By Chris Snellgrove
| Revealed
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a kind of exhibits I’ve watched till practically each body is burned into my mind. That’s as a result of the sequence is borderline good: it contains a killer premise, good actors, and a number of the greatest writing in tv historical past. Even with the wonderful writing, nonetheless, there are occasional errors that, when you discover them, will trouble you without end.
For instance, when Angel loses his soul and turns into evil, he wrecks Jenny Calendar’s pc, ostensibly destroying the knowledge on restore his soul. Nevertheless, all we see onscreen is the vampire destroying her pc monitor, which geeks like Willow know is just not the place the knowledge is saved. Fortuitously, season 2’s nineteenth episode, “I Solely Have Eyes for You” fixes this error, revealing that Willow was nonetheless in a position to get info off Calendar’s pc and that the non-tech-savvy Angel didn’t actually know what he was doing.
Breaking Vlad
A part of what made Buffy the Vampire Slayer so efficient is that the present explored the actual threats confronted by younger folks by a fantasy lens. For instance, numerous younger girls have had the damaging expertise of a boy turning right into a jerk after they’ve intercourse. Nevertheless it was a lot worse for Buffy: after she and Angel did the nasty, he misplaced his soul, turning into the scariest vampire of the fashionable age.
As soon as he turned Angelus, this violent vamp didn’t need to merely kill Buffy: as a substitute, he needed to torment her by torturing and killing her associates. In “Ardour,” he actually takes this malevolence to the following degree by killing Jenny Calendar and displaying her physique for Giles to search out when he exhibits up for a date. He initially assaults her on the college, the place Angel takes the time to destroy the pc containing directions for restoring his soul.
Discuss About A Firewall
At the very least, that’s his objective: whereas he feedback on how far expertise has superior, he slams her pc monitor to the bottom, damaging it earlier than setting it on fireplace. It makes for a really scary second, one which underscores how horrifying it’s for this instructor to be attacked in her personal classroom by a ruthless vampire. However what all the time pissed off me as a younger nerd was that “Ardour” implies that Angel efficiently destroys the knowledge on the PC, which is absurd: destroying a pc monitor (even a chunky ‘90s monitor) would do nothing to really destroy all the info within the onerous drive, housed safely within the undamaged physique of the PC.
Fortuitously, the later episode “I Solely Have Eyes For You” fastened this error, although this was seemingly by chance. Within the wake of Jenny Calendar’s loss of life, Willow (her star pupil) turns into the brand new pc science instructor. When Giles feedback on how nicely the younger scholar has tailored to educating, Willow factors out that she had entry to “good lesson plans…Ms. Calendar had them on her pc.” Moreover, she additionally “discovered a bunch of information and Web websites on paganism and magic and stuff.”
Lastly, A Good Retcon
From a story standpoint, this helps to arrange later plot factors, together with Willow discovering restore Angel’s soul (Calendar saved the spell on a floppy disk) and her ultimately turning into a full-fledged witch. Nevertheless, this throwaway line additionally confirms that Angel’s try and destroy the instructor’s pc and all the info on it was an entire bust. Which will appear disappointing, but it surely is smart: the centuries-old vampire has by no means been good with expertise, so it is smart that he would simply destroy the most important, most seen a part of the pc with out realizing he’s damaging the improper factor.
As all Buffy the Vampire Slayer followers know, “Ardour” is a killer episode, one full of excessive emotion, loopy motion, and the unforgettable loss of life of a serious character. For this fan, although, the episode’s implication that destroying a pc monitor would have an effect on the onerous drive. Whereas it will take the Scoobies a short while longer to determine restore Angel’s soul, “I Solely Have Eyes For You” managed to revive one thing else totally: my religion within the writers!