"I Only Have Eyes For You"

Written by Marti Noxon
Directed by James Whitmore, Jr.


In which Sunnydale High becomes haunted by the spirits of doomed lovers, forcing Buffy and Angelus to relive the ordeal to break the cycle...

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


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Synopsis

As the episode begins, Willow and Buffy are at the Bronze. A guy named Ben comes up to a distracted Buffy, and tries to get her to invite him to the Sadie Hawkins dance the next evening. Buffy pretty much sends him packing, and then tries to leave. Willow confronts her about her continued lack of interest in anything but feeling responsible for Jenny.

Meanwhile, at Sunnydale High, a boy chases after a girl, grabbing her arm. She professes not to love him, so he aims a gun at her, ready to shoot. Buffy arrives just in time to hear the boy scream, “Don’t walk away from me, bitch!” One of the janitors, George, hears the screaming and comes running. Buffy grabs the boy to stop him from shooting, and George sees it happen. The boy, however, doesn’t know what’s happening, and the gun has completely disappeared.

The next day, Principal Synder discusses the incident with Buffy. He warns her that he knows it must somehow be her fault. But as he leaves the office, a yearbook from 1955 slides off his shelf in front of Buffy. At the computer class, Giles stops by as Willow wraps up her lesson. They talk about Jenny and the pagan/magic websites that Willow found on Jenny’s computer. She also gives Giles a rose quartz that Jenny had been keeping in her desk.

In class, Buffy suddenly lapses into a vision of 1955, the day of the Sadie Hawkins dance. The teacher, Ms. Newman, appears to have a relationship with an earnest student named James, but it’s hidden. As Buffy comes out of the reverie, she sees that her real teacher has written “Don’t walk away from me, bitch” on the board.

Buffy finds Xander at his locker, and tells him that something strange is going on. That’s confirmed when a green arm reaches out from inside Xander’s locker, trying to pull Xander in. Buffy manages to get Xander loose, and the locker closes. When they carefully open it again, it’s normal. They go to the library and tell Willow and Giles about the experience. Giles believes that they are dealing with a poltergeist, and they determine that finding out what the ghost wants is the key to stop it.

That evening, as George mops the hallway, a teacher named Ms. Frank prepares to leave. But without warning, they start talking to each other as if they’re breaking up. George gets angry that Ms. Frank doesn’t want to be together, and just like the earlier incident, a gun appears in his hand. Giles hears the shouting, and when he hears a faint woman’s voice, he thinks that Jenny is there. He runs towards the shouting, and arrives just in time to see George shoot Ms. Frank, sending her over the balcony to the ground below. George tries to run, but Giles tackles him before he can get away. Only the gun disappears, and George doesn’t understand what happened.

Meanwhile, across town, Angelus shows Drusilla and Spike their new lair, a deserted mansion. Drusilla loves it, but Spike is not pleased with Angelus’ fawning over Dru. Back at the library, Giles explains to the gang what happened. He’s convinced that the ghost is Jenny, and that the violence is a side effect of her violent death. Buffy and the others disagree, believing that the incidents are too specific.

Willow looks for reports of previous incidents that could match the hauntings, and finds an article about a student who killed his teacher on the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance, after she broke off their relationship. After ward, the student went to the music room and shot himself. Buffy realizes that her vision matches the 1955 incident.

Buffy is insistent that James, the student, deserves to suffer torment for what he did. Willow offers to find information on line regarding spells to stop James from killing more innocent people. The next day at lunch, however, everyone’s food turns into snakes. One of them bites Cordy on the face. The police respond, and pressure Snyder to keep the truth about the Hellmouth hidden, like he was hired to do. Snyder tells everyone that the snakes were caused by a sewer backing up.

That night, Willow tells everyone about the spell she discovered. It requires one person to chant at the spot where the haunting is occurring, and three other people sit at other spots in the school, in a roughly triangular formation, with the hot spot at the center of the triangle. As the students arrive at the school, however, the doors all slam shut, locking them in.

At the mansion, Angelus continues to mock Spike’s condition, but the revels are interrupted when Drusilla declares that it’s time to finish the Slayer. Angelus agrees. As everyone at the school finds the right location for the spell, Willow finds Giles still in the library, working on a way to contact Jenny. Buffy hears music, and when she follows the sound, she sees James and Grace Newman dancing. When James turns towards her, his face is rotten.

At the same moment, Cordy sees her snake bite rotting on her face as she looks in a mirror. On the landing for a stairway, the floor suddenly begins to swirl, and a green hand reaches up, pulling Willow into the floor. Giles hears her screaming, and rushes to her rescue. When Buffy arrives at the center of the haunting, the rest of the phenomena stops, leaving only Buffy to envision James killing himself after Grace plummets from the balcony.

Realizing that it can’t be Jenny, Giles sends Willow to do her part in the spell. Everyone does what they’re supposed to do, but the spell doesn’t work. A breeze blows out everyone’s candles, and then a swarm of wasps begins ripping through the school. Everyone runs out of the front entrance, and in moments, the entire school is walled off by the wasps.

They all go to Buffy’s house. It’s clear that James is the spirit, and that he’s seeking forgiveness. Buffy doesn’t care, not wanting to grant James any measure of satisfaction, identifying with the situation far too much. But when she hears James calling to her from the school, Buffy can’t resist sneaking out of the house. When she comes to the wall of wasps, they part to allow her inside.

The others belatedly realize what happened, and they rush to the school. Inside, Buffy finds Angelus there as well. He’s come to kill her, but before they can even banter, Buffy slips into the role of James. Angelus becomes Grace. They re-enact the entire incident, and Buffy ends up shooting Angelus, sending him to the ground below. As Angelus quickly recovers, still possessed by Grace, Buffy goes to the music room to kill herself. But Angelus arrives, and Grace expresses her neverending love for James, stopping Buffy from completing the cycle. As they kiss, Buffy and Angelus return to themselves. Angelus is too disgusted by his own actions to remain long enough to kill Buffy.

With the situation over, the others help Buufy recover from the ordeal. She doesn’t quite understand how Grace could forgive James, after all the decades of torment. At the mansion, Angelus is disgusted with the taint of love that Grace left within him. Drusilla offers to go hunting for a nice toddler to pick up his spirits. They leave Spike, once again mocking his injuries. But after they leave, Spike stands up out of the wheelchair, promising himself vengeance.


Analysis

This is definitely the episode that should have followed “Passion”. Unlike “Killed By Death”, this episode addresses the fallout of Jenny’s death in terms of direct consequences, instead of asides that don’t really factor into the episode’s plot. On the surface, this episode is about the haunting of Grace and James, but in reality, this is all about twisting the knife that Angelus has driven into Buffy’s gut.

In this episode, Buffy’s feelings of personal responsibility are much more internalized and understandable. She’s not just saying that she has to stop Angelus from killing again; she’s obsessed. It would be easy enough to simply express that through her actions, but thanks to James and the nature of his crime, she is able to personalize and direct those feelings in a way that reveals her inner turmoil.

Until “Passion”, Buffy never truly understood what Angelus could do, even though she knew about Angel’s past from an intellectual point of view. Now it’s very clear that Angelus is a threat to everyone she loves, and it just about kills her to know that the man she loves is willing to destroy her world and take her life without a moment of guilt. Like she would many times in the future, Buffy hides those feelings and doubts behind the role of Slayer.

This is an important part of the overall season arc, because that is how Buffy began the season. She returned to Sunnydale intent on keeping everyone and everything at a distance. It was all about being the Slayer, hiding her emotional crisis behind duty and tradition. It took some time for Buffy to find a way to live again, and then Angelus returned in the worst possible way. Ever since that point, Buffy has been slowly but surely falling back towards that isolation. Only this time, it’s not something she wants.

Marti Noxon takes the overall concept of reliving a past trauma through a haunting and gives it an additional layer of pure angst. Having James possess Buffy and Grace possess Angelus was genius, since it forced Buffy to see where her emotions were taking her. It also gave Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz the opportunity to show how well they could sell the concept.

This episode also reveals that Giles is still holding on to Jenny in his heart. His instant hope that the haunting is really Jenny is a nice bit of foreshadowing for “Becoming”. Jenny has become the weak spot in Giles’ armor. At the same time, Jenny’s death leads directly into a major turning point for Willow’s character. This is the beginning of Willow’s interest and obsession with magic. The fact that her interest in the subject evolved out of grief and loss is often overlooked, especially in the later seasons, where her behavior can be traced back to the fact that she began exploring magic out of negative emotions.

Snyder’s hidden agenda is revealed in this episode. Though many believe that Snyder’s plot thread was eventually dropped, it’s clear that this episode and “Becoming” are meant to establish a link between his arrival and the rise of the Mayor in the third season. When viewed in perspective of the series as a whole, Snyder is best viewed as a precursor to the Mayor, a hint that the local government is well aware of the Hellmouth and has placed certain people in key positions to hide that fact. Snyder’s role is indistinct, yet his goals are fairly obvious: cover up the truth and keep the Slayer contained if possible.

Also addressed is the simmering triangle of Spike, Drusilla, and Angelus. Ever since his return, Angelus has been moving in on Spike’s territory, and Spike has been consistently more annoyed with every episode dealing with the relationship. Completing the job of bridging “Passion” to “Becoming”, this episode reveals that Spike is at the point where he is ready to act against Angelus. This would be an important plot element in the season finale, and yet another example of how well the season was plotted.

The climactic scene between Buffy and Angelus, possessed by the former lovers, drives home everything that Buffy has been feeling. Her dialogue, as James, is the most honest and resonant. Angelus, on the other hand, is just the focus of Buffy’s anger and loss; his dialogue as Grace doesn’t quite resonate as well. The fact remains, however, that Buffy is drawn to kill Angelus as part of the possession, and that is exactly what she knows she must do to Angelus.

It would have been better if this episode had come immediately following “Passion”, then followed immediately by “Becoming”. What lies in-between is largely filler, and does little to add to the season as a whole. However, as compared to the first season, the continuity of the plot threads in the second season are very strong, and none of the seasons would avoid pacing issues.


Memorable Quotes

SNYDER: “People can be coerced, Summers. I’m no stranger to conspiracy. I saw ‘JFK’…”

XANDER: “Something weird is going on. Isn’t that our school motto?”

GILES: “You should never be cowed by authority. Except, of course, in this instance, when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong…”

BUFFY: “What do we know?”
XANDER: “Dog spit is cleaner than human.”
BUFFY: “Besides that?”


Observations

- Man, I feel bad for Ben...he totally takes the brunt of Buffy’s emotional problems!

- I really like the music by Splendid in the Bronze...

- Wouldn’t Willow know that impulsive doesn’t go well with the Scoobies by now?

- Really like Buffy’s shiny happy pants...nice and skintight!

- When the 1955 yearbook falls to the floor, it opens...yet when Buffy picks it up, it’s closed again...

- How can Willow still be teaching?!?

- Wasn’t Jenny’s computer destroyed in “Passion”? Or maybe that was just the monitor...

- Nice reprise of that awesome “Passion” theme during the Willow/Giles scene!

- It’s surprising that demonic hands don’t grab students from lockers more often in Sunnydale...though of course, it turns out to be Xander’s locker, by coincidence...

- Could Giles get more excited by the idea of paranormal phenomena?

- The reference to Jasmine would be used again in the fourth season of “Angel”...

- I really don’t get that smiley-face backpack!

- It’s so hard to see Giles fixating on Jenny, regardless of the evidence suggesting something else...

- I thought Cordelia brought in her own special lunch!

- So wouldn’t there be someone from 1955 through 1998 who would remember similar incidents around the time of the Sadie Hawkins dance every year?

- I love Dru’s little hoppy dance when she starts having her vision!

- Nice of Giles to have a nice abbreviated swap of magic tips in the middle of the dangerous haunting...

- The use of The Flamingos’ version of “I Only Have Eyes For You” seems OK if one takes into account that it was a re-recording of an older song...except, of course, that it’s the Flamingos’ version that’s playing, and that was recorded after 1955!

- I wouldn’t use those animal control specialists again...they did a horrible job...

- It’s funny to see Cordelia getting into the magic spell groove!

- I wonder where Joyce was during the little retreat to the Summers abode...

- When the Scooby Gang goes back to the school, the wide shot is recycled from the earlier reaction shot...Buffy’s standing outside with them, when she’s supposed to be in the school!

- Could Buffy’s legs look more skinny in those pants?

- The cross-editing for the final possession scene is done perfectly, allowing the audience to identify directly with the fact that Buffy is James and Angelus is Grace...

Overall, this episode is a perfect bridge between “Passion” and its inevitable consequences in “Becoming”. The stage is definitely set for a final confrontation, and the emotional layers in the episode resonate well with Buffy’s psychological arc over the course of the season. Definitely one of the better early episodes.

I give it an 8/10.


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