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WATCH ALONG: Buffy S2 E7

🕑 Added 2024-11-19 15:53:47 +0000 UTC

Comments

Jennifer Eichhorn

Pagers were a way you could let someone know you wanted to talk to them if they weren’t at home. The pager had a number you called and after a prompt you would put in the number you wanted them to call you back on and they could find a (pay) phone and call the number you left.

Zombie

Also some people would use code numbers for certain things, like 143 meant “I love you” because that’s how many letters were in each word. There were more but I forgot them.

Jonathan Malamy

And the pager would typically display the phone number you should call back

Mitch M

I can see why you'd assume this is filler, but this episode is one of the most important in the season, actually, though not for plot reasons. It's widely renowned for being the "thesis" of the entire series, because of the conversation Ford and Buffy have about choices. Ford tries to pretend he doesn't have a choice (lying to himself, really, in an episode that's all about the lies people tell and why they tell them), and Buffy (very rightly) calls him out for his BS, saying that while he doesn't have a good choice, he does have a choice. And that's largely the whole point of the show, to demonstrate that building a meaningful life means making purposeful choices, even when all you have are bad ones. Our choices are what defines us.

Arronax06

If anyone is curious about it, pagers were just a way to contact someone before cellphones were common. You could call the pager's number from a landline, and then the person with the pager would know you were trying to contact them :) . (And yes, I do feel really old now :D )