Welcome to Rewatching Buffy, the part of the blog where I rewatch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each Tuesday evening, you’re invited to join me as I attempt to rediscover what made me love this show 20 years ago.

Earshot

• We open on Buffy running from a really weird looking demon. No, wait… there are two of them.
• Uh… they don’t have mouths.
• Buffy kills one while the other gets away. And some of the demon’s blood seems to have absorbed into her skin.
• That’s probably important.
• No progress on what the mayor’s ascension could mean. Which, to Buffy, means the fake Angelus/Faith team-up was for nothing.
• Buffy’s exposure to the demon, according to Giles, may lead to her taking on an aspect of the demon.
• She’s worried that it’ll turn into some kind of exterior change… like horns or a tail of some kind.
• Buffy goes on patrol and Angel decides to check up on her. He’s worried about the Faith of it all.
• But Buffy is pretty much just concerned with the whole “aspect of the demon” thing.
• The next day at school, Buffy hears a thought Xander has about Cordelia. Then she realizes that she can read minds.
• Walking through the hall she’s hearing all the thoughts. She thinks it’s pretty cool.
• Buffy uses her new power for personal gain. She suddenly does very well in her lit class.
• She then realizes she may be able to visit Angel and find out how he really feels about the whole Faith thing from last week.
• But when she’s with him, she gets nothing. Can’t read the mind of the vampires.
• So he tells her to just ask whenever she wants to know something.
• Giles discovers that what is happening to Buffy has happened to a man in Ecuador. He couldn’t shut it off, and so he shut himself off from the world.
• In the cafeteria, Buffy hears the crowd of thoughts. She’s getting overwhelmed until she hears one thought break through: “This time tomorrow, I’m gonna kill you all.”
• She tries to figure out who had that disturbing thought, but it gets to be too much and she passes out.
• Giles takes her home while the others try to figure out who could want to take out the entire student body.
• Joyce seems nervous about being around Buffy. What doesn’t she want her daughter to hear?
• “You had sex with Giles?!”
• Yeah… it happened under the influence of the Band Candy.
• The Scooby Gang set about interrogating people who might have been in the cafeteria.
• Signs start pointing toward the creepy editor of the school paper.
• Giles and Wesley discover a cure that may or may not work, but it requires the heart of the Mouthless demon that got away at the beginning of the episode.
• Luckily, Angel is there in a pinch.
• Angel makes Buffy drink the potion (with real demon heart bits!).
• Back at the school, we find Jonathan in the clock tower with a high powered rifle.
• Buffy is cured, just as the gang confront the creepy school paper editor.
• Turns out, editor was avoiding them because he thought Oz was looking for him because of his review of their band.
• In the newspaper office, Buffy arrives and they find a letter from Jonathan admitting that he’s about to do something a little crazy.
• Buffy finds him in the clock tower and gets up there in time to stop him.
• He thinks that everyone thinks he’s an idiot. She admits that she doesn’t… no one thinks much of him at all. She gives him a big speech about how every person out there doesn’t care about his pain because they’re busy dealing with their own.
• “My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it.”
• She talks him down. And he admits that he was there to kill himself, not anyone else.
• So that means the voice she heard belongs to someone else.
• Xander, meanwhile, strolls through the cafeteria and notices the lunch lady dumping rat poison into a big pot. There’s your murderer.
• Buffy sends her on a one-way trip to Lunch Lady Land.
• Body count: Mouthless demons – 2