7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me

[Clare]

7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me - Episode #139
Wood and Giles plot to kill Spike, who is reliving events from his past in an effort to learn the reason for the First’s hold on him.

Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.

[partcynic]

7x17 “Lies My Parents Told Me”

Episode Rating = 0

As so-so as S7 has been on an episode-by-episode basis, one thing it had over S6 was that it had yet to produce an edition worth a zero – at least until this point. On paper, “Lies My Parents Told Me” could have been an interesting, complex and thought-provoking story – but it instead relies on “Intro to Psychology”-level armchair analysis; destroying the characters of Spike, Buffy and Giles in the process. I’m shocked that despite having had almost seven years to learn the basics of the Buffyverse, the writers are still making elementary errors about the nature of vampires, and the season’s incessant Spike focus is rendering the other characters sad shadows of their former selves.

What I Liked about “Lies My Parents Told Me”:

- There’s some wit to the dialogue in the first few scenes. Buffy’s reference to Pink; Wood’s amusing confusion over Spike and his soul, chip, and trigger; Xander grouching about the basement chains not being available last week; and Giles quipping about Spike’s small brain were all good, and helped those sequences move at a good pace.

- I liked the final scene with Buffy and Wood. Buffy offering him consolation (of sorts) by telling him about Joyce was nice, and I could understand her subsequent threat to let Spike kill him if he persisted with his vendetta.

- Andrew answering Fred’s phone call and saying “the guy sounds kind of effeminate” was a great crossover gag.

What I found to be a mixed bag about “Lies My Parents Told Me”:

- I always welcome seeing Drusilla/Juliet Landau, and she always brings something good to the show (in this case; her hilarious reaction to learning that William wanted to take his mother killing with them). However, as I said when reviewing “Lessons” and “Bring on the Night”, the writers should do more with the character. Having her be a glorified extra does both she and Juliet a disservice.

What I Disliked about “Lies My Parents Told Me”:

- Why are we only dealing with Spike’s trigger now? Was Giles’ absence in the last two episodes because he was off hunting for the magical stone-worm thing? Couldn’t this ep theoretically have happened seven shows ago, instead of being dragged out ‘til now?

- At this point, I’m wishing that the Bringer had actually killed Giles, because then I could say that the Giles we got here was the First. Not a single one of his actions had any connection to the person he was in the first six seasons, and he’s been replaced by a flat authoritarian who did nothing but whinge and offer badly written lectures. Almost all of his dialogue was poor, and his behaviour so off you could legitimately wonder if the writer had even seen an ep with Giles before.

- A minor thing, but where exactly is Spike’s optic nerve located? It should go from the back of the eye, through the brain to the occipital lobe, yet the enchanted stone slithers up Spike’s forehead for some reason.

- Willow, Xander, Anya, Dawn? Who are these people again? Is there are reason that these regulars are frequently being dwarfed in screentime by the likes of Andrew and Rona?

- The early Spike flashbacks were dull. We didn’t need additional commentary on his bad poetry, and a continuity check would have revealed that Cecily’s surname was Adams, not Underwood. In addition, the sequences didn’t tell us anything except that the human William loved his mother, which isn’t exactly shocking.

- The constant angsty looks from Wood to Spike are too much. We know that there’s a negative vibe between the characters (and in Wood’s case, for a legitimate reason), but we don’t need to be shown it again and again.

- The first scene with vamp-William and Drusilla didn’t make sense. From Spike’s dialogue in “After Life”, it sounds like he was given a proper funeral/burial, yet his mother acts like he’d just gone missing for a few days. And how did the vampires manage to enter her home? She obviously couldn’t have invited them in, and the episode gave the impression that only William and his mother lived there (meaning that Spike and Dru shouldn’t have been able to enter at all).

- This ep flat-out ignored basic vampire rules. Why on earth is the newly-sired William exactly the same as he was as a human? What happened to the concept of “you die, and a demon sets up shop in your old body. It may walk like you; talk like you; but it’s not you” (paraphrased from Buffy’s talk with Ford in “Lie to Me”)? To make this even sillier, observe that this tenet was actually observed with regard to Spike’s mother (who was pure demon when sired). That means that the writers couldn’t even keep their story straight within the course of a single episode. Did everyone just give up and go home early?

- Let’s now go into the main plot, and the character destruction contained within. First, let’s look at Wood. His behaviour isn’t out of character, but it is tremendously stupid. Somehow, his anger and bitterness causes him to forget that Spike is a superpowered monster (who’s capable of defeating an equally superpowered Slayer, let alone a regular combat-trained human), and to think that provoking said monster into an animalistic rage before fighting him one on one (with no special weapons, no trap and no backup) is a great way of dealing with the situation. Even if he was being plagued by hallucinations, Spike should have been able to kick Wood’s ass, and while Wood’s motivations are acceptable, that doesn’t make those scenes any more interesting to watch.

- How about Giles? I touched on this briefly before, but he’s now been totally destroyed. For six years, he was Buffy’s loving father – a point that was hardly subtle. Yes, the two disagreed on multiple occasions, but he still listened to her and respected her judgements (by this episode’s reckoning, he should have tried to have Angel killed in S3). Yet all of a sudden, he gives up any kind of paternal connection and transforms into the Watcher’s Council tool he would have been prior to S1. All that development he got seems to have been for nothing – he’s remained a weak-willed bureaucrat who would turn on those he purports to love, despite already knowing the dangers of doing that (“Helpless”). Even if you believe that his actions were precipitated by a fear of the First that rendered him completely irrational, it’s still unbelievable that he’d agree to Wood’s scheme. Giles knows that Spike is deadly and has murdered two Slayers, yet thinks an ordinary human will be able to take him on? I’m really hoping that Wood lied about the specifics of his plan.

- Now for Buffy. Is she a heroic young woman who learnt between “Becoming” and “The Gift” that love was more important than saving the world? Nope – she’s apparently an unfeeling killing machine who would happily murder the people she cares about for “the mission”. It seems that the writers have completely missed the point of the first six seasons. All that stuff about friendship? Turns out, it was all a big lie. And just as an aside, it makes the later scene where Buffy’s watching Dawn sleep rather disturbing, as we now know she’d willingly throw her to a Turok-han if it allowed her to win the fight.

- Finally, there’s Spike. He’s no longer a complex and multifaceted character that’s fundamentally driven by evil impulses yet changeable when in love, and is instead just an embittered mama’s boy. The flashbacks were a transparent attempt at whitewashing his past and reducing his responsibility for his actions in anticipation of a Spuffy reunion (after all, he wouldn’t have been so bad if his mother hadn’t been mean to him). Watch “School Hard”, and try to see if the magnificently evil bastard he was there can in any way be reduced to an unresolved Oedipus conflict – I bet it can’t.

- Buffy knows that Spike is at risk of being triggered at any time, yet doesn’t accompany him to Wood’s to make sure he’s chained up and secured? Why?

- What were Giles and Wood planning to do if their plot had been successful? Did they really think that Buffy wouldn’t have been able to figure out that they were responsible for Spike’s death, and that their actions wouldn’t risk completely destroying the gang’s unity before the big fight?

- I disliked the false dichotomy Spike/the show constructed with regard to Nikki’s actions. Being a good Slayer and a loving mother aren’t mutually exclusive things, and acting like Nikki embracing her calling meant she didn’t love Robin was strange. What was she supposed to do? Shrug off her Slayerhood and potentially risk the lives of thousands of people?

- The closing scene was thematically weak. Growing up and making decisions for yourself doesn’t always mean turning your back on your parents (as Buffy did with Giles), even if you strongly disagree with each other.

Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?

Less. It has a few charms (a nice eye for continuity; good flashback cinematography; some witty lines), but that’s not enough to compensate for a questionable plot, strange theme, violations of basic canon, and the trashing of three of the show’s most important characters. I’d like to look for some redeeming features here, but there simply aren’t enough, and all I can grade “Lies My Parents Told Me” is a zero out of ten.