Restless

Due in no small part to amchau's comments, I set out tonight to watch Restless again. The first time I saw it, I was stll sleep-deprived and tired and I must admit to wondering a little what all the fuss was about. But it all makes sense on the re-watch. Well, sort of. At any rate, I am now entirely converted; I really can see what makes people love it. It's all in the details. Having seen it before, I knew to watch out for the First Slayer, and I saw her in all sorts of places - chasing Willow through the curtains, following Xander through crowds of people, and she's even referred to obliquely when Buffy, sitting in the sandbox in Xander's dream, says, "It's not my turn yet."

Where was I? Details. When Willow draws back the curtain to illuminate the Greek poetry she's painted on Tara's back, the scene outside is of the desert. I can't believe I didn't see that the first time round - and I particularly couldn't believe I didn't see how beautiful that scene is. The poetry, the desert sunlight, the music - and I didn't see it. I must have been more out of it than I thought. Pretty much the only thing I understood the first time round was the constant reference to everyone finding out the "truth" about Willow. Closeted much?

There's more comedy in it than I remembered, too. I didn't notice before that all the time Giles is talking in Willow's dream, vamp!Harmony is trying to bite him. His only real response is: "That's really very annoying." It made me giggle.

So did Willow's line: "And why is there a cowboy in Death of a Salesman anyway?"

I still don't understand why Xander's dream was the longest, but I did "get it" this time: everywhere he goes, everywhere he runs, he ends up in the basement. The others have gone on without him, and he's headed nowhere fast. Again, it's all in the bizarre details - whenever Willow or Tara says something they blatantly wouldn't say in real life, their lips don't move, and when Giles and Anya drag Xander away, Giles appears to be talking through the apple in his mouth. Xander even runs through a Scooby meeting about how to deal with the First Slayer - all we hear of it is Anya saying, "Maybe we should slap her."

The end of the dream, with Xander's father literally taking his heart - well, you don't have to look too hard to see the symbolism in that. Ouch.

Giles's dream seems to be the shortest, which I found a little disappointing, but also seems to be the easiest to understand. It makes me wonder if that could be intentional - Giles, being the only one who is an actual "grown-up", is more self-aware than the others - but I digress. I particularly loved the beginning of it, with the swinging pocket watch. A very pretty image, even if it makes no sense. The rest of it makes slightly more sense - Buffy as a child obviously implies the theme they use so often, of the paternal relationship between Watcher and Slayer, but it never quites works, and Olivia cries. I have to admit to quite liking the way Olivia appears and disappears in episodes, and the way her presence is never quite explained. She doesn't seem to be his girlfriend, being part of more of a casual, based-on-sex relationship.

Moving on, I love Spike in this sequence. I never usually like him much, but he's hysterically funny here - and it's amusing that Giles has spent so many of his waking hours bickering with Spike that he now dreams about doing it. Similarly, Anya's attempt at doing stand-up is hilarious. "Be quiet! You'll miss the humorous conclusion!"

The end of the dream is my favourite part, though. "You never had a Watcher."

Yet another thing I didn't understand the first time I saw this was the role Tara plays. She obviously represents something more than herself, but it's hard to be sure exactly what. I didn't get the part Riley played in Buffy's dream - the only good bit there was the computer voice saying: "The demons are out. Please run for your lives." - and it only got good again in the desert with the First Slayer. Tara provides her voice, because she has no name, no existence beyond being the Slayer, a lone force of destruction. And she believes Buffy should be like her. I finally fell in love with this episode during Buffy's dialogue to counteract this:

"I walk. I talk, I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones. Now give me back my friends."

There's something wonderfully resonant about that, poetical and nonsensical and I love it. And um, this wasn't supposed to be a review. It was supposed to be "Watched Restless, going to bed now." I only mentioned it to begin with because amchau said the sleep-dep fic was Restless in reverse. Which it is, kind of.

I will probably watch this again. You find more in it every time you see it, I think. Oh, and GIP.