Promises to Keep

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."

Robert Frost, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"

How far we fall, and how fast.

Both "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" began this season with a newly cohesive team of characters, a "well-oiled machine." In the "Angel" season premiere, "Judgment," Angel and Cordelia talked about "the light at the end of the tunnel," the eventual restoration of Angel's humanity. The tunnel was looking dark and deep, but Cordelia reassured Angel: "It's gonna be a long while till you work your way out, but I know you well enough to know you will. And I'll be with you until you do."

In the December 19, 2000 episodes, "Into the Woods" on "BtVS" and "Reunion" on "Angel," both our heroes found themselves deeper than ever in the proverbial woods, and while Buffy at least was willing to make an effort to get out, Angel seemed unwilling to try any longer.

At the Hyperion Hotel, it's starting to look a lot like the 1950s all over again. At the end of "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been," Angel assured Judy that he had changed, but now we are discovering that he may not have changed that much since he walked out on the humans who had tried to kill him, leaving their anger and fear to sustain and nourish a demon. Once again, Angel just can't bring himself to care any more, and finds himself echoing the words of his adversaries, becoming more and more like the evil that he fights.

After disregarding a vision from the Powers that Be until Cordelia forced him at stakepoint to make a nominal effort, and then abandoning the Wolfram & Hart lawyers and their party guests to the tender mercies of Drusilla and Darla, Angel acknowledged that Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn were probably the only ones standing between him and the darkness.... and then he fired them.

The woods are dark and deep, and the darkness seems far more alluring than all of those unkept promises.

On "Buffy," the crash-and-burn of the Buffy/Riley relationship, while it may evoke cheers from a few diehard B/A loyalists, is not much cause for celebration from Buffy's point of view.

Joss Whedon’s intentional reversals of standard gender-role expectations have always been a key theme in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Looking at the first half of the fifth season of “BtVS” and particularly at the December 19, 2000 episode “Into the Woods,” one wonders what message about male-female relations Joss Whedon is trying to present through the deterioriation of Buffy and Riley’s relationship. In many ways, this season Riley played a traditional “wifely” role as the quietly supportive, steady and reliable partner, standing in the background. Buffy was astonished to discover that Riley was dissatisfied with their relationship, which seemed “perfect” to her. Is the message simply the obvious one, that even a nice guy like Riley is deeply affected by the cultural expectation that the female must be the more needy and dependent partner? Are Riley’s noctural forays into the vampire underworld symbolic only of infidelity as the desire for danger and the craving for the forbidden? Is Spike correct when he says that Buffy wants a little monster in her man, or is it just his own wishful thinking? Or is Whedon making a more subtle point, not only about “what women want,” but about what men want, as well?

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