End of Season 2 (2.13-2.22)

2.13 Surprise

We hear the Buffy/Angel love theme for the first time.

BUFFY: I'm sorry, were we talking?

Buffy confides in Willow that she and Angel may be about to "seize the moment", but Willow is at a much earlier stage with Oz.

WILLOW: I said "date"!

On the way to her surprise party, Buffy spots vampires:

JENNY: Buffy... maybe you shouldn't...

BUFFY: Sorry, sacred duty yadda yadda yadda.

Oz is the first person not to be really surprised when he finds out what's going on.

XANDER: Yeah, vampires are real, a lot of them live in Sunnydale, Willow will fill you in.

WILLOW: I know it's hard to accept at first...

OZ: No, actually, it explains a lot!

Jenny drives Buffy and Angel to "the docks" - Sunnydale's seaport, presumably. (Later Buffy suggests it has "shipping yards, airports...") Angel gives Buffy a claddagh ring which she hangs onto well into the next season. Xander is already looking on the bright side of Angel being gone.

WILLOW: You've thought way too much about this.

By the time we get to the real love scene - beautifully lit through rain on a window - we're hearing their theme for the third time and it feels familiar.

ANGEL: I love you. I try not to, but I can't stop.

Actually Angel up to this point is a bit like a teenager. Scared a lot of the time, uncertain in his relationship with a girl, and no self-control when it matters.

2.14 Innocence

WILLOW: I knew it! I knew it! Well, not "knew it"
in the sense of having the slightest idea

There's so much in this episode it was hard to keep up.

UNCLE: Yes. It is not justice we serve, it is vengeance.

JENNY: You're a fool. We're all fools.

Once again, Xander is the bravest - he saves Willow from Angel with a cross, and comes up with a plan based on his extensive army knowledge from Halloween.

CORDELIA: Does looking at guns make you want to have sex?

XANDER: I'm 17. Looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex.

contrasted with an immediately following scene where Oz declines making out because it would be "on the empty side".

ANGEL: (to The Judge) don't you look spiffy?

Of course there's the brilliant bit with the rocket launcher, and then a particularly touching scene in Giles' car:

GILES: All you will get from me is my support, and my respect.

2.15 Phases

Willow worries that the dangerous wild animal, which may have bitten girl-harassing Larry, may also have harmed bunnies.

OZ: Don't worry. They might not look it but bunnies can really take care of themselves.

Using his experience as a hyena, Xander figures out Larry could be the werewolf, confronts him (mentioning that he's gone through the same thing himself) and has to deal with Larry coming out as gay. Then while Willow and Cordelia get together for study he saves Buffy by staking the newest vampire and comforts her over Angel and they share a moment.

XANDER: Oh no, my life's not too complicated...

Discovering you're a werewolf complicates things too.

OZ: That's fairly freaksome. May take a couple of days to get used to.

2.16 Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

Angel creeps Buffy out and Cordelia breaks up with Xander on Valentines Day.

XANDER: I have a plan. We use me as bait.

BUFFY: You mean, make Angel come after you?

XANDER: No I mean chop me into little pieces and stick me on hooks for fish to nibble at, cause that would be more fun than my life.

The authentic sound of teen angst... we also see that Xander has a sign saying "Toxic Waste" on his bedroom door, when Willow joins the throng of women wanting Xander - all of them except Cordelia. Jenny is especially funny. Sensibly Xander does what you do when you secretly cast a spell that goes wrong - he turns to Giles for help.

GILES: I can't believe you'd be fool enough to do something like this.

XANDER: Oh no - I'm twice the fool it takes to do something like this.

Amy turns Buffy into a rat (it's kind of her trademark), and while Buffy avoids lame perils like a cat and a mousetrap, Xander goes from one danger to another, the best of which is being saved from Angel by Drusilla, because she wants to give Xander eternal life ("D'you think we could start with coffee?")

It's not an episode that's strong on quotes but it's one of the funniest. Must have been fun to make.

2.17 Passion

ANGEL: It lives, so it must die, in time.

The first episode to include a voice-over.

Buffy's concerned that Angel has access to her house, and Cordelia realises he has access to her car.

XANDER: Now you're doomed to having to give him and his vamp pals a lift whenever they feel like it. And those guys never chip in for gas.

Buffy knows she has to tell her mom something...

JOYCE: I've read all the parenting books, you can not surprise me.

...but maybe not the truth yet.

Jenny visits the Magic Store (appearing for the first time) for an Orb of Thesulah, and reveals that she's working on a program to translate the Ritual of Restoration that would use it, to restore someone's soul.

Joyce has a narrow escape from Angel, but the Magic Store owner doesn't escape and neither does Jenny.

The scene where Giles finds her body isn't the most touching - he allows himself to be manipulated - but the scene where Angel watches from outside when Buffy and Willow get the news is genuinely emotional.

Giles has a pretty good go at Angel - another hint what he's capable of - and so does Buffy until she has to save Giles.

BUFFY: You can't leave me - I can't do this alone.

At the end, Jenny's floppy disk drops between two desks unnoticed. Kids these days wouldn't know what one was. They must be pretty confused by all the failing to reach each other by telephone, too.

2.18 Killed by Death

Buffy has the flu that's going round.

CORDELIA: We're all concerned how gross you look.

Buffy fights Angel (strange how she can see with her hair covering her face the whole time) and ends up in hospital, where we learn that she saw her cousin Celia die in hospital when she was 8. Flashbacks of 8 year old Buffy playing superheroes.

She explains that kids are dying and she might be up against Death.

XANDER: Oh, if he asks you to play chess, don't even do it, he's a whizz.

Mostly it's an excuse to talk about opponents that aren't monsters you can kill, a theme to be much expanded on in later seasons.

Xander bravely faces off with Angel but completely fails to give Cordelia any credit for being continually helpful and faithful, even when she points out his way of watching Buffy's "back".

In a not terribly convincing series of events, Buffy gives herself the same flu virus again by taking a diluted form of it orally, which takes only minutes to work, and knows that she'll find the monster in the basement, because the children's ward just happens to contain a door with a prominent "Basement Access" sign.

GUARD: We can do this the easy way... (we've heard this before)

WILLOW: Frogs! Frogs! Get them off me!

Buffy kills the monster (easily) and - as ever - it's Xander who's there for her afterwards. Maybe Angel and Cordelia are right about him still being into her.

2.19 I Only Have Eyes For You

Buffy averts a murder and so is in the principal's bad books again.

SNYDER: I'm no stranger to conspiracy.

Willow has taken over Jenny's classes and found "a bunch of files and Internet sites on paganism and magic and stuff" - and so it begins.

ANGEL: (to Spike, in a wheelchair) you gotta roll with the punches.

And something else starts - a trailer for Season 3 in a reprise of the principal/police exchange at the end of School Hard:

SNYDER: We're on a hellmouth. Sooner or later, people
are gonna figure that out.

POLICE CHIEF: The city council was told that you could handle this job. If you feel that you can't, perhaps you'd like to take that up... with the Mayor!

SNYDER: I'll handle it.

Also contains one of my favourite lessons from Giles:

GILES: To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It's not done because people deserve it - it's done because they need it.

2.20 Go Fish

We learn that Sunnydale has a beach where high school students can hang out of an evening.

CORDELIA: I think I've lost all will to cheerlead.

This is actually a better episode than I remembered. It's full of twists and misdirects.

BUFFY: unfortunately we have a lot of "something elses" in this town. Goodnight.

GAGE: Hey! Walk me home?

And there's the scene where we see Xander in a swimsuit stretching credibility that he's a lazy 17 year old.

2.21 Becoming, Part 1

Another opening with a voice-over by Angel, about his becoming a vampire. Flashbacks throughout the episode show us what we've already been told.

WILLOW: Well, I've been going through her files and... researching the black arts, for fun, educational fun, and I may be able to work this.

After a pretty brief warning about the danger, Giles gives in and hands her the Orb of Thesulah he'd been using as a paperweight. Meanwhile Angel and Drusilla bring home the Demon Acathla.

SPIKE: It's a big rock. I can't wait to tell my friends. They don't have a rock this big.

Flashback to Angel's meeting with the mysterious Whistler, and Buffy becoming the slayer.

WATCHER: There isn't much time. You must come with me. Your destiny awaits.

BUFFY: I don't have a destiny. I'm destiny-free, really.

But she is, and Angel wants to help, and Whistler refers to "our side".

KENDRA: I call it Mr. Pointy.

BUFFY: You named your stake?

KENDRA: ...Yes.

BUFFY: Remind me to get you a stuffed animal.

Sadly Kendra suffers the fate of all slayers too soon to have a stuffed animal. Whistler gets to do the closing voice over:

WHISTLER: The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

2.22 Becoming, Part 2

Whistler reveals that he put Angel on the road to Sunnydale because he thought Angel would be the one to stop Acathla from destroying the world. The fact that he has Foresight also explains why he just hangs out in Giles' apartment - he knew Buffy would be coming.

BUFFY: What are you, just some immortal demon sent down to even the score between good and evil?

WHISTLER: Wow. Good guess.

A whole world is hinted at here, that's never expanded on, at least not in Buffy.

SPIKE: I want to save the world.

Spike suddenly turns out to be the funny one. The scene with him and Joyce sitting silently in the living room is actually funnier than Joyce's denial phase:

JOYCE: Honey, are you sure you're a slayer? I mean, have you tried not being a slayer?

Snyder gets to expel Buffy, and points out something that might explain why we so rarely see the police around.

SNYDER: In case you haven't noticed, the police of Sunnydale are deeply stupid.

Snyder has a cellphone. How come not one of the kids does?

After an excellent swordfight we have possibly the weepiest moment in the whole series.

BUFFY: I love you.

ANGEL: I love you.

BUFFY: Close your eyes.

ANGEL: ...Buffy?