One Girl in All The World

In Every Generation There is a Chosen One. 

She alone, will stand against The Vampyres, 

The Dæmons and The Forces of Darkness. 

She is The Slayer.

Buffy enters and looks around not seeing anyone she knows. 

She walks over to a couch and spots a man across the room turned three quarters away from her that looks like Angel. 

He turns enough so that she can see his face and it isn't him. 

Xander: 

The Whole World in front of her, 

and she comes back to this dive. 

She turns around and sees him.

 Buffy: 

Xander! 

(She gives him a one-armed hug.)

 

Xander: 

Hey, Buff. 

Buffy: 

Oh, when did you get back? 

Xander: 

Couple days ago. 

Buffy: 

You freak of nature. 

Why didn't you call me? 

Xander: 

Well I knew you guys were starting the whole college adventure and I didn't want to, um, you know... help you move. 

Buffy: 

I missed you. 

How was your trip? 

Is America nice? I hear it's nice. 

Xander: 

There's some purple mountains majesty, 

I'm gonna have to say. 

Buffy: 

What'd you do? 

What'd you see? 

Xander: 

Well... 

Buffy: 

Tell me! 

Xander: 

'Grand Canyon!' 

Buffy: 

You saw the Grand Canyon! 

Xander: 

Well, I saw the movie 'Grand Canyon,' on cable. 

Really lame. 

Buffy: 

Hunh? 

Xander: 

Basically, I got as far as Oxnard 

and the engine fell out of my car, and that was literally. 

So, I ended up washing dishes at 'The Fabulous Ladies Night Club' for about a month and a half while I tried to pay for the repairs. 

No one really bothered me or even spoke to me until one night when one of the male strippers called in sick and no power on this earth will make me tell you the rest of that story. 

Suffice to say I traded my car in for one that wasn't entirely made of rust, 

came trundling back Home to the arms of my loving parents, 

where everything was exactly as it was 

except 

I sleep in the basement 

and 

I have to pay rent. 

How's college? 

Buffy: 

Male strippers? 

Xander: 

No power on This Earth! 

Buffy: 

Ok. College is good. 

Xander: 

Ok, uh, once more with even less feeling. 

Buffy: 

No, really! I-I mean, Willow's in heaven 

and Oz has this really cool house off campus with the band. 

(They both sit on the couch.) 

Xander: 

And you're sitting here alone at the Bronze 

looking like you just got diagnosed with Cancer of the Puppy. 

Buffy: 

It's just... there was this vampire, 

and she took me down, and I just... 

I don't know how to stop her. 

Xander: 

Then where's the gang? 

Avengers Assemble! 

Let's get it going! 

Buffy: 

No, I don't want to bug them. 

I mean they're just starting school, and they don't need this. 

Xander: 

Ok Buff, what's the 'what' here? 

Buffy: 

It's just --

What if I can't cut it? 

Xander: 

Can't cut what? 

Slaying? 

Buffy: 

Slaying, everything. 

Xander: 

Buffy, this is all about Fear. 

It's understandable, but you can't let it control you. 

'Fear leads to anger. 

Anger leads to hate. 

Hate leads to anger.' 

No wait, hold on. 

'Fear leads to hate. 

Hate leads to the dark side.' 

Hold on, no, umm, 

'First you get the women, 

then you get the money, then you...' 

okay, can we forget that?

 Buffy: 

Thanks for the Dadaist pep talk, 

I feel much more abstract now. 

Xander: 

The Point is, 

You're Buffy. 

Buffy: 

Yeah, maybe in high school I was Buffy. 

Xander: 

And now in college you're Betty Louise? 

Buffy: 

Yeah, I'm Betty Louise Plotnick 

of East Cupcake, Illinois. 

Or I might as well be. 

Xander gets up and crouches down in front of her. 

Xander: 

Buffy, I've gone through some fairly dark times in my life, 

faced some scary things, among them the kitchen at 

'The Fabulous Ladies Night Club.' 

Let me tell you something -- 

When it's Dark and I'm all Alone 

and I'm Scared or Freaked-out or whatever, 

I always think, 

'What would Buffy do?' 

You're My Hero. 

Ok, sometimes when it's Dark and I'm all Alone I think, 

'What is Buffy wearing...?' 

Buffy: 

Can that be one of those things you never, ever, tell me about? 

Xander: 

It's a deal. 

(He stands up.) 

Let's put this bitch in The Ground! 

What do you say? 

She holds out her right hand and he helps her up. 

Buffy: 

I think I say 'Thank You'. 

Xander: 

And nothing says 'Thank You', 

like dollars in the waistband. 

Ok, what do we do first? 

WEAKNESS

No One knows him better than I do.

The Extreme Lengths to which Our Boy has gone to Make Himself Strong are powerful indicators of The Weakness he feels that he must overcome.

That Weakness is still there, inside.

-- Hurt.

Doctor Simon, Hurt.

He's Daddy's Evil Twin -- 

And Your Own.

 

"Samson’s Hair. 

Achilles’ Heel. 

The oddly elaborate gymnastic contortions that exposed the vulnerable spots of Celtic superwarriors. 

Even the greatest heroes needed a weakness, 

or there would be no drama, no fall or redemption.

  If nothing could hurt Superman, 

what could hurt him?

  In fact, Weisinger and his writers understood 

The Most Important Thing

about Superman: 

That His Heart 

was vulnerable, 

and 

His Self-Esteem 

could be fragile. 

The Super was just 

The Icing on The Cake, 

The sugar coating : 

These were stories about 

Man and His Role 

in A New World.

  But now that The Man of Tomorrow had achieved near-divine heights of omnipotence, The Need for some kind of convincing Physical Vulnerability was becoming greater. 

Or so goes the prevailing opinion. 

The glowing green killer mineral Kryptonite had been introduced in the 1943 Superman radio series. 

The contaminated remains of Superman’s Home Planet fell to Earth in meteor form—much more often than the debris of A Distant World might reasonably be expected to fall, and in sufficient quantities to threaten Superman’s Life on a regular basis. 

As a weapon, it had a certain symbolic resonance: 

The notion that radioactive fragments 

of Superman’s Birth World 

had become toxic to him 

spoke of The Old Country, 

The Old Ways, 

The Threat of The Failure 

to Assimilate.

 

Superman was a 

naturalised American. 

The last thing he needed 

were these lethal reminders of 

Where He’d Come From; 

That he, The Son of Lordly Scientists, 

had been reduced to 

Toiling in a farmer’s field or 

Minding the general store.

  Weisinger knew how his young readers’ minds worked 

and stretched the idea a little further: 

If there was Green Kryptonite, 

couldn’t there be other colors too? 

The prismatic splintering began 

with the invention of Red K, 

The Cool Kryptonite --

Possibly because it made literal 

The Master Silver Age Theme 

of Bodily Transformation. 

It was mineral LSD for Superman, 

affecting not just His Mind 

but also reshaping His Body 

into A Playground of Fleshly Hallucination.

  No two trips on Red K 

were the same, in-story 

logic promised. 

Red K would affect Superman 

in a different way every time 

and theoretically might never become boring. 

So, under its influence, Superman might develop 

The Head of An Ant, scaling The Daily Planet building as 

The Commander of a Nightmarish Army of 

Giant Insects —

“BZZ-BZZZ … 

WE MUST CAPTURE LOIS LANE … 

SHE WILL BE OUR QUEEN!”

— or split into Good Clark, Bad Superman, 

or even become goofy for forty-eight hours.

  Red K and The Silver Age are inextricable. 

Red K was LSD for superheroes, and under its influence 

Superman could unclench 

his entire being and 

Walk The Razor’s Edge 

of Joyous Self-Abandonment 

and Ego-Annihilating Terror — 

An American Pioneer.

Red-K served equally as a handy metaphor 

for the adolescent hormonal shifts, physical changes, 

and weird moods of elation and despair 

that were being experienced by its readers.

  Other Kryptonite variants were created 

as plot mechanics demanded 

rather than with any eye to longevity. 

That’s Why --

Gold Kryptonite 

removes Superman’s Powers permanently, 

Blue Kryptonite 

affects only Bizarros, 

and 

White Kryptonite 

is deadly to plants, 

which makes it about as interesting 

as matches, DDT, or a stout spade.

But, of course, 

Superman’s Ultimate Weakness 

was his Secret identity. 

Why wouldn’t shy Clark Kent 

choose to tear open his shirt 

and reveal to his unrequited love 

The Potent God-Man behind the buttons? 

Instead he hid The Truth from Lois Lane, 

devising deceptions that became so elaborate as to be cruel : 

The Ghastly Tricks of Semantics 

a Man-Boy might play on a Child-Woman, 

all in the guise of 

“Teaching Her a Lesson.”

  A story like “The Two Faces of Superman” showed the hero promising to marry Lois Lane but only if she met him at a particular time outside the church. 

When she met his conditions, 

he contrived to seal her car door with his heat vision so that she couldn’t get out. 

Unable to marry him at precisely the correct hour meant that Lois forfeited her chance. 

A relieved, chortling Superman took to the skies, having hoodwinked the predator once more.

  Like Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Tit Tot, and the other creatures of folklore who knew that 

names held power 

and kept theirs secret, 

Superman maintained his distance 

from Clark and vice versa. 

Their paths rarely crossed. 

He hid His Heart in a plain suit, 

behind glasses. 

For Lois, A Girl, to know Who He Was would be The End. 

She’d only pressure him into exchanging his gaudy suit and life of adventure for something less embarrassing, more domestic. 

She would expect him to be home for dinner, when there were stricken ocean liners to rescue. 

In the end, his self-deceiving fantasies of one day carrying Lois up the aisle were just that, and if he married Lois, he’d be Clark forever. 

It wouldn’t matter how strong or fast he was, he’d be Clark racing around the globe to pick up groceries. "

....or making soufflés with his heat-vison

"I never drink when I fly."

** TAKES A DRINK **

** LOSES THE ABILITY TO FLY **

Couldn't Hurt.

The Goy's Teeth (scene from A Serious Man) 

from Diegech on Vimeo.

"....But then, we also talk about removing  information that is Problematic, y'know?

Of course, so, anything that is 
Medically Unsubstantiated :

Like, People Say :

"Take Vitamin C."

"Take Turmeric"



"Those Will Cure You."

Those are The Examples of 
Things That Would Violate Our Policy :

Anything That Would Go Against World Health Organisation Recommendations 
would be a violation of Our Policy.

And so, "REMOVE" is another really important part of Our Policy.

Rabbi Nachtner: 
You know Lee Sussman. 

Larry Gopnik: 
Doctor Sussman? 
I think I - yeah. 

Rabbi Nachtner: 
Did he ever tell you about the goy's teeth?

Larry Gopnik: 
No... I- What goy? 

Rabbi Nachtner: 
So... Lee is at work one day; you know he has the orthodontic practice there at Great Bear. 

He's making a plaster mold - it's for corrective bridge work - in the mouth of one of his patients, Russell Kraus. 
The mold dries and Lee is examining it one day before fabricating an appliance. 
He notices something unusual. 
There appears to be something engraved on the inside of the patient's lower incisors. 
He-vav-shin-yud-ayin-nun-yud. 

"Hwshy 'ny". 
"Help me, save me". 

This in a goy's mouth, Larry. 
He calls the goy back on the pretense of needing additional measurements for the appliance. 

"How are you? 

Noticed any other problems with your teeth?" 

"No." 

There it is. 
"Hwshy 'ny". 
"Help me". 

Son of a Gun. 

Sussman goes Home. 

Can Sussman eat? 
Sussman can't eat.

Can Sussman sleep? 
Sussman can't sleep. 

Sussman looks at the molds of his other patients, 

goy and Jew alike, seeking other messages. 

He finds none. 
He looks in his own mouth. 

Nothing. 

He looks in his wife's mouth. 
Nothing. 

But Sussman,

is An Educated Man -- 

Not The World's Greatest sage, maybe, no Rabbi Marshak, 

but he knows a thing or two from 

The Zohar and The Qaballah. 

He knows that every Hebrew letter has its numeric equivalent. 
8-4-5-4-4-7-3. 

Seven digits... a phone number, maybe? 

"Hello? Do you know a goy named Kraus, Russell Kraus?" 

"Who?"

"Where have I called?" 

"The Red Owl in Bloomington." 

"Thanks so much." 

He goes. It's a Red Owl. 
Groceries; what have you. 

Sussman goes home. 
What does it mean? 
He has to find out if he is ever to sleep again. 

He goes to see... 

The Rabbi Nachtner. 

He comes in, he sits 

right where you're sitting right now --

"What does it mean, Rabbi? 
Is it a sign from Hashem, 'Help me'? 

I, Sussman, 

should be doing something to help this goy? 

Doing what? 

The Teeth don't say. 

Or maybe I'm supposed to Help People generally, Lead a More Righteous Life? 

Is the answer in Qaballah? In Torah? 
Or is there even A Question?

 
Tell me, Rabbi --
What can such A Sign mean?" 

[pause as the Rabbi drinks his tea] 

Larry Gopnik: 

So what did you tell him? 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

Sussman? 

Larry Gopnik: 

Yes! 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

Is it... relevant? 

Larry Gopnik: 

Well, isn't that why you're telling me? 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

Okay. Nachtner says, ‘Look, —

The Teeth, we don't know. 

A Sign from Hashem? Don't know. 

Helping Others... 

Couldn't Hurt. 

Larry Gopnik: 

No! No, but... who put it there? 

Was it for him, Sussman, or for whoever found it, 

or for just, for, for... 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

We can't know everything. 

Larry Gopnik: 

It sounds like you don't know ANYTHING! 

Why even tell me The Story? 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

[chuckling] 

First I should tell you, then I shouldn't. 

Larry Gopnik: 

What Happened to Sussman? 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

What •would• happen? Not much. 

He Went Back to Work. 

For a while he checked every patient's teeth for new messages. He didn't find any. 

In time, he found he'd stopped checking. 

He returned to Life. 

These Questions that are bothering you, Larry - 

Maybe they're like a toothache. 

We feel them for a while, then — 

They Go Away. 

Larry Gopnik: 

I don't want it to just go away! 

I want An Answer! 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

Sure! We all want The Answer! 

But Hashem doesn't owe us The Answer, Larry. 

Hashem doesn't owe Us anything. 

The Obligation runs the other way. 

Larry Gopnik: 

Why Does He Make Us feel The Questions 

if He's not gonna give Us any of The Answers? 

Rabbi Nachtner:

[ He leans forward, slightly, conspiritorially ]

He hasn't told me. 

[Larry puts his face in his hands in despair] 

Larry Gopnik: 

And... what happened to the goy? 

Rabbi Nachtner: 

The goy? 
Who cares?