War Zone is another episode that is more fun to analyze than it is to watch.
The episode introduces us to Charles Gunn and company, who we spend most of the story
with and, as with any plot that tries to get us to care about a completely new set of characters
rather than the ones we've already formed a deep emotional bond with, the results are
somewhat on the 'meh' side.
As charismatic as J August Richards is (and he is) Gunn and company are tropes we've
seen a hundred times before and what might've been a solid emotional payoff gets undercut
by some dodgy dentals.
BUT, on closer examination I think there might be something very interesting going on with
this episodes structure, and with Gunn himself.
We open on a young woman walking a dark alley at night being followed by a pack of Silverchair
vampires.
The lead grunge rock-pire turns and, for a moment, we think it's Angel what with the
dark clothing and the first few notes of his theme.
But instead we meet, Charles Gunn."
The woman is Gunn's sister and the two of them lead a gang who defend the streets from
the midnight nasties.
The vamps in the alley get the best of Gunn's crew who I'll dub the Lost Boys and, the
gang returns to Neverland to attend to their wounded.
On the other end of the spectrum, Angel and company are attending a party of billionaire
David Nabbit, who is having some unfortunate blackmail issues having gone to a demon brothel.
Angel tracks the blackmailer from the brothel to an alleyway.
The Lost Boys see him coming and save the blackmailer from Angel.
Angel accidentally flees into Neverland and saves Gunn's sister from a booby trap.
Enough of a gesture that Gunn lets him go.
The vampires from the opening scenes are having a meeting about the Lost Boys and decide to
attack.
They take Gunn's sister in what is a genuinely harrowing scene.
The shots of Alannah being murdered through the ugly van window and Charles' expression
after, really bring the consequences of this life home.
It all lands in a disturbing fashion.
Angel returns to Neverland to try and offer his services.
28:40 "Unless of course, death is what you're after.
And then you're on your own."
- "I'm always on my own."
Angel gets locked up.
Gunn kills his vampire sister.
A pretty good emotional beat is interrupted by some enormous lisp-inducing vampire chiclets.
I thought they'd figured-out the lispy vampire-dialogue problem after Darla died with marbles in her
mouth.
Apparently not.
And the episode ends with Angel and Gunn striking a pact of mutual support.
Warzone is a strange episode..
The only writing credit went to Garry Campbell, his lone Buffyverse script, whose other resume
entries include The Kids in the Hall, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and MadTV.
With those sorts of entries is it odd that War Zone feels so…dry?
It's another very transitional episode away from the episodic film noir vampire detective
concept the show started with.
Season 1 has been nothing but an experiment really as the writer's tried to find their
voice but clearly they were leaning towards a more serial style show going into season
2, which by necessity would've meant building out the cast.
Thematically David Nabbit is setup in stark contrast to Gunn's world.
The opening cuts back and forth between them are intended is direct commentary.
Gunn's is a violent and transitory world, one with no expectation of long life.
It's also much more ethnically diverse.
Nabbit is isolated by money and class.
"I like to smell a little money every once in awhile."
The episode is mostly the introduction of Charles Gunn and there are a few structurally
interesting elements to it.
Throughout, the Rube Goldberg-ian style of his gang, with their improvised stake cannons
and traps, kept making me think of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
Like Peter's lost boys, Gunn's gang of misfits have no expectation of ever growing
older.
And they too have a Wendy who is eventually captured by the pirates, before returning
to London to eventually grow old and die.
Though Angel's speech at the end inadvertently relegates Gunn to the role of Ruffio rather
than Pan.
Whatever racial commentary the episode is making through the Pan analog gets especially
interesting when you consider that in the original 1953 version of Peter Pan, The Lost
Boys were all white, and some of the movies portrayals of ethnicity have...uhh...not aged
particularly well.
The vampire gang may also have been designed to be racially evocative.
Their leader is white with a shaved head and their daylight gas mask outfits feel vaguely
reminiscent of the Nazi SS.
The problem is, the episode doesn't really have anything new to say about ethnicity and
economic stratification in the United States, but rather uses those ideas as the backdrop
for the introduction of these two characters.
And like Hero's goose stepping racial purity demons, these themes are so top-shelf that
without any kind of payoff to their use, I found them a distraction from the emotional
story that was going on.
Nabbit is the less interesting of the two, though his presence does give Cordy a nice
moment where she comes to realize how far she's progressed from the beginning of the
season.
Nabbit represents for Cordelia a simple and straightforward return to the life she thought
she was going to have before she left Sunnydale.
Though it might have involved a bit of moral compromise to do so, Nabbit is a good hearted
man and without a doubt, Cordy could have run the show with him.
"Feels good in your mouth."
Can you imagine episode one Cordy turning down the opportunity to gold dig the kind,
safe, and inoffensive Nabbit?
David and Gunn's presences both feel like waters being tested.
David as the rich and well-to-do character might've given us more insight into Cordy
and provided Angel Investigations the financial backing for the writer's to put the team
in as many financially unlikely situations as they wanted.
Gunn's character offered an outsider's perspective to Angel's world (in contrast
to Wesley and Cordelia) devoid of privilege or pretense.
Of course that is all a part of the well-worn trope his character is from: The impoverished
African American male from an inner city who has resorted to a life outside the law to
find some kind of justice, and has no expectations for a long life.
Gunn: "Everyone dies."
But it's of value to distinguish between a trope, a cliche, and a stereotype.
Tropes are simply patterns that are familiar to us in media.
Frequently used plots, characters, or devices that we recognize.
What matters is what the story does with them.
For instance, Cordelia began Buffy as the bog-standard mean girl trope.
Four years later she might be one of the most complex characters in the Buffyverse.
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I think, for that reason, in order to consider Gunn and his arc in the series it's important
to not simply dismiss his early appearances as tone-deaf or cliche.
Appreciating an arc means taking both ends of it into account, but that also means that
we're going to have to talk about things that never make anyone uncomfortable, things
that Gunn unambiguously mentions in this episode.
Gunn: "I don't need advice from some middle-class white dude, that's dead!"
Race and class.
For being so progressive in regards to issues of gender and sexuality, neither Buffy nor
Angel's shows have had much to say on the topic of race, save for Mr. Trick's observation
early on:
(Faith, Hope, and Trick) You know, strictly the Caucasian persuasion here in the Dale.
It's a cute and self-aware observation by the writers that is quickly swept aside and
maybe a little overshadowed by his witheringly cringey final line
"I hear once you go Slayer you never want to go back."
But in short, to this point any non-white actor has been relegated to a minor supporting
role, and many of those suffer a quick death.
Representation across media is important for many reasons not simply for the sake of reflecting
the world we live in.
In their essay 'The Individual, the Institutional, and the Unintentional,' cited in the description,
Mary Iatropoulos and Lowery Woodall suggest that studies show popular culture's centralization
of whiteness effectively limits the scope of perception of what exists and what is possible
- not just on screen, but in the viewer's mind as well.
In other words, a portrayal of a same sex relationship as healthy and normal in a show
also normalizes those kinds of relationships for people who consume media.
And a lack of diversity across media normalizes whiteness and pushes other ethnicities to
the status of...well…'other.'
And that phenomena is actually an aspect of Gunn's arc that we'll get into.
This will be an unfolding conversation but I want to say a few general things here as
framing.
First of all, the trope that Gunn's character is cut from feels stale because of its overuse
in media, but that also doesn't make it irrelevant.
Second, while I'm going to be looking for what's interesting about his arc because...well
that's kind of what we do here, that is not to say it is never mishandled or free
of stereotypes and cliche.
Just as some of Buffy's feminism feels dated today.
There is plenty to cringe at.
But, as someone who was the sweet-spot age when Friend's was airing, and laughed while
completely oblivious to the potential harm of Chandler's transphobia, I'll just point
out that the root of the word Progressivism, is progress.
And progress is by definition, measured over time.
Also I know we're a very international audience and issues of race and class vary from country
to country.
Our discussion will be specifically focused on those issues as they pertain to the States
and inform Gunn's character.
Finally, in case you hadn't realized it by this point: I am not a sociologist nor
an academic.
I do a lot of reading and research with these essays but mistakes will come.
To this point I have had the grand privilege of not having to wade into these conversations,
but they are an aspect of Gunn's journey, and it's a commitment of mine with the guides
to do every character justice.
But, as much as there may be a few missed opportunities here, War Zone is an adequate
and entertaining episode.
J August Richards feels like a fun and charismatic addition to the cast and it's nice to see
that our core has already developed to a point where they can reflect and feel differences
within themselves.
Still, the wonderful 5by5 gave us a demonstration of what a complex and intricate antagonist
could do for the show.
Wonder if there is a direction they could go with that?
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