In the tenth episode of the second season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Kendra and Buffy team up to save Angel, despite many reservations by Kendra. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Buffy.
I ENJOYED THESE THINGS
- HOLY SHIT BUFFY DIED AND KENDRA WAS CALLED AS THE SLAYER AND THIS IS FUCKING WONDERFUL. Does this mean that there’s a chance Buffy could die again and call more slayers? I demand multi-slayer appearances like “The Five Doctors” or something.
- Cordelia’s face.
- CORDELIA AND XANDER KISSING. WOW IT SUDDENLY MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. They’ve got the Ron/Hermione vibe going on. OKAY WAIT. Let me quantify that before any Harry Potter fans call foul. This is just another take on the “opposites attract” thing. I would never in a million years expect the two to kiss, but now it’s obvious it was leading up to this.
- Creating a situation that forces Buffy to examine the fact that she is the Slayer and she’s trying to save a vampire.
- This might be unintentional, but I felt there was a very specific subtext to Drusilla’s torturing of Angel. The entire time she’s doing it, she is telling Angel what he did to her family. I am hoping that this was done specifically to give some sense of closure to Drusilla or to hold Angel accountable for what he did to her all those years ago. It’s not something the writers could have done, but it seemed like a conscious choice to include that in the script. In that sense, I didn’t necessarily feel bad that Angel was being tortured.
- The entire scene where Buffy and Willow discuss Buffy letting Kendra take over. Extremely well-written and acted, and I really love how this show treats identity and the struggles that come with it. And it’s set in high school, when so many teenagers deal with these things I JUST LOVE TALKING ABOUT THAT PERIOD OF TIME IN HUMANS OKAY
- Giles bonding with Kendra.
- The show not making Kendra exactly the same as Buffy, especially giving us a Slayer who not only has accepted her life as the Slayer, but one who enjoys it. I was getting my brutal Side-Eye ready for use when Kendra started talking about her culture back home. (Is that Jamaica? Can I assume that? GOD, DEVELOP THIS SHIT, WRITERS.) When she was explaining how she gave up so much in her life, I thought they were doing this so we could go, “Aw, poor foreign woman! Your life is so dejected and sad!” Thankfully, Kendra outright tells Buffy not to feel sorry for her.
- When the second assassin turns into mealworms. I just screamed NO THANK YOU GO AWAY when it happened.
- MAKING THE POLICE OFFICER ONE OF THE ORDER OF TARAKA. I swear to you, at first I thought it was a test or demonstration to see how “prepared” the students were!!!! AND THEN I REALIZED THIS WAS THE ASSASSIN. Oh lord, what an awesome twist.
- WILLOW AND OZ. WILLOW AND OZ. PLEASE NEVER TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME. IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL. I WANT IT. I WANT IT MORE THAN AIR. Please don’t let this be ruined. Whedon, it’s a beautiful thing, please don’t do it. I just want them to be happy. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK.
- Actually, I missed this in yesterday’s episode, but Xander referred to the group as the Scoobies. Sorry, this is the best nickname of all goddamn time and I am going to adopt it now, approximately fourteen years after the entire world already did. I swear I will catch up with pop culture some day. I SWEAR.
- Look, okay, I love a good trope inversion more than most things, but this episode makes Angel the damsel in distress. Bless this episode. BLESS IT FOREVER.
- I think it’s easy to say that Buffy did make a mistake in this story, and that Kendra was right: Buffy’s feelings for Angel clouded her judgment, and that is why she walked right into a trap without thinking of it.
- “SWITCH!” oh my god the fighting is so much better in this season.
- OH SHIT, GILES AND WILLOW BOTH KILLED A VAMPIRE ONSCREEN. OH SHIT.
- “You and bug people, Xander. What’s up with that?”
- Oh, you’re going to reverse the roles of Spike and Drusilla? YES GOOD. YES, I LOVE SUCH THINGS.
I DID NOT ENJOY THESE THINGS
- Kendra’s accent. I’ve since learned that Bianca Lawson was told to make up the Jamaican accent the night before she started and wasn’t able to study it enough to do it convincingly. I just side-eyed the crew of the show so hard that it could melt gold. The fact that she went out of her way to try to tell them that what she was saying didn’t make sense in the Jamaican patois and they ignored that is straight-up gross to me. UGH WHY YOU GOTTA FUCK UP A GOOD THING.
- Buffy’s attitude towards Kendra is just way too over-the-top for me. Would she really dislike her that much?
- Willy. No one in California speaks like that. Seriously! Get your accents right, Buffy.
- I don’t need Buffy to be super gory and bloody. But Angel had his had stabbed. How come when he is finally set free, his hand’s perfectly fine? Unless that was some sort of metaphysical knife or something.
- There’s still a weird dynamic between Buffy and Kendra that I can’t quite define beyond this: there seems to be an unspoken understanding that because Kendra is not from the US, she doesn’t understand basic things. It bothers me. Like…does Buffy really think Kendra doesn’t know how to fly in an airplane? Yes, I get that the joke is based on the fact that she snuck here in the cargo hold area of a plane. Still, it doesn’t sit right with me.
- I wish Cordelia and Xander kissing wasn’t played as a joke. The music is too much. Couldn’t they just kiss? It was so distracting the first time around that I genuinely thought it was going to be revealed as a daydream or something.
- I miss Jenny Calendar.
OZ/WILLOW was the first time I shipped anything. EVER. OMG I LOVE OZ AND WILLOW IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD I WANT OZ TO BE WITH MORE THAN ME. Seriously, I need my future husband to have good Oz-lines and be Oz-mello and Oz-adorable. *Swoooooon*
I just have to ask, Mark, have you watched Me & My Dick?
Because every time you write "YES GOOD" in any context I hear it in Dazed-Joey-Richter's voice. XD
Buffy died and Kendra became the slayer. Buffy being the Slayer but thinks her failure ruined Kendra’s life. Also Buffy feels territorial about her people her watcher her friends. Sometimes I think Slayers are programmed like some sort of territorial annimal.
Kendra is a Watcher raised slayer thought nothing but slaying, probably hasn’t been out in the world enough to know how to do much of anything.
Something occurred to me while watching this episode that I didn't remember until now: The ritual to restore Dru is supposed to take place at the new moon, and at some point someone mentions that the moon is rising. If the new moon is up in the sky, that means it's daytime, show writers. Which it clearly is not during the ritual.
They sort of flip back and forth between referring to the new moon and the full moon. Either the change was made partway through shooting, or someone missed a line or two in the editing process
I know what you mean about the cheesy music with Xander and Cordy kissing xD Like, I adore that they kissed and I got the same chemistry vibe from them when they were fighting a few episodes back. It seemed sort of subconsciously inevitable. And I think with the music the makers of the show were trying to be all "YES IT'S CHEESY AND SPONTANEOUS, WE KNOW LOL" and deliberately overplaying it, when it might have benefited from some more serious treatment to counteract the cheesy. But I'm willing to roll with it; it made me laugh a little. I just hope the pairing keeps up :3
Also WILLOW AND OZ ARE THE BEST THING EVER ASDFHJAS AWKWARD CUTENESS RULES!!!!!!!
AND I LOVE SPIKE AND DRUSILLA (role reversal ftw) AND BUFFY AND ANGEL (moar role reversal! sometimes) AND GILES AND MISS CALENDAR ARE THE GREATEST
ROMANCE ALL AROUND!!!!!
I never saw it as Kendra not knowing things because she was foreign (I watched it dubbed, so I didn’t even know she was foreign). I think she doesn’t know basic things because she did nothing in her entire life except train to be a Slayer.
It's interesting about Bianca Lawson's terrible accent. I feel much better about her performance now (although not better about the writers' choices in where she came from). I can't understand how she only has one set of clothing, has to arrive in a cargo hold (with no warm clothing?!), and yet wears more make up than anyone else on the show (even the mummy girl had to ask to borrow lipstick).
"The monkey's the only cookie animal that gets to wear clothes, you know that? You have the sweetest smile I've ever seen. [And the hippo's all like…] I have my hippo dignity. I mock you with my monkey pants." I LOVE OZ!
A few comments about some of the conclusions you jumped to about Kendra:
She was taken from her family at a very early age (she doesn't actually remember them) and was raised by her Watcher. While she was told that they gave her up willingly, we don't really know if he told her the truth.
Since then she has done nothing but study how to be a Slayer, without having much of any exposure to *any* sort of culture, that wasn't strictly controlled by her Watcher.
(And they did hire an accent coach for her, and they worked extensively to develop a Caribbean accent for her (not specifically Jamaican), but the director decided at the last minute that it was too hard for the audience to understand, and had her tone it down.)