Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 2x17 – Passion
May. 20th, 2022 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsBuffy the Vampire Slayer: 2x17 – Passion
So here we have another really good episode. But there’s a little part of me that feels weird saying that because there’s something about this episode that has always felt a bit…cheap. On the other hand, in some ways that makes it more impressive that this is such a good episode. In ways I doubt I’m going to nail down, it looks like a low budget, small network TV show, but it is working so well that that’s not a problem. You wouldn’t call it a selling feature, but it’s not really a bug either.
This is another of those episodes where I kind of wish I had someone around who thought much like me but didn’t know everything about to happen here. In this case, I don’t even have young me to compare with, because while there was (obviously) a first time I saw this episode and was likely impressed seeing it in action, I always knew the big things about this one. By the time the reruns looped back around to s2 I’d been reading quite a lot about the early seasons, plus drowning in B/G fic where Jenny’s death is a rather common specter.
But there is a small part of me that wonders if this episode isn’t better on rewatch than first watch. If you don’t know how big a mess this is going to be, do you feel the same tension over everything in this episode? To some extent I suspect so, because Angel is being creepy through the whole thing, but also I certainly feel like I wouldn’t expect it to go this bad in this episode. Regular characters usually get out of their tight spots, so if you don’t know are you just waiting to see how Jenny is saved? This is also kind of playing with misdirection, having you think Angel is going to keep messing with *Buffy*, that he’ll do something to hurt *Buffy*, but it’s not Buffy who gets hurt the most here.
I felt that as a rewatch this is especially powerful during the confrontation between Jenny and Angel. As opposed to a blind first watch where we’re so used to characters getting out of these situations when cornered. You want someone else to be there that can save her; you want *Giles* to be working late and show up as the big damn hero; you want it to be that maybe she gets hurt and isn’t going to be able to save Angel, but she’ll be okay.
And then, she isn’t. She’s just dead. And when you rewatch the episode, the part of you that does want it to be different this time, can also see the inevitability of her death the second Angel shows up. Because she’s defenseless, and this time there won’t be someone or something that steps in at the last second like there has been so many times (including by Jenny herself).
I do have to say that some of that expertly crafted feeling is undermined by the scene at the factory. Because first Spike keeps Dru back so that Giles doesn’t die instantly when he goes after Angel, then Buffy shows up in the nick of time, then Dru decided to take Spike and leave instead of joining the fight, then Buffy managed to get Giles out of there in time. Sure, I love watching Giles go off like that, and I love Buffy coming to the rescue, and I love their shared breakdown; but it does play by TV rules where the stuff with Jenny didn’t.
(This is also the much less stupid version of ‘saving what you love instead fighting what you hate.’)
There were times in this one where I feel like Buffy’s blind spot where Angel is concerned is more or less literal. I feel like a vampire ought to have a hard time sneaking into the Slayer’s bedroom, or stalking her in a club, or feeding on someone while barely in shadows across the alley. Angel does seem to be getting in and out of places rather easily and speedily all through this one, how else could he arrange for the trinkets to be found at just the right times.
This is yet another episode where most scenes deserve some kind of comment, but that’s not the kind of review this is. So it’s mostly the big stuff that I manage to pull together thoughts on before they slip away, but there were some smaller scenes that I’m going to at least mention.
The bit at the beginning with other people coming into the club house was a really good thing to throw in; I’ve noticed in the last few episodes just how much the library doesn’t feel like public territory, it looks like Slayer clubhouse.
This episode has some of the best Buffy-Joyce content we’ve had. Both of their big scenes give us a view of their relationship being loving and trying, but the Slayer stuff makes it something that Joyce can’t deal with, let alone when she doesn’t even know about the Slayer stuff.
Anytime Giles shows up at the Summers’ house I really wonder how Joyce rationalizes it. Granted Joyce didn’t really know about this one, but I maintain that someone should be asking questions about his relationship to Buffy (just because I’m okay with it doesn’t mean everyone would be). And then Buffy is the first person Giles calls when his girlfriend is murdered, and all of Buffy’s friends rush over to check on their…school librarian.
Speaking of, the scene of the gang at Giles’ apartment may actually be the darkest scene in this very dark episode. These kids are standing around a crime scene, looking at the horror committed against people they know and are close to by someone they used to know; Willow and Cordy’s shock, Xander’s anger, and Buffy’s guilt (that Xander makes worse) and fear for Giles, it feels like we’ve crossed a line with all of them that they can’t come back from. At the start of the episode, they’re still kids going to the Bronze, in spite of everything that’s happened, they were still on that side of some invisible line. But standing there in Giles’ apartment…things are different.
I don’t know if it lasts, but this episode feels weighty, and casts a long shadow for a reason.
What am I shipping?
Mostly nobody. Xander and Cordy are quite functional; it’s weird that Oz isn’t here; there are a few rustlings of my Scoobie thruple feelings but nothing that sticks.
I wish I could say that I was onboard with Giles/Jenny in the end. But I think the tentative forgiveness here should probably have happened over a couple episodes instead of all in one (for all the episode does somewhat avoid telegraphing Jenny’s coming death); and I feel like there’s still something a little manipulative about how she’s trying to get back right with Giles. Not in the sense that I doubt her intentions, but in the sense that she’s not getting quite how much hurt there has been because of her former secrecy. She’s trying to buy forgiveness, and it might even have worked if she’d managed to pull the spell off, but actually being right with Giles (not to mention Buffy, and Giles is completely standing on Buffy’s side) was going to be a longer process.
I kind of want to write a bit more of a tag for Buffy and Giles. Not to get them to a shippier place really, but because Giles letting Buffy berate herself for not killing Angel sooner doesn’t feel right with me. I get that the writing wants to climax of that section to be Buffy saying that she’s ready to do what needs to be done and accepting that Angel’s gone, but I feel like it undercuts Giles a bit to not say anything to reassure her that he doesn’t blame her.
Now, if it was intentional, and maybe we’re supposed to wonder if this has shaken Giles’ complete support of Buffy, then I guess it was a well done soft setup (soft setup can be a good thing), so I’ll have to keep an eye on that for a few episodes. I don’t actually remember much about the next few episodes until the finale, so it could surprise me a bit at least
Either way, I suspect I’m not the first person to think of writing a scene like that.
So here we have another really good episode. But there’s a little part of me that feels weird saying that because there’s something about this episode that has always felt a bit…cheap. On the other hand, in some ways that makes it more impressive that this is such a good episode. In ways I doubt I’m going to nail down, it looks like a low budget, small network TV show, but it is working so well that that’s not a problem. You wouldn’t call it a selling feature, but it’s not really a bug either.
This is another of those episodes where I kind of wish I had someone around who thought much like me but didn’t know everything about to happen here. In this case, I don’t even have young me to compare with, because while there was (obviously) a first time I saw this episode and was likely impressed seeing it in action, I always knew the big things about this one. By the time the reruns looped back around to s2 I’d been reading quite a lot about the early seasons, plus drowning in B/G fic where Jenny’s death is a rather common specter.
But there is a small part of me that wonders if this episode isn’t better on rewatch than first watch. If you don’t know how big a mess this is going to be, do you feel the same tension over everything in this episode? To some extent I suspect so, because Angel is being creepy through the whole thing, but also I certainly feel like I wouldn’t expect it to go this bad in this episode. Regular characters usually get out of their tight spots, so if you don’t know are you just waiting to see how Jenny is saved? This is also kind of playing with misdirection, having you think Angel is going to keep messing with *Buffy*, that he’ll do something to hurt *Buffy*, but it’s not Buffy who gets hurt the most here.
I felt that as a rewatch this is especially powerful during the confrontation between Jenny and Angel. As opposed to a blind first watch where we’re so used to characters getting out of these situations when cornered. You want someone else to be there that can save her; you want *Giles* to be working late and show up as the big damn hero; you want it to be that maybe she gets hurt and isn’t going to be able to save Angel, but she’ll be okay.
And then, she isn’t. She’s just dead. And when you rewatch the episode, the part of you that does want it to be different this time, can also see the inevitability of her death the second Angel shows up. Because she’s defenseless, and this time there won’t be someone or something that steps in at the last second like there has been so many times (including by Jenny herself).
I do have to say that some of that expertly crafted feeling is undermined by the scene at the factory. Because first Spike keeps Dru back so that Giles doesn’t die instantly when he goes after Angel, then Buffy shows up in the nick of time, then Dru decided to take Spike and leave instead of joining the fight, then Buffy managed to get Giles out of there in time. Sure, I love watching Giles go off like that, and I love Buffy coming to the rescue, and I love their shared breakdown; but it does play by TV rules where the stuff with Jenny didn’t.
(This is also the much less stupid version of ‘saving what you love instead fighting what you hate.’)
There were times in this one where I feel like Buffy’s blind spot where Angel is concerned is more or less literal. I feel like a vampire ought to have a hard time sneaking into the Slayer’s bedroom, or stalking her in a club, or feeding on someone while barely in shadows across the alley. Angel does seem to be getting in and out of places rather easily and speedily all through this one, how else could he arrange for the trinkets to be found at just the right times.
This is yet another episode where most scenes deserve some kind of comment, but that’s not the kind of review this is. So it’s mostly the big stuff that I manage to pull together thoughts on before they slip away, but there were some smaller scenes that I’m going to at least mention.
The bit at the beginning with other people coming into the club house was a really good thing to throw in; I’ve noticed in the last few episodes just how much the library doesn’t feel like public territory, it looks like Slayer clubhouse.
This episode has some of the best Buffy-Joyce content we’ve had. Both of their big scenes give us a view of their relationship being loving and trying, but the Slayer stuff makes it something that Joyce can’t deal with, let alone when she doesn’t even know about the Slayer stuff.
Anytime Giles shows up at the Summers’ house I really wonder how Joyce rationalizes it. Granted Joyce didn’t really know about this one, but I maintain that someone should be asking questions about his relationship to Buffy (just because I’m okay with it doesn’t mean everyone would be). And then Buffy is the first person Giles calls when his girlfriend is murdered, and all of Buffy’s friends rush over to check on their…school librarian.
Speaking of, the scene of the gang at Giles’ apartment may actually be the darkest scene in this very dark episode. These kids are standing around a crime scene, looking at the horror committed against people they know and are close to by someone they used to know; Willow and Cordy’s shock, Xander’s anger, and Buffy’s guilt (that Xander makes worse) and fear for Giles, it feels like we’ve crossed a line with all of them that they can’t come back from. At the start of the episode, they’re still kids going to the Bronze, in spite of everything that’s happened, they were still on that side of some invisible line. But standing there in Giles’ apartment…things are different.
I don’t know if it lasts, but this episode feels weighty, and casts a long shadow for a reason.
What am I shipping?
Mostly nobody. Xander and Cordy are quite functional; it’s weird that Oz isn’t here; there are a few rustlings of my Scoobie thruple feelings but nothing that sticks.
I wish I could say that I was onboard with Giles/Jenny in the end. But I think the tentative forgiveness here should probably have happened over a couple episodes instead of all in one (for all the episode does somewhat avoid telegraphing Jenny’s coming death); and I feel like there’s still something a little manipulative about how she’s trying to get back right with Giles. Not in the sense that I doubt her intentions, but in the sense that she’s not getting quite how much hurt there has been because of her former secrecy. She’s trying to buy forgiveness, and it might even have worked if she’d managed to pull the spell off, but actually being right with Giles (not to mention Buffy, and Giles is completely standing on Buffy’s side) was going to be a longer process.
I kind of want to write a bit more of a tag for Buffy and Giles. Not to get them to a shippier place really, but because Giles letting Buffy berate herself for not killing Angel sooner doesn’t feel right with me. I get that the writing wants to climax of that section to be Buffy saying that she’s ready to do what needs to be done and accepting that Angel’s gone, but I feel like it undercuts Giles a bit to not say anything to reassure her that he doesn’t blame her.
Now, if it was intentional, and maybe we’re supposed to wonder if this has shaken Giles’ complete support of Buffy, then I guess it was a well done soft setup (soft setup can be a good thing), so I’ll have to keep an eye on that for a few episodes. I don’t actually remember much about the next few episodes until the finale, so it could surprise me a bit at least
Either way, I suspect I’m not the first person to think of writing a scene like that.
