YMMV / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S2 E7 "Lie to Me"

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The ending of the episode is an in-universe example. Depressing and sad when aired, but the characters hadn't suffered great tragedy or major deaths yet. By the time the show is over that ending is second only to "The Body" in tear factor.
  • The joke of Buffy saying "Liar" as Joss Whedon's Executive Producer credit pops up on screen. Years later, Whedon would be accused of harrassing and bullying many actors on various projects, with Sarah Michelle Gellar supporting such claims, and his denials sounded unconvincing to many.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ford refers to Buffy taking part in a beauty contest at her old school. Sarah Michelle Gellar will appear in just such a contest in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
  • Buffy encounters a guy wearing a dorky Dracula costume and Ford is a fan of Dracula (1973). Three seasons later, she faces the real deal.
  • The script says that Chantarelle's original name was Joan. She'll eventually adopt the name Anne in "Anne", after Buffy's middle name, while Buffy will briefly name herself Joan when suffering from memory loss in "Tabula Rasa".
• Hollywood Homely: Lampshaded when Xander meets Ford and bemoans the fact that Buffy doesn't seem to know any unattractive guys.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Ford wasn't over it just by helping to mastermind the whole vampire pact, he's definitely over it when he knocks Buffy down the stairs while she tries to reason with the other clubgoers. Of course, as Buffy points out, he wanted to be the villain — it just made the whole death wish easier for him.
• Retroactive Recognition: Roswell fans know Billy Fordham as Max, but seven years later, Jason Behr and Sarah Michelle Gellar would be reunited for The Grudge.
• Rewatch Bonus: How much the Buffyverse might have changed if Drusilla had simply taken Angel's advice here and left Sunnydale with Spike. Angel wouldn't have lost his soul in "Innocence" (but might have lost it on some other occasion as he and Buffy still wouldn't know about the Curse Escape Clause yet), and might not have departed for L.A. the following year. Spike ended up having to help Buffy kill Angelus in "Becoming, Part 2" which caused Drusilla to dump him. That event led to Spike's entire personal transformation and turgid affair with Buffy. Drusilla later turned up on Angel to sire Darla as a vampire again, thus leading to Darla's one-night stand with Angel and culminating in Connor's birth. Phew.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Though Ford is speaking of his general bad condition should he live with cancer long enough, he specifically notes that what would be left of him would be shriveled and bald and '[…]won't even look like me[…].'. He avoids this by getting his wish to be turned, but what rises has a particularly nasty 'vamp face' that bears little if any resemblance to Ford's (though he is not shriveled and bald).

---