'The Dark Age' is an important if mostly unremarkable episode.
The problem is it tries to reconstitute elements
that were already used to much greater success earlier in the season.
And it does so by reverting to the Monster of the Week format, in this case Eyghon.
Still, there are few things worth discussing.
['Underwater Dream']
As a man anxiously searches for Giles
Buffy deafens him with her aerobics workout.
The man gets choked out by a zombie looking woman he recognizes
and Giles ominously uses Hamlet's last words.
"The rest..."
"...is silence."
"The rest...is silence."
"The rest..."
"...is..."
[WAIT FOR IT...]
"...silence."
"The rest is silence."
"The rest..."
"is silence."
"And the rest is silence."
[Misquoting fool!]
In a rather horrible '90s CGI effect, the zombie turns into a ooze puddle and touches the corpse of the anxious man.
Later, we see Giles is having acid flashbacks of something he did when he was younger.
Giles is called in to identify the body of the anxious man, named Philip
and we get a long shot of a tattoo on Phillip's arm
At a hospital stakeout, Buffy and Angel foil a vampire attempt to steal blood donations.
Interestingly, this is Angel's first display of vampire kung fu.
According to one of the DVD featurettes, originally Joss didn't want Angel to be much of a fighter.
Giles is researching a list of people and the only two names that haven't been crossed off
...are his and Ethan Rayne's.
We see him roll up his sleeve and reveal he has the same tattoo as the anxious man
who coincidentally rises in the morgue in zombie form.
Buffy catches Ethan skulking around in the library.
[KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN]
Ethan has the same tattoo as Giles and is being tailed by Philip the Zombie.
Buffy beats up Philip who puddles and touches a knocked Miss Calendar.
Buffy tries to grill Giles for information and he stone walls her.
The gang figures out the tattoo is called the Mark of Eyghon, a demon
that would take temporary possession of its host to induce a drug-like euphoria,
and that the demon has come back and can jump to the body of a dead or unconscious person.
Buffy breaks into Giles' home before Eyghon Jenny can kill him
and Giles confesses to his magic drug trips with Ethan.
From the stand point of the series lore, this is a significant detail
as it's the first real reference that magic and drugs can parallel each other in some ways, most often black magic.
More on that...
...much later.
Ethan...
*sigh-groan*
...captures Buffy and tattoos her to replace himself in the Eyghon circle.
While trying to figure out a way to save Miss Calendar, Cordelia and Xander get into an argument and Willow lays the hammer down.
"HEY!"
"We don't have time for this!"
Eyghon Jenny shows up to the former costume shop looking more like a dark elf than a demon.
Angel busts in and attacks Eyghon Jenny and Eyghon jumps to Angel, a dead man, to try and possess him.
Problem is Angel has had a demon in him for a long time already.
Miss Calendar is alive and well
...but the demon possession has put a damper on her feeling(s) for Giles.
'Season Two' is one of the best seasons in the series
...but it's also one of the least consistent.
'The Dark Age' is by no means a bad episode.
But in comparison to
'School Hard'
"Lie to Me' or
'When She Was Bad'
it feels a little dated.
And certainly not as crisp as a Joss written episode.
In 'Halloween' our vision of Ripper was chilling
Ethan Rayne dripped charisma,
he's the type of villain we love to watch because they aren't just menacing and mean.
Ethan has FUN being Ethan.
All of that joyful character exploration is jettisoned here in favor of a cheesy, slow, boring zombie monster.
Ethan skulks
and Giles mopes.
If I'm honest too, I find the developing romance between Giles and Miss Calendar a little plotting here.
I like Giles and Jenny
...just not particularly in this episode.
Her yin to Giles' yang feels so predictable
and she has a few too many "too cool" lines.
"I'll see if I can make you squirm."
"So I got involved?
"That's what happens when two people..."
"...get involved."
"You could take me home"
"...or you could take advantage of me in my weakened state."
But there are some points to cover.
Perhaps the most significant scene in the episode is the final one between Giles and Buffy.
'Buffy' is a show about becoming an adult
and one of the inevitabilities of that transition is how we, hopefully uncynically,
come to see our parents as fallible human beings.
Giles tells Buffy that most grown-ups are people.
He isn't sure Jenny can ever forgive him
and he isn't entirely sure he's worth forgiving.
But Buffy gives him a kind gift.
"I don't think she'll ever really forgive me."
"Maybe she shouldn't."
"Maybe YOU should."
It's actually quite a sweet little scene .
Most episodes in some way relate to Buffy even if they're about a different character.
In this case, the demon Eyghon is a warning to Buffy as to the consequences of
losing yourself in anything completely.
Eyghon
or "I Gone"
represents Giles' experiments with hard drugs as a young man
and how some mistakes can have consequences that ripple throughout our lifetimes.
So there are few things of merit,
they're just stitched together with such cheesy and tedious direction.
Eyghon is completely unintimidating
either as a shambling zombie
or...weird...acrobat thingy.
Giles' flashbacks come off as cheesy '70s drug trips instead of 'Event Horizon' style nightmares.
The pace of the episode just reverts to some of the 'Season 1' B-movie clunkers.
It's another transitional episode from where the show began to where it's going.