The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch S02E19: “I Only Have Eyes For You”

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone has still not learned her lesson about buying Cheez-Its to keep in her office. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
Oz is the Anti-Xander
Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
Smoking is evil.
Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shit is homophobic as fuck.
How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.  Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it. 

CW: RAPE, SUICIDE

If I were to rank all the Buffy episodes in order of greatness (maybe I’ll do that at the end of the recaps in twenty-six years), “I Only Have Eyes For You” would easily make the top ten. It has so much, dear reader. It has so much.

Our story opens at The Bronze, where the real life band Splendid is playing. Something casual fans of the show might not have realized is that all of the bands (including Oz’s band) are actual music groups in real life. Oz’s band, by the way, wasn’t Dingos Ate My Baby, but T.H.C.. I can see why that might not have flown on a show aimed at teens.

Anyway, we’re at The Bronze, and Buffy is on the catwalk, looking down at the crowd forlornly. A guy approaches Buffy and tries to get her to remember him from Algebra class the year before. Buffy pretends to remember him, and he tries to get her to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept (I’m pretty sure it’s a predominately American thing), Sadie Hawkins comes from the comic strip Lil’ Abner. Sadie Hawkins day is when all the single men of the town of Dog Patch have to run from the single women, and if the single women catch them and manage to pull them across the finish line, they have to get married.

Lil’ Abner is a super weird comic franchise, but it’s got a kick ass musical.

Sadie Hawkins dances became popular because of this, and the whole point is that women have to ask the men to the dance, and in some cases, pay for the whole date. Which I guess was revolutionary and kooky in the mid-20th century, and was kind of a mild female empowerment thing. We still have them, which is weird. I asked lots of boys on dates in high school, because they were usually too chicken shit to ask the girls.

On the other hand, I did bully my husband into dating me, so I might be the odd duck out.

So, Buffy tells the guy that it’s not personal, she’s just never going to date anyone ever again. Like you decide to do when you’re a teenager going through your first heartbreak. Downstairs, Willow tells Buffy that she’s been doing too much patrolling, rather than hanging out. Willow thinks Buffy should go out and start dating again.

Willow: “You’re thinking too much. Maybe you need to be impulsive.”

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

Willow reminds Buffy that despite what happened with Angel, love can “be nice.”

Which leads us to cut to Sunnydale high, where a guy and his girlfriend are arguing:

Guy: “Come back here! We’re not finished! You don’t care anymore, is that it?”

Girl: “No, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter what I feel!”

Guy: “Then tell me you don’t love me. Say it!”

Girl: “Will that help? Is that what you need to hear? I don’t. I don’t, now let me go!”

Guy: “No. A person doesn’t just wake up one day and stop loving somebody.”

He pulls a gun on the girl and warns:

Guy: “Love is forever.”

Then we fade to the opening credits, and come back to the guy brandishing the gun.

Guy: “I’m not afraid to use it. I swear. If I can’t be with you–”

Girl: “Oh my god!”

Guy: “Don’t walk away from me, bitch!”

Luckily, Buffy is patrolling the school halls. She stops the guy from shooting the girl, and a janitor comes running to help.

Let’s talk, for just a second, about the brave janitors of Sunnydale high. That has to be one of the most dangerous jobs on this show, and they keep coming in night after night, scraping gum off tables and sweeping papers and debris down the halls with those long, flat brooms, just a couple floors above the Hellmouth. Let’s have a round of applause for these unsung heroes of Sunnydale.

Once Buffy has the guy subdued, he’s all sorts of confused. So is his girlfriend. They can’t explain what happened; they weren’t even arguing before reaching this point. Buffy asks why he had a gun, and the janitor points out that there is no gun. It’s just vanished.

The next morning, Buffy is in Principal Snyder’s office. Snyder is convinced that whatever happened with the couple the night before was Buffy’s fault, and he’s going to find a way to make it so. When I first watched this show, I thought Snyder was unreasonably obsessed with framing Buffy for stuff that happened, but now that I’ve seen the whole series, it makes sense. I mean, whenever something weird happens, Buffy is involved. But so is Giles, who’s an employee who I assume doesn’t have tenure, because he hasn’t worked at the school that long. Why not just cut Giles loose and hope the problem moves off campus? We’ll talk about that in just a little bit here.

Snyder is called away when a vegan student chains himself to the snack machine, but he tells Buffy to stay in his office. As soon as he’s gone, a book slides itself off a shelf:

I like this because it looks like Marti Noxon wrote the 1955 Sunnydale yearbook.

Since Buffy only heard it fall, she picks it up and sticks it back on the shelf like it’s no big deal.

In computer class, Willow is still, inexplicably, teaching Ms. Calendar’s class. Giles comes to the door and looks super proud of her. She tells him that Ms. Calendar had all her lessons already planned out, as well as files about Paganism. Willow also found a necklace with a rose quartz crystal on it. She gives it to Giles because it has healing properties, and she thinks Jenny would have wanted him to have it.

Meanwhile, Buffy is in another class, bored out of her skull. She nods off and when she wakes up, she’s still in her classroom, but there’s something different about it. Like, the fact that everyone is wearing poodle skirts and there’s a sign for a fallout shelter near the door, for example. Also, nobody seems to notice her sitting there, especially not the pretty young teacher and her student who discuss Hemingway and hold hands:

They’re interrupted by an opening door, and Buffy is snapped back to the present day, where her teacher is writing something completely different on the board than what he’d probably intended:

This is good news for James, but bad news for Buffy and Angel. When the possession wears off, they’re enemies again. Just as Buffy thinks Angel might be back, he pushes her away in disgust.

Back at the library, Willow, Cordelia, and Xander report that all the bugs and snakes are gone. Buffy tells Giles that she thinks James picked her because he could identify with her more.

Buffy: “I still… A part of me just doesn’t understand why she would forgive him.”

Giles: “Does it matter?”

Buffy: “No. I guess not.”

And Giles smiles sadly because Buffy finally understands, and he must understand, too. See, here’s a part of this episode I’ve always overlooked, because I was caught up in the Buffy/Angel parallels. Giles felt Jenny had unfinished business. Hours before she died, they made plans to rekindle their relationship, though they had never outright forgiven each other. Giles feels he should have forgiven Jenny sooner, but it’s too late now. In a way, he was kind of reverse-haunting Jenny.

At Maison du Vampire, Angel is bathing in the courtyard fountain while Spike looks gleefully on:

Spike: “You might want to let up. They say when you’ve drawn blood, you’ve exfoliated.”

Angel doesn’t find it funny. He feels violated by the spirit of Ms. Newman, which is fair enough. He announces his intention to go out and do some really depraved killing, but when Dru invites Spike along, Angel nixes the idea, making more remarks about Spike being in a wheelchair and basically useless. Again, if you can think of other times in the series that ableism features so heavily, let me know in the comments and we can add it to the list. Anyway, they leave Spike behind to give us one of the most wonderful “Oh, shit,” moments of the series. He stands up, punches the air, and kicks the wheelchair he doesn’t need, because he’s only been pretending that he’s not fully healed.

In summation, what the fuck, this episode is amazing.