Blurry Grays

It’s getting harder and harder to tell good from evil these days. The line is becoming blurred, and Buffy might not be able to tell if she’s crossed it anymore. Today's episodes seem written specifically to show just how blurry the line has gotten.

In “Doppelgangland,” Willow is mistaken for a much more evil, Vampire version of herself. Even though the dual persona is clearly a danger, Willow refuses to allow Buffy to kill claiming that she “deserves a chance” just like everyone else. While Willow attachment to a mirror image of herself is understandable, the others are perfectly agreeable to going along with releases the demon back to her home. Willow has developed an affinity with her darker self, and the others respect that without question.

In “Enemies,” this juxtapose of an unidentifiable good and a hidden bad is taken even father in the opening scenes with the demon who tries to sell the slayers the Books of Ascension. As Faith says, “A demon’s a demon;” demons are supposed to be evil. However, this demon is a harmless person just trying to survive in dangerous times. In reality, he is probably more “human” than the hardly innocent Faith who condemns him. The audience is very much aware of the irony of the situation. The human is the evil; the demon just an innocent bystander.

In “Earshot,” everyone is sure they who the killer is. It has to be the angsty newspaper writer. He is obsessed with negatives. He’s depressed, and he hates everyone so it must be him, but it’s not. The next turn is to the shy awkward guy everyone picks on. No one ever pays attention to Jonathan; a massacre would be the perfect way for him to get attention. It isn’t Jonathan either. The real culprit is one no one ever suspected, the lunch lady. It is getting harder and harder to figure out who the big bads are now.

Angel blurs the line even further when we are unable to tell if he was turned or not. The question everyone is asking during the entire “Enemies” episode is did the spell work? Is Angel now Angelus? We don’t know, because the truth is he could be either. They are the same person on the outside. No one is able to tell when Angel is good or evil; they all rely on his actions to try to discern the situation of his soul. Actions can be tricky, and we find out that “it was just an act,” as Buffy says in an attempt to reassure both Xander and herself. The fact of the matter is, though, it’s getting harder and harder to discern the good guys from the bad guys now, and even when we know the difference we can’t be sure that that character really is all good or all bad. Things just aren’t black and white anymore.