"One Girl In All the World" Re-Watch: "I Only Have Eyes for You" & "Go Fish"

 Buffy the Vampire Slayer

We only have four episodes left in this season and you'd think that the last four were just ratcheting up the tension until the finale, but.... sadly, one episode out of the four is the definition of a dud. Let's get to it.

"I Only Have Eyes for You"

[Angeus furiously washing himself]

Spike: "You might want to let up. They say when you've drawn blood, you've exfoliated."

Angelus: "What do you know about it? I'm the one who was freakin' violated. You didn't have this thing in you."

Drusilla: "What was it? A demon?"

Angelus: "Love!"

Drusilla: "Poor Angel."

There's a poltergeist haunting Sunnydale High. After couples and then unconnected people find themselves acting out a psychodrama that ends with one of them getting shot, Buffy and the Scooby Gang do some investigating. Buffy learns that the spirit is a boy who was having an affair with a teacher and killed her after she broke it off. Buffy has no sympathy for the spirit but that might change when she and Angelus become the next actors in the drama.

These two crazy kids.

This episode is kind of deceptive. As I mentioned in the opening of this post, there are only four episodes left in the season, so you'd think that they'd all have something to do with Angelus and whatever his plan for Buffy is, so its a bit surprising when it feels like we are getting a standalone episode. But then, things shift and it suddenly gets hyperfocused on Buffy and Angelus. And that is what makes this a great episode of "Buffy."

The cold open of this episode is great and sets the tone right away. Buffy is watching her friends and other people dancing and being close with their significant others. She is above it all. She can't be part of it and that is driven home when an attractive, seemingly nice boy comes up to her and talks to her about the Sadie Hawkins Dance, a dance where the girls ask the boys. He just wants her to know that she could ask him and he'd say yes. Buffy lets him down gently, definitely not ready to jump back into anything after what happened with Angel. We then shift to a couple having a heated argument in the halls of Sunnydale High. When the boy pulls out a gun, Buffy is there to stop him. As soon as the gun leaves his hand, it vanishes and neither teen knows why they were fighting or what was going on.

We haven't really had a good old fashioned ghost story on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" yet and so its nice to get that here. Snakes appear in a classroom and one bites Cordelia in the face. When the Scoobies go to the school to try to expel the poltergeist things really get spooky. When Cordelia is checking out her face in the mirror, it suddenly becomes disfigured. Buffy hears "I Only Have Eyes for You" playing and sees Jim and his teacher, Grace Newman, dancing but when Jim turns his face to Buffy it is rotting and decomposing. Willow starts being sucked through the floor and is pulled out by Giles at the last minute. As the Scoobies flee the school, it is surrounded by wasps. Classic haunting stuff but in the "Buffy" way.

Buffy has zero empathy or sympathy for Jim. He killed a woman and she isn't going to feel bad for someone who killed someone they claimed to love. I wonder why she'd have such strong feelings about that? Even though Buffy just wants to dispel Jim, it's clear that Jim is working to get the Slayer's attention. Buffy has a dream where she flashes back to see Jim and Grace flirting. The class of '55 yearbook hits the ground. When the gang is driven from the school, Jim takes matters into his own hands and decides to force Buffy to help him.

After losing their last hideout, Angelus, Spike and Drusilla move into an old mansion where Angelus continues to grope Dru in front of Spike who is still in a wheelchair and taunt him. Re-watching this episode I was kind of surprised how much they let them get away with as far as Angelus feeling Dru up and the innuendo that he's throwing at Spike. Spike isn't taking this... sitting down... and he brings up how Angelus isn't doing anything about Buffy, but Angelus declares he's ready to take her out, which is how he ends up at Sunnydale High and getting his body hi-jacked by Jim.

This is where the episode really enters into classic "Buffy" territory. I like how Buffy is acting out Jim's role while Angelus is acting out Grace's. It flips it in a way that shows really didn't in the late 90's. This is a showcase for both Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz. One of the great travesties is that Sarah Michelle never won an Emmy for her work on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and honestly, this would have been her first win if there was any justice in the world. The whole sequence is great. One of the things that I always think of when I think of this show is Buffy yelling "Don't walk away from me, bitch" at Angelus. Buffy does end up shooting Angelus and because he's already dead, Buffy and Angelus are able to do what the other possessed people couldn't, which is complete it. It turns out that Jim accidentally shot Grace and she offers him her forgiveness in the body of Angelus. Watching Buffy and Angelus make out, it reminds viewers that these two did love each other and it wasn't too long ago that we were swooning when they make out. Angelus freaks out when he comes to his senses and abandons his quest to kill Buffy in order to take a Silkwood shower back at the manse.

This is a great episode, but the one part that I struggle with is Giles thinking the poltergeist is Jenny. I get that he's grieving and maybe wants it to be her to see her again, but why would Jenny be doing all this? Why would she have a gun? Giles is smart and this makes it seem like he kind of he isn't. Even after all of this, Buffy doesn't understand why Grace would forgive Jim which doesn't bode well for Angelus if  he maybe happens to get his soul back somehow maybe. We get another hint that Snyder knows what is going on in Sunnydale and another ominous mention of the Mayor. File that away. The episode ends with the reveal that Spike is playing possum. He stands up and gives his wheelchair the old what for.

Grade: A-

"Go Fish"

Willow Rosenberg: "So we're looking for a beastie."

Rupert Giles: "That, uh, eat's humans whole... Except for the skin."

Buffy Summers: "That doesn't make any sense."

Xander Harris: "Yeah, the skin's the best part."

Buffy Summers: "Any demons with high cholesterol?"

[Giles looks at her thoroughly un-amused.]

Buffy Summers: "You're gonna think about that later, mister, and you're gonna laugh."

The Sunnydale High swim team is having a historic season and its is also turning them into monumental jerks. They seem to be getting what's coming to them when two disappear leaving only their skin behind. Buffy becomes "My Bodyguard" to one of the star players that is left and Xander goes undercover as a swimmer to try to figure out who's taking out the only good athletes at Sunnydale High.

Buffy's all wet.

"I Only Have Eyes for You" may have been a nice surprise as it seemed like an episode not really connected to the Buffy and Angelus stuff and then surprise it was, but "Go Fish" is the complete opposite. It's a random episode placed in maybe the worst place of the season and it is a pretty terrible episode. There are a handful of "Buffy" episodes that I really can't stand and this one is definitely one of them. It's bad, y'all. Like, really, really bad. Like, I have told people watching the show for the first time that they should skip it bad.

The way that sexual assault is played for laughs in this episode is truly wild. At the start of the episode, Buffy is flirting a little bit with Cameron Walker, who initially seems nice enough. Buffy agrees to let him drive her to school and in the parking lot after talking about the ocean for what feels like a mind numbing amount of time, he decides that he gets to sleep with Buffy in his car in the school parking lot. Shockingly, Buffy isn't down for that and she clocks him breaking his nose. In Principal Snyder's office, Buffy is the one who gets in trouble for almost being sexually assaulted and defending herself. Coach Carl, the swim team coach, is in the room and he and Cam slut shame Buffy and Cam actually utters the phrase, "Look at what she's wearing" and Buffy actually like considers that her clothes had something do with it! 

You would think that her friends and her Watcher would have her back but, as per usual, they do not. Buffy re-counts the story and admits that she doesn't have a scratch on her ad Cam has a broken nose and like the looks on Willow, Giles and Xander's face make it seem like, she overreacted or she is somehow in the wrong here. Which again is wild. Buffy may be the Slayer but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't put some douchebag in his place when he tries to rape her and like she could have done a lot worse to him than give him a broken nose. This is so fucked y'all.

Not only that, but this episode tries to make it seem like Xander is a sex symbol when he comes out halfway through the episode in a Speedo. Sorry, but no, you're never going to convince me that any of these hot, smart women would willingly want to fuck Xander or think that Xander is hot. I'd believe that vampires were real before I'd ever believe that. No ma'am, Pam.

The episode has its obligatory Angelus appearance. Buffy is trailing Gage Petronzi and they have a bit of a tiff. Gage runs into Angelus and is shitting on Buffy calling her a bitch etc, something that Angelus is happy to co-sign. He decides he's going to kill Gage to make Buffy feel guilty but I think that Angelus is really overestimating how much Buffy cares about this guy but Angelus spits out Gage's tainted blood which is another hint as to what is going on. Which is that Coach Carl has turned the players into fish people using Russian experiments or something. Who cares? I don't. Buffy is threatened with rape yet again by Coach Carl when he tosses her into the sewers to be used by the three fish men, but it's Coach Carl who ends up being buggered by three Creatures from the Black Lagoon.

Honestly, we can just stop talking about this. I will say that these two episodes have quite a few famous faces. I forgot to mention that two time Oscar nominee, John Hawkes, is the janitor in the previous episode. And in this one we get Wentworth Miller from "Prison Break" and various Arrowverse shows, Shane West from "ER" and Conchata Ferrell from "Two and a Half Men." How about that?

Grade: F

Next up, season two wraps up with a two-parter that finds Angelus, Spike and Dru working to use the demon Acathla to suck the world into hell.

What did you think? Do you think "I Only Have Eyes for You" is a classic? How many Emmys do you think SMG should have? What are other reasons that "Go Fish" is hot garbage? Let me know in the comments.