'I Only Have Eyes For You' is...
...weird.
It feels like an episode that started with its last five minutes and was written backwards.
It’s a Marti Noxon episode so we have every right to expect greatness,
and yet...as I watched it the first time I was...
...checked out.
It felt like an episode of spooky '90210' to me.
This sounds a bit silly when describing an episode of a superhero show but it felt a little ungrounded.
It's the first time the show is actually concerned with ghosts.
But the melodrama just didn’t do anything for me
- I say melodrama because these ghosts and their trysts haven’t earned the right for me to care about them.
Haunted bees?
Really?
What were they thinking with thi...
...oh...
Ohhhh…
*sniff*
Okay, I love it.
At The Bronze, Buffy dodges the advances of an incoming guy.
She tries to bail and Willow tries to 'best friend' her from the doldrums without success.
Meanwhile in the school halls, two students are in the midst of a lovers quarrel.
The boy pulls an old timey looking pistol.
Buffy, out on patrol, intervenes and knocks the pistol out of his hand, which disappears.
"I'm gonna look at all the pieces carefully ...and rationally..."
...and I'm gonna keep looking until I know exactly how this is all your fault."
Snyder makes Buffy wait in his office and an old yearbook falls of it’s own accord from the shelf.
Willow is still teaching for Miss Calendar.
"I bet you'll think coding is pretty cool."
"I mean, if you find 2-digit multi-stacked conversions and primary number clusters a big hoot."
[laughing class]
The high school kids laughing at that joke is probably the least believable thing about this episode, including the ghosts.
Willow lets Giles know she’s found a bunch of files on Miss Calendar’s computer regarding magic.
In a class about the Depression, Buffy spaces out for a moment
and wakes up out of time,
witnessing a long look between a student and teacher.
When she returns to class her actual teacher has written something uncontrollably on the board.
After several odd occurrences,
Giles decides the gang is dealing with a poltergeist, and indicates the only way of ridding themselves of it is by providing it a sort of spiritual catharsis.
"Now we're Dr. Laura for the deceased."
That night as a teacher and the janitor pass each other in hallways they are overcome by the same spirit as the kids from earlier.
A gun appears in the janitor's hand(s).
He fires, and the teacher tumbles from the roof dead.
Giles, working late, hears a noise and suspects it may be Jenny’s spirit that is haunting the place.
He witnesses the teacher’s murder
and tackles the janitor.
The gun disappears.
The next day, Giles explains it's Miss Calendar's spirit causing these instances.
The Gang is unconvinced.
"You should never be cowed by authority."
"Except of course in this instance, when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong."
After a bit of research into previous shootings, they discover the people Buffy dreamed of in the archives.
The student and teacher were having an affair.
The teacher tried to break it off
...and the student shot her, then went to the band room and shot himself.
Willow is saddened by the whole thing
but Buffy seems...unusual unsympathetic.
"He's a murderer and he should pay for it."
More poltergeist hijinks ensue
and Snyder shares a surprising conversation with the police officer.
"We're on a Hellmouth."
"Sooner or later...people are gonna figure that out."
"Perhaps you'd like to take that up..."
"...with the Mayor."
At the mention of the Mayor’s name, Snyder shows some unusual fear.
Willow finds a spell with a chance of dispelling some of the big bad voodoo at school
and Xander points out that James the ghost shooter seems oddly fixated on Buffy.
Unsurprisingly, their ritual doesn’t go according to plan.
Spike, Dru and Angelus have moved into a new home.
Angelus’ continued torment of Spike appears to be having its intended effect.
Drusilla has a vision of a gate opening and something wanting the Slayer.
I may not have mentioned this before, but Juliet Landau’s performance is kind of incredible.
She’s like an undead woodstock hippy on ecstasy and LSD.
I've grown to appreciate her physicality the more I watch the show.
The Gang discusses their failed attempt to banish James the ghost and what James might be looking for.
"I'm not en--"
--"He wants forgiveness."
Buffy is, again, unswayed.
Cordy continues her hitting streak of brilliance.
"Okay, over-identify much."
Buffy storms off and is called in trance back to bee school.
Willow frets that Buffy just went in there to get shot
and Giles wonders who the other person is to play out the grisly ghost story.
"Fun fact about wasps:"
"They have no taste for the undead."
Buffy, clearly under the thrall of the ghost, begins the deathly reenactment
...from James the shooter's perspective.
Angel is momentarily amused
...and then...
"I just want you to be able to have some kind of normal life."
And THIS is the moment when the purpose of the episode dawned on me.
"I don't give a DAMN about a normal life."
"Angel, when I look into the future..."
"...all I see is you."
"I think about you every minute."
"Every time something like this happens..."
"...my first instinct is still to run to Angel."
[gun shot]
Angel is dead
...again.
Except that unlike the teacher, Angel can’t die from a gunshot.
Buffy goes to the band room to finish the reenactment, that culminated in James’ suicide.
But this time.
[Sha bop sha bop]
Okay, so remember Buffy’s feelings about James?
“He’s a murderer and he should pay for it.”
Let's consider the gender swapped lovers and on the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance, no less.
Buffy very specifically takes James’ role in the murder suicide reenactment.
James’ teacher was older than him,
as Angel is older than Buffy.
Her relationship to James is a suggestion of her own guilt over Angel’s death.
And the ripple of consequences that have come since.
Her vehement lack of empathy when describing James is only an indication of how she’s feeling about herself.
"James destroyed the one person he loved the most in a moment of blind passion."
"That's not something you forgive."
As Xander pointed out, James was fixated on Buffy but not from a combative sense
but because he identified with the guilt that she was carrying.
“James picked me."
"I guess..."
"I guess I was the one he could relate to.”
The key to understanding the episode is realizing it doesn’t matter whether WE think Buffy did anything wrong,
...SHE thinks she has.
"Was I not good?"
"I didn't know what would happen until after I swear I would have told you."
"So it WAS me."
"I did it."
"I think so."
"You must be so disappointed in me."
"No."
"I'm sorry."
"Just a little more fallout from my love life."
And Buffy is looking for the same thing James is.
"I'm not en--"
--"He wants forgiveness."
But she can’t find it because she doesn’t think she deserves it.
So why should she be allow herself to be happy?
And then the dialogue between Angel and Buffy provides her this moment she needs.
"You thought I stopped loving you--"
"I loved you with my last breath."
Whether it was Angel speaking the words or some spirit inside of him,
this tiny echo of the man she loved is a moment of reprieve.
A breath that gives Buffy the space and peace for one of the most difficult acts of compassion.
The act of forgiving yourself.
Yeeaaahhh...I like this episode.
Either I’m a little thick or the whole point is a little easy to miss at first.
But now that I think I’ve got the grasp on it it really is like a poem.
There's a rhyme and meter to the whole thing and a beautiful little thought revealed by the ending.
It has a similar thematic aspiration as 'Killed By Death' but is executed
so much more elegantly than that episode.
In the final scene, Angelus is disgusted by his forced participation in the love fest
and goes hunting with Dru, taking another moment beforehand to taunt Spike.
And as the music thrums,
Spike kicks himself free of the chair and stands up,
...reborn.
"Oh, what is it?"
"What is it?"
[breathes]
"What is that? What is that? What is it?"
"Oh, God!"
"Oh, no not the bees!"
"Not the bees!"
"AAAAH--"