Stew’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Retrospective:

 

 

 We sees Cordelia and two of her friends walking through the halls of the school to open the penultimate episode of the first season. They quite literally bump into Buffy, causing the latter to spill her assortment of medieval weaponry to the floor. Buffy makes a lame excuse for why she has them, but Cordy just makes fun of her and walks off. Literally nothing bothers this chick, man.

In class, Cordelia just openly admits she ran over a girl once. She found it deeply traumatic, and was upset when the victim made it all about her and her broken leg. Wait, canonically, when did this happen? Because we know Cordelia was just learning to drive back in the witchcraft episode. So this was a very recent event, right? Is this an open case? Are the cops actively looking for Cordelia?

We discover Cordelia actually cares about her classes when she asks the teacher, Ms. Miller, for help focusing on the assignment. I’m sure this will be fine! Friendly and named teachers have such a good track record on this show.

Cordelia’s prom date makes an off-color remark about wanting to have sexual relations with her, and it’s good to know Joss Whedon definitely at least co-wrote this episode. You can tell he didn’t entirely write it because the follow up line of “As long as she doesn’t blow up like a fat pig” was cut.

 At some point, the school district HAS to say “You know what? You all get all A’s. Please go home and hide under your beds for the rest of the year. We clearly can not guarantee your safety on campus.”

Buffy examines the crime scene and sees “LOOK” written across four of the lockers.Later on, the gang is trying to reason out the attack. Xander says “Maybe it was a vampire bat”, and I know you are expecting me to lambaste him some more, but nope. Puns are the way to my heart. This is Xander’s best moment so far. Don’t keep it up; I already named the series after how crappy you are.

Shortly thereafter, Cordelia and her friend Harmony (whom my wife implies will be more relevant later) are walking along, and an invisible force pushes Harmony down some stairs! So it seems as though the unseen malevolence is targeting our dear Cordy and those near her!Giles and Angel come together in the school, with mopey ass Angel being all “I can’t bear to be around Buffy wah wah” and my being all “I don’t care about this schmuck AT ALL unless he is fighting dual-wielding vamps”. Giles mentions needing some unobtainable Codex book, and Angel agrees to track it down for him. An adventure that I’m sure will be worthy of showing on screen!

There is a flashback to a girl in a bathroom named Marcie (played by one of those “OH, THAT PERSON” actresses, Clea DuVall). She tries to fit in with Cordelia and her friends, but they ignore her completely except to shut her down. Another flashback later on confirms Marcie is the menace; she keeps raising her hand in class, but Ms. Miller calls on other kids. To be fair, like, EVERYONE’S hand is up. What does Marcie want? She didn’t get to answer three questions in a class of, what, twenty kids? At that point, Marcie’s hand turns invisible.

And you know what? I love that this show thinks fuck-all about explaining anything. It’s all “THE HELLMOUTH DID IT”. Why did Billy from last episode pull kids into nightmares? Hellmouth. Why did Marcie turn invisible? Hellmouth. The show just gave itself an out to explain away anything it wants, and you know what? I respect that. It’s lazy writing, but at least it’s something.

Buffy goes skulking about and finds, like, a nest in the ceiling of the school. There’s a bed, a teddy bear, a flute. Apparently Marcie plays the flute. This will be important-ish later. Marcie sneaks up on Buffy with a knife, but elects not to kill her. Buffy takes a copy of her yearbook to the gang, and they see EVERYONE wrote “Have a nice summer” to Marcie, the social Kiss Of Death, I guess.

Marcie tries to murder Ms. Miller by suffocating her with a plastic bag, but CORDELIA of all people makes the save. Marcie writes “LISTEN” on the chalkboard. Cordelia runs off to our heroes for help because she just kind of knows they deal with weird shit. They straight up tell her there is an invisible girl going around attacking people, and Cordy just accepts this. Which, I mean, sure. She’ll rationalize it away by next episode, I’m sure.

Buffy and Cordelia spend some time together, and Cordy opens up about constantly feeling alone, even surrounded by her popular friends. They don’t really know her; they just agree with her and act like they do. During bonding time, Cordelia gets pulled into the ceiling. Buffy follows, but is drugged by Marcie. She wakes up tied to a chair next to Cordelia. Marcie has surgical tools and wants to make Cordelia TRULY memorable. Oh yeah, Marcie writes “LEARN” somewhere to finish her alliterative lesson. I don’t… whatever.

Elsewhere, Willow, Giles, and Xander follow the sound of a flute to a recording device. They get locked in a room leaking natural gas! Before they can all succumb to the fumes, Angel breaks them free and gives Giles the Codex he was looking for. I swear to god, this show had no idea how to fill its run time. We can’t see Angel getting this big-ass deal Codex, but we get a few undramatic minutes of three supporting characters coughing and acting sleepy.

Buffy frees herself from the chair, then realizes she can’t fight what she can’t see. So we get this slow motion scene, with an indoor breeze lightly flitting her hair, where Buffy is listening, but it honest-to-god looks like a Dragon Ball ripoff of someone channeling their chi. LOOK OUT, MARCIE! She’s going Super Slayer! BAM! She punches Marcie!