1/29/08 - 2/7/08 Episode Discussion: Passion

In my humble opinion, "Passion" is the best episode of season 2, and one of the best of the series. Giles and Jenny were about to be reunited and you could sense his enthusiasm about that throughout the entire episode. That just made his heartbreak all the more difficult to handle when he sees Jenny and realized that she is dead.

If nothing else, this episode introduced Angelus to us; the real Angelus, that is. We had heard for a year and a half about how vicious, how evil, how heartless Angel's other half was. This is the first time that we experience that for ourselves. The ruthless fashion in which he kills Jenny and arranges her body to inflict maximum damage to Giles is unthinkable and speaks to Angelus' true nature. It was a very well written and well acted episode.
 
Simply chilling. I remember watching it when it first aired, Angelus stalking Jenny through the halls, and I'm sitting there thinking ", someone'll show up and help her escape in a minute," but when she runs straight into Angelus on the stairs and he brutually snaps her neck I was like *sharp breath, eyes widened* "-OH!" Not many moments in T.V history have made me do that. A benchmark episode, especially for David.
 
This was one of the (many) episodes that made me wonder WHY people insisted on hanging out in the school after dark in a town known for its vampire activity? Even worse for Jenny, she knew Angelus was on the loose and that the school was one of the WORST places she could be. Didn't she have a computer at home?
 
Blondie Bear said:
This was one of the (many) episodes that made me wonder WHY people insisted on hanging out in the school after dark in a town known for its vampire activity? Even worse for Jenny, she knew Angelus was on the loose and that the school was one of the WORST places she could be. Didn't she have a computer at home?
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Not necessarily, didn't Jenny ask Angelus how he'd gotten it. IMO that implies she had no idea the school wasn't so save. This leaves us with some new questions, like why didn't she notice the school was so dangerous in 'School Hard' or 'Prophecy Girl', but anyway...
But yea, interesting question, like in episode one, why does the boy drag Darla to school with him?
 
She did ask him how he'd gotten in--after she witnessed a vamp stealing a book from the library in "Lie to Me." And she's supposed to be SO smart. . . . (I'm being more than a little sarcastic there.)
 
Maybe she didn't have a computer at home? What was this, 1997? I don't think I had a home computer in '97. I'm just saying...
 
Or she just liked to live dangerous, with Angelus on the lose and everything.
And I'm sure she had a comozter at home, maybe us normal people didn't have one (we got our first on in 98), but she's a computer science teacher.
 
Social Suicide said:
Or she just liked to live dangerous, with Angelus on the lose and everything.
And I'm sure she had a comozter at home, maybe us normal people didn't have one (we got our first on in 98), but she's a computer science teacher.
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That does put a crimp in my theory, but how much was Jenny paid? I mean, weren't computers pretty expensive in '97? And teacher salaries are notoriously low. I'm still not 100% sold on the idea that a teacher, computer science teacher or not, would own a computer with internet access and the fancy translation software that she used in '97. I think it makes sense that those resources would only have been available to her at the school. Heck, the only friend I had who had a home computer with internet access and translation software was a friend whose father was a neurologist from India. She also had the biggest TV I had ever seen and a really nice house. I'm guessing Jenny wasn't on-par, salarywise, with my friend's brain surgeon dad.
 
I doubt a public school would have access to that sort of software, either. And didn't she say she was building the program herself? And besides, she had to know how dangerous it was hanging out at the school. Even if she was incredibly close to an answer, she'd have to know that if she didn't tell someone or keep herself safe, all that hard work would come to nothing.

Or maybe it's just me and my over-planny brain.
 
I think the "why Jenny was using the school computer after hours when she probably has one of her own at home," issue boils down to: it is a bit of a "buy," like in a show about lawyers when one side manages to put someone on the stand at the last minute who would never ACTUALLY be allowed on the stand at the last minute, and when said witness is allowed to ramble on w/their testimony totally beyond the scope of the initial question and opposing counsel just, like, *sits there* . . . you just "buy it" because it's one of those things that happens in TV to move the story along. If you think about it too hard, the logic just isn't there, but it's not such a MASSIVE absurdity as to take you out of the story, so you buy it and move on.

The entire idea of all these Big Baddies coming to the Sunnydale hellmouth was another issue that was discussed on a BtVS related podcast, and the point was made that . . . um, with the exception of the 1st season, most of the baddies seem to be aware that there's A SLAYER guarding this particular hellmouth--but there is another hellmouth in Cleveland, and it's guarded by Drew Carey (to quote the podcaster). Why are the demons all so willing to hang in Sunnydale in close proximity to A SLAYER??? That's another "buy." The hellmouth concept makes the whole show work, so we just won't think too carefully about the underlying logic.
 
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