| Written by: | Ty King |
| Directed by: | Michael E. Gershman |
| Starring: | Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase David Boreanaz as Angel Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles |
| Guest Starring: | Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers Robia LaMorte as Jenny Calendar Richard Assad as Shopkeeper James Marsters as Spike Juliet Landau as Drusilla |
| Co-Starring: | Danny Strong as Student Richard Hoyt Miller as Policeman |
Angel continued to make Buffy's life miserable by, among other things, killing Jenny.
Angel had been stalking Buffy. He watched Buffy and Xander dance at the Bronze and was busy killing a woman when they left. After Buffy went to bed, He entered her room and left a sketch of her sleeping.
Needless to say, Buffy was very unnerved by the latter. The group was especially concerned that Angel has already been invited into her house (and Cordelia's car), so he could enter at any time. Giles promised to find a spell to reverse the invitation. Buffy was also concerned that Angel might go after her mother and wondered how to warn her without giving away a secret identity.
Jenny asked Willow to fill in for her in computer class if Jenny ran late the next day. Willow expressed enthusiastic ambivalence toward the new responsibility. Giles and Buffy interrupted Willow's stream of questions. Buffy pulled Willow away while Giles asked Jenny if she knew of a spell to uninvite Angel. She gave him a book and apologized for her betrayal.
That night, Willow found that Angel had killed her fish and put them in an envelope on her bed. She quickly decided that a sleepover at Buffy's was in order. Unfortunately for Xander, nobody thought to bring a camera.
Jenny went to the local magic shop for an Orb of Thesulah, which she planed to use to give a friend back his soul. The transaction went quickly, so she arrived in time to teach her class, much to Willow's disappointment. Buffy told her that she was glad the Jenny was feeling guilty, but that she did not want Giles to be alone, so she sort of forgave Jenny.
Willow, Buffy, and Cordelia performed the uninvitation spell in Willow's room. They found an envelope on Willow's bed containing a sketch of Joyce. A bit later, Angel approached Joyce, begging her to intervene so that he could see Buffy again. Angel let slip that he slept with Buffy. He was about to follow Joyce into the house when Buffy and Willow finished the spell.
Drusilla paid a visit to the magic shop owner to find out what he sold to Jenny Calendar. As a result, Angel was waiting for Jenny when she finished translating the spell to give him his soul back. He promptly destroyed her orb, printer, and monitor before chasing after her. She put up a very good fight as he chased her, but it was futile. He caught up to her and snapped her neck.
Giles arrived at Buffy's house to fetch the spell to uninvite Angel while Joyce was lecturing Buffy about having sex. He returned home to find a rose in the front door. Inside, he found champagne, music, more roses, candles, and, on his bed, Jenny's dead body. The police took him in for a few questions but let him home to collect his weapons.
Angel made sure that he was in position to see Buffy and Willow when they learned of Jenny's death. Xander and Cordelia arrived soon afterward and drove Buffy and Willow to Giles's apartment. They found missing weapons and figured out that Giles was planning a little revenge.
At the factory, Spike was very upset at Angel for provoking Buffy rather than simply killing her. Angel protested that he had everything under control just as a Molotov cocktail landed on the table. Giles smacked Angel around with a flaming baseball bat as Spike kept Drusilla out of the fight.
However, the tables turned and Angel gained the advantage. Angel strangled Giles to unconsciousness just as Buffy arrived. Drusilla wheeled Spike out of the way as Buffy pounded on Angel. Buffy stopped, however, when Angel pointed out that Giles was on the floor in danger of being burned to death.
While visiting Jenny's grave, Buffy admitted to Giles that she was not able to kill Angel but she has to be. Meanwhile, Willow is taking over Jenny's class with much less enthusiasm than she showed earlier. She did manage to knock a floppy disk between a desk and a file cabinet without realizing that the disk contained the backup to the spell to curse Angel.
When I wrote about how "Surprise" and "Innocence" represented a turning point for the show, I was thinking of episodes like this. Before those two episodes, most problems took one episode to solve. A character like Principal Flutie might die, but not anyone that we cared about. After "Surprise" and "Innocence," the show is now willing to embrace more complex problems such as Buffy's boyfriend turning evil and is more willing to do things like kill people we care about. This has become a much better show. Turning Angel evil has brought new life to the show, ensuring that there was no chance that it would go stale.
Willow's fish looked like they were made of rubber.
Angel chased Jenny around the school. She did a good job in trying to escape, but not good enough.
Giles attacked Angel in revenge for killing Jenny. When Angel was starting to get the better of the deal, Buffy rescued him.
This was meant to be a heart wrenching episode, so there is little humor. Willow's reaction to being asked to fill in for Jenny while Jenny bought the Orb of Thesulah was amusing as was Willow telling Giles about Angel's visit to Buffy's house. Cordelia also had a few good lines when she worried more about Angel getting into her car than about anything more serious.
Most of the drama in this episode came from Angel's campaign to make Buffy's life miserable, culminating in his murder of Jenny Calendar.
Jenny admitted that she fell in love with Giles.
Jenny is feeling very guilty for betraying Buffy and the others, and she desperately wants to be on good terms with everyone. She is also dead.
Drusilla has taken over the caregiver role for Spike that Spike did for her in the first half of the season. She still seems to favor him over Angel, but is flattered that Spike and Angel fight over her.
Spike is growing more frustrated at his physical weakness and his inability to put Angel in his place.
Buffy is realizing the consequences of her inability to kill Angel.
This episode is important because of Jenny's death and the how she was killed.
Jenny's death will have ramifications for the rest of the season and beyond. Before this episode, Angel had not killed anyone that we or the other characters cared about. If Jenny had succeeded in restoring his soul, most fans and characters (except for Xander) would probably have forgiven him. Now, he has killed someone that the audience and the other characters cared about (albeit posthumously for some of the characters). Even if the disk with the backup curse is found, the audience and most of the characters will have a hard time forgiving him.
The fact that Jenny Calendar is killed also makes a statement about the show. Sunnydale is a dangerous place. From now on, deaths will not occur only for extras, expendable characters, and villains. Important good guys are also in danger. Buffy is not 24. Not every important character will die. However, Jenny is merely the first important character to die, not the only important character.
Angel is the clear MVP of this episode. Nearly everything that occurred in this episode happened because of him. He first rattled Buffy by sneaking into her room at night. He went further by subtlely threatening both Willow and Joyce. He then told Joyce that he had sex with Buffy, which caused tension between Joyce and Buffy. Finally, he killed Jenny.
Not one to let insanity get in the way of a good performance, Drusilla figured out that something was up and got the necessary information to Angel.
The fact that Angel was able to succeed so well without anyone screwing up is a testament to how formidable a villain he is.
I admit that a fair amount occurred off screen, but it is very surprising to me that Giles was not considered to be a suspect in Jenny's murder.
I may be the only one who thought that it would have been more appropriate for Giles to wield a cricket bat rather than a baseball bat. A baseball bat would be easier to obtain in the United States.
I would imagine that Google would love the translation program that Jenny used to translate a dead language into English. Google's translation program seems to have problems translating commonly spoken languages like French and German into English.
One could suggest that it might be more worthwhile (and safer) for the group simply to give souls to Sunnydale's vampires rather than to hunt and kill them. I have to assume that the curse was specific to Angel and would not work on other vampires such as Drusilla and Spike.
Jenny Calendar Jenny and Giles made an interesting couple. Robia LaMorte and Anthony Stewart Head had excellent chemistry. It was fun to imagine Giles, dressed in tweed, shifting uncomfortably at a monster truck rally. I also enjoyed their banter.
Still, I never thought that she and Giles were well matched. Giles is not the sort to go to monster truck rallies or do naked mud dances at Burning Man, even if he enjoys imagining Jenny do a naked mud dance. Giles does not need someone to loosen him up. He needs someone who can accept him the way that he is. That person was not Jenny.
Jenny left the show with zero MVPs, zero Holmeses, and one Goat.
As the orb is round in
nature, as the earth, is round
in nature and the heavens are
round in nature, so is the
soul. Return from whence
you were banished, using this
orb as your guide — penetrate
every ounce of the flesh,
every sinew of the body and
every tissue of the heart.
Make what lays before you
more than the empty vessel
that is animal, that is beast —
make it man as God created
when he seperated [sic] the
firmament of the heavens
from the earth.
Come forth now, return,
return. As the orb burns, let
life burn.
Interview with Joss Whedon Joss Whedon discussed the need to kill someone to show that Angel is really evil and to show that Sunnydale is dangerous even to well-liked characters. Finally, it was a message to the actors, "Be very good or I'll kill you."
Joss Whedon also mentioned why Angel killed Jenny exactly the way he did. Angel broke her neck rather than biting her so nobody would believe that she would return as a vampire. He did so in vampire face because it would have been too much for the audience to bear if they saw him kill her with his human face.
"I think there may be a valuable lesson for you gals here about inviting strange men into your bedrooms." Xander
"You're doomed to having to give him and his vamp pals a lift whenever they feel like it, and those guys never chip in for gas." Xander
"There has to be some sort of spell to reverse the invitation, right, like a barrier—a no shoes, no pulse, no service kind of thing?" Buffy
"This is a school library, Xander." Giles
"Since when?" Xander
"Why doesn't he just slit her throat or strangle her while she's sleeping or cut her heart out? I'm trying to help." Cordelia
"The nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah approach to battle." Xander
"Yes, Xander, once more you've managed to boil a complex thought down to its simplest possible form." Giles
"Hey, how come Buffy doesn't get a snotty 'once again you boil it down to the simplest form' thing?" Xander
"What if they don't recognize my authority? What if they try to convince me that you always let them leave class early? What if there's a fire drill? What if there's a fire?" Willow
"Will I have the power to assign detention or make them run laps?" Willow
"Willow, I though I might take in a class. I figured I could use someone who knows where they are." Buffy
"Sorry, I have to talk to her. She's a teacher and teachers are to be respected, even if they're only filling in until the real teach shows up." Willow
"I know you feel betrayed." Jenny
"Yes, that's one of the unpleasant side effects of being betrayed." Giles
"Rupert, I was raised by the people Angel hurt the most. My duty to them was the first thing I was ever taught. I didn't come here to hurt anyone, and I lied to you because I thought that it was the right thing to do. I didn't know what would happen. I didn't know I was gonna fall in love with you. Oh, God, is it too late to take that back." Jenny
"Do you want to?" Giles
"Maybe next time, I'll bring you with me, Spike. It might be handy to have you around if I ever need a really good parking space." Angel
"I know you feel badly about what happened, and I just wanted to say, 'Good, keep it up.'" Buffy
"Don't worry, I will." Jenny
"Wait, He misses you. He doesn't say anything to me, but I know he does, and I don't want him to be lonely. I don't want anyone to." Buffy
"Ira Rosenberg's only daughter nailing crucifixes to her bedroom wall? I have to go over to Xander's house just to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every year." Willow
"I heard you went shopping at the local boogedy-boogedy store. The Orb of Thesulah. If memory serves, this is supposed to summon a person's soul from the ether, store it until it can be transferred. You know what I hate most about these things? They're so damn fragile. Must be that shoddy, Gypsy craftmanship." Angel
"It went fine until Angel showed up and told Buffy's mom that he and Buffy had... Well, you know... They had... You know. You do know, right?" Willow
"Oh, yes, sorry." Giles
"Oh, good, because I just realized that, being a librarian and all, maybe you didn't know." Willow
"Perhaps I should intervene on Buffy's behalf with her mother, maybe say something." Giles
"Sure, like, what would you say?" Willow
"... You will tell Buffy I dropped by." Giles
"Let's not forget that I hated Angel long before you guys jumped on the bandwagon, so I think I deserve a little something for not saying 'I told you so' long before now, and if Giles wants to go after the fiend that murdered his girlfriend, I say 'Faster, pussycat, kill, kill.'" Xander
"Are you insane? We're supposed to kill the bitch, not leave gag gifts in her friends' beds." Spike
"But Spike, the bad teacher was going to restore Angel's soul" Drusilla
"What if she did? If you ask me, I find myself preferring the old Buffy-whipped Angelus because this new improved one is not playing with a full sack. I love a good slaughter as much as the next bloke, but his little pranks will only leave us with one incredibly brassed-off slayer." Spike
"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." Angel
Highlight the space after each question to find the answer. It is strongly recommended that you do not do so if you have not seen episodes through the episode indicated.