YMMV / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S3E18 "Earshot"

• Ass Pull: The episode is so focused on having a big twist to the killer's identity that it forgets to have the Red Herring make any kind of sense as anything other than a deliberate red herring. Who tries to kill themselves with a sniper rifle in a clock tower?
• Fanfic Fuel: This episode has spawned several fics regarding Willow's comment about...ahem, her idea of the aspect of the demon.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Columbine High School massacre occurred one week before the original planned air-date of this episode, which was about preventing a school shooting. It included this line by Xander:
    "Who hasn't idly thought about taking out the whole school with a semi-automatic?"
  • After Buffy glares at him, he adds, "I said idly."
  • Even The Stoic Oz would later have cringed over the comment about school shootings becoming trendy, since...well...they did.
  • Buffy saves Jonathan's life by accident when she learns he was going to kill himself and not commit a mass shooting. She would come to regret that decision when he became part of the Trio and one of the accomplices to Katrina's death. Even though Jonathan decided to return the favor to Buffy and make up for his past mistakes, he never got the chance.
• He Really Can Act: After two seasons of being a recurring extra and the butt of jokes, Danny Strong shows some serious dramatic chops during the clocktower scene.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Buffy can't read Angel's mind, due to him being a vampire. It's now impossible to watch this scene without thinking of them as a reversed Edward and Bella.
  • Or Sookie and Bill.
  • It also helps that even at the time, people (including the Television Without Pity recapper) were making the same joke that's now popular about this aspect of The Twilight Saga: Buffy was reading his mind, and there simply wasn't anything in there.
• Realism-Induced Horror: This is the only episode where the entire school is in danger without anything supernatural being what threatens them.

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