“I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends”

In “The Replacement” and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I was struck by the difference in attitudes both Xander and Mr. Hyde/Dr Jekyll had about their doppelgangers. More importantly, I was struck by the contrast in how each of their attitudes changed over the course of their stories. These two men take very different stances on their duality, and that difference is ultimately life or death.

For Xander, he is initially unwilling to believe that the doppelganger is actually just parts of himself. He creates all sorts of fantasies to convince himself of this, for example, the silver disk that he purports as being inherently evil, when in reality is nothing more than a smushed coin. However, as usual, The Scooby Gang comes to the rescue and convinces both Xanders that they are in fact just parts of each other. Suspend your disbelief for the next part where Willow magics them back into one person. But if not for his friends, Xander probably would have killed his other half, essentially killing an important piece of himself in the process.

As we all know, Dr. Jekyll is not so fortunate as Xander. He ultimately kills himself as a way to stop the evil Mr. Hyde from walking the Earth anymore. It is interesting that from the beginning of the story, Dr. Jekyll is well aware of the fact that Mr. Hyde is a part of himself. I don’t mean that simply because Jekyll created Hyde, but also because Jekyll is not so naive (sorry Xander) as to believe that the qualities in both men are not his own. What is so sad for Jekyll, is that much like Xander, he seeks counsel from his friend, Dr. Lanyon. This is interesting because while Mr. Hyde is terrifying the streets, Dr. Lanyon remains a staunch Victorian rationalist. It is this one-sidedness that eventually kills him. Perhaps a blend of old and new, eastern and western would have served him better (hey Van Helsing, how you doing).

So no offense to Robert Louis Stevenson, but if somebody is going to script me a doppelganger, I want it to be Joss Whedon. Xander gets to continue living his life, perhaps for the better knowing that he has a “suave” side buried somewhere deep inside. Jekyll is not so lucky. Granted his best friend wasn’t a powerful witch who could just magic himself back together, but even so, maybe he sought help with his problem from the wrong source.

Moral of the story, make friends with cool, and magical people.