Earshot

"Earshot" is the eighteenth episode of the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is the fifty-second episode altogether. The screenplay was written by Jane Espenson and directed by Regis Kemble. It originally broadcasted on September 21st, 1999 (almost a full two months after the airing of the season finale), and attracted almost 4.5 million viewers. Buffy gains a telepathic ability after defeating a demon, but soon finds it too hard to handle - especially after hearing about a mass-murder attempt in her high school.

Summary
Out patrolling one night, Buffy runs into two mysterious, mouthless demons. While one manage to escapes, Buffy slays the other, although she does not notice the demon's blue oozing blood seeps into hers through an open wound. The next day at the library, The Scoobies gather for another group meeting, where they find that Giles is making little to no progress with The Mayor and stopping his ascension. Wesley soon arrives, promising new updates, but ends up finding his information obsolete.

Meanwhile, Willow and Buffy talk about the current Angel/Faith situation (see Enemies). Willow suggests Buffy to talk with Angel, and straighten things out. Percy then arrives, telling Willow that they'll have to reschedule their planned study session. Willow then talks to Buffy about the basketball game held after school later that day. Apparently, everybody except for Buffy is going.

Buffy finds her hand itchier than normal (where she had received the cut), and decides to confer to Giles about it. After a little research, Giles tells her, rather distractedly, that the mixture of her blood with the demon's might cause her to be infected with an aspect of the demon. Later that day, Xander, Willow, Oz and an absent-minded Buffy watches the pep rally, where Willow catches Buffy feeling her head for horns. Willow further horrifies her by wondering if the demon is male. That night, Buffy meets Angel during her usual patrol and tells him about the demon. Angel tells her that he'll still love her no matter what she looks like.

The next day at school, Buffy finds the rest of them ecstatic about the game held the day before. When Cordelia passes by, Buffy hears Xander wondering if she and Wesley had kissed before - although the problem is, he wasn't wondering it aloud. Buffy then walks through the school halls, where she suddenly starts hearing people's thoughts, literally. Buffy, freaked, talks to Giles about her new ability, where Giles realizes the demons are telepathic. Buffy seems overjoyed about it, and Giles says that this power is very useful in combat.

However, Buffy decides to try it out in class instead. During American Literature, she answers the teacher's questions without difficulties, impressing the rest of the students, the teacher and even herself. Buffy then hears the thoughts of Freddy Iverson, who writes editorials for the school newspaper, and has a seriously negative opinion about everything at Sunnydale. Later that evening, Buffy visits Angel's mansion, to use her mind-reading abilities on him. But Buffy realizes that she can't, Angel's demons won't allow his thoughts to reflect into her mind. Angel reveals to her that what happened with Faith meant nothing, and reassured Buffy that she's all he ever loved in 243 years.

The gang meets up at the library again the next morning, where Buffy tells her friends her newfound ability. She finds Xander constantly thinking about sex and Wesley keeps thinking about Cordelia. Oz thinks extremely deep thoughts, while Willow is upset because Buffy has access to Oz's mind, and will learn more about him than she ever will. While in the school cafeteria, Buffy finds that the power then starts to be painful, as the voices become too much for her to endure. Just then, a single, menacing voice pops up; "This time tomorrow, I'll kill you all". Buffy then passes out, unable to contain the thoughts.

When she regains consciousness, Buffy tells The Scoobies to find out everyone in the cafeteria, and interrogate them, to find out who the potential killer is. Giles tries to find a cure for Buffy, but before she leaves to rest at home, she hears the painful truth - she'll go insane if the telepathy continues. At home, while trying to comfort Buffy, Joyce inadvertently lets it slip that she and Giles has had sex, twice, and on a hood of a police card (see Band Candy).

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang starts interrogating members of the faculty and the students. They go nowhere with their research, and almost all likely suspects are crossed out, except for Freddy, who Oz can't seem to find. In the meantime, Giles and Wesley had come across a potential cure for Buffy's telepathic abilities, but it requires the heart of the second demon. Angel hunts down the demon at the cemetery, and successfully acquires the heart.

He brings the ingredients needed for the spell to the Summers home the next morning. Giles performs an incantation, and Buffy downs the potion. Buffy's body soon goes into convulsions, and she starts spasming and loses consciousness. Moments later, she wakes up again, good as new and heads to the school to straighten the mess out. Meanwhile, The Scoobies finally corner Freddy in his office, where they realize that he isn't the (would-be) killer (instead, he is hiding from Oz as he believes that Oz is looking for him due to a negative review he had written for Dingoes Ate My Baby).

Buffy shows up just as the group finds a letter on Freddy's desk from Jonathan Levinson, an ignored and disregarded student, apologizing for his upcoming actions of death. The gang then splits up to look for Jonathan. Meanwhile, Jonathan loads a firearm, ready to pull the trigger, up in Sunnydale High's clock tower. Buffy locates him and quickly jumps into the tower to confront him.

Jonathan remains hostile at first, claiming that he is tired of everybody disregarding him, for his size and his lack of capabilities. Buffy civilly talks to him, telling him that the reason everybody ignores him is that they have their own problems to deal about, bigger problems than his. She takes the rifle from him and unloads it, just as he admits his plans on committing suicide. In the meantime, Xander is still looking for Jonathan in the cafeteria and stumbles upon the overweight lunch lady putting rat poison into the food.

Xander runs out and warns everybody to stop eating the food. The lunch lady then comes tearing out in anger, and proceeds to strike Xander with a cleaver. Buffy shows up in time and knocks the weapon out of her hands. The lunch lady calls the students vermin, always eating and never stopping. Buffy decides that the lunch lady has lost her mind and knocks her unconscious. Soon after, Giles and Buffy recap the events as they walk around the school grounds. Giles asks her if she's up for some training, and Buffy says she is - that if he isn't too busy sleeping with her mother.

Giles walks straight into a tree.

Regular Stars

 * Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Anne Summers
 * Nicholas Brendon as Alexander LaVelle Harris
 * Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
 * Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
 * David Boreanaz as Angel
 * and Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

Guest Stars

 * Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
 * Alexis Denisof as Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
 * Ethan Erickson as Percy West
 * Danny Strong as Jonathan Levinson

Co-Stars

 * Larry Bagby as Larry Blaisdell
 * Keram Malicki-Sanchez as Freddy Iverson
 * Justin Doran as Hogan Martin
 * Lauren Roman as Lunch Lady
 * Wendy Worthington as Lunch Lady
 * Robert Arce as Mr. Beach
 * Molly Bryant as Ms. Murray
 * Rich Muller as Student
 * Jay Michael Ferguson as Another Student

Main Theme
"If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness, the confusion ... it's deafening". Like Gingerbread, it's an episode with an unusually broad agenda. The underlying theme is that everybody is suffering - at its most obvious when Buffy tells Jonathan that even the popular, athletic students are being torn apart on the inside. Yet, it also touches on teen suicide and high school gun massacres, which Oz chillingly describes as "bordering on trendy". Once again, Sunnydale High is a crucible for US high school life, and on American television, Earshot remains "the episode most likely to be canceled due to current news events".

A word about Buffy's relationship with Jonathan: While mainstream television too often delivers the generic message, "It doesn't matter what you look like, it's what inside that counts," most serious fail to put this into practice. Instead, they default to a double standeard that gives special treatment to the more attractive characters. (On Xena: Warrior Princess for example, Gabrielle is presented as a caring, sensitive, moral soul - who nonetheless flirts with a blood-soaked, genocidal God of War just because he's built like a weightlifter and has a sexy beard).

However, Buffy outright confronts this problem instead of pretending it doesn't exist. After her speech about good-looking and athletic students having the same problems as everyone else, Buffy still laughs off the idea of attending the prom with Jonathan because he's too short - a rare acknowledgment of just how shallow even the central characters can be. Sadly, the lesson will be forgotten by Season Six, in which the attractive characters are always given a shot at redemption, while the geeks are - as ever - just stupid, evil and pathetic.

General

 * The name of the Sunnydale High newspaper is The Sentinel.
 * Regis Kemble who directed this episode, also designed the title sequences of Angel.
 * The character, Hogan Martin, was named after a gymnast Jane Espenson went to school with.
 * In a season four DVD commentary, Seth Green, Joss Whedon and Marti Noxon mention the frequent appearances of the extra they call "Asian Dan". Apparently, he is present in this episode too.
 * According to Jane Espenson, Joss Whedon hates having demons with tails on the show, as the tails almost never look realistic. It was parodied in this episode, with Buffy checking if she has one.
 * According to a British slang dictionary, Giles was calling Wesley an idiot when he said, "Berk." This has been confirmed by some viewers, but others tell us that it originates from the word "berserk," still others tell us that it's a contraction of the slang term "Berkshire Hunt," and is an extremely profane term, and still others tell us that the Berkshire Hunt part is right, but that "berk" in itself isn't profane at all, although perhaps it used to be. We're guessing this is a regional thing — unless it's a conspiracy to confuse us.

Production

 * The Sunnydale High clock tower was constructed especially for this episode.
 * Jane Espenson says that the fact Joyce and Giles had sex in Band Candy was further confirmed in this episode was because she was shocked fans still weren't sure about this.
 * The scene at the end, in which Giles walks into a tree, was not in the shooting script. It was a last minute addition by Anthony Stewart Head, intending to provide the scene with more comic relief.
 * Sarah Michelle Gellar lobbied hard for this epsiode to be released on schedule. She thought it was great and would help those affected by the Colubmine tragedy (also, Sarah regarded this as one of her favourite Buffy episodes).
 * Buffy's class discuss Shakespeare's Othello during American Literature. In the original script, they discuss Henry VIII. Joss Whedon rewrote the scene to make it tie in with Buffy's feelings (and the sub-theme of this episode).
 * This episode's subject matter, in conjunction with the terrible mass-shooting at Columbine High School (which occured a week before the intended airdate for this episode), led to the WB's postponing Earshot's broadcast. The episode finally aired September 1999, two months after the season three finale (which was also delayed due to the final scene which includes Sunnydale High's destruction. Nevertheless, audiences were eager to watch it, and on its original broadcast, the episode raked in almost 4.5 million viewers.

Bloopers

 * The Lunch Lady’s stunt double is clearly nowhere near the same shape or size as the actress.
 * When Angel is sitting on Buffy’s bed, sun is shining in, directly, but he doesn’t burst into flame.
 * If the scabby, mouthless demons were telepathic, why didn’t they anticipate Buffy’s moves when they were fighting?
 * How was Jonathan going to kill himself with that high-powered rifle considering it was so long and his arms were so short?
 * When Buffy and Angel are talking at the mansion, Angel’s necklace moves from inside his shirt to outside as the camera switches angles.
 * When Buffy does the flip to get on top of the building near Jonathan, her shirt is not the same one that she is wearing before and after she does the flip.
 * When Buffy's in the lunchline and walks out of it, you see that there is no food on either of her plates. Then in the very next shot, each plate has something on it.
 * When Buffy first looks up at the clock tower, the clock says 12:40, but when she looks back up a moment later, it says 12:10. Shortly before this scene, it says 11:00.
 * Making her way into Angel's mansion, Buffy throws open the curtain and lets the sunlight flood in, nearly scorching Agel as he's already walking across the room towards the doorway. Now, if anyone can explain why a vampire is heading for an exit that leads out into broad daylight?

Title

 * Earshot: Obviously, the episode refers to Buffy's ability, and the fact that others' thoughts are all in earshot for her.


 * French: "Voix Intérieures" ("Inner Voices")
 * Italian: "Poteri Metafisici" ("Metaphysical powers")
 * German: "Fremde Gedanken" ("Thoughts of Others")
 * Japanese: "声が聞こえる距離" ("Earshot")


 * The title does not appear at all in the script.

Body Count

 * Scabby Demon #1. Buffy stabs demon number one in the park, while out patrolling.
 * Scabby Demon #2. It is offscreen, but since Angel got its heart, it's safe to assume that it's dead.

The series has shown that Buffy has killed 70 vampires and 19 demons. She stabs a scabby demon in the park.

Music
No music is featured in this episode.