“Just Rewards” Written by David Fury and Ben Edlund Directed by James A. Contner The Story We pick up on a flashback to when Spike’s amulet destroyed the entire Hellmouth (sadly with much less awesome music), then Spike. That was nineteen days ago. In the present, Spike is staring around at the A.I. team (and Harmony) in utter disorientation. When Spike sees Angel, he vamps out and tries to tackle him, but goes right through him and ends up standing in the middle of the desk. He’s a ghost! Spike is the one most weirded out by his ghost status. He wants to know what happened to Buffy. Angel tells him she’s in Europe, but he doesn’t want Spike going near her. They argue about Buffy for a while, until Harmony breaks it up with her disgust and jealousy. Wesley explains Buffy/Spike to Fred and Gunn—at least, as much as he can, given that his only info is from Angel. Angel doesn’t appreciate Wes saying that Spike is like him. Spike is still extremely freaked out by his circumstances. Cut to Fred running some tests on Spike in her fancy lab (while he hugs his coat very close to him as if scared she’s going to electrocute him or something). Lorne and Wes are there too. Fred and Spike chat a bit. Spike thinks the idea of Angel being in charge of W&H is hilarious. Fred isn’t so sure Spike is a ghost, because he’s not giving off the same readings as ghosts. Wes has been looking at the amulet under a microscope, but not discovering much. He theorizes that Spike is connected to it. Angel wants to know how the amulet got to L.A. from the bottom of the crater formerly known as Sunnydale. Fred thinks maybe it’s Spike’s destiny. He could be here because the Powers sent him! Spike hates that idea. While he’s complaining about it, he starts turning transparent, then disappears completely. He reappears a few moments later, after Angel has dismissively explained what he meant about saving the world. Once he comes back, he starts accusing Angel of doing this to him on purpose and being a coward for not wearing the amulet himself. Um, yeah, that wasn’t his call. Somehow, it seems none of the A.I. team but Angel knew about Spike’s soul. Dangit, Hipster Angel. Angel walks away, and Spike follows him. We get another glimpse of the random luchador mail guy. I wonder if he’ll be important. Angel tries to ignore Spike, who keeps calling him a sell-out. He gets serious for a second to ask Angel why he took the W&H deal, which was clearly a trap. A demon comes off the elevator and Angel fights it. Spike tries to help, but his fist just goes through. Angel keeps fighting until finally killing it. Unfortunately, that was his three o’clock appointment. Oops. He was supposed to open negotiations with these demons to convince them to stop eating babies. Gunn thinks this will actually benefit the negotiations, so Angel doesn’t need to worry. Harmony tries to reconcile with Spike, but he walks away without acknowledging her. He follows Angel and Gunn to Gunn’s office, where he’s telling Angel about all the evil employees he’s fired lately. A lawyer comes in, upset that they’re shutting down the grave robbing division. They’re under contract to supply a local necromancer with bodies. Angel assigns the lawyer to go tell the necromancer client they’re dropping him. Spike scoffs at Angel, who tells him to get out. He does so, after a few last insults. Arial shots of the city until it’s night. Angel is thinking about how he could’ve been the one ghosting out of the amulet. He thinks maybe W&H were trying to take him out by giving him a weapon that would kill him. Wes thinks a different player could be responsible for this. Spike returns. It seems he is physically incapable of leaving. When he tries to, he just ends up popping right back to the W&H building. Wes thinks that means W&H owns Spike now. Spike thinks Angel’s enjoying this. Angel thinks that’s hilarious. Harmony pops in to inform Angel that the lawyer he sent to dump that client is back...in several different buckets. Angel has Harmony get him the contacts list of the dead lawyer’s clients, and then Gunn brings him the client file on the necromancer. Oh, I guess they didn’t realize he was a necromancer until this conversation. They still don’t know what he was doing with the bodies. Angel is going to go deal with the necromancer. Wes thinks he should delegate, especially since this particular villain has control over dead bodies. Angel still wants to do the hands-on approach because screw delegating. Gunn has a different idea. Angel’s listening. We don’t get to find out Gunn’s idea, because now Angel is picking a car to take to the necromancer. Spike’s already sitting in the one he picked. He’s decided he actually does want to haunt Angel forever, as long as he’s going to be stuck in L.A. Angel picks a different car, but Spike’s already in that one. They arrive at a mansion. Apparently necromancy is a lucrative field. The butler warns him it’s a bad idea to barge in on the necromancer. Hainsley the necromancer has quite a few dead people arranged like wax statues. His showroom! Gross. In his workroom, he’s doing creepy magic on the body of a young woman. A demon picked the young woman as the body he’d like to walk around in. The necromancer channels the demon into her. The butler informs him of Angel and Spike’s arrival, and he tells him to kill them. Angel and Spike are walking around the showroom. Spike is a bit jealous of these bodies, since at least they’re really dead. The butler returns and melodramatically whips out a cleaver and a butcher knife. Angel casually picks up the teaspoon from one of the posed dead bodies’ teacups and throws it into the man’s skull, killing him. Spike finds that anticlimactic. Angel wants to know why Spike is bothering him. It’s because Spike is jealous that Angel seems to have everything even though Spike’s the one who saved the world. Wow, really? He was doing that for a reward? Wait, no, I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he’s just annoyed that if he can’t just be dead, he has to deal with this exceptionally sucky situation. Angel is equally annoyed with Spike, because Spike thinks he deserves some great reward, while he’s the one who’s been suffering the agony of having a soul for a hundred years after the atrocities he committed. How is it fair that Spike only had to spend a few months being crazy before he adjusted? Spike goes transparent and vanishes again. Angel busts into the necromancer’s workroom. The demon in the young woman’s body casually tries to leave, but Angel kills it. Now he knows what Hainsley wanted bodies for. And how he got so rich. Hainsley quickly tires of Angel’s threatening speech, so he turns his necromancy powers on him, controlling him like a puppet. Spike reappears. Hainsley thinks a ghost is even funnier than a vampire. Hainsley releases Angel. He doesn’t want to kill Angel if the Senior Partners have such big plans for him. Angel calls Gunn and tells him to “do it.” That means he froze all of Hainsley’s accounts and turned him over to the IRS. Oh, so that was Gunn’s idea. Spike finds that about as anticlimactic as the death by spoon, but Hainsley is furious. Angel doesn’t care. He walks out. Spike vanishes mid-taunt. This time, he reappears in Hainsley’s workroom. Hainsley wants to make a deal with him. He’ll put him back in a real body. He doesn’t even finish his pitch before Spike volunteers to hurt Angel. Angel and Gunn are discussing their success against Hainsley. Fred and Wes join them. Angel is aware that taking away Hainsley’s money won’t remove him as a threat, but he wants to focus on the Spike issue first. He wants Spike gone. Fred tells him they kind of can’t get rid of him. Spike really is bound to the amulet. The only way to get rid of him is to send him to get eternal rest. Spike gets back to W&H and walks right past Harmony’s desk, but she gets all huffy about him ignoring her, which forces him to acknowledge her. She was hoping he’d open up now that he has a soul. Yeah, not likely. He walks over to the door of Angel’s office and overhears the team’s conversation about whether to help Spike move on or let him be a ghost forever. They can destroy the amulet if they smash it on hallowed ground. Angel isn’t sure this is the right choice, so he’s going to sleep on it. Angel goes up to the penthouse. It doesn’t look at all like his style. He heads to bed, now shirtless. Ooh! Haven’t been able to use this one in a while. Just when he’s settling in for a good day’s rest, Spike appears in his room to yammer at him. He mocks him for being so high and mighty. Then he admits he a) overheard the team’s conversation about him and b) Hainsley tried to make a deal with him. He resents that Angel asks him if he accepted the deal. He hates being a ghost, and he wants it to be over.
Cut to the cemetery. I wonder if it’s the same set they used for the last two seasons of Buffy. Angel asks Spike if he’s sure about this. He is. So Angel prepares to smash the amulet. They have a semi-nice moment. Then Angel hits himself with the urn he was going to use to smash the amulet. Yeah, Hainsley’s there, and he’s controlling him again. Apparently Spike did take the deal, and he’s not happy Hainsley waited to the most dramatic moment to take Angel down. Angel wakes up in Hainsley’s workroom, his shirt slit up the center. Aww, come on, just take the shirt all the way off! He already proved in this episode that he still looks amazing shirtless. Angel tries threatening Hainsley with the wrath of the Senior Partners (which is a bit surreal), but Hainsley isn’t worried. His plan is to stick Spike in Angel’s body and have Spike pretend to be Angel until he fixes all the problems with Hainsley’s assets. Hainsley has promised to get Spike his own body back after that. Also, Angel will get kicked out of his own body and be gone for good if Hainsley does this. Spike comments on how he’d like a go at Fred while he’s in Angel’s body. (Interesting coincidence, since that’s what Marcus tried to do while he was in Angel’s body. What is it with dudes who steal Angel’s body and wanting to take advantage of Fred?) Spike wants Hainsley to get going already. Hainsley’s never shoved a spirit into a dead body that was still conscious. Hmm, wouldn’t it be like in “The Dark Age”? Wouldn’t Angel and Spike end up duking it out for control of Angel’s body? Angel beat Eyghon; he could probably beat Spike. Hainsley starts his creepy body switch spell, which involves shoving his hand into Angel’s stomach. Gross. Then he absorbs Spike into his free hand so he can put him into Angel. However, it doesn’t work. Spike seems to be fighting the process. He takes partial control of Hainsley’s body, which gives Angel enough of an edge to fight and kill him. However, he gets up and keeps fighting until Angel throws a silver tray at him, slicing off his head, revealing Spike’s. Hainsley’s body falls to the ground, revealing the rest of Spike. He was just having fun beating Angel up after Hainsley died. Angel is exasperated. Angel is telling Wes the story of his and Spike’s plan. He thinks it was reckless but effective. Wes would prefer it if Spike were more open about his plans in future. Fred heads to her lab and finds Spike in there. He asks her if she’s the smart one. She tries to say Wes is the one who can help, but he’s more interested in what she can do with the science. He tells her he’s pretty sure he’s slipping out of this reality. He’s getting gradually sucked into hell. That’s what happens when he vanishes. He wants Fred’s help. I like “Just Rewards” much better than any of the Spike-centric episodes of the last few seasons of Buffy. Without Buffy in the picture, it’s like Spike is back to being the irritable comic relief he was in Buffy S4, only said comic relief is no longer undercut by the absurdity of the good guys letting him live, because he has a soul now. Of course, that doesn’t apply to Harmony. There’s still no good reason for her to be alive. She doesn’t even have a chip in her head. I think the most fun thing about this episode is the way it plays on our expectations about Angel and Spike. The last we saw, they both turned into jealous morons just for briefly being in the same town. So it probably wouldn’t have seemed terribly far-fetched for Spike to betray Angel to save himself. But if you think about it, no, soulful Spike wouldn’t stoop that low. Even soulless Spike probably would’ve tried to double-cross Hainsley just to be contrary. While I did enjoy the episode overall and, surprisingly, Spike’s role in it, I’m not psyched that Spike is already taking up such a large percentage of the screentime on a show he just barely joined. Fred, Gunn, Wesley, and particularly Lorne took a major backseat to him. I hope that won’t continue. The Characters Spike definitely has the unique ability to bring out the pettiest, least mature sides of Angel’s personality. He’s uniquely good at pushing all of Angel’s buttons. But even with all the pettiness and jealousy, Angel can still recognize when Spike has a good plan, and they can work together, using everyone’s expectations of their mutual animosity to their advantage. It’s quite clever. And yes, Angel is definitely still struggling to maintain his “champion of the helpless” identity even as he’s the CEO of W&H. Spike’s line “I don’t give a piss about atonement or destiny” is a very telling one, and not surprising. So far, the only sins committed by soulless Spike that concern soulful Spike are clearly the ones that directly affected Buffy, and she forgave him already, so that covers it. He wouldn’t have treated Wood the way he did (or kept wearing Nikki’s coat) if he cared about any of his other victims. But I think he’s saying lines like that because he’s no longer secure in his apathy. If he’s slipping into hell, then that must mean he’s accountable for all of it. So maybe atonement and destiny are things he needs to care about. He just deeply resents that idea. He’s having like the reverse of an existential crisis. He didn’t used to think life had much meaning, but now he’s horribly aware that it just might. Whoops. Gunn is officially the character most comfortable with being at W&H. There’s definitely going to be something to make him regret his decision (I mean, that’s how deals with the devil work, and that’s pretty much what this is), but for now, he’s at the top of his field without having to do anything to earn it. I wonder if that seems empty, or if he genuinely likes it. Fred doesn’t even blush when Spike tries to tease her. I feel like this is how he and Willow would have interacted if he’d met her after he got his soul. I mean, he was pretty amicable with her even when he was coercing her into doing a love spell and when he was bemoaning his inability to bite her after getting chipped. Maybe he should consider that his type might actually be women with genius-level IQs. Lorne is kind of barely in this one. Harmony has more lines than him. Boo. Not cool. Wesley and Angel are doing that thing they used to do in S1 and S2 where Wesley is Angel’s main advisor! Yay! There’s one consequence to Angel having the memories of Connor erased that’s definitely positive. Wesley’s guilt over kidnapping Connor and everything that resulted from that action ruined their friendship. Even though Angel forgave him, I don’t think Wesley ever forgave himself. I don’t think he could look at Angel without remembering getting smothered half to death by a distraught, furious father. But now that’s all been erased, and things are back to normal between them. Of course, it would mean more if they could get back to this point with the unpleasant memories intact, but still. Favorite Quotes “I’m in a meeting, Spike.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t care.”
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The Watcher's Diary
In this blog, I'll be reviewing, analyzing, and generally fangirling over excellent television. Exhibit A: the Whedonverse. Archives
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