#like???? giles's relationship to computers was a metaphor for his relationship with jenny?????

[coraniaid]

As frustrating as I find the way that Jenny Calendar is often written in the show, it is nonetheless kind of bizarre to me how the fandom has collectively -- and fairly consistently -- decided to give her a set of personality traits that she simply doesn't show any sign of having in canon.

Remember that, in canon, it's Giles (and not Jenny) who rebels at the idea of sending Buffy to die fighting the Master in Prophecy Girl (Jenny only comments that she's surprised the Slayer is "so little"). It's Giles, too, who Buffy turns to for reassurance when she thinks she's made any serious mistake (whether that's in how she treated her friends in When She Was Bad or her role in Angel losing his soul in Innocence). It's Joyce (and, for obvious reasons, not Jenny) who looks after Buffy, Willow and Xander when they all get sick at the end of Killed By Death and who lets the group hang out in her kitchen (at the end of Helpless, for example) and who offers to make everyone hot chocolate after letting them spend the night at her house in Restless. It's adult figures who appear in only a single episode, like Teacher's Pet's Dr Gregory and Beauty and the Beasts' Mr Platt, who offer Buffy praise and encouragement at a time she's not getting it from Joyce or Giles.

Jenny Calendar's only relationship to Buffy in canon -- beyond being her metaphorical father's on-again, off-again girlfriend -- is to be variously somebody she blames (for reasons the plot isn't ever quite clear on) for her boyfriend having lost his soul and then somebody she blames herself for not being able to save from said soulless boyfriend. Buffy and Jenny don't even seem to like each other. Jenny does have more of a connection with Willow, but it's not a particularly nuturing or parental one (she gets Willow to help her out in class because Willow is obviously competent, but she doesn't encourage Willow to think about plans for her future or ask about Willow's home life or really offer any kind of support beyond being one of her school teachers). I can believe Willow looks up to Jenny a lot and even has a (repressed) crush on her, and she does seem to shape her life post-Season 2 around Jenny in ways the show never explicitly acknowledges ... but that's all stuff happening on Willow's side; I don't think there's evidence Jenny is equally invested in their relationship. She hardly seems thrilled when Xander and Willow show up to interupt her first date with Giles. Her only involvement in Cordelia and Xander's lives is to make them come in on a Saturday for remedial computer science. She only interacts with neophyte magic practioner Amy Madison in one [terrible] episode, and said interaction is limited to squabbling over the romantic affections of Xander Harris [look, I said it was a terrible episode...]. She never even meets Kendra; they don't appear in any of the same episodes.

And yet for some reason we have all -- and I include myself in this -- apparently decided that, okay, maybe Joyce and Giles would let Faith live out of a motel for months, but if she'd been around in Season 3 there's no way Jenny would've let that slide. Jenny is The Good Parent, you see. But ... why? Because she referred to Buffy and her friends as "the kids" a grand total of one time? What shred of evidence is there in canon to support this reading?

[marigoldbaker]

no see now i’m thinking about that AGAIN because that scene in gingerbread felt SO bizarre. like, jenny’s horrific and traumatizing death took up half a season, and we get another “haha giles doesn’t like computers” moment as though she never even existed? i think it’s particularly significant that he calls them a “fad” and it’s supposed to be a little comedy beat when by calling them a fad he’s underwriting the life’s work of someone he loved. it’s one of many moments that obviously feeds into jenny being neatly erased by the narrative after a certain point -- seen most glaringly in this scene, where we’re reintroduced to Giles Hates Computers and expected to believe that his feelings towards computers have never wavered when they were so transparently linked to his feelings towards jenny (the fact that he hates computers, and that all of his conflict towards jenny is OVER computers, and that then he subsequently falls in love with jenny after learning that she’s actually just as dedicated to information, knowledge, and the supernatural as he is....it’s legitimately right there).

but the fact that there’s this retroactive attempt to pretend that she was never there is particularly baffling when looking at the fact that they never seem to actually replace her with anything. we are supposed to just genuinely not care enough about her to remember her in moments where giles is squaring up with a computer. and i really don’t think that it’s in character for giles TO still harbor this antipathy for computers after jenny’s death, particularly when considering the fact that it would be just this supremely awful metaphorical statement given the information that we have.

giles and jenny’s relationship starts with them beefing over computers, but if examined more closely, it could be argued that their fight is really about giles saying that he thinks jenny is shallow and not actually as important or worldly as he is. his realization that jenny is actually a woman of substance comes when she presents a facet of herself that reveals she uses computers in a way that is not something he would ever have thought of, and that actually incorporates a part of his life that is really important to him. so to then have a scene in season three where giles is saying “computers are stupid and worthless” when the entirety of his connection with jenny was about him questioning these beliefs and learning to love things outside of his comfort zone -- obviously it could be argued that this is a larger metaphor for jenny being unimportant, but the time the show spent on depicting giles’s grief & how fundamentally broken he was by jenny’s death makes this just nonsensical and totally out of character.

i can definitely see a situation where giles avoids computers, but never a situation where he actually shit-talks them, and i think that this is the only place where i’m not willing to allow the show its “jenny isn’t important but she is but she isn’t” paradox. this is fundamentally incompatible with everything that the story has told us about giles and jenny’s relationship, even if we’re going with the We Don’t Talk About Jenny principle. and even IF i am reading way too deep into the i robot argument, i cannot imagine a situation where giles himself would be comfortable with labeling computers as a unilaterally useless fad when jenny’s death came about because she was using one to translate the ritual to resoul angel. he would essentially be shit-talking jenny at that point, and obviously that’s just not something he would ever do. it doesn’t mesh.

[coraniaid]

Most of the notes I made for myself while watching Passion were complaints or criticisms, but I do think it’s worth saying up front that I honestly love this episode.  For all its flaws I completely agree with the popular critical consensus on this one: I think it’s a genuinely great episode of television.  One of the best parts of the high school seasons and quite possibly the highest peak the show has managed to hit so far.

In a lot of ways it picks up where Innocence left off.  Both episodes lean heavily into the metaphorical reading of the newly soulless Angel as an older boyfriend who turned out to be a creep after Buffy slept with him (“Don’t tell me,” says Joyce early on.  “He's not the same guy you fell for.”).  Both episodes work very hard to show us that Angel is not redeemable – first with the Judge last season declaring him “clean” of humanity, now with Angel killing Jenny.  But Passion hits a little harder, I think, because there’s no counterpart to that rocket launcher scene.  The good guys don’t get to enjoy even a partial victory here.

Other thoughts:

I think this is a surprisingly good episode for Joyce, in a way we don’t typically really get until Season 3.  It hits the right balance between showing that Buffy and her mother struggle to communicate but that this doesn’t mean they don’t bother deeply care about each other.  Buffy’s concern for her mother is paramount throughout the first half of the episode (and Giles’ insistence that she can’t tell her mother about being a Slayer is more than slightly hypocritical, given that we’ve already been told that his parents always knew about him being a Watcher).  

Of course Joyce herself isn’t perfect – she doesn’t know the whole story, and yes Angel only tells her that he slept with Buffy because he knows Buffy well enough to anticipate Joyce’s reaction – but however bad The Talk goes it doesn’t feel like this really had as much of an impact as Angel would have been hoping for.  It doesn’t seem to have really damaged their relationship.  I believe Joyce when she says she loves Buffy “more than anything in the world” even if (she thinks) Buffy’s trying to shut her out.  And I think this particular conversation, and the way Buffy can only say “you’re not” when her mother suggests she’s “grossing her out” is the sort of thing Season 5 is calling back to when, three years from now, Buffy will tell Giles that “my mom is gone … and I loved her more than anything … and I don’t know if she knew.”

(I think the shot of Joyce hugging Willow when they get the call from Giles is a nice touch too.  That whole scene from Angel’s perspective is so good, isn’t it?  The whole framing device with his voiceover too.  It should probably be kind of cheesy, but it’s not.  Maybe it helps that I just think Angel is a really fun villain.)

Speaking of that scene: everything between Willow and Jenny is so sad knowing what’s coming up later.  I remember being slightly surprised, back in Season 1, that Willow didn’t seem to immediately warm to Jenny despite their mutual interest in computers (“how come she’s in the club?” she protested in Prophecy Girl).  But I think the show has done just enough by the halfway point of this episode to make it seem credible that of all the Scoobies Willow in particular would be hardest hit by her death.  (The juxtaposition of Willow being excited and eager to take over Jenny’s teaching responsibilities at the start of the episode and then how somber she looks when she is taking over for her at the end is particularly good.)

It rankles slightly, in the way I’ve complained about before, that the script still reduces Jenny to “Giles’ girlfriend” at times and that one of the reactions to her death – by somebody who knew Jenny! – is “poor Giles”.  Nobody even thinks to suggest that Angel might have killed Jenny for some reason other than hurting her boyfriend.  Equally Giles seems unnecessarily dismissive of Buffy’s concern about the fact that Angel has been sneaking into her room at night at the start of the episode.  But the scene with Jenny’s boyfriend attacking Angel in the factory (after the rather complacent advice of “you mustn’t let Angel get to you.  No matter how provocative his behavior may become”) and then Buffy coming to save him, giving up the chance to kill Angel herself to pull him out of the fire, is so good I’m almost persuaded to overlook it.

And the mere fact of Jenny Calendar’s death itself – despite the weird retcon about her past and the fact the show insists she betrayed the Scooby Gang while showing us she didn’t, despite the fact they bury her under a name she never used in the show, despite the fact that after this season ends Jenny’s name will only be spoken on screen twice, despite the fact it establishes the precedent that will later be used for any number of increasingly questionable ‘shocking’ deaths in the Buffyverse – despite everything, it’s still utterly heartbreaking.

Jenny isn’t the first recurring character the show’s killed off, but she’s the first recurring character of any significance (with apologies to Jesse and Principal Flutie).  Or, I suppose, technically she’s just the first recurring character of any significance who dies and doesn’t get better.  The first recurring character who won’t be coming back.  The first recurring character that Buffy and her friends show any sign of missing.  And the first recurring character that the audience will care about losing.

I just think this episode could have been even better if the writers themselves cared about Jenny Calendar at all.