Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Enemies" Review (3x17)

Brief Synopsis: “As a part of her new alliance with The Mayor, Faith tries to seduce Angel so that he will lose his soul again. When that fails, The Mayor summons a powerful demon to remove Angel’s soul with dark magic.”


"Doppelgangland" (3x16) quick link here                                                                                                                          "Earshot" (3x18) quick link here


Four quick notes before we get started...

1)    I will be reviewing the episodes in bullet point form. This is because it makes the reviews simple to read and helps break up the text.
2)    This review will almost definitely contain spoilers for episodes after this one.
3)    If you enjoy my reviews, please subscribe to the blog! Over on the right-hand side there's a little box that says "Follow Shangel's Reviews by Email!". If you put your Email address in there and click "Submit", then confirm your subscription, you will get each review sent straight to your inbox! I can promise you that I won't send you junk mail or any of that rubbish! It will literally just be my reviews as they're uploaded here. You'll never miss a single one! Also, please bookmark the blog and check back every couple of days! I update every 1-3 days without fail!
4)    If you're going to be using Amazon (UK/USA) or eBay (pretty much anywhere) soon, please do so through my blog. It'll take you just a couple of extra mouse clicks, but they will pay me a small percentage of the money you spend, helping me find more time to write these reviews. Most importantly, it costs you nothing at all extra. Details of how to do this are located here (it'll take less than a minute to read!). Thank you very, very much!

With that being said, let’s get started, shall we?



• Time and time again with season three, I am blown away by how consistently brilliant the quality is. I’m talking across the board here. From writing to directing, to acting, to the musical scores, everything about season three seems to work. There hasn’t been a bad episode this season at all and since “Band Candy” every episode has been great. I think the difference is that the writers have found their feet by this point. In seasons one and two, if the episode story itself was poor, the episode would fail. By season three, even if the monster-of-the-week or the episode plot is a little underwhelming, the character growth and secondary plots are always enough to make the episode at least ‘good’. “Enemies” is the perfect example of this. This episode is basically broken down into two parts. The first part is Faith trying to make Angel lose his soul and the eventual discovery that Faith is evil. The second part is Skyler and the ‘Books of Ascension’. The second part of the episode (Skyler), doesn’t do a great deal for me. It’s not bad, it just doesn’t hold my interest a great deal. I understand that the Books of Ascension will be more important later on in the season, but at this present moment I found myself wanting more of the Buffy-Faith-Angel scenes. The main story of this episode is damn near perfect. Seriously, this is high quality stuff.

“Enemies” works as a catalyst for setting up the rest of the season. It brings Faith’s betrayal and alignment with The Mayor into the open, it introduces the Books of Ascension, it explains to us that Mayor Richard Wilkins III is ridiculously old, and it alludes to the fact that The Mayor will be ascending on the day that the Scoobies graduate from Sunnydale High. What makes this episode very special is the way in which the Scoobies discover all of this information.

I like to consider myself an intelligent person, especially when it comes to storytelling. I can usually figure out where a story is going and what is going to happen next. This episode got me. I admit it, I completely fell for it! I was 100% sure that Angelus had returned and that the odds were against Buffy more than they’d ever been, with a combination of The Mayor, Faith, and Angelus (imagine if it was true! That’s an unstoppable force!).

• The episode opens with a host of couples leaving an erotic film at the cinema, hand-in-hand, all cuddled up, and looking thoroughly pleased with themselves...then Buffy and Angel leave the cinema looking awkward with no touching whatsoever and closed off body language, because there is no naughty touching in their relationship. One spurt with Buffy and something else leaves Angel at the same time. I find this scene far more amusing than I should. In a lot of ways, this scene (and episode) is the beginning of the end for ‘Bangel’. They can’t have sex and they can’t go out in the daylight.
• While I find the Skyler section of the episode the weaker half, I do like Skyler himself. He’s one of the first instances of a grey-area demon in “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. Up until this point, almost every vampire or demon that the Scoobies have crossed paths with have been evil. Skyler is a friendly, nerdy little demon that wants nothing more than to raise some money for a plane ticket to escape Sunnydale. I wonder if he was friends with Clem? I bet they’d have gotten along great. While we’re on the subject of Skyler, how did he get the Books of Ascension in the first place? These are very rare, very powerful books and Skyler doesn’t seem like the type of demon that would murder to acquire them.
• Another highlight of this episode is the ever-growing relationship between Faith and The Mayor. Their relationship is so fascinating. I’ve always been in awe of Joss’ ability to make loveable villains. Not only that, but he somehow manages to establish genuine, loving relationships between two villains that you find yourself caring about. This is such a hard thing to pull off successfully, yet Joss succeeds time and time again. “Enemies” is the first instance where you get to really see the father-daughter relationship dynamic between the two. These quotes are the embodiment of that...

The Mayor: “Do you know what I wish? I wish you’d pull your hair back. I know, fashion isn’t exactly my thing, but gosh darn it you’ve got such a nice face. I can’t understand why you hide it.”
     ...............................
The Mayor: “Try to have her home by eleven. She’s not a little girl anymore *sniffs*.” 

I can see why Faith is willing to do anything for The Mayor. Make no mistake, she’d kill anyone or sacrifice anything for The Mayor by this point. What we have to remember is that Faith had a very rough childhood. We’ve heard little snippets about her childhood before now, but this episode divulges far more information than we’ve been allowed to see before “Enemies”. Faith grew up with an alcoholic mother that was “so busy enjoying the drinking and passing out parts of life” that Faith was neglected. She had a bad start in life. Does this forgive her actions? Absolutely not! But it does help to explain them. Since her childhood, Faith has never really trusted anyone. As far as I can see, the only person Faith has trusted is Gwendolyn Post, who turned out to be a psychopath that used and manipulated Faith. That made Faith trust people even less. By choosing Gwendolyn over Buffy, she isolated herself from the Scoobies. Even if the Scoobies don’t see it that way, Faith does. Now, The Mayor comes along and he’s everything Faith has ever wanted. He’s the loving parent she never had. It’s such an interesting relationship! Even though I don’t want The Mayor to ascend and kill people, I find myself wanting a happy ending for Faith and The Mayor. I want them to be happy and live out their lives in a nice white cottage as father and daughter. Alas, this is a Joss Whedon show, so that’s as likely as having Wesley and Fred live happily ever after (I’m still bitter about that one...).

• Giles: “Demons after money….whatever happened to the still-beating heart of a virgin? No-one has any standards anymore.”

I love that Giles is genuinely disgusted at the fact that Skyler is after money.

• After killing Skyler, Faith has a breakdown and goes to Angel for help. During this scene, I was torn. I was unsure if Faith was being sincere or not. On the one hand, perhaps having blood on her hands again gave her an internal struggle so she went to Angel for help. Angel was the one who helped her the most in “Consequences” after all. He almost got through to her before Wesley interrupted. On the other hand, Faith is clearly devoted to The Mayor. Her betraying The Mayor would have been completely out of character. It’s not long before we find out that it was all a big ‘scamola’ (as Lorne would say).

I’ve got to admit, The Mayor’s plan to recruit Angelus isn’t the most intelligent thing in the world. Even if he succeeded, Angelus doesn’t have a history of playing well with others. He’s a loose cannon that would rock the boat (“is that a mixed-metaphor?”). I can understand why The Mayor would want Angelus on side, but I still don’t think it was the most well thought out idea in the world. Plus, he’s invulnerable! What does he need Angelus for?!

The Mayor: “And I won’t tolerate brooding.”

That explains why he’s never tried to recruit Angel before now...

The next section of the episode takes a little bit of guess work, but I think I’ve figured it out...

After Faith tried to seduce Angel, he realised that something was wrong. He confided these thoughts in Buffy, who went to Giles with the information and they started piecing together a plan to discover if Faith had betrayed them or not. Giles contacted the sorcerer demon dude, as he owed Giles a favour (Giles introduced him to his wife – I need that backstory, and I need it now!). There is one gaping hole in this plot...how did Giles know that The Mayor would ask for the services of that particular demon? Was he vacationing in Sunnydale at the time, so he was the obvious choice? Do sorcerers who cover their mouth vacation? Do they sit on the beach tanning their eye area? As we learn in Angel season four’s “Awakening”, there are other people that can remove Angel’s soul.

Glancing over that obvious flaw, the rest of this plot plays out perfectly.

The Mayor offered the creepy sorcerer guy who’s going to remove Angel’s soul a mint! TWICE! YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE HIS MOUTH!

The sorcerer ‘removes’ Angel’s soul, he kisses Faith, and wackiness ensues. After Angel kissed Faith, I was sure that he was really Angelus. Angel would never kiss Faith otherwise, right?! This scamola does lead to a very entertaining scene between Angel and The Mayor. Angel throws a letter opener at The Mayor, who catches it through his hand casually, with the skin healing over instantly. Awesome moment! The interesting thing about that scene is that the audience think it’s two ‘Big Bads’ interacting, which never happens at any other time (I don’t consider Willow to be season six’s Big Bad). It’s such a fascinating power play between the two. If you’d seen all of “Angel” before this episode, it should be quite apparent that it’s not really Angelus. Angelus doesn’t take orders from anyone; even people who could kick his ass easily like The Beast. He wouldn’t happily follow out The Mayor’s orders.

The Mayor wants Angel to take his time killing Buffy because he doesn’t want a replacement Slayer running around any time soon. Interestingly, Buffy’s death wouldn’t activate a new Slayer anyway, Faith’s death would. Buffy’s an anomaly to the Slayer line (since she died and was brought back in “Prophecy Girl”), so Buffy dying again would just remove the anomaly (which is exactly what happens when she dies in “The Gift”).

I’m surprised that Buffy and Giles didn’t let Xander and Willow in on their plan. I think that Xander and Willow have earned the right to know; especially considering that Xander gets punched in the face by Angel in this episode.

I mentioned earlier that I totally bought the lie. However, looking back at this episode a second time (or hundredth time by this point), there are subtle little clues that it’s not really Angelus. A few of his glances towards Buffy, the way he acts around Joyce, and the brief look of concern on his face after ‘tying’ Buffy up, are all evidence of this. It’s all very subtly done though. David is brilliant in this episode. He successfully plays a character playing a character. That can’t be easy. It’s confusing enough to say, let alone do! I think the brief look of concern that flashes across Angel’s face after ‘tying’ Buffy up is because he knows that things are about to get very uncomfortable with Faith. He knows he’s probably going to have to kiss Faith and say horrid things about Buffy, and he will be powerless to do anything about it until after Faith has let slip some details about what The Mayor is up to. Also, just as Angel and Buffy are leaving Buffy’s bedroom, Angel gives Buffy a glance that seems to say “are you sure you want to do this?”.

Then, we arrive at the best part of the episode and the reason why the episode exists: the reveal scene. The reveal scene is one of my favourite scenes from any episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. IT’S JUST SO DAMN PERFECT! While there are some plot holes on the way to the reveal scene, the reveal scene itself is flawless. Buffy and Angel are both fantastic actors. When I first saw this episode, I had no idea that Buffy wasn’t really tied up or that Angel wasn’t really soulless until “second best”. I swear, I screamed so loudly at my television! 10-year-old Shangel nearly had a fit! I can only describe my reaction as a bird trying to fly away, even though it’s been tied down. Like a hyper-excitable arm-flail, while screeching.

The scene sets up the rest of the season perfectly. We know a lot more about The Mayor’s ascension, the Scoobies’ fears about Faith betraying them are confirmed, we learn more about Faith’s past, and, best of all, we get to see Faith’s motivations for betraying Buffy. Faith is jealous of Buffy. Faith has nobody or nothing in Sunnydale (in her eyes), but Buffy has everything (I mean when Faith first left and developed a loving relationship with The Mayor). Buffy has a Watcher (ex-Watcher) who treats her like a daughter, she has a caring mother, an education, and a close circle of friends that would do anything for her. I’d also like to point out that Joyce did tell Buffy that she could learn a lot from Faith, so somebody did tell Buffy that she should be more like Faith. I just adore scenes between Faith and Buffy. They’re the only people in the world that can truly understand what it’s like to be a young woman and the Slayer, yet they’re completely polar-opposites of one another. It’s one of the reasons why season three is my favourite season of either show. If you tweak Buffy’s upbringing and environment just a little bit, she could easily have turned into Faith. Don’t believe me? Go and watch “The Wish” again. Buffy even makes reference to it herself in “Doppelgangland”, when she confides in Willow that Faith’s actions in “Bad Girls” and “Consequences” could easily have been her. I think it reinforces the message that everyone is capable of being ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Everyone is capable of terrible or wonderful things under certain pressures and circumstances. Willow almost destroys the entire world in just three years time!

Angel reveals that he’s not actually soulless, the episode turns slow-motion (which is also excellently handled!), and Buffy and Faith have their second fight of the season (the first being “Revelations”). It’s very brief, but it’s highly intense and energetic. Their fight scenes are always awesome. Their third and final fight of season three (the best one) takes place in “Graduation Day Part One”.

What’s interesting to me is Faith’s reaction to Buffy finding out about her betrayal. Faith is upset. For someone that dislikes Buffy, she takes it hard. I’ve always felt that Faith wants to be loved and accepted by Buffy deep down. She wants Buffy’s approval. She’d never admit that, but I think it’s true. It’s a testament to the closeness of Faith and The Mayor’s relationship that The Mayor is able to make Faith genuinely smile again. I don’t think anyone else is capable of making her smile so widely. Even years later!...

The Mayor: “Still unhappy? Okey-doke. I’ve got two words that are going to make all the pain go away: Miniature. Golf.” 

On the flipside of Faith’s reaction is Buffy’s. After watching Angel and Faith smooching and Angel pretending to be evil again, Buffy needs a break. It’s completely understandable that she needs to step away for a while. Angel only did what he was supposed to do, but it must have brought up a lot of old, painful memories for Buffy seeing Angelus again. Plus, with Angel and Buffy not being able to do anything sexual, Buffy is insecure and fears that Angel might be looking elsewhere. “Enemies” closes on the highly depressing note of...

Angel: “You still my girl?”
Buffy: “Always.”
The Bangel theme plays as the show fades to black.


A few other thoughts on “Enemies”...

• Wesley: “Find anything?”
        Giles: “Six course banquet of nothing with a scoop of sod all as a pallet cleanser.”

I love these two together. After a rocky start, these two have developed a dysfunctional bromance of sorts. Plus, I always love Giles’ dry, sarcastic, English sense of humour.

• Xander: “Okay, I bribed him.”
        Buffy: “How much?”
        Xander: “28 bucks. Does the Council reimburse for that kind of stuff?”
        Giles: “Did you get a receipt?”
        Xander: “Damn...”

• I adore Willow being proud of everyone liking Oz’s plan.


Quote Of The Episode

Faith: “I come to Sunnydale, I do my job kicking ass better than anyone, but what do I hear about wherever I go? Buffy. So I slay, I behave, I do the good little girl routine, and who does everybody thank? Buffy.”

Buffy: “That’s not my fault.”

Faith: “Everyone always asks ‘why can’t you be more like Buffy?’, but did anyone ever ask if you could be more like me?”

Angel: “I know I didn’t...”

Faith: “You get the Watcher, you get the mom, you get the little Scooby Gang, and what do I get?! Jack. Squat. This was supposed to be my town!”

Buffy: “Faith listen to me.”

Faith: “Why? So you can impart some special Buffy wisdom? That it? Do you think you’re better than me? Do you? Say it. You think you’re better than me.”

Buffy: “I am. Always have been.”

Faith: “Umm, maybe you didn’t notice, Angel’s with me.”

Buffy: “And how did you get him, Faith? Magic? You cast some sort of spell? Because in the real world, Angel would never touch you and we both know it. You had to tie me up to beat me. There’s a word for people like you, Faith, loser.”

Faith: “Uh-huh. You’re just trying to make me mad so I’ll kill you. I’m too smart for that. Stick around.”

Buffy: “For what? Your boss’ lame ascension? Like I couldn’t stop it...”

Faith: “You can’t.”

Buffy: “I will.”

Faith: “Keep dreaming. No-one can stop the ascension. The Mayor’s got it wired, B. He built this town for demons to feed on, and come graduation day, he’s getting paid, and I’ll be sitting at his right hand. Assuming he has hands after the transformation, I’m not too clear on that part. And all your little lame-ass friends are gonna be kibbles and bits. Think about that when your boyfriend is cutting into you.”

Buffy: “I never knew you had so much rage in you.”

Faith: “What can I say? I’m the world’s best actor.”

Angel: “...Second best.”


FINAL SCORE: 8/10

What are your thoughts on "Enemies"? Did you enjoy this episode? Dislike it? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments section below!

If you've enjoyed this review, please use the conveniently placed buttons just below to share it on Blogger, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, or email it to a friend! It is greatly appreciated!