Season 2, Episode 9
Written by Marti Noxon and Howard Gordon
Directed by David Solomon
Original Airdate: 17 November 1997
“You know, I’m a little rusty when it comes to killing humans. It could take a while.”
Angel
REGULAR CAST
- Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
- Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
- Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
- Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
- David Boreanaz as Angel
- Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
GUEST CAST
- Seth Green as Daniel “Oz” Osbourne
- James Marsters as Spike
- Eric Saiet as Dalton
- Kelly O’Connell as Norman Pfister
- Saverio Guerra as Willy
- Bianca Lawson as Kendra Young
- Juliet Landau as Drusilla
- Armin Shimerman as Principal R. Snyder
CO-STARRING
- Michael Rothharr as Suitman
- P. B. Hutton as Mrs. Kalish
SYNOPSIS
Buffy’s fate as the Slayer is set in stone. As career week arrives, Buffy becomes bummed that she can’t be anything but the Slayer. Spike is working on a cure for Drusilla. He gets a transcriber to decode a book stolen from Giles. Spike is working with the transcriber and Drusilla wants his attention. He blows up at her and she starts to pout. He apologizes and then kisses her very romantically. She forgives him and he goes back to work on the book.
When they find that the book is in code, and the transcriber can’t crack it, Drusilla looks to her tarot cards for an answer. When they find out that the book needs a key, Spike and Drusilla dance together. When making her rounds at the cemetery, Buffy finds the transcriber, named Dalton, and another vampire stealing something from a mausoleum. She kills the vampire, but Dalton gets away, and returns to Spike. When she arrives home, Buffy finds Angel there, and he warns her of grave danger, as usual. They chat for a bit, and Buffy reveals her childhood obsession with Dorothy Hamill.
Giles begins to worry about what happened at the cemetery. Dalton has stolen a cross which is the key to the code. Spike decides that if Drusilla is to survive he must get rid of Buffy. He calls for the Order of Taraka – a group of bounty hunters of the most deadly kind. They will keep coming until Buffy is dead. Giles and Buffy go back to the mausoleum and Giles finds the name “duLac” on the wall. He puts the pieces together to find that Spike is using the book and the cross to restore Drusilla to full health. Giles then goes back to the library to try to find out what the book says. Meanwhile, the assassins are coming. Pretending to be normal citizens they position themselves to kill Buffy, but all in their own individual ways.
Buffy gets out of helping with book deciphering to go and skate with Angel. Then one of the assassins shows up and attempts to kill Buffy. Angel gets there just in time to try and save her. Then Buffy cuts his throat with her skate. Then Angel looks at the assassin’s ring and freaks out. He tells Buffy to run and hide, which is something Buffy has never done. Then he acts shy because he doesn’t want Buffy to see him as a vampire. But she says she didn’t even notice. They kiss and are unaware of another girl watching them. She sees Buffy kissing Angel and prepares to kill them both. Back at the library Giles, Xander and Willow can’t find Buffy. Giles begins to panic because he knows what is in store for Buffy and Angel. He sends Xander after her and asks him to go with Cordelia since she has a car.
Angel goes for help. He goes to a bar where vampires hang out. The bartender, Willy, is his source of help. He asks him who sent the assassins and Willy refuses to answer. Angel smashes his head against the bar and threatens to kill him. Meanwhile, Buffy gets really scared due to the multiple warnings of death. She goes to Angel’s place and falls asleep in his bed. In his bar, Willy is saved from Angel by the girl who observed him with Buffy earlier, and she confronts Angel. She corners him and then locks him in a caged area where he can’t get out. The sun will burn him alive in this trapped space within a few hours.
As Buffy lies in Angel’s apartment, she is awoken by Angel’s attacker, who matches her every blow with ease. As Buffy stops the fight, desperate for answers, the girl informs her of her identity. She is Kendra… the vampire Slayer…
TRIVIA
Actress Bianca Lawson originally auditioned for and won the role of Cordelia. She turned down the role for a part she had been committed to already in the show Goode Behaviour. When asked about the situation she had this to say: “Well, there’s a period in a season where you audition for all the pilots, and you never know…so you kind of audition for everything. At the time I had done a lot for Sister, Sister and the writers of that told me they were going to write a new show and put me in it. A couple of years later they did, they wrote a part for me in this new show and named the character Bianca. I just felt a kind of loyalty to those writers. And who knew that Buffy was going to become the phenomenon that it did?” Her accent on the show is not her real accent and the actress herself hated it: “I really hated that accent! I got the part, and I didn’t originally have an accent. Then, literally the night before, they said, “What about a Jamaican accent?” So it’s one of those things where, y’know, I just had to put it on tape, but I didn’t have a chance to get comfortable with it. And the thing is, certain things – if you say it properly [in Jamaican patois], people don’t really fully understand it, so they would change things. They’d say, “Well, say it like this” and it’s like, “Would that be accurate in that accent though?” “It doesn’t matter because no-one’s going to understand you!” So different people were giving their interpretations of it. I was like “But everyone’s going to think that I’m doing it wrong!” So personally, I wasn’t happy with the accent!”
Willy the snitch appears for the first time in this episode. He appears four more times throughout the next two seasons.
This is the first instance where the Slayer mythology is hinted at. If one Slayer dies, the next is called, and that is how Kendra is the Slayer. If Buffy dies again, then the Slayer line shouldn’t be affected. The line now runs through Kendra. This problem ends in the final episode when every girl in the world with the potential to be a Slayer is made one by Willow’s spell.
CONTINUITY
Dalton, Spike and Drusilla’s henchman who steals the duLac cross, returns again in Surprise.
Kendra Young arrives in Sunnydale. She was called to be the Vampire Slayer after Buffy’s brief death in Prophecy Girl.
Willow mentions to Giles that she has frog fear (which is odd because she has a stuffed frog in her bedroom in Inca Mummy Girl), and Buffy later uses it as a distraction technique in Killed by Death.
GOOFS
When Buffy and Kendra fight, Kendra throws Buffy into a table and the table breaks. But in the next shot, the pieces are gone.
Why does Dalton need to wear glasses? I thought that vampires had excellent sight. Perhaps it’s a fashion statement.
When the assassin gets off the bus the steps are a different colour in the first shot than in the second.
When Buffy climbs in her window to find Angel in her bedroom, her shade is up. In the next shot the shade is down.
Angel’s reflection is briefly seen in a picture frame in Buffy’s room.
How did Kendra know where Angel lived?
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
The Watcher's Guide 