Buffy Season Two Episode Nineteen

This entry will be hurried and sloppy because I want to get my thoughts down before my memory of the episode fades utterly, and I have to be somewhere in an hour, so corrections and additions will come when I get back, but HOLY AMAZING COW! How did they pull this off? I was sure at the start that (1) this episode was yet more time-killing while the series waited to take care of Angel in the season finale; (2) so, like the previous episode, it wouldn't have much to do with the story arc that we've been intermittently getting since Episode Thirteen; (3) ghost of a dead boy from the Fifties is almost guaranteed hokum; and (4) in fact, My So-Called Life, the gold standard for teens on TV as far as I'm concerned, had already fumbled and flubbed their attempt at Ghost Boy From The '50s several years earlier. So anyway, as this was going along, I was saying to myself, "OK, they haven't made any wrong moves yet, I'm actually taken by the mystery here, but still, it seems wrong that they've forgotten their ongoing task." And then, man, did they pull one on me, not just relating the story to the arc but nailing it to the themes and to poor Buffy's emotions, or nailing Buffy's emotions to this story, leading us by the nose and whomping us with the connection but, owing to strong dialogue and acting, getting me to absolutely buy into and feel as profound a tale that fundamentally was constructed out of a spare and worked-over melodramatic scene with sentimental paperback psychology layered on top of it. I guess people's lives as they're told often are melodrama and sentiment, even if as lived they're much deeper, but smart drama can suggest a world of thoughts and feelings beyond the simplicities of the story. This episode is about whether Buffy Can Find A Way To Forgive Herself. Also, I don't actually get the plot logic of the conclusion, though that's no matter since we're pushing for emotional "logic" here anyway, but now we go down under the cut.

( How does James get his ending? )

( EDIT Gellar as actress )

( EDIT Cordelia watch )