Lie to Me (Buffy episode)
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"Lie to Me" is episode 7 of season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. See also List of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.
Plot synopsis
Summary
Buffy spies Angel talking to Drusilla in a playground, but mistakes it for kissing. The next day, she finds Billy "Ford" Fordham, her fifth-grade crush, at Sunnydale High. Xander and Angel are jealous. At night, Ford sees Buffy stake a vampire, but he already knows she is the Slayer. Unbeknownst to Buffy, Ford has cut a deal with Spike: he will be made a vampire in exchange for giving up Buffy. Spike brings Dru along, but she is held hostage and Spike is forced to let Buffy go. The next night, Ford rises as a vampire and is staked by Buffy.
Expanded overview
The episode opens in a little boy waiting for his mother in a playground. Angel appears in time to stop Drusilla from a kill and sends the boy home. While Dru and Angel talk, Buffy watches from afar.
The next day, Ms. Calendar teases Giles about a date she is planning. Buffy decides not to reveal her Angel sighting. In class, she passes notes to Willow about it. In the hallway, a young man surprises Buffy from behind. It is her friend Billy "Ford" Fordham, with whom she attented school for seven years in Los Angeles. He says he is finishing his senior year at Sunnydale High. They make plans to go to the Bronze.
That night, Ford entertains Willow and Xander with embarrassing stories about Buffy and claims to know her darkest secrets. Buffy runs into Angel, who does not mention Dru. Angel becomes jealous upon meeting Ford and does not trust him. Buffy decides to take a walk with her old friend.
In the alley behind the club, Buffy senses trouble and asks Ford to fetch her purse. Ford surreptitiously follows Buffy instead and watches her stake a vampire. Ford appears and tells her he knows she is the Slayer.
Later that night, Buffy and Willow discuss the incident on the phone. Ford goes to a basement club populated by goths. He chats with a friend, who is upset at not being told about the details of some plan. In the background, the 1974 version of Dracula plays on several monitors. Ford quotes some of its better lines.
Angel shows up at Willow's window, and she invites him into the bedroom, though he is male. He asks her to find out more about Ford. Angel admits he is jealous, but insists that Ford is trouble. She quickly finds that Ford is not registered at Sunnydale High. She agrees to keep the investigation from Buffy.
The next day, Willow is awkward around Ford, but Buffy attributes it to coffee. Giles accuses her of using her identity to impress cute boys. That night, Buffy gives Ford a tour of the small town. They are attacked by two vampires on campus. Ford pins his attacker to the ground and tells her he will let her go if she tells him what he wants to know. After killing her vamp, Buffy finds Ford, who claims he has killed one.
Meanwhile, Xander, Willow and Angel visit the address associated with Ford. They find a vampire cult there. Ranting on their way out, they are overheard by Diego, Ford's friend.
Buffy returns to the library and meets Giles, who is not upset about being called from a monster-truck date. Buffy sees a picture of Drusilla and recognizes it. Giles explains that she was Spike's lover, killed by an angry mob in Prague. Buffy tells him she saw her with Angel. A vampire suddenly storms out of Giles's study with a book and manages to escape. Buffy recognizes her as the vampire Ford said he killed.
At the same time, Spike and Drusilla are also discussing her meeting with Angel. Ford sneaks in and asks to be made a vampire, promising the Slayer in return. Later that night, Angel goes to tell Buffy about Ford's group, but she starts interrogating him about Drusilla instead. Angel explains that Drusilla was his worst crime. He drove her insane by killing everyone she loved. She fled to a convent but he followed her and killed her the day she took her Holy Orders. Buffy accepts his past, but is upset when told that his friends were investigating behind her back.
The next morning, Ford asks Buffy to hang out again, but will not tell her what he planned. Buffy pretends she does not suspect anything, but goes to his club before their agreed meeting time. He is explaining to his followers that they will be changed that night when Buffy interrupts. Someone locks the door behind her as Ford explains that it can only be opened from the outside. He expected her to arrive early.
Ford's alarm beeps at sunset as Buffy pleads with him to let the others go. Ford reveals that he has brain cancer and will die in six months, and that the parasitic life of a vampire is his only chance to survive. He also admits that the others will not be changed. He dares Buffy to live with the pain of cancer for one month, and then call him a villain for his actions.
The vampires soon arrive. Spike immediately begins feeding. Buffy knocks out Ford and spots Drusilla standing alone. She takes the vamp hostage and forces Spike to release everyone. The former vampire worshippers flee, and Buffy follows. Outside, she sadly tells her friends "We'll come back later...when [the vampires] are gone...for the body [Ford's]."
Ford, trapped in the bomb shelter with the defeated vampires, demands his reward, insisting he kept his part of the bargain and brought the Slayer to Spike and his minions. The angry Spike quietly agrees, but with a sinister gleam in his eye.
Later Buffy does indeed return to find Ford's body lying lifeless on the floor.
A few nights later, a melancholy Buffy and Giles lay flowers on Ford's grave. Struggling with the moral ambiguity of her recent experiences, Buffy asks Giles if life ever gets easy. He replies that the confusion she is experiencing is "called growing up."
Just then, Ford bursts from the grave, a snarling vampire. Buffy stakes him with blinding speed, without even missing a beat of dialogue. In that one split second we learn several facts of significance: it turns out that Buffy and Giles have not merely come to pay their respects, but were there waiting for Ford to rise so they could destroy him.
This means, therefore, that Spike, rather than simply killing Ford out of spite, disdain, or revenge for Ford's failure, actually kept his word and turned the young man. This is a subtle hint at unexpected aspects of Spike's character, and a foreshadowing.
Furthermore, the fact that Ford actually succeeded in his endeavor to become a vampire -- only to have Buffy render moot all of his ambitions of immortality, just as they were realized -- brilliantly provides one final example of the same troubling irony that Buffy is complaining about to Giles in the very conversation that frames this scene.
Finally, Buffy's quick action and resolve, slaying her friend -- in the middle of a sorrowful colloquy on moral vagary, no less -- shows that she is adapting to the equivocal ethical landscape of adulthood.
Giles asks Buffy what she wants to hear. She asks him to lie. He replies,
- Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Writing and acting
This is the first time that Chantarelle/Lilly/Anne appears in the show. She later meets Buffy in a diner in Los Angeles in the first episode of Season 3, then appears in a handful of Angel episodes, including the last one of the series.Production details
Music
- Clement & Murray - "Blood Of A Stranger"
- Creaming Jesus - "Reptile"
- Divinyls - "I Touch Myself"
- Sisters of Mercy - "Never land"
- Willoughby - "Lois on the brink"
Quotes and trivia
Continuity
Arc significance
Giles delivers a blatant lie at the end ("No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after"). It forebodes many heartaches for the heretofore relatively untouched Scooby Gang. Several episodes later, Ms. Calendar will be brutally killed as the first major casualty of the bloody show and by the season finale, Buffy will have killed her love.Timing
- Stories that take place around the same time in the Buffyverse:
External links
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