The Buffy Episode That Secretly Corrected the Show’s Most Frustrating Mistake
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Buffy the Vampire Slayer it’s one of those shows that I watched until every frame was burned into my brain. That’s because the series is so perfect: it features a killer premise, brilliant characters, and some of the best writing in television history. Even though it is very well written, however, there are occasional mistakes that, once you see them, will haunt you forever.
For example, when Angel loses his soul and turns evil, he smashes Jenny Calendar’s computer, apparently destroying the information on how to get his soul back. However, what we see on the screen is a vampire destroying his computer monitor, experts like Willow know that there is no where information is stored. Fortunately, episode 19 of season 2, “I Only Have Eyes for You” corrects this mistake, revealing that Willow was still able to access information from Calendar’s computer and that the non-tech-savvy Angel didn’t really know what she was doing.
Breaking Vlad
Part of what you did Buffy the Vampire Slayer most effectively the show examines the real threats young people face through the lens of fantasy. For example, many young women have had the negative experience of a guy who turns into a jerk after sex. But it was worse for Buffy: after she and Angel did something bad, she lost her soul, becoming the fearsome vampire of the modern age.
When he became Angelus, this violent vamp didn’t just want to kill Buffy: instead, he wanted to torture her by torturing and killing her friends. In “Passion,” he really takes this evil to the next level by killing Jenny Calendar and displaying her body for Giles to find when he shows up on the date. He first attacked her at school, where Angel took the time to destroy the computer that contained the instructions to restore her soul.
Talk about a Firewall
At least, that’s his goal: while commenting on how far technology has come, he knocks his computer monitor down, damaging it before setting it on fire. It makes for a very scary moment, emphasizing how horrifying it is for this teacher to be attacked by a vicious vampire in her classroom. But what always bothered me as a young person was that “Passion” implies that the Angel has successfully destroyed the information on the PC, which is nonsense: destroying a computer monitor (even a chunky ’90s monitor) will do nothing to destroy all the information on the hard drive, which is safely stored in the undamaged body of the PC.
Fortunately, the latest episode of “I Only Have Eyes for You” corrected this error, although this may have been accidental. After Jenny Kalenda’s death, Willow (her star student) becomes the new computer science teacher. When Giles comments on how well the young student has adapted to teaching, Willow points out that she had “good lesson plans…Ms. Calendar had them on her computer.” In addition, he also “found a lot of files and websites about paganism and magic and so on.”
Finally, A Good Retcon
From a narrative perspective, this helps set up plot points later, including Willow finding a way to restore Angel’s soul (Calendar stored the spell on a floppy disk) and eventually becoming a full-fledged witch. However, this disposal route also confirms that Angel’s attempt to destroy the teacher’s computer and all the information on it was a complete disaster. That might seem disappointing, but it makes sense: a centuries-old vampire has never been good at technology, so it makes sense that he would just destroy a very large, visible part of a computer without realizing that he’s damaging something wrong.
Like all of them Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans know, “Passion” is a killer episode, full of high emotions, crazy action, and the unforgettable death of the main character. In this follower, however, the episode explains that destroying the computer monitor will affect the hard drive. Although it would take the Scoobies a long time to find a way to restore Angel’s soul, “I Only Have Eyes” managed to restore something else entirely: my faith in the writers!
