So in the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s mom gets sick. Buffy deals with fear, grief, and the struggle of role-reversal, trying desperately to keep it together for her mom and her little sister.
And Buffy’s boyfriend cops an attitude. He’s upset because she cries alone, rather than on his shoulder. He’s upset because she doesn’t reach out to him; that the people who stopped by her house to see how she was doing (in Whedonverse, no one has a working phone) knew what was going on, but he didn’t, because he wanted her to be the one to reach for him.
And the show painted it as her being cold, closed off, not letting herself need people. And all I could think was, what kind of asshole makes someone else’s grief about them? In what way does Riley get to call himself Mister Wonderful Boyfriend when he’s that much of a narcissist? Hello? The good ones let a person freak the way she freaks, without judging their relationship based on that.
So why this comes up is that the exact same thing happened on Grey’s Anatomy this week (which I Tivo’ed and watched last night). Meredith’s stepmother has died, and her father, with whom she has just begun to create a relationship (mostly through the stepmother’s machinations), blames her and rejects her. And, understandably, Meredith freaks. And being Meredith, how she does that is by freezing, going numb and silent. And everyone who knows her knows that’s what she does. So her friends see her freeze and know she won’t reach out to them and so they arrange to help her and stand by her anyway; through her silence. And her boyfriend feels all sorry for himself because she didn’t reach out to him. He looks at the friends gathered in support and he’s jealous because he’s not included. As if she’d gone to them and said “Please gather in support for me, but don’t tell Derek.”
In deference to Shonda Rimes, I think they’re not painting this as Meredith is cold and she should reach out to Derek and he has every right to feel hurt. At least, I hope not. Because y’know what? There’s not a right way to grieve, but there is a right way to be supportive.
But what gets me, what makes me bother to blog it, is this: Do people really do this? Are relationships in the world peppered with boyfriends (or girlfriends, I suppose, but I’m working from Riley and Derek) so shallow and self-centered that they’re actually interpreting grief as a statement about the relationship? What the fuck? Can that be real?
Because if so, I dunno, maybe I’m lucky to be single.
I don’t watch “Grey’s Anatomy” and it’s been years since I thought about Riley and Buffy. But it may be worth mentioning that Marti Noxon, former producer and writer for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” has been working on “Grey’s”
In fact she was recently hired as show runner for the spinoff.
Thanks for pointing that out, Ben. I am a person who reads credits, so I had noticed Marti Noxon, but then I forgot. It’s a good connection to make.
That spinoff will go nowhere. The pilot episode stunk stinky shit.
I do not like Riley. Uninteresting character, didn’t fit the group, and she was totally not into him anyway. What bothers me is less Riley and more Xander telling Buffy off in “Into the Woods.” Riley comes along “once in a lifetime”? WTF? Spike loved her more.
I think you’re right. with a big but.
When you’re already lost in a relationship, you get crazy. We, in the real world, mostly see this in the girls, because, well, we’re crazy girls, who obsess over every nuance and wonder if it means they love us less.
We don’t really recognize it in a boy, especially a boy on tv, especially the very tall and/or pretty boys we see on tv.
So you’re this boy, in love with a girl who is making your head crazy, because she’s strong and sometimes distant and she’s got a good posse (it’s SO much easier to rely on your friends because friends act more naturally because they are not questioning how their actions will be received) and the only way you can be reassured that she loves you when you’re feeling insecure is her needing you. ‘Cause that’s how boys feel loved; when they take care of girls.
All this is going on, and then the mourning.
Again, not saying it’s okay. Derek should see that she is trying to change, and in this moment of agony she reverts to default behavior. Derek is being a big baby.
Which is not exclusive of what I just described.
For the record, I liked Riley. But also, Xander like Riley because he wasn’t Angel.
the end by rkl.
Hello, “once in a lifetime” is Angel. And yeah, turned evil, she killed him, definitely star-crossed and angsty. But Angel was “the” love. After that, well you love and you also make choices. And I get that Riley seemed like a good choice for her, normal and steady is so appealing after getting out of an angsty thing. But what a whiny-ass titty baby!
And Xander never did get the Spike thing.
PS I wasn’t crazy about Christina telling everyone over and over that Meredith was okay. What was that? Unless maybe it was projection…
but the writers are being mostly retarded right now on Grey’s. Instead of using interesting circumstances and surprising behaviors to reveal more about characters to us, they are simply twisting people into funny shapes so we can look at their funny shapes. I am not okay with Izzy and George; I am really not okay with Thatcher. Maybe his initial reaction, but not his follow-up. Nope.
And the spin-off might take, not because it’s good, but because it’s stupid AND everyone is so pretty and has slept together.
NOW
the end by rkl.
I agree about the twisty shapes. Christina is made out of projection. It’s like her primary feature. And part of how she and Meredith bonded and became friends was the no-touching, no-talking, we’re-cold rule. So Christina is trying to protect her by enforcing that.
I disagree only about Thatcher. This is the guy who abandoned his daughter and then made lost puppy eyes when she came back. You think he didn’t have that in him all along? To me, this was the real revelation. This is the real Thatcher; the guy who married Ellis Grey and then turned away and never looked back. This is the father that Meredith hated for fifteen years.
Hmm. Maybe. I only ever got him as passive and regretty, not vicious. But maybe it’s just because I like Jeff Perry so much.
I don’t think vicious is like his primary characteristic, but I’m not surprised it’s in there. I’m not surprised he can put his foot down and say “no more, go away, I make you invisible.”
I mean fuck, he said Susan was “all he had” and his other daughter was standing RIGHT THERE. Nice father.