Great Buffy Rewatch of 2015: Passion
I rather feel I've been very lucky, taking the odd numbered episodes. Today we have Passion, one of the most powerful and painful episodes so far.
Passion
The Bronze. Cool music, a relaxed atmosphere. Buffy dances with Xander - but Angelus is watching and ruminating. Most unusually for this show, we have a voiceover - and the POV is Angelus.
Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... ...waiting... And though unwanted... ...unbidden... it will stir...open its jaws, and howl.
We see the Scoobies leave the club, cheerful, possibly even happy. They pass a couple in a corner - and as they leave the shot we see it is Angelus, dropping his latest victim. He resumes his human face and watches the Scoobies leave, utterly unaware of him.
We see Buffy through the window of her bedroom. She is faintly suspicious and pulls the blind open to look more clearly, but apparently sees nothing. Inside her room she is preparing for bed - nice silky pyjamas there, Buff. Angel is there, stroking her face as she sleeps.
It speaks to us... guides us... Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?
And all that is just the teaser.
Buffy wakes in the sunlight. On her pillow there is an envelope, which she opens - a sketch of her, sleeping. No name on it - but who else could it be from?
We discover from Giles that once a vampire has been invited in, he is always welcome. Xander points out there is a lesson the girls could learn from this, about inviting strange men into their bedrooms. Cordy is spooked - she invited him into her car once. Giles will research the possibility of a spell to counteract an invitation.
Xander is most annoyed when two students (Jonathon!) enter the library, looking for books. “Does this look like a Barnes & Noble?” - he’s unconvinced, even when Giles points out that this is a school library. (And we thought everyone had forgotten.)
The Scoobies clearly feel it is bizarre to use the library to research Stalin. (He’s a mass-murderer like Angelus, but probably not so supernatural.) Giles and all the others leave, so the students are left to find books on their own. Just as well Snyder has no idea how the library is operated.
Cordelia does not understand why Angelus didn’t simply kill Buffy in a variety of possible ways, but Giles recognises the classic battle strategy of unnerving the enemy. (Killing her would have done that too, mind you. Why didn’t he?)
Buffy remembers that Angel’s first step in destroying Drusilla was to kill her family. Clearly Joyce has to be told something. The truth? Giles is adamant that it would be a bad idea to share that with her - Xander agrees, “The more people who know the secret, the more it cheapens it for the rest of us.”
Something has to be done, though - Buffy and Joyce really can’t simply accept Cordy’s offer to ride around all day in her car with her. Giles tells her to keep a level head - as the Slayer she doesn’t have the luxury of being a slave to her passions. In effect, ignore him and he’ll go away.
Jenny asks Willow to teach the class at the start of the lesson for her. Willow gets very geeky. Buffy, however, is not prepared to be polite to the teacher. Jenny asks Giles how’s been - not well, as Angel has regained his sense of whimsy. There is a sort of reconciliation and Jenny admits she has fallen in love with Giles. She wants to make it all up to him - but he points out that he is not the one who needs that. He has a book from her now, which may contain the disinvite spell he needs.
Joyce knows something is wrong with Buffy and asks her to share - after all, nothing can surprise her now. (Really, Joyce? We think not.) Buffy tells her that she and Angel (the college boy) have split up and he has been stalking her - she begs her mother not to invite him in. (Even though, currently, he has open access to her house. She must really trust Giles will find that spell quickly.) Joyce is mildly amused - “Don’t tell me. He’s changed.”
Willow talks to Buffy on the phone while feeding her fishtank. Then she spots an envelope on her bed - and pulls from it a linked string of dead fish.
The next thing we see, Willow is staying the night with Buffy. He may have changed totally, says Willow, but Buffy is still the only thing he thinks about.
Spike is still in a wheelchair and not exactly a bundle of joy. Dru tries to persuade him to eat a puppy.
She treats him exactly like a child - Angelus points out that this is precisely what he is. He offers to help Spike by assuming any responsibility for him - any he’s not already doing, that is. The sexual tension is not in the slightest unstated. Dru, however, becomes aware that someone is planning to break up their happy home.
Jenny visits a magic shop. She needs an Orb of Thessulah, and the request makes the shop owner treat her much more respectfully. She’s in the trade, after all, so he drops the silly foreign accent, which he normally uses on the totally unaware. He knows who she is, condoles with her on the loss of her uncle and supplies her with a box containing an Orb. He points out that it is more or less useless without a translated text of the rituals, and he has a strict policy of no refunds. She is working on it, she assures him - she will have a present for a friend of hers. His soul.
At school, Willow’s orange stripes are cast into the shade by Xander’s horrific tartan trousers. They are all too polite to comment on clothes choices, however.
Willow sees Jenny approaching; that’s five hours of lesson plans down the drain. Buffy accosts Jenny; she is glad Jenny feels badly about what happened - but Giles misses her, and Buffy doesn’t want him to be lonely.
Giles has found a disinvite ritual. Cordy is relieved, as she had been forced to make her grandmother swap cars with her. All heart, that girl. In order to complete the ritual, Willow nails up a cross on her wall - carefully hidden behind a curtain so her dad doesn’t discover his good Jewish daughter uses such things.
She has to go over to Xander’s house even to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every year. It’s worth it, even so, to see Xander do the Snoopy dance. Cordelia asks if Willow knows there are no fish in her aquarium. Buffy suggests she go home, but before doing so Cordelia notices another envelope. This one is for Buffy: it’s a portrait of a sleeping Joyce .
It’s is dark as Joyce drives home, and we see Angel waiting for her as she turns into the driveway. She is cool and firm when he tells her he needs to talk to her. No dice. He tries to persuade her that Buffy must return to him; he hasn’t been able to sleep since the night they made love.
Joyce has been fumbling with her keys, but opens the door - and Willow and Buffy are coming downstairs completing the ritual. They have changed the locks.
Jenny is working late. She may have some news for Giles, and offers to stop by his house. It looks as if things may be positive.
Drusilla brings the puppy, Sunshine, into the magic shop. What did the owner talk to the mean teacher about?
Jenny has made a breakthrough.
She prints her work out on a dot matrix printer and saves it to a floppy disk. Angel is there, aware of her plans.
He shatters the Orb; it is so damned fragile.
Possibly that shoddy Gipsy craftsmanship.
He smashes her computer monitor and burns the printout before taking on game face and chasing her across the school. He is enjoying the chase, and lots of tension builds up. She is running, he is barely breaking into a jog. Then he snaps her neck. This is where she gets off.
Giles visits Willow to collect the book, and learns what Angel told Joyce. He will now be able to do the ritual in his own place.
Joyce and Buffy are having The Talk. Joyce points out that Angel is older than Buffy. Too old. Buffy can’t tell her mother everything, but Joyce will never stop caring. Talk over, they seem to have reached some sort of settlement.
Giles gets home. Operatic music. Red roses. My screen and laptop screen are too misty for me to tell you the rest. But I am a brave and determined soul, so here goes.
Oh his face.
Heart breaking about now.
Giles has to go with the police to answer a few questions. He makes a phone call first.
Once more we look through a window as Angelus talks. We watch Buffy and Willow hear the news. And collapse.
Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... and the ecstasy of grief.
Angelus walks away, smiling.
Xander and Cordelia arrive in her car. Giles has left the police station but they don’t know where he is now. Buffy is worried about what he will do.
We see the debris of flowers on the stairs and the open weapons chest.
Giles is packing to go armed. He looks very angry and intense.
There is another portrait, this time of the dead Jenny.
The Scoobies arrive at the empty flat. (Unlocked door. Why?) Buffy realises he must have gone to kill Angel - Xander is delighted. She points out it will get Giles killed.
Spike is really annoyed. We're supposed to kill the bitch, not leave gag gifts in the friends' beds. (His accent is 95% US at this point. IMHO at least.)
Just as Angelus reassures ‘roller boy’ that he has everything under control, there is the sound of smashing glass and fire spreads across the table.
As they run an arrow pierces Angelus’s left shoulder. Giles has arrived, with a torch he lights from the blaze. He beats Angelus with it - whatever happened to wooden stakes?
Spike won’t let Drusilla intervene, surprisingly. Perhaps Angelus should have been a touch less cruel to him?
Giles does not have his way for long, however. Angelus grips him by the throat and lifts him above his head.
Just as he is about to go for the kill, however, Buffy arrives. Dru pushes Spike out of the way of the ensuing fisticuffs. Buffy is very violent, but is stopped from destroying Angelus by the fact that if she doesn’t rescue him, Giles will die in the fire.
Forced to choose, she rescues Giles, then hits him when he complains to her.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” She begins to cry and crouches down to hug him. He cries and hugs her back. “You can't leave me. I can't do this alone.” They both break down.
Giles returns to his flat. We hear the voice of Angelus again as he enters.
It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank... Without passion, we'd be truly dead.
And we see Jenny’s tombstone. Giles and Buffy stand as she apologises for not killing Angelus. She wasn’t ready, but she thinks she finally is.
Willow takes the class for Jenny. As Buffy says that nothing will ever bring Angel back the floppy disk falls to the floor unseen.
*****
Another astonishing, powerful episode, which took us places nobody expected. The brutal murder of Jenny, the even more brutal way in which it is revealed to Giles; these are game-changers every bit as much as the change Angel underwent. Teenage shows were not supposed to be like this. Tony Head’s amazing performance, both when he finds Jenny and when he tries to get his revenge is mindblowing. And heartbreaking.
Jenny is the first time a character we have come to care about dies. And, of course, this happens just as she and Giles are about to be reconciled. She tells him she loves him. It is clear that he loves her. Willow may assume that, because he is a librarian, Giles knows nothing of passion, but we see differently.
Love is an important passion, but so are revenge, anger, hatred, contempt, grief. Virtually every character in this episode is prey to more than one of the passions; even the magic shop owner talks about his routine sales to ‘tourists’, which are usually about love and revenge. Drusilla seems to worry about Spike, who has not been eating properly; she may not be capable of monogamy, but she is clearly able to care.
Beautiful camerawork and lighting in this episode too - the use of windows and doors to frame action is particularly powerful. Even Willow's discovery of her dead fish is framed by the 'window' of the aquarium. The grief as Buffy and Willow hear the news is all the more intense because we are outside, watching their world collapse. And so much of the action is shown from the point of view of the villain. And what a villain. As Giles says, he has lost his soul and recovered his sense of whimsy, and there is a sequence here of atrocities which are also practical jokes. And note how often the point of view is emphasised - Angel's sketches constantly remind us he is watching. In some ways we are made to be complicit with him. Everyone is observed, and they real much about themselves when they think they are alone.
So, how did you feel when you first saw this? Have you recovered yet? Do you sympathise with Xander, or is his reaction annoying? Cordelia - is she more than a chauffeur and plot device here? And do you enjoy the sheer glee of Angelus - he is not just evil, he relishes it. Do you feel sorry for Spike, for all that he is evil? And is it just petty vengeance that makes him hold Dru back?
Nothing in the Buffyverse can ever be the same again. Many people rate this episode in their top ten. How about you - and why, or why not?
Talk to us?
Passion
The Bronze. Cool music, a relaxed atmosphere. Buffy dances with Xander - but Angelus is watching and ruminating. Most unusually for this show, we have a voiceover - and the POV is Angelus.
Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... ...waiting... And though unwanted... ...unbidden... it will stir...open its jaws, and howl.
We see the Scoobies leave the club, cheerful, possibly even happy. They pass a couple in a corner - and as they leave the shot we see it is Angelus, dropping his latest victim. He resumes his human face and watches the Scoobies leave, utterly unaware of him.
We see Buffy through the window of her bedroom. She is faintly suspicious and pulls the blind open to look more clearly, but apparently sees nothing. Inside her room she is preparing for bed - nice silky pyjamas there, Buff. Angel is there, stroking her face as she sleeps.
It speaks to us... guides us... Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?
And all that is just the teaser.
Buffy wakes in the sunlight. On her pillow there is an envelope, which she opens - a sketch of her, sleeping. No name on it - but who else could it be from?
We discover from Giles that once a vampire has been invited in, he is always welcome. Xander points out there is a lesson the girls could learn from this, about inviting strange men into their bedrooms. Cordy is spooked - she invited him into her car once. Giles will research the possibility of a spell to counteract an invitation.
Xander is most annoyed when two students (Jonathon!) enter the library, looking for books. “Does this look like a Barnes & Noble?” - he’s unconvinced, even when Giles points out that this is a school library. (And we thought everyone had forgotten.)
The Scoobies clearly feel it is bizarre to use the library to research Stalin. (He’s a mass-murderer like Angelus, but probably not so supernatural.) Giles and all the others leave, so the students are left to find books on their own. Just as well Snyder has no idea how the library is operated.
Cordelia does not understand why Angelus didn’t simply kill Buffy in a variety of possible ways, but Giles recognises the classic battle strategy of unnerving the enemy. (Killing her would have done that too, mind you. Why didn’t he?)
Buffy remembers that Angel’s first step in destroying Drusilla was to kill her family. Clearly Joyce has to be told something. The truth? Giles is adamant that it would be a bad idea to share that with her - Xander agrees, “The more people who know the secret, the more it cheapens it for the rest of us.”
Something has to be done, though - Buffy and Joyce really can’t simply accept Cordy’s offer to ride around all day in her car with her. Giles tells her to keep a level head - as the Slayer she doesn’t have the luxury of being a slave to her passions. In effect, ignore him and he’ll go away.
Jenny asks Willow to teach the class at the start of the lesson for her. Willow gets very geeky. Buffy, however, is not prepared to be polite to the teacher. Jenny asks Giles how’s been - not well, as Angel has regained his sense of whimsy. There is a sort of reconciliation and Jenny admits she has fallen in love with Giles. She wants to make it all up to him - but he points out that he is not the one who needs that. He has a book from her now, which may contain the disinvite spell he needs.
Joyce knows something is wrong with Buffy and asks her to share - after all, nothing can surprise her now. (Really, Joyce? We think not.) Buffy tells her that she and Angel (the college boy) have split up and he has been stalking her - she begs her mother not to invite him in. (Even though, currently, he has open access to her house. She must really trust Giles will find that spell quickly.) Joyce is mildly amused - “Don’t tell me. He’s changed.”
Willow talks to Buffy on the phone while feeding her fishtank. Then she spots an envelope on her bed - and pulls from it a linked string of dead fish.
The next thing we see, Willow is staying the night with Buffy. He may have changed totally, says Willow, but Buffy is still the only thing he thinks about.
Spike is still in a wheelchair and not exactly a bundle of joy. Dru tries to persuade him to eat a puppy.
She treats him exactly like a child - Angelus points out that this is precisely what he is. He offers to help Spike by assuming any responsibility for him - any he’s not already doing, that is. The sexual tension is not in the slightest unstated. Dru, however, becomes aware that someone is planning to break up their happy home.
Jenny visits a magic shop. She needs an Orb of Thessulah, and the request makes the shop owner treat her much more respectfully. She’s in the trade, after all, so he drops the silly foreign accent, which he normally uses on the totally unaware. He knows who she is, condoles with her on the loss of her uncle and supplies her with a box containing an Orb. He points out that it is more or less useless without a translated text of the rituals, and he has a strict policy of no refunds. She is working on it, she assures him - she will have a present for a friend of hers. His soul.
At school, Willow’s orange stripes are cast into the shade by Xander’s horrific tartan trousers. They are all too polite to comment on clothes choices, however.
Willow sees Jenny approaching; that’s five hours of lesson plans down the drain. Buffy accosts Jenny; she is glad Jenny feels badly about what happened - but Giles misses her, and Buffy doesn’t want him to be lonely.
Giles has found a disinvite ritual. Cordy is relieved, as she had been forced to make her grandmother swap cars with her. All heart, that girl. In order to complete the ritual, Willow nails up a cross on her wall - carefully hidden behind a curtain so her dad doesn’t discover his good Jewish daughter uses such things.
She has to go over to Xander’s house even to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every year. It’s worth it, even so, to see Xander do the Snoopy dance. Cordelia asks if Willow knows there are no fish in her aquarium. Buffy suggests she go home, but before doing so Cordelia notices another envelope. This one is for Buffy: it’s a portrait of a sleeping Joyce .
It’s is dark as Joyce drives home, and we see Angel waiting for her as she turns into the driveway. She is cool and firm when he tells her he needs to talk to her. No dice. He tries to persuade her that Buffy must return to him; he hasn’t been able to sleep since the night they made love.
Joyce has been fumbling with her keys, but opens the door - and Willow and Buffy are coming downstairs completing the ritual. They have changed the locks.
Jenny is working late. She may have some news for Giles, and offers to stop by his house. It looks as if things may be positive.
Drusilla brings the puppy, Sunshine, into the magic shop. What did the owner talk to the mean teacher about?
Jenny has made a breakthrough.
She prints her work out on a dot matrix printer and saves it to a floppy disk. Angel is there, aware of her plans.
He shatters the Orb; it is so damned fragile.
Possibly that shoddy Gipsy craftsmanship.
He smashes her computer monitor and burns the printout before taking on game face and chasing her across the school. He is enjoying the chase, and lots of tension builds up. She is running, he is barely breaking into a jog. Then he snaps her neck. This is where she gets off.
Giles visits Willow to collect the book, and learns what Angel told Joyce. He will now be able to do the ritual in his own place.
Joyce and Buffy are having The Talk. Joyce points out that Angel is older than Buffy. Too old. Buffy can’t tell her mother everything, but Joyce will never stop caring. Talk over, they seem to have reached some sort of settlement.
Giles gets home. Operatic music. Red roses. My screen and laptop screen are too misty for me to tell you the rest. But I am a brave and determined soul, so here goes.
Oh his face.
Heart breaking about now.
Giles has to go with the police to answer a few questions. He makes a phone call first.
Once more we look through a window as Angelus talks. We watch Buffy and Willow hear the news. And collapse.
Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... and the ecstasy of grief.
Angelus walks away, smiling.
Xander and Cordelia arrive in her car. Giles has left the police station but they don’t know where he is now. Buffy is worried about what he will do.
We see the debris of flowers on the stairs and the open weapons chest.
Giles is packing to go armed. He looks very angry and intense.
There is another portrait, this time of the dead Jenny.
The Scoobies arrive at the empty flat. (Unlocked door. Why?) Buffy realises he must have gone to kill Angel - Xander is delighted. She points out it will get Giles killed.
Spike is really annoyed. We're supposed to kill the bitch, not leave gag gifts in the friends' beds. (His accent is 95% US at this point. IMHO at least.)
Just as Angelus reassures ‘roller boy’ that he has everything under control, there is the sound of smashing glass and fire spreads across the table.
As they run an arrow pierces Angelus’s left shoulder. Giles has arrived, with a torch he lights from the blaze. He beats Angelus with it - whatever happened to wooden stakes?
Spike won’t let Drusilla intervene, surprisingly. Perhaps Angelus should have been a touch less cruel to him?
Giles does not have his way for long, however. Angelus grips him by the throat and lifts him above his head.
Just as he is about to go for the kill, however, Buffy arrives. Dru pushes Spike out of the way of the ensuing fisticuffs. Buffy is very violent, but is stopped from destroying Angelus by the fact that if she doesn’t rescue him, Giles will die in the fire.
Forced to choose, she rescues Giles, then hits him when he complains to her.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” She begins to cry and crouches down to hug him. He cries and hugs her back. “You can't leave me. I can't do this alone.” They both break down.
Giles returns to his flat. We hear the voice of Angelus again as he enters.
It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank... Without passion, we'd be truly dead.
And we see Jenny’s tombstone. Giles and Buffy stand as she apologises for not killing Angelus. She wasn’t ready, but she thinks she finally is.
Willow takes the class for Jenny. As Buffy says that nothing will ever bring Angel back the floppy disk falls to the floor unseen.
*****
Another astonishing, powerful episode, which took us places nobody expected. The brutal murder of Jenny, the even more brutal way in which it is revealed to Giles; these are game-changers every bit as much as the change Angel underwent. Teenage shows were not supposed to be like this. Tony Head’s amazing performance, both when he finds Jenny and when he tries to get his revenge is mindblowing. And heartbreaking.
Jenny is the first time a character we have come to care about dies. And, of course, this happens just as she and Giles are about to be reconciled. She tells him she loves him. It is clear that he loves her. Willow may assume that, because he is a librarian, Giles knows nothing of passion, but we see differently.
Love is an important passion, but so are revenge, anger, hatred, contempt, grief. Virtually every character in this episode is prey to more than one of the passions; even the magic shop owner talks about his routine sales to ‘tourists’, which are usually about love and revenge. Drusilla seems to worry about Spike, who has not been eating properly; she may not be capable of monogamy, but she is clearly able to care.
Beautiful camerawork and lighting in this episode too - the use of windows and doors to frame action is particularly powerful. Even Willow's discovery of her dead fish is framed by the 'window' of the aquarium. The grief as Buffy and Willow hear the news is all the more intense because we are outside, watching their world collapse. And so much of the action is shown from the point of view of the villain. And what a villain. As Giles says, he has lost his soul and recovered his sense of whimsy, and there is a sequence here of atrocities which are also practical jokes. And note how often the point of view is emphasised - Angel's sketches constantly remind us he is watching. In some ways we are made to be complicit with him. Everyone is observed, and they real much about themselves when they think they are alone.
So, how did you feel when you first saw this? Have you recovered yet? Do you sympathise with Xander, or is his reaction annoying? Cordelia - is she more than a chauffeur and plot device here? And do you enjoy the sheer glee of Angelus - he is not just evil, he relishes it. Do you feel sorry for Spike, for all that he is evil? And is it just petty vengeance that makes him hold Dru back?
Nothing in the Buffyverse can ever be the same again. Many people rate this episode in their top ten. How about you - and why, or why not?
Talk to us?