Clay Dockery
Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) is one of the great comfort characters of television: the British librarian with the good books, the tweed suits, the better cheekbones, and the glasses endlessly in need of cleaning. But he is also so much more. He is smart and funny, and dangerous, and could definitely hold his own in a bar brawl. He at once feels like the most reliable of the Scooby Gang even though he was the one who left. And, of course, the way that Anthony Stewart Head portrayed the character embodied the very essence of fatherly affection. Of course Head did that not just in the role, but throughout his life.
It is certainly possible to fill hours just by looking at favorite moments from the character. It’s easy to get chills when he sings, argues with Spike (James Marsters), gets turned into a demon, or punches Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs) repeatedly, as one should. But beyond and within all of that, Giles becomes something rarer: a character who feels like a real person.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is built around suspicion of authority and undermining it. Giles does this from the inside. As Buffy’s (Sarah Michelle Gellar) Watcher, Giles is responsible for initiating her into the institution, for taming and honing the power of the Slayer in the ways that a conservatively dressed, mild-mannered librarian would be expected to. But from the very first time we see him in “Welcome to the Hellmouth” it is clear that Rupert Giles is not only that.
Giles is, of course, fussy and mannered, and oh so British, but also dry and witty and gives as good as he gets. This doesn’t mean that he was a foil for Buffy, Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and Xander (Nicholas Brendan). He was a mentor, sure, but really, he was their way to connect. With each other, with the past, with the Council, with the Hellmouth. It’s this warmth, Tara (Amber Benson) would certainly call it an aura, that made Giles so essential to the show, and it was Head’s warmth that made him so indelible.
That warmth is essential because the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is often colder than it seems in our memories. The show is witty and colorful and basically provides the genesis of the word “snark” but the ideas at its core are dark and brutal. A young girl is chosen by fate to fight and kill the demons that walk among us every day until they inevitably beat her and she is replaced by a younger girl who is destined to the same cycle. The greatness of the show comes in the idea that the best way to fight the darkness is by breaking the rules. Buffy refuses to be the Slayer she should be; she won’t even stay dead. And so the people around her are also constantly refusing to be who we expect them to be.
Giles is the embodiment of the struggle. He is the person sent to train and guide Buffy, to be her Watcher, but is only actually able to succeed in doing those things because he is not just Rupert Giles, Librarian. He is also Rupert Giles, the dark magician, the rebel. He’s also “Ripper.” Which isn’t just a cute nickname and an excuse for Head to be extra sexy (though it is also that). The darkness inside of Giles is just as essential to his character, and to why we love him, as his warmth.
The Watcher Problem
Giles begins the show as Buffy’s “Watcher,” a concept that has become so ingrained in culture it feels like it’s been around forever. But it hasn’t. The wise mentor has been around forever, as have the guides and sages and wizards, space and non-space variety. Watchers, however, are none of those things. They are trainers, handlers, record keepers, and institutional functionaries. But they don’t embody the wise mentor trope, they undermine it. The Watchers Council somehow exists and functions and has its own meetings (complete with beach retreats) in which they don’t see fit to include the actual Slayer they are “watching” nor the actual Watcher assigned to her. They have rules and trials and secrets, but were (until being disbanded) basically useless in their most important role.
And so Giles, while forever defined in culture as a Watcher, is most defined as a character by how he broke away from the role, and the journey of reflection he was sent on for having done so. “Helpless” is the breaking point for the character, not just because he was fired by the Watcher’s Council in the episode. Giles knows that what the Watchers put the Slayers through in the trials is wrong, but the institution is so much a part of him that he goes along with it anyway. It’s clear how much drugging Buffy hurts him, but he does it anyway. They end the episode back together, but the damage from that betrayal lingers in the relationship throughout the choices that follow.
It’s fascinating to compare that development in the Buffy/Giles relationship with the mirror version, that of Faith (Eliza Dushku) and Mayor Richard Wilkins III (Harry Groener). The Mayor and Giles are both older men who form deep attachments to a Slayer, albeit through very different circumstances. Faith has been left behind as the Mayor steps into the void, pulling her into his evil plans, but also creating a real connection with her. A connection that no one else, Giles included, really tried to create. The Mayor believes in Faith and her potential (to be evil, but that’s still a real belief) just as Giles believes in Buffy. But the Mayor never emotionally betrays Faith in the way Giles betrays Buffy and he definitely feels real affection for her, staying by her side even as she is in her coma. Giles, on the other hand, does betray Buffy, and he is afraid that his affection is bad for her, so he leaves. Those connections deepen all four characters. There are no actions that are right simply by the feelings involved; the motivations and outcomes matter too.
This is another area where Anthony Stewart Head’s performance is essential to the narrative working. In the hands of a lesser actor these contradictions would seem like character inconsistency, but with Head it all fits together. Of course, a person with the life experiences of Rupert Giles, whose choices in the past have led to death and darkness, would be afraid that his influence would be destructive to the ones he loves. Of course, a person who has endured torture, lost love, and countless head traumas in this battle would have a reluctance to stay fully open to anyone. But also of course he is reserved and intelligent. Of course, he is steadfast and loyal too. Head grounds every version of Giles in the same warmth and seeming lack of panic, even when he is clearly panicking, with rage simmering just beneath the surface.
Love, Actually
Rupert Giles is also a character defined by love, and not just the surrogate father relationship with Buffy that is at the core of the show. Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte) is the first of these loves that we see, and their relationship, and her death, redefine and clarify the character. Their relationship is cute and awkward and sad even before the end, as they clearly work together and really love each other, but are pulled apart time and again. What makes “Passion” most devastating is not only the circumstances of Jenny’s death, or even the effect it has on Giles. It’s the joy they both felt earlier in the episode at getting back together. The look Head gives when he arrives at his house and finds the flowers, all the joy and longing and hope, that’s only matched by the look of horror and pain when he finds her body. Giles’s grief in that moment is one of the times when his reserve breaks. He goes after Angelus (David Boreanaz) with fire and rage because he’s been ripped open.
Jenny’s death looms over Giles for a long time, but of course she isn’t his only romantic entanglement during the show, and the other two help shape the character as well. The other actual relationship we only see glimpses of, that one being with Olivia Williams (Phina Oruche). Olivia appears out of nowhere, to Buffy and to the audience and disappears nearly as quickly. But she represents both the way that Giles is finally living an authentic version of himself and how he has a full life, with history, connections and lovers that we never get to see. Even with just two real appearances, Olivia is able to give us an insight into Giles that we never would have gotten otherwise. Even more so than “Giles fucks.”
Because the show already made that particular fact extremely clear. With Joyce (Kristine Sutherland). On the hood of a police car. Twice. The Joyce/Giles dynamic is fun and sexy but it also points to something that the show could have explored more deeply. Joyce and Giles are the two adults closest to Buffy and they both understand her in different ways. There is an intimacy between them that was always built in. “Band Candy” lets that dynamic play out in a silly, amazing, way, but the dynamic is real in every scene they share. These are two people who absolutely could have been together. Which of course makes it another connection that was lost due to the sad and terrible nature of the world.
And then there is Buffy, which is the love that defines Giles, even though he would definitely prefer it not be put in those exact terms. Their love is always changing, paternal affection and admiration complicated by fear, pride, and guilt. Giles’s love for Buffy leads him to some of his worst choices. He kills Ben in “The Gift” because he is willing to do for Buffy what he would never want her to do for herself. Then he leaves because he convinces himself that he is holding Buffy back. When he returns he tries to keep that distance, to make things about the Potentials and the end of the world, but even then at the end of all things the heart of it all is love.
The clearest and most important part of their connection, though, is that Giles really understands who Buffy is, and what she needs. There are two moments that always come back to mind whenever I’m thinking of the best parts of the Giles and Buffy connection. When Buffy is blaming herself for Angel becoming Angelus in “Innocence” and Giles and Buffy are in the car, his words to her are so true and real and comforting that I know people who watch that scene just to hear them being said. And then, of course, at the end of “Lie to Me” after the gang has dealt with a whole host of lies and manipulations:
Buffy: Does it ever get easy? (kills a newly risen vampire)
Giles: You mean life?
Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?
Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats. And, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar
Standing In The Way
When you have someone as talented as Anthony Stewart Head in your show the call to make every episode a musical must be extremely strong. (I know it would be for me. I’d have had him singing in the Bronze to close every episode starting at least in Season 2.) The Buffy creative team had more restraint than that, but they still took some opportunities to get the man behind a guitar and absolutely destroy the audience. Giles singing “Behind Blue Eyes” at the Espresso Pump could have been nothing more than a fun showcase, a chance to showcase the range and singing voice of one of your stars, but instead it was also used as a pivotal moment for the characters. Giles, no longer a Watcher or a librarian, is showing how much he is reeling from losing his place in the world, sexy earring and all. The Scoobies on the other hand are invited in to see a part of him they never get to see: open, emotional, feeling. “No one knows how it feels to feel these feelings,” after all. As can only really be expressed in song.
Which the show then takes to the logical extreme in “Once More, with Feeling.” In addition to being one of the greatest musical episodes in television history, it showcases everything great about having such musical talent in Head. Giles’s song “Standing” is able to express all of the pain and contradiction the character is feeling in just a few verses. The song is devastating because it’s both loving and wrong. Giles believes that he is keeping Buffy from her true self, when he is really helping to ground her to the world. The pain and desperation are palpable in Head’s voice even just listening to the soundtrack.
But Giles still leaves. And the timing is devastating for everyone. Buffy is not reluctant to grow up; she has been forced to be older than her years by pain, loss, and responsibility. In “Tabula Rasa” Giles’s choice to leave is framed as necessary, but that isn’t the case. Buffy is already nearly alone, raising Dawn, with all of her friends on their own paths, and without the guidance or direction to know who she should be. Giles could have stayed and helped her through that. Instead, he chose to leave and left her even more alone. Which is a sad choice for the characters but a fascinating one for the viewers.
We are used to our lovable characters being lovable. We are used to our charming British librarians actually having libraries. We are used to our father figures being better than actual fathers. Giles upends all of that. Like Buffy’s actual father, he leaves her. And while he comes back, that choice has a profound effect on both of them. Similarly, he is wise and funny, but he is also often wrong and snarky. He can hold his own in a fight or he can get so completely destroyed in fights that people make drinking games out of how many concussions the man must have had.
But through all of that we love him. Because he is inherently trying to do what he thinks is right. Because he loves the Scoobies and wants to be there for them. We love him because Rupert Giles is always safe, but never simple. And most of all we love him because of the light Anthony Stewart Head brought into every single frame.
