Act Three

14KK) "If you take a life in order to make a life, the whole thing is a wash." KANT WOULDN'T LIKE THIS!: "Immanuel Kant believed that it is not possible to judge the moral goodness of an act by its consequences. Someone may do something with good consequences, but her motivations may be completely bad and self-serving. Furthermore, an individual can have the very best intentions, and the consequences may not come out the way she intended at all. It therefore makes no sense to praise or blame someone for something (consequences) she could not completely control. On the other hand, what she intendsis completely within her control. Hence, moral praise or blame cannot be placed on the actual consequences of actions, but on what the person intended.

Kant's Categorical Imperative: Kant valued the individual's intentions. But it is more difficult to judge an individual's intentions if they are not free to act on them. From this, he thought it followed that trying to control another rational individual was wrong.

A 'Kantian stricture... [is] ...a restriction on morally permissible courses of action, proposed by Kant. In this case, the restriction is that one must never treat a person as a morally insignificant object, a tool. Human beings should always be treated as if their own needs and goals count, too' (C. Roberson, 10:01pm Jun 15, 1999)."--Masquerade, "Philosophies Represented: Kantian Ethics" from http://www.atpobtvs.com See 14RR.

VAMP PARALLELS: This line is interesting, when taken in context of vamp siring. When a vampire kills a human, but sires that human to become another vampire, does that make "the whole thing a wash"? Kant would say no, and so would Buffy and the Scoobies. It does not matter that another life was created out of the one that was taken, because an act of violence was done on the person, and his or her former life was taken against his or her will.

14LL) "No. He's just a ghoul." HUMAN EVIL: Buffy always finds the act of a human being evil all the more reprehensible. Evil or not, demons are soulless beings who Buffy sees as having little choice in their evil. For a human to choose to do such a horrible act, however, sickens Buffy. See 10SS.

14MM) "He woulda been nineteen next week." FROZEN IN TIME: "Mrs. Epps is clearly still grieving for her elder son, to the detriment of her younger son and the rest of her life. Anniversaries are especially hard for those who have suffered a loss. As the video shows 11/17/1995, it's just about two years since Darryl's death...One can read the whole episode...as a study of finally letting go of the lost loved one."--Vickie, Sun, 12/01/02 at 23:08:35

14NN) "...I *have* to go. I'm the apex!" WHAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT: "Another sign of Cordelia's courage when she feels it's justified, although at this stage her idea of justification is slightly different from other people's."--KdS, Sun, 12/01/02 at 11:18:08 See 11RR.

Act Four

14OO) "Dissing my country's national pastime?" UM...JENNY?: "A slip by [Jenny or] the writers here. The phrase 'national pastime' refers to baseball, never football."--Sophist, Sun, 12/01/02 at 12:06:25

14PP) "Did you just say 'date'?" THE RULES: "Is there anything more adorable in early Buffy than the Giles/Jenny relationship? The backstory to come on both characters only makes their initial interactions and tentative romantic moves all the more poignant. Some Assembly Required picks up on the motifs of I Robot, You Jane, as Jenny tutors a very nervous and reserved Giles on the fine points of modern dating, hitting all the points Buffy, Willow and Xander said Giles should hit, but with much greater ease. In IRYJ, Giles was the traditionalist and Jenny the 21st century babe, and the difference in their intellectual approaches to the world carries over into their personal lives.

Also, Some Assembly Required could be seen as Giles' baby steps in shedding his Tweedy Boy persona and letting some of the juice from his Ripper days flow back into his veins. Jenny takes him to an American football game, and once he's actually on the date, Giles relaxes and lets loose with some quality snarkage about our wussy American sports. Hanging around Buffy and the gang has obviously invigorated him.

However, there's also a telling moment when Willow and Xander intrude on the date; he's grown very fond of them, of course, but he clearly doesn't want the kids around when it comes to his private life. This is reinforced in rapid fashion (and in a more serious context) in The Dark Age and it might be the first, faint hint of his eventual departure. Most of his reasons for leaving in season 6 involved Buffy, but part of it was his disillusionment with his life as a Watcher (see season 4 for about 1 gazillion examples), and a deep desire to discover if he could still build a life of his own outside his "calling." (In that way, he's similar to Buffy herself.) If Jenny had lived, could Giles have built a life of his own IN Sunnydale? Would he have stayed? We'll never know."--cjl, Mon, 12/02/02 at 14:01:05

14QQ) He sees the action on the field and stops a moment to watch and remember." FROM THE ORIGINAL SHOOTING SCRIPT: "There's a Phantom of the Opera quality to his reaction."--"Some Assembly Required" by Ty King

14RR) "And when you're finished you won't go out." THE PATCHWORK GIRL: "Why cut up three girls and put them into a new combination? Why not just reanimate one girl to be Daryl's mate? It would be a lot easier, and it is all that is necessary to satisfy Daryl's loneliness. There are two possibilities:

1. To make Daryl's "mate" more "beautiful". One reason, as Xander points out, is that creating a combination girl reflects (Eric's) desire to design a "dream" girl (what Giles calls "their masterpiece")-- to take the "best" of each and put them together. This implies that women need to answer to the standards of men, and that the "pre-made" women must be "corrected" to answer to these standards. Humans constantly change the natural world to meet their own needs and standards. Changing people, however--especially a class of people (such as women)--to meet the needs of other people, is another thing entirely. It's a practice as old as history, but that doesn't make it morally acceptable.

From a Kantian point of view (see 14KK), using other rational beings as means to one's own ends and not as ends in themselves (of value as human beings) is morally wrong. Buffy expresses this concern for the girls when she contemplates the combination girl walking around: "What could she be thinking?" Willow brings up the implications of treating the girls as mere means when she adds, "And what are they gonna do with her?"

2. The other reason is to make Daryl's "mate" uglier. A revived dead woman (even one injured in a car crash) would be willing and able to live her own life. They want a woman who will feel compelled to stay put in the world they've created for her, and so they give her, in effect, a disability, much like the Chinese tradition of foot-binding. As Daryl "And when you're finished you won't go out. You won't run away. But we can hide together." Again, turning a human being into a means to one's own ends."--Masquerade, "Some Assembly Required" Analysis, from http://www.atpobtvs.com

THE DARRYL/ANGEL CONNECTION: "In some ways Daryl is a more monstrous version of Angel, one whose anger at being dead yet living, and whose desperate desire for companionship, has gone to murderous extremes...[Darryl says, ']And when you're finished you won't go out. You won't run away. But we can hide together.' Is this not Angel's fear of what their relationship will do to Buffy? Deny her a normal life? Is it not what eventually causes him to leave Buffy?"--Ponygirl, Mon, 12/02/02 at 12:00:44

14SS) Xander gives the gurney a good shove, hops on and they roll through the flames while Cordelia screams. CORDY-IN-DISTRESS: "In the early seasons, Cordelia often takes on the role of damsel-in-distress, later to be displaced by Dawn. It could initially appear strange that an avowedly feminist show still holds with this convention, even with the strong female at the centre. A consideration of Glies' shows to being-knocked-unconscious ratio, and Xander's tendency to find himself in trouble in the early Seasons evens up the scores for the genders."--Tchaikovsky, Sun, 12/01/02 at 11:04:26

14TT) "We'll be together always." INNOCENCE: "The relative innocence of the Scoobies at this point in their lives is reflected in that no one actually says the Franken-girl will be used for sex. Companionship is emphasized here. Contrast this to the almost instant assumption of the purpose of April and the Buffybot [in I Was Made to Love You and Intervention, respectively]."--Ponygirl, Mon, 12/02/02 at 12:00:44

14UU) The flames engulf Daryl and his bride-to-be. LOVE AND THE HELLMOUTH, PART II: "...[T]he end of the ep, where Daryl burns up, with his bride reminds me of the dream that Angel has in season three['s The Prom], that when Buffy and Angel, finally bride and groom, step out into the daylight, Buffy, who 'doesn't look that good in direct light' burns up in flames. As if he's finally taken every bit of humanity from her, until like him, she cannot step out into the daylight without burning up as a Vampire does. Is there a sense, that Angel who is as dead as Daryl is, fears that he will make Buffy one of the undead? Just as Daryl requires a 'dead' girlfriend, and has to kill the beautiful, living Cordelia and give her a crisscrossed, scarred undead body so that he can be with her...Season 2, and B/A is darker than memory served to remind me. And the playful fighting between our two couples in this ep is tragically underlined by Daryl burning up with his grisly bride.

Because Giles will come back to find his dead Jenny, and Buffy will have to send Angel to hell, and if playful fighting is a prelude to sex, the consummation will burn like a destructive fire that will lead to real, deadly fighting."--Rahael, Wed, 12/04/02 at 06:59:42

POP CULTURE TIME: "The story of Some Assembly Required is a rewrite of the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein which starred Boris Karloff and Colin Clive from the original movie Frankenstein, with Elsa Lanchester as the bride. In the film Dr. Frankenstein agrees to make a mate for the monster so that it will not be alone and so that it's more violent tendencies will be blunted. In the movie the bride is brought to life, but not realizing her own condition she screams uncontrollably at the sight of the original monster, causing him to go on a rampage destroying himself, the labratory, and the bride as well."--Cactus Watcher, Mon, 12/02/02 at 11:55:58

MORE ON THAT: "This sequence is a hybrid of the endings of the two original Universal Frankenstein films. In Frankenstein the monster is apparently killed when a windmill he is trapped in burns down and collapses. In Bride of Frankenstein the monster blows up himself and his 'bride' after she rejects him, deliberately allowing the humans to escape. There are also parallels to Mary Shelley's original novel, in which Frankenstein originally offers to create a mate for the Creature but then changes his mind for fear that they will breed. This decision precipitates the Creature's final murderous rampage. (These references to Frankenstein are rather shallow and largely based on the films. There would be far deeper and more interesting resonances with Shelley in the portrayal of Maggie Walsh and Adam in S4, in particular the contrasts between Maggie and Frankenstein.)"--KdS, Sun, 12/01/02 at 11:18:08

14VV) "He said I shouldn'ta brought him back." THE DOWN SIDE OF RESURRECTION: "The first appearance of the trope in BtVS of the inadvisability of trying to resurrect those who have died naturally." This messes up the balance of nature and leads to usually dire consequences. Resurrected people usually end up being mindless zombies (Dead Man's Party, Forever), or monsters (Some Assembly Required), or rotting, living corpses (The Zeppo), and of course the ever present resurrection inherent in the siring of vampires. Even resurrecting someone from a death caused by magic, like Buffy's in The Gift, is frowned upon and demands a price (the demon from After Life, and, arguably, Tara's death in Seeing Red).--KdS, Sun, 12/01/02 at 11:18:08, with additions by Rob

14WW) "I saw the fire." LINKAGE: "Probably an oblique reference to Buffy's previous school, Hemery, where she was expelled for torching the school gym, which at the time was full of vampires (see 1J)."--Tchaikovsky, Sun, 12/01/02 at 11:04:26

14XX) "...and we're the only ones who don't have a chair?" LINKAGE: "This conversation is very similar to the ending conversation Buffy, Xander, and Willow had in I, Robot...You, Jane (see 8TT).

14YY) "Do you mind? We're talking here." XANDER CLUELESS: "We see another side of Cordelia here, and it is ironic that almost the first time she attempts to be genuine and generous, she is cut down by somebody being as self-obsessed as she customarily is. It perhaps shows the dawning of a grudging resepect for Xander which leads to a relationship growing throughout Season Two."--Tchaikovsky, Sun, 12/01/02 at 11:04:26

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