Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Intervention Rewatch

December 9, 2015 10:10 PM - Season 5, Episode 18

Giles and Buffy head out on a vision quest, where Buffy receives a message from the First Slayer. Spike receives his Buffybot and plays with it in public, confusing friend and foe alike. Glory's minions kidnap Spike due to his presumed closeness to the Slayer, and the gang must bust him out before he tells her about Dawn.
posted by yellowbinder (2 comments total)

This is a really important episode for Spike's arc. Only a few episodes ago he was tying up Buffy and almost feeding her to Drusilla, and his initial plan here is quite gross, with he and the Buffybot engaing in sexploits. However, by the end of the episode he will have been tortured for information, and refused to give it up. While his actions here might be slightly self serving (it doesn't seem likely that Glory was going to let him go after he told), I think the strongest implication is that he held out for Buffy, and for Dawn. He's on a pathway to being something better, even if we're not sure quite what that is. Unfortunately, the writers are never quite clear on what that is either, which will lead to some confusion in 6.

Buffy's vision quest is really important too. She's frustrated by it, but she learns a lot of things. Not just that Death is her Gift, the key to the final episode, but also that she overflows with love. This is really important. Buffy throughout this season has cut herself off from love. She's tried harder to be a good slayer and become emotionally detached from Riley and Dawn. But that hasn't helped, because she isn't just a slayer, she's human too, and she needs those human connections.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 11:59 PM on December 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

So it's from here on that the stakes just keep getting higher and higher without letting up. Glory starts to seem genuinely dangerous, with her absolute glee at the thought of peeling Spike like an apple. And Spike is such a badass when he insults her to goad her into hitting him hard enough to let him escape. When this run of episodes started, it was absolute torture waiting a week between airings.
posted by wabbittwax at 7:15 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]