Jumping the Spark, Part Two

Smallville has a wonderful amount of relationship angst, but it is not alone. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel are obvious examples. Every relationship on those shows is fraught with peril, and few of them end well. I’ve boiled some of them down to a simple list:

Buffy + Angel: He’s a vampire, she’s a vampire slayer. She dies. She comes back. He goes evil. She kills him a split second after he turns good again. He dies. He comes back. He leaves. She dies. She comes back. He comes back. He leaves.

Buffy + Spike: He’s a vampire, she’s a vampire slayer. Sometimes he’s good, sometimes he’s evil. She dies. She comes back. He dies. He comes back on Angel.

Xander + Cordelia: He’s a huge dork, she’s the queen bee. Mostly their relationship consists of making out in mop closets. They fight, they break up, he buys her prom dress. She moves to L.A.

Xander + Willow: She’s always loved him, but he’s been oblivious. It’s not until they’re both dating other people that they start smooching. This relationship is so short-lived that if you blink, you’ll miss it.

Willow + Oz: Oz is a werewolf. Oz wolfs out and almost kills Willow. So he leaves because he doesn’t want to ever hurt her. Most painful break-up scene ever. “Don’t you love me?” “My whole life, I’ve never loved anything else.” (And I could not find a video of it to save my life.)

Angel + Cordelia: It takes a long time for this to even get started, and then what happens? Cordelia goes into a coma. Then suddenly she’s awake again, and we finally get the kiss we’ve been waiting for. Then Cordelia disappears, and Angel gets a phone call telling him Cordelia died without ever coming out of her coma. Wrap your brain around that.

There are more. Basically one half of the couple dies or simply walks away in a cloud of angst. Possibly Whedon is sadistic, but also I think Whedon sabotages relationships in his shows to illustrate to us that in the worlds he creates, no one is safe. And angst is highly unsafe.

A lot of people think Alias jumped the spark, but I don’t think so. There’s a delicious, subtle interplay between double agent Sydney Bristow and her CIA handler Michael Vaughn. There’s no way they can be together because she must maintain her cover working for a rogue agency. But halfway through the second season, the rogue agency is brought down, and there is this epic kiss as the smoke clears.

But happily ever after isn’t in the cards for Sydney and Vaughn. Not yet. They’re together for a little while, but then she dies. Or he thinks she does. It was very convincing, and she wakes up two years later with no memory of what happened. And when she sees Vaughn for the first time? He’s wearing a wedding band. Crank up your speakers and witness the suckitude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLaPlfATnSw.

Eventually, we learn that Vaughn’s wife is working with the bad guys, and Vaughn kills her. So that obstacle is out of the way, right? Sort of. Vaughn proposes, but as they take an engagement trip, Vaughn confesses, “My name isn’t really Michael Vaughn.” And then they get broadsided, literally. Once they’re reunited, they get married. I think. Sydney gets pregnant, and then Vaughn dies. Actually, he faked his death very convincingly with the help of Sydney’s dad. They are reunited after a while, and they get their happily ever after in the final episode of the series.

Angst! But it was angst that ended well. I’m kind of amazed that they would get back together after she told him it would have been a waste to wait for him. But whatever. Maybe it’s different for superspies. I LOVED the Sydney-Vaughn relationship. The mythology of the show was interesting, but finding out what would happen next to Sydney and Vaughn was the reason I kept watching the show.

One of my favorite relationships, though it was frustratingly brief, is the relationship between Wilson and Amber on House. Wilson is House’s foil in practically every way. He’s nice. He’s been married. He has social skills. :P But Wilson spends most of the series just as single as House. Until Amber. It was an unlikely pairing. She was abrasive and competitive. He was a pushover.

Then she went to pick up House from a bar. They got on the bus, and then there was a bad accident. House lost some of his memory after the accident, and it took him time to even remember Amber was with him. For a while no one even knew where she was. Due to complications and her various injuries, she wasn’t going to survive. So there was one of the best death scenes ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m30K9vZ86-E. (I couldn’t find a video without music over it—at least this one has some of the actual dialogue.)

I really enjoy tortured love stories that take a while to develop, like Sydney and Vaughn. But angst is not just for dramas. Once upon a time, there was a sitcom called Frasier, a spinoff of Cheers. Ostensibly it was about Frasier, a radio psychiatrist, and his daily foibles. But often the focus wandered to his brother Niles. Niles was married, but he was attracted to Daphne, a physical therapist who took care of Niles’ and Frasier’s father.

Niles and Daphne’s story developed slowly. Just little hints here and there of Niles’ attraction to Daphne. It wasn’t a big story, just an ongoing sub-subplot. In one of my favorite scenes here, Niles has lied to Daphne about having a date over for dinner because he doesn’t want her to know he’s single and pining for her. She comes over to help him cook for his fake date. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBvoKrCmHZY

The nice thing with Niles and Daphne is that the writers took their time letting the relationship blossom. It was until the last few seasons that anything significant occurred, and once they’d declared themselves, it was still quite a while until they married. Drawn-out tension is wonderful. I love it.

There are many relationships that bear exploring, but I simply don’t have room. I think what I love so much about these stories is the way they stick with me. The journeys fraught with difficulty have much more meaning to me than the quick and easy, too-perfect scenarios that end up jumping the spark. Here’s to more angst!