Yeah Angelus needed to kill someone that mattered to the characters for his time as a villain to have any impact, so if anything Jenny was the safest and most obvious choice. You couldn't kill any of Buffy's closest friends or her mother (well not at that time anyway when she was still 16/17) without drastically changing her character, but killing off a favourite teacher and Giles's girlfriend was just far enough removed from Buffy that it wasn't going to seriously change the narrative or anything to lose her, while still giving the show a memorable death sequence and a lot of angsty moments.
Arguably they did something similar in the pilot actually with Xander's and Willow's friend being killed off to demonstrate the threat that the vampires represented, although obviously Passion handles the aftermath far far better :P But yeah I don't get why it's developed this rep as something that nobody saw coming, the Angelus arc in general did steer the show in a much darker direction obv and the chase sequence and neck snapping were incredibly memorable, but I wouldn't have thought that the choice to kill Jenny in itself was such a gasp-worthy ohnotheydidnt one, even though that's more or less how it gets spoken of
And lol I have noticed that Kendra seems surprisingly popular among fandom on tumblr, but yeah she always felt like the most thinly-drawn caricature that Joss could come up with to me, rather than a fully developed character :shrugs:
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2015-12-24 08:17 am (UTC)Arguably they did something similar in the pilot actually with Xander's and Willow's friend being killed off to demonstrate the threat that the vampires represented, although obviously Passion handles the aftermath far far better :P But yeah I don't get why it's developed this rep as something that nobody saw coming, the Angelus arc in general did steer the show in a much darker direction obv and the chase sequence and neck snapping were incredibly memorable, but I wouldn't have thought that the choice to kill Jenny in itself was such a gasp-worthy ohnotheydidnt one, even though that's more or less how it gets spoken of
And lol I have noticed that Kendra seems surprisingly popular among fandom on tumblr, but yeah she always felt like the most thinly-drawn caricature that Joss could come up with to me, rather than a fully developed character :shrugs: