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This week on Buffy and the Art of Story: Never Kill A Boy On The First Date. (Season 1, Episode 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
The podcast episode covers interweaving plot lines, theme, and cliffhangers versus game changers.
As always, the discussion is spoiler-free, except at the end (with plenty of warning).
Story Elements in Never Kill A Boy On The First Date
In this podcast episode we’ll look at how Buffy handles:
- All the major plot turns in this standalone episode
- How the different story lines interconnect
- Theme
- The difference between a game changer and cliffhanger
Also discussed – Buffy Season 1 DVD interview with Joss Whedon. He says Never Kill A Boy On The First Date is important because it is all about Buffy maintaining a normal life, and it juxtaposes her vampire slaying directly with a date with a cute boy.
Next Up: The Pack, S1 E6
Last Week: Teacher’s Pet S1 E4
Plotting Your Story
If you’re working on your own novel, screenplay, or story, check out the Story Structure Template available free to all on my Patreon page.
Or you can check out Super Simple Story Structure: A Quick Guide To Plotting And Writing Your Novel (Book 1 in the Writing As A Second Career series).
As a patron, you’ll also get access to bonus episodes.
Those episodes will include Buffy-adjacent stories (such as key Angel episodes). Also films or TV episodes that are intriguing from a story, theme, or character perspective.
Episode Transcript
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date S1 E5
Hello and welcome to Buffy and The Art of Story. If you love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you love creating stories or just taking them apart to see how they work, you’re in the right place.
I am Lisa M. Lilly, author of suspense, mysteries, and supernatural thrillers, and founder of WritingAsASecondCareer.com.
Each week I”ll talk about one episode of Buffy in order, covering plot turns and other story elements. The discussion will be spoiler-free, except at the very end, and I”ll give you plenty of warning.
This Week: Never Kill A Boy On The First Date
This week, we’re covering Season One: Episode Five, Never Kill A Boy On The First Date. It’s a standalone episode, so we”ll cover:
all the major plot points,
plus how the different storylines interconnect,
a little bit on the dialogue and
the difference between a game changer versus a cliffhanger.
Okay, let’s dive into the Hellmouth.
Opening Conflict
We start in the graveyard, Buffy slays; Giles critiques, and this sets up our roles of our two characters for anyone who’s new in the audience. Giles finds a ring and says he will consult his books. And we get a cut to a dusty book slamming down on a table.
It’s not Giles though, it’s the Master. And the Master hints at one of our plot conflicts, which is the Anointed One.
He quotes a prophecy about the Anointed One, says, “The Slayer will not know him. He will lead her into hell, and that he will rise from the ashes of five who die.”
Story Spark and Intertwining Plots
Right about ten percent in, at four minutes, 30 seconds of a roughly 43 minute episode, we get our Story Spark, or Inciting Incident. And usually this is right about when we will see this happen in the episode.
Buffy figures out that the ring relates to the Order of Aurelius. She sees this in a book in the library when Giles is saying he can”t find anything. And we get this nice line that shows the developing playful relationship between the two when she says “Two points for the Slayer, while the Watcher has yet to score.”
Owen comes in.
Now this is our real conflict. We basically have two plots here that merge into one, in a way.
Two Plots Merge
We have the plot, the main plot with Buffy, trying to have a normal life — specifically to date a boy that she is very interested in — while also fulfilling her Slayer duties.
And the other plot is the plot of Buffy trying to stop the Anointed One from rising or kill the Anointed One once he rises.
I”ll talk a little more about why the Owen/Buffy conflict is the main plot.
It’s also something in the DVD interview that Joss Whedon talks about, and he says, “This episode is so important because it is about Buffy maintaining a normal life, and it juxtaposes her vampire slaying directly with a date with a cute boy.”
So this is the most on target that we have addressed this issue. It is an episode all about that. Where in the other episodes to date, it’s been sort of an ongoing subplot or a side issue and an additional internal conflict for Buffy.
Owen
We see how much Buffy likes Owen because she gets flustered when she talks to him. She follows him upstairs. She’s happy that he’s even thought about what she’s like. And she has a hard time paying attention to Giles when he is telling her about this Order of Aurelius.
On the way from our 10% to our first major plot turn, we see Buffy clashing with Cordelia in the cafeteria and they literally crash. Or Cordelia crashes into her.
Buffy and Owen make a plan to meet at The Bronze at eight.
But the conflict escalates when Giles tells her about the prophecy he found about the Anointed One rising from the death of five and that it is going to be tonight. And Buffy argues. But eventually she agrees because she’s going to do what she needs to do.
And Giles warns her about the hazards of getting involved with anyone or revealing her identity and how it could put people close to her in danger.
We see Buffy and Giles on the roof waiting, sitting, clearly, nothing’s been happening, and he finally says, well, maybe he made a mistake.
The One-Quarter Turn in Never Kill A Boy
Now we’re at the first major Plot Turn. Usually this happens about one quarter way through the story, and here it is almost exactly on target: it’s 11 minutes and 23 seconds of a roughly 43 to 44 minute episode.
We see the bus. First we see this little kid, who’s I think playing with a paper airplane. And then we see the scary sort of guy who we find out later is a murderer, as well as gets turned into a vampire, talking about to everyone how “You will be judged.” The scene on the bus escalates as the scary guy is preaching to the bus driver, and the bus driver is telling him to sit.
There’s someone in the road. We see it’s a vampire. I don”t know that the bus driver picks up on any of that, but he swerves and he crashes.
All of this is inter-cut with Buffy at The Bronze. She gets there. Owen is dancing with Cordelia and Buffy leaves disappointed.
Too Long?
This bus scene has always felt a bit drawn out to me, even though I overall like this episode. I”m curious if anyone else feels that way. I”ve also wondered whether they ran short on this episode and perhaps kept in more of that scene than they really needed.
It ends when we see that the vampire is killing people.
We cut to Buffy at school the next day, and she’s complaining about how she has no life. And then Owen comes up. He’s flirting with her and it turns out he does still want to see her.
So while we had that One-Quarter Turn in our plot about the Master in the Anointed One, and Buffy, we also get a bit of a One-Quarter Turn here in that Owen changes things by revealing he’s not really interested in Cordelia and that he still wants to see Buffy.
We also get this moment where Buffy and Owen are flirting and he gives Buffy what looks like an antique pocket watch.
The joke is so she”ll know what time to meet him. And Xander, who is jealous, glances at his Tweety Bird watch and his expression is just so clear. And before Owen came back, or actually later in the episode, he will say to Buffy something about “What you need is someone who already knows your darkest secrets.”
Character Through Line: Xander
I found it interesting that in the comment in the interview, Joss Whedon commented that Xander has a terrible crush and, “What happens is sort of typical to what happens to Xander in his life.”
The reason I found that interesting is because for the most part, unlike Teacher’s Pet, this story is not about Xander. We already have two plots with the Anointed One and the Master, and then Buffy and Owen.
And Xander’s interest in Buffy for this episode isn”t really even a subplot.
There’s a little bit of a story happening here, but it’s really more of that character through line. So I found it interesting that Joss seemed to be saying that was what the episode is about in a way.
But he also said that, you know, the part about, it’s about Buffy struggling to have a normal life.
And I think what this points to is part of why the show works so well and any good ensemble show works so well,
There are many different ways to come into the world of the story and different characters that audience members can identify with. So one person might really identify with Xander, and that brings that person into the story in a way that they might not have engaged with it if Xander were not there.
The Main Story Arc
We also see the Master telling a vampire that, “When this work is done with the Anointed One he”ll be one step closer to freeing himself from his underground prison.”
So this does a couple of things.
It is a reference to our season story arc about the Master trying to get free and take over the world. It also is why I say the main plot is Buffy and Owen and Buffy trying to have this normal life, not Buffy trying to stop the Master. Because this makes it clear that if the Anointed One rises and comes to the Master, it”ll be a step forward for him.
It will help him, but it isn”t going to win the day.
Side note: there’s also this moment when the Master tells the vampires to give their lives, if necessary, to bring the Anointed One back to him and to kill the Slayer.
I have always wondered why vampires would give their immortal lives for another vampire’s cause. That’s done a few times in the series and never really explained why they would do that.
Great Dialogue: Buffy and Giles
There is more great dialogue when Giles tells Buffy he miscalculated and tonight is when the Anointed One will rise.
And she says it can”t be that night because she has this date.
And he says, “Oh, well, I”ll just jump in my time machine, travel to the 12th century, tell the vampires to push their prophecy back a few days so you can take in dinner and a show.”
Buffy says, “At this point, you’re abusing sarcasm.”
Again, I”m enjoying so much this developing relationship between them where they can have this kind of conversation.
That Buffy dropped everything the first time and missed her date does a couple of things. One, from an audience perspective, it helps us be on her side here because she did the right thing. And it’s not unreasonable for her to feel that if Giles made a mistake before, he may have made a mistake now.
It also gives Giles a reason to capitulate when she points this out.
Even when he shows up with this article showing that five people died on this bus accident and there was a murderer on it, on the bus. Also a bus crash, as Buffy points out, isn”t exactly the type of thing that they usually are used to dealing with.
The Midpoint of Never Kill a Boy
So now we are at the Midpoint.
Because Giles is confronting her with this, despite everything I just said, the cautious thing would be to be vigilant that night and skip her date.
But remember, our protagonist at the mid point in a well structured story typically commits all in, throws caution to the wind and goes ahead with her quest. And here Buffy’s quest is to have a normal life and to go out with a boy she really likes. She throws caution to the wind and says, “If the apocalypse comes, beep me.”
And she goes out with Owen.
And for those of you who haven”t seen them, these were beepers, you probably know beepers. In the time before cell phones, you could call someone from a landline and they would get a message with just your phone number and you would know to call them.
So there is a way to reach Buffy.
Often at the Midpoint, we see a character suffer, the protagonist suffer, a reversal.
And sometimes we see both the commitment and reversal. But here we just have the throwing caution to the wind.
And I think that it works really well as the Midpoint for the story, and it does what it needs to do, which is to drive the story forward from that point on.
Buffy’s action at the Midpoint propels the story toward the next major plot term.
The Intertwined Plots
What we have now are scenes intercut with one another, just as Buffy’s life is split between her desire to have a normal life and her Slayer duties.
So we get Giles going to the funeral home, being surrounded by vampires and chased. He barricades himself in a room. Xander and Willow follow him. And they’re going to go get Buffy because they aren”t able to get him out.
In between all of that we see Buffy at The Bronze.
She is talking with Owen, happy to be there and yet checking her beeper. And she looks worried when there is no message, but she dances with Owen anyway. He comments on feeling like she’s two different people.
We have Cordelia trying to separate them.
I don”t quite think Cordelia would be as over the top as she is. But it is fun because this is basically the high school fantasy of everyone who wasn”t Cordelia, and perhaps even people who were, that this person that you are so interested in will return your feelings over or instead of somebody else who is more popular or prettier or who you would expect that person to want.
And that wonderful feeling Buffy gets to experience that, yes, Owen does want to be with her and not Cordelia.
And it’s especially nice because Cordelia has been mean to her. So we see Buffy getting this sort of, not just normal life, but even a little bit of the high school fantasy.
We also have some fun when Cordelia sees Angel for the first time.
And says “Hello, Salty Goodness,” and then just cannot believe it when he too is talking to Buffy.
Angel and Owen
We have nice conflict when Angel and Owen meet. Angel is so surprised by the date. Buffy has trouble explaining how she knows Angel.
She’s also offended that he’s surprised. And she’s reading him as surprised rather than jealous. I think that he is both.
I get why she sees surprise though, because she has been feeling like she has no life. She’s tired of people like Giles or Xander and Willow, well not Willow, but Xander and now Angel, saying in one way or another that she’s not allowed to have a social life.
That she should just be vampire slaying all the time.
Xander and Willow appear. They pretend they’re double dating and get across to her that Giles is in trouble. And she tells Owen he can”t go with to the funeral home.
And there’s a nice shot with Buffy and Owen talking, and Angel is in the background, between the two of them. I don”t remember if I noticed that when I just watched the episode for fun or watched it the first time.
It’s clearly very symbolic.
I think it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t bang you over the head with it. But it was very noticeable now because I am looking at this whole episode for how her two lines clash.
The Three-Quarter Point Twist
This takes us up to the next plot Twist. And typically that happens from around three quarters through the episode.
So we have a couple of things right around there at about 32 minutes in.
Owen follows Buffy to the funeral home. And I think that is the turn in the Owen/Buffy plot because clearly had he not followed her, we wouldn”t have the rest of the storyline between them. It would end very differently.
So Owen follows her. She gets rid of him, sort of, finds what she thinks will be a safe room, leaves him there, finds Giles.
Then about almost 35 minutes in, we get the Turn or Twist in the plot over the Anointed One. Because Owen’s looking at this dead body. And he says he’s read about them a lot . We’ve heard that he is very fascinated by poems about death.
But now he is seeing an actual dead body. And he says, “I”ve never seen them before. Do they usually move?”
And the murderer sits up and we realize he’s a vampire. And he says, “I have been judged.”
The Anointed One
So this is a pretty significant Turn in our story because now we know who the Anointed One is. Or at least we think that we know who the Anointed One is.
I was a little bit confused in previous viewings. I had thought the murderer was a vampire all along. And I don”t think I caught the first time or several times through, cause I’ve watched the series many times. I don”t think I caught that the guy in the road the driver swerves to avoid was the vampire. And that he was the one who killed everyone. For a long time I thought this murderer was a vampire the whole time.
But watching it carefully, I realized that when he sits up, he’s saying “I have been judged” because he did die.
He was a human, an evil human, but he was a human. And now he is undead and he feels this is a judgment on him and his worthiness apparently.
He says something later about, “They told me while I was sleeping.” So he sees some great significance to all of this. And that adds to our perception that this is the Anointed One.
The Climax – Anointed One
So now everything from the Three-Quarter Point to the Climax, the story moves very fast.
Everything comes from that Three-Quarter Twist. So with the Owen/Buffy story, it’s Buffy trying to keep Owen safe and to still hide her identity from him. While she also with the Anointed One plot is trying to kill this vampire and protect Giles.
Giles gets knocked out. There’s a lot of fighting. I think at one point Buffy is out for a moment.
She thinks that Owen is dead. It looks like the vampire killed him.
She fights the vampire. She’s really angry and with Giles’ help, she sends him into the incinerator.
That fight is our Climax of the Anointed One plot. Owen is confused. He leaves and he doesn”t want Buffy to walk him home.
The Falling Action and Climax
Now we get to the Falling Action from the Anointed One plot.
And here we have Xander and Willow and Buffy going down the stairs. This is when Xander says, “You need someone who knows your darkest secret and still likes you.”
And he says, “someone like…” and Buffy says, “Owen?” because Owen appears. He still wants to see her. But it’s because of all the danger.
He found it invigorating. He felt alive and excited. And he thinks she’s amazing.
I think this is the Climax of the Owen/Buffy arc because this is the moment where everything comes together and Buffy says “no.” That she doesn”t want to see him again.
And then there is Falling Action in that plot because Giles comes over to talk to her. He gives her credit for making this choice. And tells her about learning at the age of 10 that his destiny was to be a Watcher and how unhappy he was and the sacrifices that have to be made.
And Buffy says that Giles and Willow and Xander understand the score. They know to be careful. But Owen would get killed in a day in her world, and she can”t risk that.
Buffy’s Choice About Owen
I also think, though Buffy doesn”t say it, I think there has to be an element there of, she wants Owen to want to keep seeing her for who she is as a person. Aside from being the Slayer.
And while I think he does — I think he likes that part of Buffy, too — I don”t think she wants someone who only wants her for that reason. But I”m just reading into that.
We will deal with the different parts of who Buffy is in a relationship quite a ways down the road. But I can”t help thinking there’s a little of that, too. But here, mainly it is written as, and Buffy’s dialogue suggests it is namely, she has to protect Owen.
Character Development: Buffy and Giles
And she is feeling deep regret that she didn”t listen to Giles in the first place. Well, I guess in the second place. She listened to him the first time.
But when he showed her that article, she is afraid that Giles could have gotten killed because she was off trying to have a date. And he reassures her.
Which I so love about the Giles’ character. He says, “We’re figuring it out as we go.” And she’s doing pretty good, and at least they stopped the Anointed One.
I like this about Giles so much because it would be easy to write a one-note sort of Giles who is always scolding Buffy.
Who would shake his finger and say, “Yes, I could have got killed. See what happens when you try to do this.”
But Giles is so much more nuanced than that. And it’s partly because of knowing Buffy and recognizing that she is a whole person.
In the beginning, he, I don’ know that he was ever one-note, but he was much more in our pilot episode, you know, all about the dire warnings. He too has already grown and Buffy has grown and it’s such a nice relationship.
And there is plenty of conflict there already without having him be like the punitive parent here.
Cliffhangers Versus Game Changers
Now we get the Game Changer. S
A Cliffhanger is where we end something, the good guy plunges over the cliff, literally, and we think the good guy is gonna die and cut. And you have to come back for the next episode to find out how, whoever it is, our protagonist gets out of that situation.
So the story does not wrap up.
If the story was about our protagonist having to catch the bad guy, the bad guy has stepped aside, good guy plunges over the cliff, and we’re left with, “Can the good guys save the day, still get the bad guy or not?” I mean, unless you’re writing a really dark story and the good guy just dies, but if we don”t see what happens after that moment, you have a Cliffhanger that you have to come back for the resolution.
That is different than a Game Changer.
So here we find out the Master is with the kid from the bus. And he repeats his prophecy about the Anointed One. So we know that that murderer vampire was not the Anointed One, and this child is. Buffy actually failed to stop the Anointed One from rising and going to the Master.
So our plot is resolved. Our Anointed One plot is resolved. The Buffy/Owen plot resolved.
The Anointed One plot is resolved. Buffy doesn”t know — she thinks it’s resolved by her prevailing — she actually lost. We find that out, so it resolves that plot.
So we’re not stopping short of the Climax or of the resolution. But we do change everything because going forward now we have a new threat. We have an Anointed One, and we have a threat Buffy is completely unaware of.
Endings and Installments
So this is a great way to end when you’re writing something that’s in installments. And it can be a struggle to figure out the difference between the two.
It’s not always such a clear distinction: Cliffhanger and Game Changer. That can be tricky because readers, if they don”t realize it’s an installment style story, do not like to be left, generally, don”t like to be left with a cliffhanger.
In my Awakening series, in one of them, I did have what I saw as a game changer in the end of the second book. So it”d be the middle of the series. And I thought that was a good place to have a game changer.
But some readers felt like it was a cliffhanger. And I did get a few comments about that, like not liking that, and especially because I didn”t have all the books out yet.
Once they were all out people, people didn”t seem to mind so much. They could just go right onto the next one.
So it’s something to really think about when you’re ending your story.
Here I think this is done really well because we do wrap the plot and obviously we know this is a series and it is a nice hook for us to come back and see what happened.
More DVD Commentary
A couple of more things from the DVD interview.
These were not specific to Never Kill A Boy On A First Date, although it all kind of relates. So Joss Whedon said there is a little bit of him in each character, which I think is true for any writer. But he also commented that Xander is very much like he was in high school. So perhaps that’s why we get his comment about what happens to Xander in this episode, even though it is really not primarily, well, it’s just not a Xander-centric episode.
He also said something I forgot, and I”m sure I must have watched this interview way back when I got the DVDs. Joss said that he went to an English boarding school, so some of Giles comes from that, from his experience.
He also said, Giles is the classic British guy in the horror movie who says, “The vampires are coming, the vampires are coming” and consults his dusty books. as I talked about, I love that about Giles. And I love that we do get more nuance from him.
So that is it for this episode other than a very short spoiler section. Or at least I”m meaning it to be short.
We”ll see if I go on longer than I expect.
Next Week: The Pack
Next week we will talk about Season One, Episode Six: The Pack. As with this episode, it’s a standalone. So we”ll talk about all the major plot points. We”ll talk about subplot. We”ll also talk about building up feelings for the victim and misdirecting the audience on who the victim will be.
We talked in The Witch about misdirection as to the villain, but this time there’s a bit of a misdirect as to the victim.
So thank you for listening. I hope you”ll come back.
In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter @LisaMLilly, you can email me, [email protected]. and if you put Buffy Story in the re: line, it”ll make it easier for me to find an answer your emails.
You can also find articles and books on writing at WritingAsASecondCareer.com.
All right, we’re going to go into the spoilers in a second.
Buffy Spoilers – Cordelia
Spoilers. One quick thing. I love Cordelia’s line after she sees Angel and says the salty goodness line, she says something like, “Call nine one one that boy will need oxygen when I”m done with him.”
And I just find that fun given that we are going to find out in another, I think two episodes, that Angel is a vampire. He doesn”t need oxygen at all.
The other spoiler, I just briefly wanted to comment because it occurred to me only as I was recording this, that my comment about Buffy wanting Owen to like her for her, maybe comes from my having watched the Buffy/Riley relationship.
Buffy Spoilers – Romantic Relationships
And if you remember the episode, it’s the one with the demon who splits Xander into two people. And Buffy and Riley had this conversation. She asks if Riley would like her to, would like to split out those two parts of her, the Slayer Buffy and Buffy Buffy the person.
Because that’s what that demon Toth was trying to do in the first place and missed and hit Xander.
So what’s interesting to me about that is in that scenario, Buffy is struggling with feeling like Riley would prefer her to not be the Slayer.
He denies it. He says he wants the whole package, and he’s in love with the whole package. Yet there is a lot that happens that suggests that maybe he’s not okay with it. Or he just hasn”t found a way to come to terms with it.
But there she is feeling like she wants Riley to want the whole package. By that time, she feels more integrated with who she is.
We”ll see what I think when we get to that season, which I believe is, this discussion happens in Season Five. I”m excited about getting to that point so we can talk more about that Buffy/Riley relationship, and of course soon we”ll get to talk about the Buffy/Angel relationship.
Okay, that is it for this week.
Thank you so much for listening and I hope to see you next week.
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