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Week 12 - Love
"Don't I Get Any Say In This?"

Background - Things You Didn't Know About Oz

Because we've skipped a lot of episodes, and because the Unitarian Slayer course focuses on selected storylines with a limited number of episodes to support discussion, we've missed out on several long-running stories altogether. Now it's time to pick up the thread on one of those stories.

Photo: Willow and Oz

Oz is a werewolf. This happened around the same time that Oz and Willow began dating, at the same time frame that Angel lost his soul. Oz was bitten by his six-year-old cousin Jordy, who is also a werewolf. This first came up in the series in the episode "Phases" (episode 2.15), in which there were a series of werewolf attacks. The problem was resolved by Oz agreeing to lock himself up in the high school library book-return cage on the nights of a full moon. Willow decided that she could continue to date Oz, noting that "three days out of the month, she wasn't much fun to be around, either."

The "monster within" is taken literally with Oz becoming a werewolf. In most werewolf stories, Oz would die for this, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer once again turns clichés and standard plot devices inside out.

This solution to Oz's werewolf problem also reverses course on traditional views of ethics, which look only at individuals versus society. Buffy takes a feminist view based on relationships; she knows Oz as a person, and even more than that, her friend Willow is falling in love with Oz. These become critical factors in finding an accommodation for Oz's werewolf issues. This is a recurring issue for as long as Oz remains in Sunnydale.

We haven't seen Oz in any of the episodes from season four, and there's a reason for that, as we'll discover in tonight's episodes. The first episode, "Wild At Heart," comes before any of the season four episodes that we've seen. The second episode, "New Moon Rising," picks up after recent episodes involving the Initiative.

Opening

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.

-Laurens van der Post

Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person's suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain.

-Sheldon Kopp

Episode 4.6: Wild at Heart

Continuity

  • Jumping back, before the "Initiative" storyline begins

What to watch for

  • One person's change (Oz) causes Willow and Oz's relationship to fail

Transcript is available at http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/season4/transcripts/62_tran.shtml

Episode 4.19: New Moon Rising

Continuity

  • Jumping forward, after the Faith episodes

What to watch for

  • How Willow has changed relative to Oz's expectations

Transcript is available at http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/season4/transcripts/75_tran.shtml

Metaphor Watch

Many sexual metaphors allude to "animal magnetism," or sometimes to suggesting that "men are just animals." Here, the animal inside is taken literally, and both Oz and Veruca are taken over by their "animal instincts."

Questions

What else could Oz have done instead of locking Veruca and himself in a cage? Would it have saved his relationship with Willow?

We see Oz change and grow after breaking up with Willow. He is devastated when this change does not bring him back to the place where he and Willow were before their breakup. How do we blind ourselves to the effects of changes in our lives?

In the first episode, we see how Willow deals with sudden and unexpected change. In the second episode, we see how Oz deals with equally difficult change. How do you feel about the way that each character copes with change?

When Oz is ready to leave Sunnydale to deal with the "wolf inside," Willow doesn't want him to go. How do relationships survive infidelity?

Breaking up with a long-term love is deeply painful, but it also brings growth. How have each of us grown after such a loss?

How do you deal with being in love with someone who is all wrong for you?

How do we deal with the pain when someone we still love deeply has moved on to someone new?

How do friendships help Oz and Willow through these situations?

Closing

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

Additional Reading

Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Kopp, Sheldon B., If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! Toronto: Bantam Books, 1972.

Korsmeyer, Carolyn, Passion and Action: In and Out of Control. South, James B, ed., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.

Larbalestier, Justine, The Only Thing Better Than Killing a Slayer: Heterosexuality and Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Kaveny, Roz, Reading the Vampire Slayer, second edition. London: Taurisparke Paperbacks, 2004.

Miller, Jessica Prata, "The I in Team": Buffy and Feminist Ethics. South, James B, ed., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.

Riess, Jana, What Would Buffy Do? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Sheinberg, Esti, Irony, Satire, Parody, and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000.