Getting Buff with Buffy

Season 1, Episode 8: "I Robot, You Jane"

Original Air Date: 4/28/97

Willow gets catfished by a demon.

Pick out your screen name, kiddies, today we're taking a look at love in the time of dial-up. Early depictions of the internet were ridiculously corny- see "The Net", "Hackers"- and this BTVS ep. is no exception.

In this (horribly titled) episode, Willow scans an ancient text into the library database and unknowingly releases a long-trapped demon into the internet. Next thing you know, he's all "Hey Willow, a/s/l? Wanna cyber?"

Like most women who came of age in the heyday of AOL, I had a few internet boyfriends in high school. There wasn't much remarkable about any of them, I even remember finding most of them annoying. But they were guys my age (presumably) who were giving me their attention, which was more than what I had going on IRL. So I can empathize with Willow in this episode- online, she gets to be The Buffy, and that's hard to resist. I am grateful that my teen years happened to fall in that moment in technology when interaction was easy but it was still 100% possible to maintain anonymity. Sending a pic was a multi-step process: You had to blindly take a photo with your wind-up camera (no instant viewing to perfect the double-chin reducing head tilt), walk to Walgreen's, spend 7 bucks, wait a week, pick them up, go to Kinkos (or a rich aunt's house) to scan it and then wait for it to upload line by line. There's a lot of opportunities in there to rethink your choices. If it had been as easy as snapping a selfie in my bedroom and sending it off, I don't know that I can confidently say that some rando dude in Michigan wouldn't have half-nude pics of an eager-to-please 15 year-old me right now.

Back to the show. Our adorable Willow falls hard for "Malcolm" (aka Molluck the Corruptor) and Buffy and Xander get suspicious. Meanwhile, Mr. Corruptor uses the interwebs to wreak some havoc and enlists the help of a couple of Sunnydale red-shirts, Dave and Fritz, to do his bidding, which includes attempting to kill Buffy. There's a pretty dark

scene where Dave is yelling at the computer, saying that he won't hurt anyone and then suddenly a suicide note comes out of the printer and Fritz is given the order to eliminate him. Here is Buffy and Xander's emotional reaction to finding their classmate dead:

Buffy: Dave. He's dead.

Giles: How?

Buffy: Well, it looks like suicide.

Xander: With a little help from my friends?

Buffy: Yeah. I'd guess Fritz.

Again, are they ALREADY so jaded to peer death?

Molluck and his minions take over an abandoned tech company and craft him a Mega-Tron style robot body that he uses to try to kill Willow and take over the world. I remember real-life meetups with some of my AOL crushes- they were only slightly less awkward than this (and yes, Mom, I went with a group to a public location). Conveniently, we learn that hot computer teacher Miss Calendar identifies herself as a "techno pagan" (groan) and she gathers a digital coven to re-trap Molluck (while having some cute flirtatious moments with Giles).

Ugh, you SO do not look like your profile pic.

Willow is left heartbroken. She thought she finally found someone who understood her and wanted her, only to discover that it was all a fraud. Hang in there Willow, whether you're a 16 y/o dorky romantic, or someone trying to wade through the first season of Buffy: I promise you, it gets better.

This one is fun for its camp-factor, but that's about it: 1/4 Mr. Pointy's.

Most Dated Line/Reference:
There's some serious contenders in this episode- a lot of talk of "cyberspace", "The Web", at one point Buffy says "e-letter," but the prize has got to go to this angry rant by Fritz:
"The printed page is obsolete. Information isn't bound up anymore. It's an entity. The only reality is virtual. If you're not jacked in, you're not alive."

Oh, and there's also this: