Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S2/E19 I Only Have Eyes for You

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it.

Ghosts of two lovers possess students and force them to act out their tragic Murder-Suicide.

Xander: This was no wimpy chain rattler. This was 'I'm dead as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore.'
Giles: Well, despite the Xander-speak, that's a fairly accurate definition of a poltergeist.

Buffy: I'm telling you, something weird is going on.
Xander: Something weird is going on. Isn't that our school motto?

Giles: Many times the spirit is plagued by all manner of worldly troubles. Being dead, it has no way to, uh, to make its peace. So it, it lashes out, growing ever more confused, ever more angry.
Buffy: So it's a normal teenager, only dead.

  • Everything's Worse With Huge Swarms Of Magical Wasps
  • Gender Flip: The ghost always possesses a man and a woman to reenact his murder-suicide. By deliberately saying the ghost's opening line ("you can't make me disappear just because you say it's over") Buffy manages to invoke the reenaction with her playing the ghost's part.
    • Buffy is already under Jessie's thrall by that point. As she says later; "He picked me. I guess I was the one he... could relate to. He was so sad..."
  • Good Hurts Evil: Once Grace's possession of him has ended, Angelus is so mortified he flees even though Buffy is at his mercy. He's later shown vigorously washing his body and complaining about being "violated" by having been forced to feel love, and insists on going out immediately to commit an act of evil, like killing a child.
  • Groundhog Day Loop: Done without the Time Travel. The loop is broken when Grace's ghost inhabits Angelus, who can't be killed by gunfire and so survives to tell James what he needs to move on.
  • Foreshadowing: "The city council was told that you could handle this job. If you feel that you can't, perhaps you'd like to take that up...with the Mayor."
    • Willow does a spell. She kinda likes it. Good for her.
    • Also the ghost dialogue foretells Bangel events in "Becoming, Part 2", and in Season 3.
  • He Really Can Act: It was this episode that convinced Joss Whedon that David Boreanaz was an actor strong enough to have his own series.
  • Hey, It's That Place!: The exterior of Angel's mansion is of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House.
  • High School Dance: The Sadie Hawkins Dance.
  • Hope Spot: For a second Buffy thinks Angel has been restored, then she's pushed away in anger by Angelus who flees the scene.
  • Insane Troll Logic

Snyder: 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.

  • Ironic Echo: The dialogue between the ghosts once they possess Angelus and Buffy matches what Angel and Buffy would say to each other, if only they could.
  • It's Not You, It's Me: When Ben hints he's like Buffy to ask him to the dance, Buffy responds "Oh Gosh!" He quickly backs off thinking she doesn't like him but Buffy hastens to add that he looks like a nice guy, but she's not seeing anyone. Ever again.
  • Leitmotif: The Giles/Jenny theme plays briefly while Jenny is being discussed.
  • Kissing Under the Influence
  • The Lost Lenore: Jenny for Giles, and ensouled Angel for Buffy.
  • Meaningful Echo: Specific lines of the James/Grace dialogue will be spoken by Buffy/Angel in Season 3's "Lover's Walk" and "The Prom."
  • Metaphorgotten: In a rare unfunny example, Buffy's refusal to forgive the ghost rings strongly of her own past with Angel. Cordelia of all is the first to notice.

Buffy: No. James destroyed the one person he loved the most in a moment of blind passion. And that's not something you forgive. No matter why he did what he did. And no matter if he knows now that it was wrong and selfish and stupid, it is just something he's gonna have to live with.
Xander: ...He can't live with it, Buff. He's dead.
(Buffy storms out)
Cordelia: Okay. Over-identify much?

  • Mind Rape: What Angelus thinks has been inflicted on him. After this event his goal changes from tormenting Buffy to bringing about The End of the World as We Know It, implying that Angelus is so disturbed at feeling love he wants to abolish all chance of it ever happening again.
  • Monster of the Week
  • No OSHA Compliance: Spike dryly notes the large windows for letting sunlight into their new mansion (ironic given that it's the notoriously unsafe Ennis House).
  • Nothing Is Scarier: The Oh Crap look on Snyder's face when the Mayor is mentioned tells us this is no mere small town politician.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different
  • Out-of-Character Moment: Commented on by the characters -- Giles is still so torn up by Jenny's death that he refuses to take note of any evidence that she's not the one haunting the school.
    • Also Willow pointing out that Jenny would never be this mean (as the ghost is). Giles finally accepts this point.
  • Prison Rape: Buffy is pissed about a jock who murdered his girlfriend, and rather than forgiving him -- which she is told will lift the curse -- cites he deserves "sixty years of breaking rocks and making special friends with Roscoe the weightlifter."
  • Remonstrating with a Gun / Railing Kill: How Grace was killed.
  • Saw It in a Movie Once

Buffy: I don't incite! I stopped that boy from killing his girlfriend, ask him. Ask the janitor.
Snyder: People can be coerced, Summers. I'm no stranger to conspiracy. I saw JFK.

James (1955): Don't walk away from me -
Buffy (1998): - BITCH!

  • Theory Tunnelvision
  • Throwing Off the Disability: After Angelus taunts him again and leaves with Drusilla, bidding him "Have fun without us", Spike slowly rises from the wheelchair he was in since Buffy tried to kill him and kicks it across the room.

"Oh I will. Sooner than you think."

Snyder: We're on a Hellmouth. Sooner or later, people are gonna figure that out.

  • Why Don't You Just Bite Her?: Angelus had become bored with his mind games with Buffy and decides to finish her off once and for all. Fortunately the ghosts have other ideas for the two of them.
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