Yeah, I think that's a fair point. Riley's going through an existential crisis and serious angst and it's his relationship with Buffy that's falling apart.

What makes Xander's actions so uber-douchey is that he's so sanctimonious in his 'splaining about Buffy's emotional shortcomings, as he sees them, when he's the one who's guilty of that -- and Xander doesn't have the circumstances like Buffy where she needs to be strong for Joyce and Dawn nor where she was very open emotionally in Season 4.

But then I see Riley and Xander doing a lot of projecting when it comes to Emotional Stoicism is BAD if you've got lady parts and all. If you're a dude, keep on with the not talking about your feelings and find release via vamp-sucking or unloading on your best friend and telling her ~she's wrong when you really mean you are.

You know what I hate most?

How in the next episode, Anya says at the beginning that "maybe it's her" when she and Xander are talking about Riley leaving Buffy. It just seems to reinforce that it's Buffy's fault, that everyone thinks so. A great opportunity for a counterpoint and instead we get this scene:

ANYA: Maybe it's her.
XANDER: Huh?
ANYA: Well, maybe it won't happen to us because it's all about *her* messing things up. She couldn't make it work with Angel, and then she let Riley go away.
XANDER: Yeah, relationship debris is kind of piling up on the Buffy highway.
ANYA: Hmm. Humans make the same mistakes over and over. I saw it when I was a vengeance demon. Some guy dumps a girl, she calls me, I exact vengeance, blah blah blah, the next year, same girl, different guy. I mean, after you smite a few of 'em you start going "my goodness, young lady ... maybe you're doing something wrong here too."
XANDER: I don't think it's a pattern with her. No, it's just ... you know, now that it happened again ... man number two ... I wonder how she's dealing with it.


Followed up by Buffy considering joining a convent and wondering "how's the food?" SO MUCH BUFFY BLAME. :(

I think it's still ultimately a flaw of the narrative, especially such a long narrative like BtVS. While it might be clear that Into the Woods is more heavily dictated by Buffy's POV, the show itself slips into less perceptually subjective moments. And in the past, it does a better job of presenting the situation from all angles.

Here, we're left with Buffy's Fault as the overriding narrative conclusion and with so many different characters concurring that it becomes a viewpoint approaching unanimous. No dissenting voice -- except when we get to Buffy later saying she wasn't supposed to be ready yet. But nothing to counteract the vehement judgment of ItW.

It makes the narrative unbalanced when it needn't be. And the opportunities to later address go unrealized; specifically, As You Were which just skews even further down the spectrum of Buffy's Fault. Admittedly, it does so in such a way that it becomes farcical, but there still should been some calm rational presentation to re-center the perspective.

Even with As You Were, perspective is again subsumed in Buffy's self-judgment -- which really demands an outside voice to counteract it. We never get it, though. And if Buffy is such an unreliable narrator, I think we should have.



Edited at 2012-03-21 08:14 pm (UTC)

And it's so clear that they're riding off a superiority high, you know. Because Xander saw Buffy's relationship implode -- for reasons other than Buffy's Fault like Riley's existential crisis -- but he sees it as a sign for him to go fix his relationship. Because everything he accuses Buffy of doing is actually what he's been doing.

So not only does he project his failings onto Buffy, but then once he's externalized his failings enough that he can see them clearly, he then uses it as a way to go fix his relationship. And the next morning, he and Anya are practically bathing in the relationship superiority when they get all judgy over Buffy and her break-up -- and they still don't understand why the break-up was destined to happen. Nor does Xander ever own up to knowing how self-destructive Riley was for that season. He SAW it all happening, more so than anyone else, with Riley feeling unloved and Riley's self-destructiveness, and he did nothing about it.

UGH XANDER. This is not how you do friendship okay.