For some reason, body swap stories tend to work so much better as episodes of ongoing television shows than as standalones. I'm not sure why, exactly-maybe because it's that much more powerful and insightful to see established characters inhabiting each other's bodies after we've already gotten to know them on their own. X-Files also has a great two-parter in this vein called Dreamland (though it is not, unfortunately, Mulder and Scully body-swapping with each other).
Who Are You? Really explores questions of nature vs. Nurture when Faith uses a mystical device to transfer herself into Buffy's body and vice versa. Faith, in Buffy's body, suddenly has a support system in place that she never had as herself. People have a preconceived belief that she is good and treat her accordingly. Suddenly she finds herself developing a moral compass in reaction to this treatment. Personally, I believe there's a lot of truth in the idea that we allow ourselves to be defined by the perceptions of others. Girls who are reminded of the stereotype that females are bad at math, for example, tend to perform worse on math exams. We don't like to admit it, because it wreaks havoc with the concept of free will, but oftentimes we live up or down to the expectations of others. Winding up in someone else's body is kind of like a more extreme version of moving to a new town and getting to reinvent yourself because you no longer have a history with anyone nearby.
People love to denigrate Eliza Dushku's acting, but honestly (hot take coming up), I think she is way better at channeling Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar is at channeling Faith. People who dislike Faith as a character enjoy SMG's portrayal because it's a complete reinvention (and one that they presumably find less annoying), but reinventing the character wasn't the assignment. She's supposed to be building off the foundation that Dushku laid. Emulating her movements, her speech, her attitudes, SOMETHING to let you know she's working off a pre-existing model. Instead Gellar just builds a new Faith from the ground up. Yeah, you get that she's a different person inhabiting Buffy's body, but nothing telegraphs that she is THAT particular person.
Dushku, on the other hand, IS Buffy. Not in a showy or theatrical or ostentatious way; not in a "look at me, look at my acting, throw an Emmy at me please!" kind of way. She's not trying to convince us via over-the-top, charades-level tactics. She just becomes the Buffy we know and love. I can't really explain it. There's just something immediately different about her-a look in her eyes that we've never seen before, an optimism, an utter belief in human goodness-an innocence, a doe-eyed naivete that Buffy still possesses even after all she's been through.
The scene where she tries to escape the Watcher's Council by holding one of them hostage, only to have them call her bluff, is so well done and so telling. Dushku has this incredulity in her expression when she realizes that these guys-the Good Guys, presumably-would willingly sacrifice one of their own to achieve their mission. It's an education in ethical complexity that she's never really had to grapple with before. It goes back to Giles' ironic speech at the end of Lie to Me about bad guys being easily recognized by their black hats; she heard it, but she didn't have to really reckon with it on such a systemic level. Buffy still held true to the idea that there are absolute authorities of good, just as there are absolute authorities of evil, and it shakes her to see that this is not the case, and that morality is just as sloppy for the veterans of the Good Fight as it is for the foot soldiers at ground level getting their hands dirty. Maybe this experience gives her more empathy for Faith, who reached this realization so long ago she takes it for granted. Being morally upright is not the same as being weak or naive, but it's a harder stance to maintain the more you know about the world and the more evil you see in unlikely places. This is a colossal revelation for Buffy, neatly couched in a fun genre exercise, and the weight of its demonstration falls entirely on Dushku, who delivers the moment flawlessly and without melodrama.
(I fully believe, by the way, that Wesley would have made the same call as these terrible council members with regard to letting the hostage die, but maybe he wouldn't have come to it quite so callously.)
Other things to enjoy about the episode:
-Tara understands, intuitively, that the Buffy she's meeting can't be Willow's friend. Is it witchcraft, or is Tara just a good judge of character? You always want characters in body-swap/possession stories to be smart enough to figure out that SOMETHING IS OFF with their modified acquaintance, and the fact that it's a relative newcomer who comes to the realization here is a fun surprise.
-Riley going to church.
-The threebeat Faith-as-Buffy line: "Because it's wrong." Faith-as-Buffy practicing Buffy-level self-righteousness in the mirror indicates that Faith believes Buffy's virtue is entirely performative, which is a neat idea. She can't bring herself to believe that everyone isn't as dark and morally corrupt deep-down as she is; the so-called "good" people are just covering it up for show and for accolades. Then you get to the end of the episode, when Faith finally begins to understand why someone might perform a selfless action for no better reason than that it is right.
Nitpicks:
-Why is rough or kinky sex always portrayed as the hallmark of a damaged, self-destructive, or immoral person? Riley convinces Faith-as-Buffy that he really cares about Buffy because he shuts down her masochistic requests and tells her that he wants to "make love" (meaning he'll only do missionary, I guess) rather that F-U-know-what. As if kinky sex can only mean you hate the person you're sleeping with, or else you hate yourself. This is lazy writing. For a show that feints at being sexually honest, Buffy is often pretty regressive in this way-rough sex is reserved exclusively for unhealthy or abusive pairings (Faith and anyone, Spike and anyone, Wesley and Lilah, Angel and Darla), while tender, wholesome, emotional sex indicates virtue (Willow and Oz, Willow and Tara, Willow and...Kennedy, I guess, who if I had to guess is probably so convinced of her own hotness that she doesn't think she has to do any work in bed). Hell, even vanilla sex can land you in hot water when the guy you thought really cared for you (Angel, Parker) suddenly goes cold once he "gets what he wants". For someone who claims to be an atheist, Whedon sure has some Christian hang-ups on this subject.
-The interaction where Buffy-as-Faith has to convince Giles that she's actually Buffy feels contrived to me. I don't believe Buffy would reference "bondage fun" with her father figure (EW!) and I think it would take a LOT for her to voluntarily bring up the Giles/Joyce coitus. I know a body swap is an emergency by most people's standards, but I mean it would take a lot more than that, even. Is there really no other intimate detail she could pull from her relationship with Giles as evidence, something that Faith wouldn't know? Something that happened while Faith was in a coma, for example, like Giles becoming a Fyarl demon not a month prior? (An odd parallel to her current situation.) I think Whedon just wrote in that exchange because he really wanted to make a sitcom-style joke about a stevedore's sexual stamina, so he shoved aside Buffy's personality for a moment just to get to it, which undermines the integrity of the whole piece. Not to overstate my case or anything.
-Riley never seems to feel any kind of way about the fact that he was tricked into having sex with someone under false pretenses. In fact, he has to defend himself from Buffy, since she's so upset that he couldn't tell the difference between her and Faith in Buffy's body. Awfully victim-blamey. So if it didn't create direct conflict with Buffy, Riley would just be okay with the fact that he had sex with Faith without giving informed consent? He wouldn't feel violated, betrayed, used? Wouldn't even feel just kind of dumb or sheepish or made a fool of? Try gender-swapping the situation and tell me it wouldn't be addressed at all...
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