The I in Team

I've procrastinated about writing about this episode....not because it's so seminal or baffling, just....there's a lot going on, but it's mainly plot level. This episode is more soap opera structure, multiple storylines that only tangentially impact each other at this point, but all building towards further plot complications. Nothing is resolved in this episode; there's no satisfying "win" for the Scoobies, but the promise of more Big Bad action is clear--and this is the episode where the season metaplot really starts. All the players are in place, and they've introduced and established the Initiative, Riley, Oz's departure, Anya, Maggie, even Adam. We're pretty fair into the season for the big picture to just be emerging, but that becomes more the modus operandi in the later seasons (Willow isn't revealed as the Big Bad until the last couple episodes in season six; season 7, it seems like the Bringers, then Caleb, then....underlying Big Bad.).

The title for this episode is an onion: obvious, Buffy joins the Initiative (Note, it starts with an I, and is a Team), but it's clear that she is not good at being a Team Member--there's too much "I" in her makeup (which ties in with Giles' insistence to Kendra and the Council that Buffy can't be treated like the other slayers, that she doesn't fit the subservient pattern). A couple brief conversations with Riley where it's clear that he doesn't question, he does what "the team," usually Maggie, tell him because he's a team player just emphasizes Buffy's difference as well as setting up Riley's loss of innocence.

Riley knows he is part of the good guys, and he trusts without question that his leaders--Maggie--are doing everything for the greater good. Hence, he doesn't need to question. Just act. In Maggie and Riley's eyes, Giles is wrong for fostering the collaborative approach that he has permitted with Buffy (and the Scoobies--note that slayers are NOT team creatures, usually--flashback to Kendra's amazement about Buffy having friends and help).

So....Buffy, who has been the core of the Scooby team, has left that affilation (or so it seems based on her lack of connection emotionally and in daily ways with the others) in favor of Riley...not the first time she's chosen a man over her friends, notice. Season three had large helpings of Angel-secretiveness and pulling away, too.

But everyone is, in some manner, exploring connection and team:

• Spike starts off the episode by declaring that he's bad, and he will not come running if "teen witches' spells go wonky" or "Xander cuts a new tooth," cutting ties with the group even as Giles is there in the background trying to offer Spike status and involvement. What exactly Giles was intending is never made clear, as Spike is rude and dismissive, closing all discussion....until, of course, Spike is shot with a "tracer" and shows up at Giles door for help. A smidgen of Giles' hardass background--a hint of Ripper--comes through as he neogotiates with Spike about why Giles should help him. (The chemistry between those two characters is interesting; I wish Joss did a bit more with it...well, the whole season 7 Giles plotting to kill Spike excepted, I guess.) This episode makes it clear that although Spike refuses to fit into the Scooby team, he is part of the gang in more than a peripheral manner.
  
• Willow's turned gay--she's left the Scooby team with her own secret, and it's only later that the significance of this episode is clear. Tara, a stuttering, shy misfit, has been in most of the season, but just as "a witchy friend," filling a gap for Willow because Tara has more background in ways. But the scene where Buffy, after spending the night with Riley in one of the more graphically sexual scenes in the series, comes back to the room only to find that Willow has been out all night too. Buffy is so keyed into herself that she misses Willow's evasiveness and unease about saying where she was; Buffy isn't a Scooby at that point, isn't thinking as Willow's best friend. When Giles calls Willow for help with Spike's tracer, it's an affirmation that Giles is still assuming the Scoobies exist and function, but based on Willow and Buffy....that's shortsighted.
  
• Xander is floundering, and because he has no job, no Scooby imperative--Anya is with him constantly, and he hangs out with Giles, who is equally at loose ends. Xander's foray into selling the granola/power bars--which no one likes, and he justifies by explaining that he needs to buy pretty things for Anya (who embraces capitalism with a vengeance...so to speak!) Xander can't hold onto the sense of gang that they had; it's too clear that Willow and Buffy have other interests (and, as the poker game makes clear, Willow feels left out from the Anya/Xander vibe, too--making her relationship with Tara more likely, as well. Tara needs her friendship; Buffy and Xander don't)

BUT--pesto chango. The point of this episode may be to shake up Riley and make it clear that the Initiative (read: Maggie) has spawned the Big Bad: Adam, the cyborg-demon-human that Maggie has created and Riley has inadvertently helped with by supplying parts, never questioning what he was doing. Maggie reveals herself as evil--as not really being part of the Team, in once sense--when Riley finds that she has set up Buffy to get killed. The farm boy's world is rocked, and he's questioning everything. Buffy--who had been enthusiastic about the Initiative, barely considering the ramifications of that for the Scooby gang, is now Maggie's sworn enemy--and Maggie is dead...but by Adam. not Buffy.

One other curious thing: during a big fight scene, the graphic sex scene with Riley and Buffy is intercut. That's a technique that is unique to this episode, I think....I can think of times that things which we happening simulataneously are intercut, but the fighting and the sex couldn't be simulataneious--in fact, when Buffy asks Riley at the end of the fight, "what now," the audience knows exactly where they end up--and that conclusion of that sequence of events is when we find out that Buffy spent the night with Riley. Why they chose to juxtapose the action of the two scenes is curious. In a later season---five or six---Spike needles Buffy about the sexual thrill of battleing demons, declaring that it just primes the pump, or something similar--and Buffy vehemently denies it. The filming here may be the first exploration of that idea, which is pivotal in parts of season six....maybe.

The most important point: they have been losing the "team" experience and "team" feel this season, and the barely interlocking plots are designed to emphasize that; the end-of=-season melding that requires all their gifts to beat Adam also reaffirms that they are still a "team," not just the "I."

Now, on to the next episode, which continues the soap opera feel, if I remember right.