Summary
In this episode we discuss Baith and Fuffy, Cory’s frustration with Spike, and of course, why it’s wrong. Thank you for listening to our discussion of Season 4, Episode 16: Who Are You?
Listen
Links
We have a Patreon account where you can support us and get access to all kinds of fun things!
You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
We also have a threadless shop here! It’s mostly for our other podcast, but if you’re looking for something to drink Miss Edith’s tea out of, we’ve got you covered!
You can also always email us with your thoughts, questions, and ideas! We love hearing from you! You can send an email to mythtakenbtvspodcast AT gmail DOT com.
Music
Music for this episode is “Digging a Grave,” by Shadows from the Underground, and is used under license from Audiosocket.
Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast 
I’ve been listening and very much enjoying your discussions but haven’t had much time to comment ’til now. Also, season 4, though I tend to rewatch it a lot and know that it has a lot of really good things going for it, annoys me deeply once Adam comes along. However, I couldn’t let the Faith episodes go without commenting, because Faith is one of my favorite characters and having her back around this point in the season felt like a breath of fresh air. I really appreciated your deep dive into Faith’s motivations in this episode, and I just love the whole concept of Buffy and Faith switching bodies. Because the Buffy-Faith season 3 relationship gets talked about a lot like this: Buffy meets Faith and sees another version of herself. Another path she could have taken. Another potential way to be. Then Faith kills Alan and reacts the way she does and joins the mayor and Buffy sees her more as an enemy/cautionary tale.
But on Faith’s side, the same thing is initially happening – she’s seeing this other version of herself and all that she has. Buffy has a support system, and though that support system tries to include Faith as well, Faith always feels like an add on – like she can join in the group but not be supported the way Buffy is. Faith sees what she COULD be, if she had what Buffy has. But she can’t have a watcher as dedicated to her as Giles is for Buffy. She can’t have friends that will back her up the way they do with Buffy. She doesn’t have any parents in the picture like Buffy does, someone to take her in so she doesn’t have to live in a motel. And then when she accidentally kills Alan she feels any tenuous connection that she had to being a slayer more like Buffy start to drift away. So she becomes desperate and straight up tries to replace Buffy even then, lying to Giles about who killed Alan. Buffy’s important to her as a friend but the envy and bitterness are always there – she wants Buffy’s life. And now in season 4, she gets a chance to have it.
She gets to see what it’s like to have support and love, and at first she thought she was too removed to let it affect her. It’s a fun performance, it’s temporary before she gets on a flight out of town, and she can get one over on Buffy. There are moments where she’s forcefully reminded that she’s NOT Buffy, she’s Faith, and these people actually can’t stand her (the stabbing Willow scene), but for the most part she just tries to have fun with it because in her mind, Buffy deserves it. Buffy had this great love in Angel and now he’s gone and there’s someone else ready to love Buffy, and Faith is irritated because Buffy just… has these things. And Faith doesn’t get them. Faith lie alone in a hospital while Buffy continued to live her life with people, even new people, to love and support her, and no one bothered to care what happened to Faith.
But the way people treat her as Buffy does eventually crack her shell just a bit. Just enough for her to grasp onto the chance to want to be a hero again. But it also magnifies her ever present desire to have Buffy’s life. So she doesn’t skip town. She fights the vampires in the church (and Laine, I agree that it’s kind of jarring when Faith says “it’s wrong” in the church, because it seems like a too-quick turn for her to make at this point, especially considering what she then does on Angel, right after this. I tend to see it more as Faith still performing as Buffy, but embodying it more completely – saying no, I can do this. I can be the hero. I think it’s more self-centered than it is altruistic at this point). And when Buffy comes back, she fights her with a viciousness that has everything to do with her need to have this life. To have the things that Buffy has and be the person that Buffy is.
I can’t wait to hear your discussion of Faith on Angel, because I love her arc on Angel but it’s also been a while since I’ve watched, so I’m not sure if I’ll feel differently about it now. I love that Faith eventually gets to a point where she can look at things and say “yeah, it’s not fair that I didn’t have these things growing up and that connection was so hard for me to find, but this is my life and these are my responsibilities/consequences and I need to find a way to move forward as myself and deal with the things that I’ve done.” And Angel is there to support her, which is really key for her.
Re: some other stuff in the episode – I like that it was Tara that noticed something off about Buffy. I like that it took someone who could intuitively sense disturbances involving magic, and that it apparently didn’t have much to do with knowing Buffy or being able to read her. Maybe they should have sensed that something was up, and I think if the arc had been extended, both the Scoobies and probably Spike would eventually pick up on something, but for this short amount of time, I think it works well that it was Tara.
Thanks for another great episode!
LikeLike