Giles in Season 7 - Something I had forgotten

[hobgoblinn]

So I posted the last part of "In Loco" I'll probably get to before Summer of Giles, and while doing the formatting, I had been listening to Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along." For those who aren't familiar with the show, it runs backward through the lives of three friends, starting with them all estranged, their lives outwardly "successful" with all the things they thought they wanted, and ending with them together watching Sputnik passing overhead, their whole lives ahead of them. It asks the question, "How did we get there from here?"

I thought it might give me a new perspective, going back through the Buffy canon from the end. And so far, yeah, it's been interesting.

But something just happened that threw me completely. In the episode "Touched," Giles listens with the others to the Bringer speaking through Andrew's body, about how it serves the First Evil and how it will be around long after they're all dead. The Bringer is bound and helpless. And Giles picks up a knife and cuts the Bringer's throat to silence him.

Just trying to wrap my mind around this. I know it's often been remarked how Giles is anti-Giles in this final season. But I'd appreciate thoughts on this and what it might say about Giles, here and post Chosen. I can't write this story if I can't get back in the head space of these characters. And I'm not sure this Giles is someone I can understand well enough to write, or even to edit what I have to finish this.

Comments

[rahirah]

So is it that Giles kills the Bringer that's the problem, or that he kills him in a way that possibly lost them some valuable information, or...?

My standard fanwank for just about anything Giles does in S7 that seems irrational is that, well, it is irrational. He's suffering from some form of PTSD and survivor's guilt from the Council getting blown up, and him losing all his friends and colleagues.

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Both that it's stupid and doesn't seem to make any sense. And that he's so detached while he's doing it-- he's not angry, not defending anyone. It's so wastefully brutal a way to shut the creature up. Is there any reason for him to kill it? The only thing I can come up with is, if the hive mind of the Bringers constitutes something he sees as a threat.

Yeah, that might be an explanation.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

But but but... what else could he do? Let it go so that it could turn around and start killing more Potentials? Or keep it permanently locked up in Buffy's basement next to Spike? Especially since it's strongly implied that all Bringers are in constant communion with each other and the First, so anything this one hears, will automatically and immediately be known by all the others.

I do agree his action was very abrupt - he could at least have asked if anyone had any more questions...

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's kind of what I came to as well. It had to be put down like a rabid dog. Just the way he did it, so quickly and emotionlessly, and so without warning, is what threw me, I think.

[secondalto.livejournal.com]

Well, he cant' exactly let it go, can he? It would just report back to the first. But is a semi-irrational killing, unlike Ben's, who he killed so they'd be rid of Glory.

As much as I love the show and as much as there are a FEW good episodes in the last two seasons (OMWF, Tabula Rasa, Storyteller) I prefer to ignore a lot of canon after season five unless it suits my purpose. There was a lot of character rape in those last two seasons, not just of Giles.

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that hive mind did present a threat, and maybe Giles is so quick here because he's suddenly realized what they're brought into the house. Just seems strange, the way he did it.

[ex-shitsu-to509.livejournal.com]

You're so right, I always thought the throat slitting was weird. My standard fan-blather for why pretty much everyone in season seven is a fairly unlikable, consistently irrational shell of the awesome characters who populated the earlier seasons - maybe not so much season six - is that The First's existence creates low-level evil vibes that make everyone more selfish, depressed, angry etc without them being able to pin it down to a supernatural cause.

For Giles specifically I think the loss of the Council, The Bringers, finding the Potentials and all that makes him crack up. Hence the detatchment and the killing. Also how recovered from what Willow did to him is he? In season six he didn't seem that bothered about being about to die, so perhaps by the end of season seven he's lost everything and is more than prepared to go out fighting. Everything up to the final scrap is almost an irrelavance because Giles knows that in a very short time it won't matter at all.

Good luck getting into the headspace of the 'Chosen' era characters and writing your story. If you want to kick ideas around at any point and think a Sniggs p.o.v may help then do email. I look forward to reading your fic :-)

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

We've seen before that Giles can be brutally detached when he needs to. I don't think he sure any other possibility.

While the book is very problematic, "Merrily We Roll Along" has some of my very favorite Sondheim music of all time.

[clavally.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was a bit like him shoving the sword through the Mayor. But, now that you mention it, it was very detached. I think that's just a very dark part of him. The same part that let him kill Ben and summon Eyghon(sp). I don't think we've ever been meant to know how dark his past is, but there's lots of little hints.

For instance, remember in season 5 when they catch one of Glory's minions and Willow and whoever else it was turns their back and there's this noise and suddenly the minion is spilling his guts? He had to do something to him, but we never see what it was.

And again when he threatens Ethan and beats him up and when he threatens Snyder to let Buffy back into school.

I always get the feeling there is something very scary about that man's past.

[beatrice_otter]

See, the thing about Giles is that while he's a good guy, he can also be absolutely ruthless when the fate of the world is at stake. He killed the Bringer and Ben in cold blood. He was also willing to kill Dawn if that was what it took to save the world. Back in the Haloween costume episode, he not only beat the shit out of Ethan, he did so coldly and with purpose. Giles would prefer never to have to make the hard calls or do the dirty work. But someone's got to do it and he'd rather it was him than anyone else.

What could they possibly have gotten out of keeping the Bringer alive? Information? Would you trust anything that came out of its mouth? I wouldn't. The First's greatest weapon is its ability to manipulate people. Even if you had some way to ensure that it was telling the truth, sometimes that can be the most potent weapon of all, if it's slanted and edited well. You can't do anything about the phantoms the First sends except endure them and try not to listen. The Bringer, now--that you can kill. And he does.

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree with what everyone else said. They might have gotten a bit more information out of the Bringer, but it was a danger just standing there.

I like the explanation about PTSD. It would explain a lot of about Giles's behavior (and in fact is pretty much what I go with in All We Need of Hell for why he is, how he is. Because it's actually more how he acts with Buffy that drives me crazy in that season - he shows up, he doesn't hug her (she goes to hug him but Kennedy gets in the way), and he says, "It's all on you." Has he ever done that before? Ever? No. And the only reason he would, imnsho, is if he was so exhausted and traumatized that he couldn't do anything else.

[usedtobeljs]

Season Seven is deeply problematic from a writing standpoint, so my answer is a mixture of Doyleist (extratextual reasons) and Watsonian (character reasons).

Watsonian: yes, Giles has a warrior-side, and has done since the character-reworking in "Halloween" and "The Dark Age." He says in "First Date" that this is a war, and he's behaving accordingly. And he does not rely on Buffy to solve the problem. (It's important to me that he doesn't torture the Bringer, however.)

But I would also note, as Barb says above, that the man has lost the institution by which and against which he has defined himself his adult life. He has lost friends. He has lost resources and backing. He has been doing the work of a dozen men since then, travelling continually on the grim job of collecting Potentials, exhausted and stretched past bearing. AND, to extend and slightly counter sahiya's point, no one has hugged HIM (except Anya and Co in "The Killer in Me" when they tackle him in the desert). He's had no comfort or support -- not from Buffy or Willow, certainly, who are taken up with their own concerns.

Doyleist: Because the thrust of the show is "It's All About Buffy," in Season Seven the writers *take away* any Giles character work they've done to save room for more feel-sorry-for-Buffy moments -- Joss and Co wrote and then discarded scenes in which (in LMPTM) he talks about how killing Ben has affected him, and in Chosen how the First had appeared to him as Jenny.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Doyleist: Because the thrust of the show is "It's All About Buffy," in Season Seven the writers *take away* any Giles character work they've done to save room for more feel-sorry-for-Buffy moments -- Joss and Co wrote and then discarded scenes in which (in LMPTM) he talks about how killing Ben has affected him, and in Chosen how the First had appeared to him as Jenny.

That's very interesting and quite sad, because it didn't work--IMO Buffy was less sympathetic in Season 7 than at any other time in the series. I don't want to get started on an anti-S7 rant here, but I particularly disliked the way Giles and Willow were written that season--it took way too much fanwanking to connect them to the characters they'd been before. In what was most likely a case of self-protective denial, I'd completely forgotten about Giles killing the Bringer. It never made any sense to me, PTSD or no PTSD.

[heron-pose.livejournal.com]

So, I haven't much to add that others haven't said ... but still feel compelled to second the PTSD stuff, the sense of isolation he's brought with him that is reinforced by all the trauma in the house (no touching, no line-crossing) --

AND, while it's true the Bringer was helpless, I think it's gloating made RG feel even more helpless than he already had, and certainly the Bringer's continued gloating was bad for morale.

He didn't ask others if they needed more info because he's often a ruthless solo player -- remember his offscreen but clear torture of one of Glory's minion's in S6? Brrr. And, isolated. Plus, (oy, somebody stop me) if he had *any* thought of further need, it wouldn't have seemed difficult to go pick up another one.

I really like L's Doyleist/Watsonist distinctions above; sometimes I think that a stable of TV writers needs to farm out a guardian for each character -- would help w/character continuity (which I don't strictly believe in), even if it would result in some RPG-ish elements to TV shows (um, more than there already are).

Aren't you glad you asked?

[heron-pose.livejournal.com]

Um, I meant "its gloating", of course, and also the Glory-minion thingy happened in S5. Lala. La.