beginning | blinding torment | boils | lies | making me bitter | evil compounds evil | blah blah bity blah

 

 

 

 

 

Impulsive? Do you remember my ex-boyfriend? The vampire? I slept
with him, he lost his soul, and now my boyfriend's gone forever and the demon that wears his face is killing my friends. The next impulsive decision I make will be my choice of dentures.

 

season two   >  i only have eyes for you

 

Yes, folks, it’s Ghost time, sadly minus the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore pottery wheel scene. Which is really too bad. How hard would that have been to write into the script, eh? You’ve got a school. You’ve got that required Art class which always involves atrocities against the fine art of clay sculpting being kilned into oblivion, so we know they’ve got a pottery wheel somewhere just waiting to be violated. Would it have killed them to toss Buffy and Angel in there? Of course, given their reverse roles I can understand why ME would have an issue with SMG going shirtless.

 

I stand by my belief that it would’ve been hilarious.

 

Instead, mopey “I slept with a guy, he turned evil, I’m now afraid to date anyone ever again; especially if they have a pulse” Buffy is being all “woe is me” and “no, sorry, you’re cute and all but I will not date you and it’s not just because of your hideous shirt, I’m fragile now, ya know? Plus making the girls ask the guys is lame” while she hangs at the bronze. And I’m only mentioning this scene for two reasons: 1) Buffy has the most hideous pair of gold pants on. They’re fascinating and damn near hypnotic in their wrongness. 2) for some reason, the band at the Bronze is not the band I feel it should be. For some reason I have the lead singer pegged for a different song. This song does not fit her. I do not approve. Plus, in my mind, she’s supposed to be singing something a little more soothing and lullabyish. I’m sure it, too, was about angst and! whatnot, since most of the songs at the Bronze tend to follow this theme, but the fact that this woman is not singing what my mind wants her to sing has compelled me to mention this scene.

 

And there you go. Anyone else getting the idea that I’m dreading recapping this? Good, you should be. I’m not quite sure how I keep drawing the short straw around her, SP, but things are going to change. First Passion, now this? Someone must’ve been more than a little naughty in her past life, that’s all I’m sayin’.

 

Oh oh oh! A third reason I mention this Bronze scene! Besides the fact that it opens the ep, I mean. Buffy’s gives this whole “I will never be impulsive again” speech to Willow when Willow suggests that maybe she should go out on a date. She’s not saying Buffy has to go with ugly shirt guy, just a guy. (Willow here, makes a fatal mistake. She fails to leap at this chance to reprogram her friend. A subtle suggestion here, when she’s down and ready to be kicked, about trying someone out with a pulse might have made all the difference in season six. [Or about trying someone with different, erm, parts, since deep down Willow knows that gay lovin' is the only lovin' worth having. -ST] But in the previously mentioned speech wherein she says that being impulsive caused her to sleep with a vampire and turn him evil and cause him to kill her friends? I really hate that she says “friends”. You know, Buffy’s al!ways tossing around that word. I’m not sure that word means what she thinks that word means. Ms. Calendar was not Buffy’s friend. She was Giles’ potential tail, but not Buffy’s friend. [In fact, the day Jenny got killed, Buffy was all "I hope you're miserable, bitch." What kind of a friend is that? Well, OK, a typical one, but still.] Teresa? We saw her for five minutes in one episode. Also not a friend. An acquaintance, perhaps. So are we to believe that off screen Angel’s running around offing Buffy’s army of imaginary friends? Luckily, my train of thought is interrupted by Willow reminding Buffy that love doesn’t have to be drama, and that it can actually be quite nice, with this cute little dreamy expression on her face, and I burst in to laughter. It helps that she’s wearing a rainbow sweater as she says this.

 

My, recapping with the knowledge of what’s to come just makes this so much more fun.

 

Also, my school never had a Sadie Hawkin’s Dance. [Nor did mine. I think it's a made-up dance used by movies and tv shows when the plot requires hitting the audience over the head with the concept of role reversal.] I’m with Cordelia. What the hell?

 

All of the above is interrupted by two people acting out the final argument of the two people who started this episode’s mess-a high school teacher we’ll call School Marm and her varsity lettered underage stud we’ll call Stud Muffin. I so love this show’s stance on relationships. Let’s see, so far we have Xander dating a Mummy, Willow dating a werewolf while secretly gay, Buffy embracing necrophilia and now this. A teacher and her underage student. I suppose their love is pure and all. But I digress. Two teens are fighting along the lines of “Say you don’t love me.” “I don’t love you.” “No.” “A person doesn’t just blah blah blah…” and then out of nowhere a gun that isn’t actually very ghostly appears in the stand-in Stud Muffin’s hand. I suppose there are tons of questions to be asked here--the how’s and why's and huh’s, but I’m too sober to care. It should also be noted that you will hear this speech no less than three times this episode, so learn to embrace it. Buffy sort of trots in to the rescue, and it’s interesting to note that Sophia looks incredibly different than Buffy in the fuzzy halter top and incredibly ugly gold pants. Not to mention the black pumps. Why SMG couldn’t have thrown her own elbow backwards into the guy’s stomach is another issue I’m just too sober to care about right now. So SMG’s stunt double and the janitor run to the rescue. If the janitor was thinking, he would’ve taken his mop with him because they can make wicked weapons when wielded correctly, something I know nothing about, but he was probably just glad to have something to do besides clean up after the little non-literal monsters of Sunnydale. Also, he had to save his energy up for his big scene where he gets to be possessed by the disgruntled spirit of the Stud Muffin and actually shoots the poor teacher who gets sucked into being the old time School Marm and sends her off the balcony to her death.

 

Also, the gun the boy was pointing at the girl before Buffy’s stunt double came running in in her gold pants disappears and Buffy feels that saying “you just went OJ on your girlfriend” is both clever and appropriate.

 

And then we’re in Snyder’s office! He feels Buffy stinks of lies. I love Snyder. And I do not completely hate Buffy’s brown, belted dress. He leaves the little delinquent in his office, which is really not a very Snyderly thing to do, and the ’55 yearbook handily throws itself off of his bookshelf at Buffy. She, being Buffy, cares not.

 

People can be coerced, Summers. I'm no stranger to conspiracy. I saw JFK.

 

We leave this scene of inaction to join Willow teaching class. I refuse to be baited. So that’s all I’m saying about this scene. Except that Giles comes in and sits on a desk. He’s wearing quite a bit of face make up this scene. I suppose I should mention that a line about files Ms. Calendar left behind harkens the beginning of Witch!Willow, but eh. I don’t have the time. Because now we’re in class, falling asleep with Buffy! Buffy daydreams about Stud Muffin and School Marm flirting and holding hands in a classroom. And then we wake up to Buffy’s current day teacher writing obscenities on the chalkboard. Why is the school being haunted now? Is this the first Sadie dance they’ve had since ’55? Is it because the ghosts sense the Slayer? Is it because ME was in a contract dispute with Phallics ‘r us and needed a last minute baddie?

 

I bet you'll think coding is pretty cool. I mean, if you find two-digit multi-stacked conversions and primary number clusters a big hoot.

 

Xander, who ponders none of this because he is not real, is accosted by a hand in his locker. They sort of just tossed everything into this here “phenomena”, didn’t they? I think they borrowed Giles’ Time Life Books collection, wrote down everything they had on poltergeists and ta da! I’m not complaining though, I’m actually grateful. Each minute wasted on random manifestations of this poltergeist is one less minute of B/A angst. And there ain’t no wrong there. None at all.

 

We hear the speech for the second time, and the great mystery of why a gun would disappear but the bullets would not is ignored. Though I suppose the bullet could have disappeared, but this means the hapless teacher #1 would have stumbled back under the volition of a ghost bullet that disappears, and that is in and of itself just as problematic as the gun disappearing and the gun not. Dammit, I hate ghost stories, almost as much as I hate time travel stories. It’s just never pinned down properly.

 

Giles thinks Jenny’s the ghost, because he’s in denial and for some reason finds it comforting that she’d come back as an angry, people-possessing poltergeist who runs around shooting people. The Scoobs? Not so sure. They’re pretty sure, actually, that Giles is wacky on the fruit juice. So Willow hops on her trusty computer and I really love how Willow just sort of finds everything she ever needs on her computer. She must have the BEST search engine ever. Maybe Buffy should have had Willow looked up “manifestations of evil” [in the movies]. This time Willow conveniently and immediately pulls up a scanned in article on the murder/suicide that took place betwixt School Marm and Stud Muffin. Xander, dubbed “Lesson Expositor” for the episode, deems that killing a person and then killing yourself are pretty much two of the dumbest things one can do. Even if you do get really good grades. Remember that, kids. Write it down, tattoo it on your ass, whatever. Because it’s true. Truer than “Be cool! Stay in school!” and right behind that old adage I know I heard often as a child: “Don’t have affairs with your English teacher! They end badly!”

 

It’s just not cool.

 

My musing’s on these thoughts are interrupted by random poltergeisty phenomenomena…#500: High school cafeteria spaghetti turns into snakes. Everyone runs screaming, Cordy gets bit but does not die instantaneously of poisoning [because they're ghost snakes!], the school empties out and the police chief, or someone I suspect very strongly to be the Police Chief, arrives with the cavalry. A cavalry that sucks at snake retrieval, but a team nonetheless. I’d tell you what was said, but I was too distracted. Anyone else having problems taking the Police Chief seriously because he was the guy on Seinfeld with the high pitched, womanish voice? Anyone? Anyone? I am.

 

Willow, already succumbing to the seductive ways of her crack, has done some research and in that 5 minutes where she visited 2 chat rooms and says exorcism is the way to go. Cordelia freaks because she saw that movie and even the priests died and in the process ruins the end of the Exorcist for me, which I have never seen [me either! damn her!]. Not that I was planning too, but if I’m going to get harassed about spoiler tags, I want them to get some shit too.

 

I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. In fact I encourage you to always challenge me when you feel it's appropriate. You should never be cowed by authority. Except, of course, in this instance when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong.

 

They go to do an exorcism at the school, and it goes badly. Cordy’s face breaks out, Buffy sees Stud Muffin and School Marm dancing and watched him turn into a spooky ghost thing that screamed at her to get out (though why he would if he needs her help is sort of questionable, but we’ll file that little conundrum right behind the bullets question), and Willow gets sucked into the floor. Giles pulls her out because he’s cool like that [I think it's because he's sweet on her, and this whole episode is really a subtle way of exploring Giles' love for an underage student. What? You don't think ME can be that subtle? Oh. Right. ME. Never mind.] Willow doesn’t believe it’s Jenny because Jenny would never be so mean, completely forgetting that she was an evil gypsy who was shunned by all of her “friends” (using the Buffy definition here, not Websters) even though she said she was sorry and was pretty much murdered because of it and that might drive one to violence, if one were a criminally insane poltergeist. Bees masquerading as wasps then invade the school. Everybody runs.

 

It's paradise. Big windows, lovely gardens. It'll be perfect when we want the sunlight to kill us.

 

Drusilla acts crazy. Spike goes crazy with jealousy because Angel loves Dru more than him. Spike says that Angel is all hat, no cat, and while I have no idea what that means [Spike is channeling Dr. Suess!], I still feel as if maybe Spike’s a pot calling a kettle black. But I could be wrong there.

 

I know this is wrong, but I find the next scene where the Scooby Gang sits in Buffy’s living room and Cordy sucks on saltines while everyone looks extremely serious about this ghost wanting forgiveness and Giles talks about forgiveness being an act of compassion and Xander graciously points out to the self-righteous Slayer who thinks that Stud Muffin should live with what he did because it was wrong and all that jazz that Stud Muffin can’t live with what he’s done because he’s dead hilarious. I do. It’s just that they’re all trying so hard to look thoughtful and grave. It doesn’t click. The tinkly piano in the background’s evil too. It just adds to the absurdity of it all. And if this little lesson that Stud Muffin’s predicament teaches Buffy is why Angel’s still around and she never staked him well, dammit. I’m not amused.

 

Since everyone has the opposite stance of Buffy and feels sorry for Stud Muffin, she stomps off to the kitchen and gets her ass possessed by Stud Muffin himself. She goes to the school, where she runs into her boytoy and here we go, round three. With a twist! Oh yes, we have a twist! Buffy, not Angel, is Stud Muffin. Which leaves….Angel as…yes, that’s it! Angel as School Marm! It’s almost too good to be true, isn’t it? And David Boreanaz playing a distressed woman is the best thing ever. I really think he found his niche there. It’s really too bad they couldn’t find a way to build Angel around that. [And funny how Angel's demon couldn't fight the ghost possessing him, even though he had no trouble throwing Eyghon out]


It’s almost enough to distract me from questions like “Where did the gun come from and why is Buffy wearing that color of nailpolish? WHYYYYYYYYYYY?”

 

Almost.

 

Meanwhile, the rest of the Scoob’s are outside of the school, trying to rescue Buffy. Apparently the gang’s idea of rescuing Buffy involves sitting on the curb, rather than going and finding a really large hose to aim at the wasps. Or stealing a fire truck. They have big hoses. And men in rubber uniforms. With hats. [But no cats.]

 

I know. He's usually Investigate-Things-from-Every-Boring-Angle Guy. Now he's, like, Cling-to-My-One-Lame-Idea Guy.

 

 

But no firemen for me. Instead, I watch the scene in the school cut back from Stud Muffin and School Marm to Angel and Buffy finishing their sentences for them. This is all really touching, really, but I’m left wondering why Angel still wears the Claddagh ring? To torture Buffy? He forgot? Because he thinks it makes him look manly? Who knows. All I know is that I cheer when Buffy/Stud Muffin shoots Angel/School Marm and sends him/her over the balcony. Buffy/Stud Muffin mopes to the band room, where he committed suicide in ’55, and Buffy prepares to shoot herself with an imaginary gun. Angel shows up, blowing our little experiment. Would it have killed her? How could it have? Angel didn’t even have a hole in his shirt where it supposedly went through. So I’m thinking, Buffy could have shot herself and she would’ve been fine. [Yeah, because, dude, it's a ghost gun. That disappears. How dangerous can it be?]

 

Which really isn’t the point of the episde, I’m sure. Anyway, thanks to Buffy and Angel the ghosts kiss and make up, Buffy is confused as to why School Marm forgave Stud Muffin after what he did and I do a very nice job of keeping my twitch under control, thanks. It gets rather difficult, when the parallel to Buffy/Angel is drawn the complete opposite of subtly. Buffy, pretending to talk about Stud Muffin and School Marm but really talking about her and Angel, wants to know why he chose Buffy. Because he could relate to her? Or because she had super powers and an ex-boyfriend that could stand to fall off another cliff or two? You make the call.

 

Wrapping up this ep, we return to the biggest drama queen of them all, Angel, as he whines about being possessed by love, cuz he’s evil and evil has no patience for that shit, flirts with Drusilla, pisses off Spike-in-a-chair and then goes out to viciously kill someone to make himself feel clean again. Buffy, of course, will be nowhere nearby to stop this, as she his busy looking distraught in the school library, but I’m sure she’ll be really upset about it in the morning. She might even call the victim her friend.

 

And then Rollerboy, aka Spike, stands. Aw. Spike. We miss you.

 

 

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