10/27/08 - 11/4/08 Episode Discussion: Earshot

An episode with two sides. I know the serious part is very important but for the most part I seem to concentrate on the funnies side. Might be different if I lived in a country where people actually had killed a lot of people in schools in the way as they have in America. But no matter how you see it, Buffy´s speech to Jonathan is a classic one.

Some things that "bugged" me a little.

1) If Jonathan would commit suicide what are the chances that a riffle is his choice of weapen/way? Does he even have long enough arms to pull it off? Or was he planning to use his toes? I know it´s possible to do it but lets face it. Jonathan don´t have the longest arms. Oh, forget it. I´m probably way off.
2) When Buffy meet the gang the day after the basketball game and it´s oh so quiet. And all of the sudden she hears Xander´s thoughts. But I guess the whole "aspect of a demon" kicked" in just a few seconds before that since it after that basically got worse all the time. Because where´s no way all of them were sitting where all that time without a single thought? If they can, it explains why I have such a hard time gathering my own thoughts. I have constanly like 5 at the time...
3) The stunt double for the cafeteria/lunch lady. :lmao:



Lots of classic quotes of course but I just want to point out that Xander knew who the killer was right from the start. 😉


BUFFY No really. I'm OK. Listen, there's a killer in the cafeteria.
XANDER See, I've been saying for years that the lunch lady's gonna do us all in with that Mulligan Stew.

And lets not forget things that some things might be even worse to grow than horns"¦

BUFFY What if he is right? I'm suddenly going to grow this demon part and we don't even know what it is. It could be claws or scales...
*Willow's expression turns shocked.*
BUFFY What?
WILLOW Was it a boy demon?


Lyri said:
Also, either Jane Epenson or Marti Noxon play a lunchlady in this ep, but I can never remember which one it was! :lmao:
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As Rach said it was Jane. She got tricked into doing it. 😀 They said Joss like those kind of things which he really didn´t. At least not at that point. As we know now both Joss himself, Marti and David has also appeared on the screen. And I might have forgotten someone.


Fake Shemp said:
oh yeah the bandcandy gets brought back up (lol)
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Not surprising since Jane wrote both Bandcandy and this episode.
 
This episode really stands out in season 3 as one of my favourites and considering how many great episodes there are, it shows how much I love this one.

And I love that we get to see more of Jonathon. As of up to that point in the show he was one the background characters but you knew and seen him being bullied for a season and a half before it led up to this. I thought it was a great use of a character, very sad.🙁

Everyone's thoughts were perfectly written, especially Cordelia - when we find out she really does just say what she thinks. :biggrin:

But the funniest thing in this episode, or maybe it's just me, is this from Angel -

ANGEL: I'm a funny guy.
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Really makes me laugh everytime, great delivery too.:lmao:
 
I just re-watched this episode today, and yes, one of the more like-able Angel moments is the 'I'm a funny guy'.
And we also get the 'you had sex with giles'.
And the 'if you're not having sex with my MOTHER!' with Giles walking into the tree.
And how cute does Buffy always look when she's in bed? ... Ok, that was awkward when I just realised what I said!
Oh, and one more annoyance of Xander. He bails on trying to find out who's going to kill everyone because he wants jell-o?!?! Ok so he manages to save the day so I can't be to judgmental about this, but really? JELL-O?
Watching it again even inspired me to make a new banner and actually change it!
 
Definitely one of my fave eps in S3 (which is chock full of GREAT eps, even though I still prefer S2 because of the arc).

It's got the perfect match of excellent humor (the ending, of course, is priceless with Giles walking into the tree) and incredible eeriness; being as private and reclusive a person as I am, I can relate well to how Oz is feeling in the library scene, and get shivers down my spine just thinking of that scene in Buffy's bedroom, before she tries to shut out the voices by shuting the window. Very horrific, IMO.

I also appreciate Buffy's speech to Jonathan in the belfry too. Being more on the depressive side myself, I know from experience that the "tough love" lesson she uses there is much, much more likely to get through to him than the "some people are bad, so you get victimized" approach. About the last thing a true depressive is going to believe would be that there are people worse than himself out there... but "everyone is alone in their little world of problems, you're no different there" is likely to ring a bell more easily.

With the postponing... when I first read about it (back then, three months before the ep was first aired in Germany) I considered it a stupid move, I'm usually against rescheduling TV because of current happenings; changing away from "business as planned" tends to disturb me more than touchy current subjects do (I also found it ridiculous that radio stations banned songs whose titles including "Sea" or "Wave" for the first weeks after the mega-tsunami in South East Asia). However, what with Jonathan with his sniper rifle - while it may "work", it is definitely a damn weird choice for a tool of suicide - and the sarcastic line in the text about "not like that ever happens in American schools", I can understand it got pulled until after Columbine wasn't as fresh a memory anymore. I still hold that the pulling of "Grad Day 2" was utter nonsense, however, P.C.ness taken to silly extremes. (Can you tell this is one of the pre-ATS eps where I like Cordy most? I can't help but admire her total saying-100%-what-she-thinks-approach. 🙂 )
 
Kean
Kean
Full of agreement with your first two paragraphs
Another one of my favourite episodes (there are 72 of those, to be exact...). It moves very nicely from the comedy in the beginning to the very serious issues at the end. I'm not always a great fan of Jane Espenson's stand-alone episodes ("Superstar" comes to mind, slightly fun but eventually mostly silly), but here she has done a good job.
It was interesting to see the discussion above concerning Buffy's speech to Jonathan. I tend to agree with both sides (I usually do). I'm sure caitaintdead is right in that the speech wouldn't really work to stop Jonathan - in real life probably nothing would work at that point. But I do agree with the gist of the speech, too. As a teenager you feel that everybody's attention is on you, but they really do have their own problems. And sometimes it makes them take it out on other people. There's no excuse for that, really, but understanding why they behave as they do may perhaps help in seeing that life can go on. A more workable solution would probably have been to stop Jonathan by force and give this speech later, but that would have been worse TV.
 
There was a few strange things in the episode. Did Wesley and Giles contact the other bloke who heard peoples thoughts, to help him. They could have sent in Cordy to tell him, she wasn't what you'd call a thinker.
The thing that made me laugh the most was the gun that Jonathon had to kill himself - a high powered gun with telescopic sites. Buffy thought he was going to commit mass murder, even after she'd removed the one bullet from the gun.
So how was he going to shoot himself, if he was going to shoot himself in the head he'd have had to cut his head off first, hope he had a good memory.
I Liked Buffy's throw away comment to Giles at the end of the episode.
 
the gun he was gonna use is ridiculous.... i mean he's little... a little man.... he could hardly hold that thing!
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
okay.. that was funny.. i think i read it much into it though
this ep rocked i loved that buffy can read minds and she gose and trys to read angels......but cant (he has none) jk jk.😀

and the fact that buffy finds out about giles and her mom!:lmao:

BUFFY
Sure. We can work out after school.
You know, if you're not too busy
HAVING SEX WITH MY MOTHER!

and then she trys to find out who is planing to kill everyone andfinds hjohnathan with the gun and gives him a very well thought out spech only to find out that it wasnt him. but it was the LUNCHLADY!

i always knew that there was something funky about that mystery meat they serve. lol
 
I loved this episode. However, it didn't rank up with my favorites, and it didn't rank with my least-favorites. It was somewhere in the "little-bit-above-average" category.

My favorite moment was when everyone was in the library, and Buffy listened to everyone's thoughts.
Xander: Thinking about sex. Like every other 17 year old male.
Willow: Thinking and talking at the same time.
Cordy: Saying what she thinks right after she thinks it.
Oz: Thinking very deep, "Oz-y" thoughts. (Wow, there's a sign of Whedon addiction. "Oz-y")

Every thought Buffy heard told a lot about each character.



4 stakes out of 5.
 
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