Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s first Willow Episode is still one of its least popular
I, Robot… You, Jane ranks last in season 1
Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s “I, Robot… You Jane” aired on April 28, 1997. It was the show’s first Willow-centred episode, and it still tends to show up on lists of the series’ weakest hours.
The ratings back that up. On IMDB, “I, Robot… You, Jane” sits at 6.6, the lowest score in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1. It also lands near the bottom in larger episode rankings, at 142 out of 144 for Vox and 129 for Rolling Stone. The setup, at least on paper, has that very specific 1990s appeal: Willow falls for “Malcolm,” only to discover he’s actually Moloch, a demon turned loose on the internet and later plugged into a robot body. What drags it down is the way it plays out, with corny execution, an awkward tone, dated cyberspace clichés, and a final reveal tha’s hard to take seriously.
Going back to early Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “I, Robot… You, Jane” is mostly worth pulling out as a little time capsule of 1990s internet panic, and for the introduction of Jenny Calendar as Rupert Giles’ techno-pagan counterpart and future love interest. Willow, meanwhile, is written far too passively here, especially knowing she later becomes one of the show’s richest characters. You can also already spot the shakier side of the show’s early monster-of-the-week run, before the serialized leap late in season 2, along with some clumsy first attempts at ideas the series would brush up against again: online manipulations, curated identity, and the collision between old knowledge and digital culture. You can find it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1.
Original article at Softonic
