Buffy The Vampire Slayer

(S01E08) I’ve caught season one of Buffy a few times, between the reruns shown on TV and the DVD set I own. For some reason, when I started watching this episode, I was taken aback at how things were starting; Jenny Calendar was introduced this soon? And she’s not a new teacher? Wait, I’m missing something here, right?

Maybe I’m just getting old or I’ve just taken too long between watchings of season one to remember this episode, but I could have sworn Jenny came later on. Obviously she makes a greater presence next season. Silly point of trivia: did you know Jenny Calendar was originally going to be named Nicki Calendar, though they made the name change due to possible confusion with Nicholas Brendon?

There’s just something about looking back at television shows and movies that reference technology that has to make you laugh. The whole notion of what the internet was and how computers communicate with each other (and with people) seems so ridiculous when seen nearly ten years later, but at the time people probably thought it was kinda neat.

Not one of the top episodes, I have to say, though they seem to always throw in some important happenings within these relative flops, like Ms. Calendar’s first appearance. We also see a greater foundation for Willow’s knack for computers. It’s great to see how much Giles supposedly loathes Jenny, though we know what comes of that eventually.

I little visit over at the Wikipedia entry for this episode, and I saw I wasn’t the only one who noticed the varying birthdates for Buffy when Molock scans the school files. One date showed October 24th, 1980 and the other showed May 6th, 1979. Yet on the Wikipedia page for Buffy Summers, it states her birthdate as sometime in January. The explanation fans are giving for this anomaly is Molock’s corrupting of the data on the network. I’ll believe it more simply that the writers never established Buffy’s birthday before writing this episode and just threw something together for the scenes on the show. I mean, fans aren’t crazed enough to look that closely at this stuff, are they? Nah.

Main points of interest in this episode:
 Another no-vampire episode.
 First appearance of Jenny Calendar.
 We sort-of learn Buffy’s birthdate, but not really.

Quote of the episode: Jenny Calendar: "You here again? You kids really dig the library, don’t ya?" Buffy: "We’re literary!" Xander: "To read makes our speaking English good."