TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Surprise: This episode reveals that Jenny Calendar is actually Janna of the Kalderdash… descended from the tribe of gypsies that cursed Angel with a soul. The elders of her family have detected that Angel’s pain is lessening, and Jenny must work to keep him away from a girl. Willow finally asks out Oz. Buffy and Angel discover The Judge, who turns out to be the fake Big Bad of the season. The crux of this episode is, though, the consummation of Buffy and Angel’s relationship. The thing fans had been waiting for since the first season.

Alas, there was a wrench.

Innocence: The after school special trend of this season continues. Buffy has just lost her virginity, but the guy who she lost it too turns out to be an asshole. More specifically, Angel has reverted to Angelus, the evil demon cursed by the Romanians. Angelus turns out to be the big bad of this season… complete with all the downfalls of one; monologuing, not taking care of the good guys when he has the chance, and over-planning — ironically, all the things that Seth Green would mention later in Austin Powers. This re-unites the power base that is Angel, Spike, and Drusilla.

An aside, the Romanians cursed Angelus with a soul. To break that curse, Angel had to find a single moment of true happiness. He found this moment when he was with Buffy. Now, am I the only one who saw a distinct problem with the resolution of this curse? Or, more specifically, the fact he didn’t KNOW that this was the trigger to end the curse? You’d think the Romanians would be very vocal, at some point, that his reaching happiness would bring the killer out within him which would, in effect, torture him even more. Instead, Jenny Calendar (in what turns out to be a fatal error) allows his relationship with Buffy to continue, allowing him to reach a moment of happiness, and allowing the curse to be broken.

If Angel knew that finding a moment of happiness would revert him to Angelus, don’t you think the torture involved with the curse would be much more effective? I mean, he’s immortal. Wouldn’t the Romanians realize that, at some point in his life, he’d manage to be truly happy just for an instant? This bothered me. This is one of the reason I’ve started a blog. Besides that small issue, this and the preceding episode makes for one of the best two-parters in the whole series… just for the writing, the relationship to actual teenage issues, and acting.

Phases: Oz and Willow finally get together and Oz discovers he’s a newly anointed werewolf (via his baby cousin biting him). During the episode, Xander confronts the football player who he believes is the werewolf and inadvertently gives him the courage to come out of the closet.

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: Amy, the witch’s daughter from Season One, makes her return. She casts a spell causing all women in the school to fall in love with Xander. She also turns Buffy into a rat, foreshadowing her unfortunate future.

Passion: Angel’s evil and kills Jenny Calendar: marking the first death of a “beloved” character in the show. There was no better way to drive home the point that Angelus was not to be trifled with. It started to become evident that Jenny Calendar was being built up to die… she’d reached that point of “ancillary character with tight relationships who are just far enough off the main radar that she can be disposed of with meaning” about four episodes prior. At this point in the series, the only other character who’d have fit the bill was Joyce Summers. One can kind of point to this episode where Angelus punches in as the “big bad” for this season.

Killed by Death: Random wheelspinning episode where Buffy kills a demon who haunts the hospital.

I Only Have Eyes for You: The random Sadie Hawkins Day Dance episode. You know, every single high school show in the history of televisions mentions this dance… and I’ve never met anyone who’s been to one.

Go Fish: One of the first “holy crap” reverse guest star moments in the series as Wentworth Miller of Prison Break stars as a member of the swim team. This episode doubles as an after-school special. The Sunnydale Swim Team is going for the state title and are treated like Gods in the school. One of the team members tries to sexually assault Buffy in his car and he receives a broken nose for his effort. The principal, not wanting to discipline the school’s star athletes in trouble, blames the girl. Lo and Behold, it doubles as a steroid special as well. The coach is feeding the boys steroids through the sauna steam… but it’s not just any sauna steam. The steam contains a special blend of fish DNA and it’s turning the boys into a monsters. One episode encompasses “athletes get treated better”, “steroids are bad”, and “roid rage” all with the Whedon spin. This is also one of the first episodes where Jonathan is blamed for something that he didn’t do.

Becoming: This was the second straight season finale that managed to be the strongest episode of the season. Whedon (probably due to the necessity of writing for a full season) has a few too many episodes that go nowhere, but when he goes toward tying plot together, he does it as well as anyone I’ve ever seen. This episodes shows us the siring of Angelus and the eventual curse. Kendra meets her decidedly quick end… with consequences we won’t see until next season. We find how Angel eventually came to find Buffy. Spike is introduced as someone who may not be entirely evil… which will not really start to be explored for another couple of seasons… including his weird little relationship with Joyce Summers (they both like soaps… “have we ever met?” “Ya hit me with an axe once.” “Ah.”) The grand finale sees Buffy forced to kill Angel to save the world. This is actually one of my favorite episodes of the entire run of this series.

Summary

I’m pretty sure this is my favorite season in the entire run of BtvS. I’m not sure why. Maybe as I revisit them as I’m writing about them I’ll change my mind, but as I recall, this was it. It had non-gratuitous death, the characters were finding themselves, Angel hadn’t left yet, and other such goodness.