The Buffyverse Character Countdown (#29)

#29

Hero: Clem (Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Seasons 6 and 7)

A joke character ranks at #29. This fact should only be seen to reflect upon the weakness of the preceding two heroes as opposed to an evaluation of Clem’s actual merits. Because, honestly, Clem doesn’t have any true merits. He isn’t even a comic relief character; comic relief characters have identities beyond their humor. Clem is a giant walking joke, a benevolent demon whose absurd habits are opportunities for Joss Whedon and the other writing staff to insert random bits of comedy into the script. Throughout the two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer he appears in, Clem does nothing that actually affects the plot nor does he have any virtues that are particularly admirable. The only reason he beats the Potentials is the lasting appeal of his jokes. I recognize that this is a short entry but… there’s simply nothing more to talk about with Clem. He’s a joke.

Villain: Billy Blim (Angel Season 3 - "Billy")

There’s one specific reason I included the category “appropriateness of allegory” in the criteria for judging the villains of the Buffyverse – its name is Billy Blim. If one were to judge a monster of the week purely on the basis of his impact on the plot, effectiveness as entertainment, and depth of villainy, then Billy Blim might just crack into the top fifteen of a list like this. However, should one explore this villain’s philosophy and implications for reality, one cannot help but be insulted by the dangerously toxic philosophy the writers end up endorsing through Billy’s involvement in the Buffyverse. Billy Blim might be a source of twisted horror in Angel, but the real horror comes from what he has to say about the real world.

Billy Blim is the nephew of a US senator who has a… special talent. This conniving devil is able to bring out a “primordial misogyny in men” with whom he comes into physical contact. Throughout the course of his episode, “Billy,” Blim uses his powers to inflict tremendous amounts of harm on the female population of Los Angeles. Billy's interactions lead to Lilah getting beaten up by her flunkies as well as the murder of several innocents and police officers. Contact with a mere blood sample from Billy is enough to turn Wesley into a madman hell bent on murdering Fred, the woman whom he loves more than anything else in the world, chasing her through the Angel Investigations office with a hatchet as if his name were Jack Torrance. Angel, fortunately, isn’t affected by Billy’s powers, thanks to his being a demon already, but he still has to fight his hardest to put this impish killer to rest.

I'm going to start this analysis with the bad. As vicious as Billy is and as frightening as his episode is, his concept is both inherently preposterous and potentially dangerous. The notion that men are, by nature, misogynistic is utter poppycock: they might all benefit from inherent structural biases, but that doesn’t mean that they hate women to the point of wanting to kill them. This plot point is not merely demeaning to men, but it also inherently legitimizes the grotesque opinions of “red pill” men’s rights activists and pick-up artists who claim that all feminist allies are secretly just as misogynistic as they are. Worse still, this "primordial misogyny" functions to abnegate the abusive actions of actual misogynists by virtue of the idea that all men would do the same thing if some magical demon removed all their inhibitions. It perpetuates the idea that violence against women is "natural" behavior, giving credence to such malodorous ideas as "boys will be boys" and "all men are dogs." The Buffyverse might be the television universe with the most nuanced feminist stance, but it still has its flaws: Billy Blim represents the very worst of its errors.

That said, should one be able to overlook these glaring political issues (and, indeed, they are hard to overlook), one does have one of the very best one-off villains in the series. Billy’s infection of Wesley is one of the pivotal moments in the relationship between himself and Fred, an act of violence so traumatizing that it takes an entire season’s worth of episodes for their relationship to recover. Billy also induces both Cordelia and Lilah to step up their “badass b****” identities in order to end him; indeed, the fact that Lilah ends up actually jobbing this cretin makes her all the more imposing an antagonist in her own right. Plus, Justin Shilton’s performance as Billy is simply spectacular: his blank line delivery, glazed expressions, and shifty demeanor add a level of menace the dialogue in “Billy” often lacks. He ends up turning a simple, misogynistic voyeur into one of the most horrifying creations in the entire Buffyverse. Though these qualities don’t quite surmount the more dangerous elements of Billy’s character, they do make him one of the most entertaining villains in Angel's third season.