad behaviour in “Crush”, but they should already know that he, Buffy and Willow are the only people who might be able to hurt Glory – and his presence is thus necessary.
- Xander’s road sickness was tacked on. It only seemed to be there to kill time, and didn’t produce any good lines or jokes.
- Spike’s ability to survive in daylight is getting stretched. I can tolerate the blanket making brief appearances here and there, but having him in sunshine for extended periods of time is too much. That flimsy piece of cloth isn’t going to provide
that much protection.
- I said it when I reviewed “Checkpoint”, and I’ll say it again: the Knights of Byzantium are among the stupidest things the writers ever dreamt up. I can understand them wanting to give Buffy a cool group to fight at close range, but they went overboard and made things ridiculous. Nothing about the Knights makes sense – they’re poorly acted, and have bizarre, stylised dialogue that doesn’t fit inside the parameters of the Buffyverse. That’s not even mentioning the massive fails in logic that accompany their actions, which I’ll go over in the next few points.
- Why do the Knights choose to wear chain mail? Not only is it cumbersome and restrictive (bad things when you’re fighting for your life), it’s inappropriate for a battle in the (hot) California desert, and makes them stick out like a sore thumb. Did anyone not notice them as they were marching along, or did people just think they were a band of medievalists? On top of that, I can’t see what protection the armour would provide – it won’t be any impediment to Glory, or even a regular person with a firearm.
- Why are the Knights fighting with swords? What good are blades going to do against an invulnerable god, and why choose an attack method that would require you to get close to said god (thus allowing them to kill you easily?) At least get some guns – they might not do much, but you could at least strike from a distance.
- Can the Knights not afford cars? I laughed out loud at the horses (a mixture of cringing, embarrassment, and the ‘so-terrible-it’s awesome’ factor), and couldn’t believe that the audience was supposed to take it seriously. Even if the Winnebago was travelling at only 30-40 mph, there’s no way they could have kept up (the gang were several hours out of Sunnydale, and in the middle of hot, dry terrain). I hope they were magic horses.
- The Knights figure out that that the Key is “a little, shiny girl” (based on one coincidental statement), but how do they determine that it’s Dawn? All they have to go on are the ramblings of someone who’s been brain-sucked, so a few more lines explaining things would have helped. Then, upon deducing that it’s her, how do they track down the Scoobs? They could have at least mentioned getting their clerics to do a locator spell. And how do they assemble so many people outside the abandoned gas station in such little time (and again, without a believable form of transportation in sight)?
- In more Knight suckage, it’s rather pathetic that they’ve been fighting to stop Glory for generations... yet she’s only been around for 20-odd years. It’s also sad that they couldn’t even defeat the monks and destroy the Key prior to her arrival.
- The show’s ethics are getting increasingly hypocritical. For all of the blathering about how murdering humans is wrong regardless of intent, I find it annoying that Faith got lambasted for a total accident, while Buffy killing people (who are trying to do the right thing for every innocent being in the universe) gets a free pass.
- Many of the sequences that try to be emotional are trite. Like “Blood Ties” (also written by Steven S. DeKnight), this episode frequently presented clichéd soundbites as deep and meaningful (Ben saying why he wanted to become a doctor; Buffy’s “What kind of god would do this?”; and even Giles’ “no Watcher could be prouder”).
- Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting is starting to slip. I know she can excel when she wants to, but here she seemed to substitute wide-eyed staring into space for emotional power.
- Why does Buffy ask Willow to open a door in the barrier when she can talk to the Knights through it? Sure, it would be necessary once Ben/a doctor came, but it’s better that they only create a gate when necessary, reducing the amount of time for the Knights to double-cross them and breach it.
- Charlie Weber continues to prove that he can’t act, and I don’t understand why Ben agrees to go to the desert. Given that he knows Dawn’s the Key (and that he could potentially become Glory and cause real trouble), why doesn’t he at least try to arrange for someone else to go in his place? Did anyone not guess that he was going to transform (resulting in Glory getting Dawn) the instant he made his appearance at the station?
- How do Glory and the Head Knight know each other? Have they met before? If so, how did the Knight survive the encounter?
Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?In terms of enjoyment, I’d say I liked it a fraction more this time, but that was only because I embraced how spectacularly awful big chunks of the ‘story’ are. Unfortunately, that can’t transfer into a rating increase – as I still appreciate my lowest-rated ‘3’ episode (“Living Conditions”) more than this one. Looking back over S5, I think it was getting blatant that the show needed to reach a conclusion, and getting this and “The Weight of the World” back-to-back was like a neon warning sign that the writers were losing it (or in the case of a few of them, never had it to begin with). Still, the unintentional comedy value this ep provides is worth something, and the road-trip vibe is novel and somewhat refreshing. That makes “Spiral” worth of two out of ten from me, though I’d still say it’s one of the few eps from S1-5 that can near-objectively be dubbed ‘poor’.
. Though there are a few flaws (for one I didn't know byzantium was a real place), the episode makes up for it by being so much fun, both in a humorous way and an adrenaline pumping way.
