I’ve already looked at many good episodes of Buffy, but ever since I first saw it some five or six years ago, I’ve thought this was the first truly great one. It’s dark, twisted, psychological and fearless, and it goes to almost unthinkably dark places. Most of all, it’s brilliantly perfomed by a regular cast who once again more than earn their salary.

From the first, ‘Passion’ sets out to disturb and unsettle. The ongoing motif of the episode, Angel’s charcoal drawings and other notes, is a brilliant one as it admits of so many variations- not just the portraits of Buffy, Joyce and Jenny, but the horrible moment when Willow finds her fish strung together. Angel, it seems, can go anywhere and do anything, and his little messages are a psychological offensive aimed at reaching Buffy’s deepest fears and vulnerabilities. The spell which prevents Angel from physically entering the Summers household can’t prevent the fear of him and what he might do to her friends and family from entering Buffy’s psyche.

Where ‘Passion’ lives up to its title, though, is in the heightened emotion which runs through the episode from start to finish. It tries to wrongfoot the viewer at least in part by suggesting that Giles and Jenny are going to get back together, then kills the character abruptly, the first of the great sex=death moments in Buffy. The scene where Giles returns home to find Jenny’s wide-eyed corpse in the bed is almost unspeakably intense, and I never felt particularly comfortable with them using the shot of Anthony Head smelling the rose in the opening titles for the next couple of years. And then the second brilliant acting moment in the episode- the way Alyson Hannigan plays Willow’s reaction to hearing of Jenny’s death is just awesome, made all the more disturbing as seen from Angel’s point of view and with minimum sound. But for all this, it’s quite a straightforward episode in many ways- Angel provokes Buffy and friends and forces them onto the offensive and an inconclusive confrontation ensues which only goes to show that Buffy values the lives of her friends more than victory. It could have been very ordinary- it’s basically a showcase for the regulars, and Jenny’s death is the only thing which moves the ongoing story forward- but the direction and above all the acting from Head and Hannigan in particular make it special.