'Passion' is a beloved episode for a lot of people I know
but everytime I watch it I find myself wishing for some of the spit and polish of the later seasons.
It IS great.
While it doesn’t measure up to 'Innocence' or 'Becoming (Part 2)' for me
- the back half of the episode is brilliant.
The final three scenes are affecting in a way that some of the greatest episodes in the season arc are.
But for every great scene, there's a small detail that deflates my enthusiasm for the episode.
I love the tapestry of elements 'Passion' brings together,
but its stitches feel as tortured as this metaphor.
As I mentioned earlier in the season, the episode writer only has two series credits and the other was...
'Some Assembly Required'.
Joss Whedon started his career as a script doctor,
taking other people’s writing,
fixing it up and beefing it up
and I get the strong sense that that's what happened here.
This review may seem to some people like a pile of semantics.
But sometimes that pile gets big enough it becomes hard for me see around.
Let’s get into it!
Angelus is stalking Buffy and the gang.
With the line, “Passion (it) rules us all,”
Angelus seems to be explaining why he can’t just kill Buffy but has to terrorize her first.
To that end, Buffy wakes up the next morning to find
...a drawing of herself on the pillow next to her.
She describes the situation to the gang and Cordelia is appropriately worried:
"Oh God!"
"I invited him in my car once."
"That means he can come into my car...
"...WHENEVER HE WANTS."
It’s a cute line...
...but sometimes the writers' handling of Cordelia is inconsistent
and her character vacillates between
just being an egotistical alpha
or ditzy and dumb.
I think Cordelia has shown herself on different occasions to actually be smarter than Xander.
This route with her character is a big miss for me.
It doesn’t help that the beat the joke into the ground three more times in this scene.
The bit right after though where Jonathan comes in looking for a book in the library,
an unheard of occurrence in Sunnydale High,
always makes me smile.
The gang attempts to strategize the proper defense against Angel.
Considering Angel’s first decision with Drusilla was to kill her family
Buffy very reasonably wants to tell her Mom.
But Giles says "No, that's not possible,"
perhaps worried that Joyce will...
...try and take Buffy away?
And yet, Kendra was given to the Watchers early on.
Buffy is after all, the ONE Slayer in all the world
(not counting Kendra).
Wouldn’t the full force of the Watchers Council be on the side of ensuring she can do her duty?
Given that if she doesn't, you know...
...THE WORLD COLLAPSES.
"I know how hard this is for you."
Giles: "Alright, I don't."
"But as the Slayer..."
"...you don't have the luxury of being a slave to your-your passions."
There’s some foreshadowing for you.
Speaking of, Giles goes to Miss Calendar to try and figure out a way to block Angel from Buffy’s home.
You can see the great chemistry they’ve had all season and the two of them play their resistance to it rather well.
But then Jenny drops the “L” word.
“I didn’t know I was gonna fall in LOVE with you.”
Now, this is a pivotal moment in the episode so give me a minute here.
Her delivery of such a significant line is SO flat and dry
I ACTUALLY thought she was doing some kind of gypsy manipulation thing to try and weasel her way back into Buffy’s sphere of influence.
There is just NOTHING in the performance.
Then Christophe Beck’s sparse and beautiful score comes in and says,
"No, no, no. She’s serious."
The music does enough to bring me back into the moment and I actually find the tune moving
... but I still CRINGED when Jenny said that line.
There are some better examples later in the show
but in the interest of not spoiling, let’s consider the scene
....where Oz turns Willow down for a kiss.
“It's OK."
"I can wait.”
Alyson Hannigan does more with a single expression and no lines
...than Jenny (Robia LaMorte) manages to accomplish in her entire scene.
We can see in the softening of her features and the hold of her gaze
We can-we can SEE her fall in love with Oz right in that moment.
Love, intimacy and their complications are things the show normally handles so masterfully.
This scene with Jenny and Giles just thudded.
I wouldn’t hammer it like this
if so much of the emotional impact in the later scenes weren’t dependent on it.
Aaaanyway Giles indicates the way back to him is through amends with Buffy.
At dinner, Buffy finds a way to warn her Mom to stay away from Angel.
And on the phone that evening, Willow discovers that Angel has left her a message,
...consisting of all her fish stitched together.
I love the shot where the camera pans around the empty tank and she pulls the fishy necklace out of the envelope.
Though it took me a minute to remember when the hell Angel had been in Willow’s bedroom.
It was back in 'Lie to Me' when he was suspicious of Ford.
Willow decides it’s a good idea to stay at Buffy’s house.
As they sit together in bed, Buffy says how she still feels the desire to run to Angel whenever something occurs,
Earlier in the season, Buffy’s identity was consumed by her relationship:
“Angel, when I look into the future..."
...and all I see is you.”
Now she’s being forced to find ways to be complete by herself.
In that sense then, Angel was her...
...uhhh...
...weapon, friend, and hope.
At the factory, Spike and Angelus are still sparring over Drusilla.
As she bathes in their attention,
she has a vision of something awful about to break up their little family.
The next day, Buffy stops Miss Calendar, and after rubbing her face in the shame a bit
finds the Angel of her better nature and tells Jenny she doesn’t want to be the reason Giles is lonely.
In the hallway, Giles tells Buffy he’s found a way to lock Angel out of her home.
As if from NOWHERE Cordelia pops into the shot
JUST to flog that stupid joke from earlier in the episode.
Even Buffy and Giles look momentarily confused as to where she just came from and what she’s doing there.
Then she doesn’t exit the scene with them.
Angel corners Joyce in front of the house and we get this great scene with him playing the obsessed boyfriend.
It's sooooo creepy
and the question of is he going to do anything to her makes this the tensest moment in the episode.
Consider too what David Boreanaz manages to do with the revelation that he and Buffy slept together.
"I haven't been able to sleep since the night we made love."
He twists it, like a screw.
And the moment he can’t get in and Buffy slams the door in his face makes the whole scene incredibly satisfying.
"Sorry, Angel."
"Changed the locks."
Jenny is working late and runs into Giles.
Their walls are down and she says she may have something.
Giles tells her to stop by later that night.
Jenny has a breakthrough in the search for Angel’s soul restoration spell and prints it out and saves it on a floppy,
only to realize Angel is already there.
Angel destroys the spell
and Jenny flees in terror.
After a few nice cuts
we get a laughable bit of blocking in which Jenny pushes a conveniently placed mop bucket into Angel’s path
and he prattfalls over it like a Marx brother.
It's SO ridiculous.
She doesn’t put any curve on it.
He’s literally running directly at it and would have hit it if she hadn’t pushed it.
The only thing missing to complete the cheese is the proper sound effect.
[bowling pin strike sound]
Then again, maybe he was just giving her hope
as he miraculously beats her to the top of the stairs
...and breaks her neck.
Giles shows up at Buffy’s house as Buffy is getting chastised by Joyce for having sex.
Willow wondering whether Giles knows about sex given his librarianessness is hilarious,
as is the bit where Giles suggests he intervene on Buffy’s behalf.
"Perhaps I should, uh, intervene on-on Buffy's behalf w-w-with her mother. Um, maybe...say something?"
"Sure. Like what would you say?"
"We..."
"Uh, wa, uh..."
You know...
Joyce is often a terrible parent.
She’s completely oblivious to a lot of her daughter’s life.
She’s always rubbing Buffy’s nose in her past failures.
She’s constantly punishing Buffy without really seeking to understand.
I think sometimes it's just because of sloppy writing.
The Joyce MacGuffin.
The writers need a source of conflict or a reason to push Buffy in one direction or the other.
But I found her incredibly relatable in this scene where she's trying to get her mind around the fact
that not only is her daughter sexually active,
but with a guy way too old for her and that is now stalking her.
"Buffy, you can shut me out of your life, I am pretty much used to that."
"But don't expect me to EVER stop caring about you because it's never going to happen."
It’s one of Joyce’s greatest character building bits in the series.
Giles returns home.
There’s a bottle of wine
Lit candles.
An opera is playing in the background, probably a record from his collection.
It is Puccini’s 'La Bohème'.
['La Bohème']
[smash]
['La Bohème']
This is a transcendent scene.
Music, shot selection and performance all fit together SO painfully well.
It is the most elegant and specific portrayal
of Angel’s whimsical evil,
which to this point has been spoken of but never really shown.
Giles calls Buffy and tells her Jenny is dead,
as Angel stands outside looking through the window, feeding off their grief.
What good is a performance without an audience.
I don’t particularly care for Angel’s monologuing in this episode
but the seemingly paradoxical wording:
ecstasy of grief,
... is wonderful.
His ecstasy over other people’s grief.
Cordy drives the gang to Giles' house to see the scene.
Xander capitalizes on the moment in a very Xander fashion.
"So Giles is gonna try and kill Angel then?"
"Well it's about time somebody did."
"I'm sorry, but let's not forget that I hated Angel long before you guys jumped on the bandwagon."
Yeah.
Technically true, Xander.
But you hated Angel when he was a good guy just because you’re racist.
Or...undeadist…
They all have a right to be pissed
but this event is not vindication for Xander’s bias against Angel that started because
...Buffy didn’t want him.
The 'I told you so' feels so unnecessary in a very Xander way.
Similar to...
“If they hurt Willow, I’ll kill you.”
Giles attacks Angel at the factory
and Spike prevents Drusilla from intervening.
Angel turns the table.
Buffy kicks his ass
and Angel gets away by pointing out that Giles might burn to death in the fire.
One side effect of Giles sparse emotional outbursts
is that when they do happen they land with unexpected force and severity.
"You can't leave me."
"I can't do this alone."
Angels speaks as Buffy and Giles stand over Jenny’s grave.
And Buffy takes over indicating she’s now prepared to do what is necessary and kill him.
In the midst of this dramatic and emotional outpouring, Willow walks into the computer room
...and “Fat Bud” is written on the blackboard.
She sits and knocks the backup of Angels soul restoration disk...
...into an unseen crevice on the floor.
There's a chance 'Passion'’s impact has been blunted for me due to
too many viewings and a certain amount of innate cynicism.
It IS an excellent episode.
Now that the season climax we were building to has occurred,
the episodes are less burdened with metaphor and subtext.
They're more about consequences, and what we do to put the pieces back together again
-as seen in Buffy’s self awareness over how she would normally run to Angel in moments like this.
Willow’s comment about Angel’s obsession over her is a nice throwback to Giles in 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered'.
"I know it's not love!"
"It's obsession!"
"Selfish, banal obsession!"
Obsession is destructive.
I grieved for Jenny, because Giles grieved for Jenny and I care for Giles.
But Jenny wasn’t a developed character.
She came and went as necessary for the episode plots.
Though Giles' discovery of Jenny is a masterful sequence,
what was more significant to me than Giles’ loss, which was built up mostly in this episode,
...was how this complicated Angel.
To this point, I had been looking at...
...Angelus as a sort of problem that the Scooby Gang would solve the way they always do
- with gumption and a few extra hours in the library.
A few jokes.
Maybe a chase.
And they would peel away the mask of Angelus
to find their old pal Angel underneath, happy to be rescued.
But Jenny’s murder is a permanent scar on everyone.
I found myself feeling bad for Angel.
There would be no going back from this.
*chuckle* OK. OK. One more.
*chuckle*
Alri-alright.
Leave me alone kitty, I gotta-I gotta do a 'Buffy' review.
Leave me alone.
OK. OK. One more. One more.
(throw grunt)
Yeah alright, leave me alone kitty, I gotta do-I gotta do a 'Buffy' review.
"Leave me alone."
[bemused cat owner noises]
Alright-alright. One more. One more.
(throw grunt)
Alright.
Leave me alone kitty, I gotta--I gotta...
do a 'Buffy' review.
Gotta do a 'Buffy' review.
[cat owner giggles]
Alright. One more. One more.
Are...
Are you-this is good.
Leave me alone kitty
Kitty?
[cat owner giggles]
Alright. One more. One more.
Alright.
Uh. Alright-alright. I-gotta-I gotta do a 'Buffy' review.
Kitty come back.