Passion

[Updated April 29, 2013]

In Noel Murray’s review of Passion at the AV Club, he said that this episode was “as good as television ever gets.” I rate Passion higher than Innocence; it’s on my short list for the best episode in the whole series (along with Becoming, The Body, and OMWF), which means in the whole history of television. Interestingly, Joss didn’t officially write it, though rumors say he re-wrote substantial portions of it. I consider those rumors likely true, since Ty King never wrote another episode, which would be inexplicable if he had really produced something as stunning as Passion.

I’ll start at the top, with one of the greatest scenes television has ever produced, one that stunned me when I first watched it and which still blows me away no matter how often I’ve seen it (and yet which, amazingly, has not one but two competitors for the very best in the series IMO). What follows was originally posted at ATPO by Akita in April 2002. Apologies if some of you have seen it before, but it’s so good it’s worth re-reading:

“One of the things I most love about BtVS is the skillful, often artful, way music is used not only to complement, but to add depth to various scenes. And indeed, if you pay attention, it often cuts like a knife. Of course, we can usually understand the words of the songs that play behind the scenes . . . .

Yesterday evening, I finally got a chance to tape "Passion" -- the S2 episode when Angelus kills Jenny Calendar. I ended up watching it several times. Each time I grew more intrigued with the opera music playing in the scene where Giles arrives at his apartment. As a true opera fanatic, I knew the music, of course; it is "O soave fanciulla," a particularly glorious moment in Puccini's ultra- Romantic, enduringly popular "La Bohème."

However, opera is not something with which I would expect the typical (be there such a thing) BtVS fan to be very familiar. And, sure enough, when I checked the shooting script, it says merely: "Giles hear MUSIC - SOMETHING SOFT AND ROMANTIC - coming from an album on his TURNTABLE."

So why choose an opera selection that few will understand? And why that particular opera? Well, Giles (as we learn through the course of the series) is passionate about music (many kinds of music) - - and he surely loves this recording, because the record sounds as if it has been played often. That seriously repressed Giles, who intellectualizes nearly every event in his life, would love something as lush and Romantic as this opera obviously tells us something about him -- or at least affirms what we have already suspected. That Angelus would choose this recording as the backdrop for his sadistic little play also says something about his own cruelty and the twisted nature of his definition of passion. For the passion expressed in the opera scene is a world away from passion as Angelus understands it; it is the innocent passion of first love: it's all trembling first kisses, lovely girls bathed in moonlight. (In the opera, Mimì -- a poor and frail young seamstress [we learn later that she is actually dying of consumption] -- has just met the struggling young poet Rodolfo in his moonlit garret in 19th-century Paris; after telling each other a bit about themselves they realize they are falling in love.)

Here's the way the music in the scene plays out (English "translations" taken largely from William Weaver's translation of the libretto; some from my copy of the complete score).

Earlier in "Passion", Giles and Jenny have begun to mend the break between them; Jenny in fact has said, obviously for the first time aloud, that she loves him. He is expecting to see her later that night, and undoubtedly has some romantic fantasies of his own as to how the evening will turn out (only we the audience know that Jenny is already dead). As this scene opens, we see him walking down the stairs to his apartment. As he comes to the door, he sees a beautiful, long-stemmed, red rose attached to it -- and we can now hear the music swell. It is a tenor/soprano duet:

Rodolfo : Fremon già nell'anima/le dolcezze estreme (repeated 3 times)/Nel bacio freme amore [Already I taste in spirit/The heights of tenderness/Love trembles in our kiss]
Mimì: Ah! Tu sol commandi, amor! Tu sol commandi, amore/Oh! Come dolci scendono/ Le sue lusinghe al core . . .[You rule alone, Oh love!/How sweet his praises/enter my heart . . .]

(During this, GILES tenderly pulls the rose from the door, smells it, smiles, and opens the door, hopeful, but perhaps still fearing to expect too much, because we begin to hear a breathless, slightly awkward exchange between the two lovers. . .)

Mimì: . . .Tu sol comandi, amor! [Love, you alone rule.] (Rodolfo kisses her. She pulls back.) No, per pietà! [No, please.]
Rodolfo: Sei mia! [You are mine!]
Mimì: V' aspettan gli amici . . .[Your friends are waiting . . .]
Rodolfo: Già mi mandi via? [You send me away already?]

(During this, GILES enters his apartment a bit hesitantly, calls out for Jenny, hangs up his coat, looks around, sees the wine, roses, and note, and walks toward them.)

Mimì: Vorrei dir . . .ma non oso . . . [I daren't say . . . what I'd like . . .]
Rodolfo: Di'. [Tell me.]

(On the words "Di'/Tell me", GILES opens the note and reads -- "Upstairs." The conjunction of the words and the act made me gasp when I first heard it.)

Rodolfo to Mimì: O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso/Di mite circonfuso alba lunar [Oh, lovely girl! Oh, sweet face/bathed in the soft moonlight]

(On these lines, GILES glances upward toward the bedroom, smiles sweetly, nearly joyfully, and with great expectation grabs the wine and starts toward the stairs.)

Rodolfo: In te ravviso il sogno . . ./Ch'io vorrei sempre sognar! [I see you in the dream . . ./I'd dream forever!]

(GILES climbs the stairs, sees Jenny on his bed, but only when he arrives at the bedroom door does he realize she is dead. As the champagne bottle drops from his hand, shattering on the floor, we hear Mimì and Rodolfo sing ecstatically:

Ah, tu sol commandi, amor! . . . [Ah! Love, you rule alone! . . .]

Oh, twist the knife. And then twist it one more time, because later as Giles leans against the wall, as Jenny's body is removed, we hear Mimì, alone, sing that line one more time: "Ah! Love, you rule alone! . . ." Then the soundtrack goes briefly totally silent, as the police bring Giles irrevocably back to what happened:

POLICEMAN: Mr. Giles, I need to ask you to come with us . . .

GILES (still dazed): Of course . . . . .yes . . . .procedure.

And lest you still think this is all coincidence, the music has been altered. Although it sounds seamless, in fact the first part we hear (from: "Fremon già nell'anima" to "Di'") in the scene actually comes at the end of the aria/duet in the opera and indeed comes in again in its proper place at the end in the TV scene itself.” 

Making the scene all the more heart-rending is the irony of Giles’ words earlier:  “I know how hard this is for you. (gets a look from Buffy) All right, I don't. But as the Slayer, you don't have the luxury of being a slave to your, your passions. You mustn't let Angel get to you. No matter how provocative his behavior may become.”

Passion would rate in my top 5 for that one scene alone, but it’s filled with brilliant moments: Willow pulling the fish from the envelope; Angelus’s confrontation with Jenny and her murder; the way we see Buffy and Willow react to the news of Jenny’s death while Angelus narrates; Giles’ confrontation with Angelus; Buffy telling Giles she can’t do it without him. Voiceovers are controversial – see Blade Runner – but I think they really work here. The poetry of Angelus’ monologue conveys the devastation of the scene where Buffy and Willow break down far better than any dialogue could. It’s world class.

At the end, Buffy refuses to let Giles’ passion destroy him. She can’t let him leave; she can’t do this alone. She’s not a slave to passion after all.

Some random thoughts:

The title seems ironic given the role of Angelus. He’s as cold-blooded – that is, passionless – a killer as there ever was. “Without passion we’d be truly dead.” Yes he is.

I’ve often thought there’s a good deal of self-interest by the Watchers in the rule forbidding the slayer to disclose her identity. If the identity of the slayer were widely known, the job of the Watcher would be at least as dangerous as the job of mother.

With the focus on music above, you might note (ahem) that in both scenes with Giles and Jenny in the classroom, a variation on the Buffy/Angel theme plays while they speak.

BB&B showed us how love can easily become obsession. Here we get confirmation of Angelus’ obsession with Buffy:

“Buffy:  (stares into space) It's so weird... Every time something like this happens, my first instinct is still to run to Angel. I can't believe it's the same person. He's completely different from the guy that I knew. (looks at Willow)

Willow:  Well, sort of, except...

Buffy:  Except what?

Willow:  (looks at Buffy) You're still the only thing he thinks about.”

Though he doesn’t bite Jenny, there’s still a very sexual vibe when Angelus kills her: “this is where you get off.” Angelus looks like he’s having an orgasm. Making this implication even more distasteful, if that’s possible, is that Giles is Buffy’s surrogate father.

Xander comes across as very self-righteous in this episode. Yes, he hated Angel previously, but not for this reason, and he obviously had no reason to suspect the gypsy curse or its consequences. It’s an unattractive part of Xander’s character which will increasingly annoy me personally as we go forward.

Keep thinking about it: Who’s right, Buffy in saying that Angel is “completely different from the guy I knew”? Or Xander, who treats Angel and Angelus as the same? In the essay on Phases, I raised the question of how Buffy should think of Angelus. I’m still not going to answer that yet, but Passion obviously raises the stakes. Pun very much intended.

Trivia notes: (1) Cordelia was worried about her car because she gave Angel a ride in Some Assembly Required. (2) Remarkably, Joyce remembered that Buffy told her that Angel was tutoring her in history all the way back in Angel. (3) When Willow told Buffy she was glad her parents didn’t let her have a puppy, I think that was a deliberate reference to BB&B, where Giles told Buffy that on one Valentine’s Day “Angel nails a puppy to the...”. (4) Having Angelus in vamp face when he killed Jenny was a conscious decision. Joss didn’t want to confuse viewers about who was doing what. Keep this decision in mind when we get to S6. (5) When Xander encouraged Buffy to kill Angelus, he used the phrase “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill”, which was a 1966 movie by Russ Meyer. (6) Angelus was toying with Jenny when he said he’d been invited in to the school. It’s a public building and vampires don’t need an invite.