What's with the timeline discrepancy, anyway?  What's your theory on this?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's next big two-parter, "Becoming", starts out with a flashback to Galway, 1753.  Angel, still human in Ireland, is getting thrown out of a pub.  He sees a beautiful noble-woman in the alley way, and he follows her.  In his roguish, drunken way he comes on to her.  In the course of his conversation with her, he reveals his desire to see the world, and experience new things.  She tells him to close his eyes, and suddenly bites him.  When she's done, he falls to his knees, and she cuts her own chest, bidding him to drink her blood.  She is Darla  (First six or so episodes, season 1).  In the present, Angel watches Buffy slay a trio of vampires in the cemetery.  Buffy has decided that it's time for this to be over, and she's trying to take the fight to Angel.  Angel watches from the shadows as Buffy and Xander leave the cemetery, saying that it will "all be over soon". At the archeology museum, Giles has been asked to consult on a mysterious find.  It's a large, vertically rectangular stone object.  Giles, while doing some scrapings, finds out that it's a container of some sort.  He asks the curator to not open it until Giles can translate some of the writing on the exterior of the object.  In school that day, Xander relates to the gang Buffy's wailing on the vamps from the night before, and Buffy says that she's ready to kill Angel.  She's not as sure, however, about passing the finals coming up.  In another flashback, this time to London, 1860, we see Drusilla (still human) going into a confessional booth.  The priest to which she would be giving confession has just been killed by Angelus.  For fun, he plays with her, pretending to be the priest and she gives confession to him.......saying that she's still having her visions.  She says that her mother thinks she's cursed, and is an affront to the lord.  She begs for forgiveness, but Angel condemns her, saying that she's a spawn of satan, and that she should give in to the evil within her.  In the present, Vampire Dru meets up with Angel and Spike in the mansion.  She tells them of dreams of the artifact unearthed that is now at the museum. In Willow's class, Buffy's studying with Willow when she drops her pencil down in between the desk and the file cabinet.  She reaches down to get it, but then gets a strong sense of déjà vu.  She does it again, and when she retrieves it she finds the disk that fell down there in "Passion".  Willow pops it in the computer, and when it loads they find out that it's the restoration spell for Angel's soul.  Flashback to the Rumanian woods, in 1898.  A dead gypsy girl lies on the ground, and the elders stand chanting above her.  Angelus is running through the woods, but then falls to his knees as the elders finish their curse.  A light shines in his eyes, and Angel stares around in bewilderment.  This is when Angel first got his soul back.  The gypsies say that he can't remember it yet, but that he will.  And he will be tortured for all eternity. Back in the present, in the library, Buffy and Willow show Giles the curse that Jenny found.  Xander is bitter, because he realizes that this is what Angel killed Jenny for.  Willow volunteers to perform the spell, but Xander jumps all over her, saying that Angel should just be killed.......that Buffy doesn't care anything about Jenny's murder; she just wants her boyfriend back.  At the museum, Angel and Drusilla attack and kill the curator guy.  That night, while Buffy's talking to Willow on the phone, she comes across the clauddaugh ring that Angel had given her on her birthday.  It makes her think, and she goes out for a walk......where she encounters Kendra.  Kendra's Watcher sent her because he's sensed a great dark power rising in Sunnydale.  Cut to the great dark power.......the stone artifact.  Angel tells Spike and Dru that Acathla the demon was sent to destroy the world, but was pierced through the heart by the sword of a virtuous knight before he could draw a breath to do so.  Acathla then turned to stone and was buried where no one was ever supposed to find him again.  At this, Angel's vamps open the stone box, and Acathla the stone demon looks out at them.  A sword protrudes from its chest.......the deal is someone worthy must pull out the sword, and the demon will wake up, swallow the world, and every living thing on it will go to hell. At the library, Giles has heard about the loss of the Acathla stone, and the death of the curator.  Buffy asks Willow to perform the restoration spell, saying that if she (Buffy) fails in her endeavor, Willow might be the last hope.  At the museum, Angel is performing the ritual that precludes the awakening of Acathla.  He kills a human, wetting his hands with the human's blood, and tries to pull the sword out, but it doesn't work.  Flash back to Manhattan, 1996 (two years earlier to this point).  Angel (even though he's homeless looking and kinda grubby, has this longish hair and looks HOT) is pretty much a mess.  He's been haunted for almost a hundred years by his tortured memories.  A man comes up and introduces himself as Whistler.  He's a demon, but not a bad one.  He says that Angel can "go either way".  He can become someone.......someone to be counted.  He takes Angel to L.A., where Buffy is pre-slayer, and doing the whole no-brain thing.  He witnesses Buffy first be informed of her destiny by her watcher, and sees her first kill.  He watches as she goes home and bears the unhappiness of fighting parents, and this whole new responsibility that has been thrust upon her.  He watches, and he falls in love with her.  Angel tells Whistler that he wants to help her.  That he wants to be somebody.  After the failure of the ritual, Angelus is kinda ticked and says that he's going to "turn to an old friend" to find out what he did wrong.  In class the next day, everyone's taking finals when a vampire in a cloak (to keep out the harmful rays of the sun, don'tcha know?) shows up and delivers a demand from Angel to Buffy, telling her to meet him in the cemetery that night, or more will die.  She leaves Kendra in charge,  and instructs Willow to perform the spell at the same time.   At the cemetery, Angel greets Buffy with his by now usual "hello lover", and they start fighting.  At the same time, the gang starts the ritual for restoration, but are interrupted and attacked by Angel's vamps.  They break Xander's hand, kidnap Giles, and hurt Willow by knocking a book case down on her.  Cordelia runs out.  Kendra's fighting off the other vamps with a degree of success, but then Drusilla walks in.  She hypnotizes Kendra, and kills her.  In the cemetery, Buffy realizes that Angel was just distracting her, and that the others are in danger, and flees back to the library.......but she's too late.  The episode ends with Buffy running into the library in slow motion, and finding Kendra's dead body on the floor, with a voice over from Whistler: "Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments.  No one asks for their life to change, not really.....but it does.  So what're we, helpless? Puppets? No.  The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that.  It's what you do afterwards that counts.  That's when you find out who you are.  You'll see what I mean." To be Continued... FLAWS:      I hate to be an ass.......especially since I really liked this episode, and it's 2nd part.  But I have a couple problems with continuity.  Firstly, in the movie Buffy was a senior, and she was told by Merrick that she was the Slayer while she was practicing in the gym......not hanging out on the front steps of the school as a freshman, as she was in this episode.   Secondly, while it was really cool that we're shown how Angel fell in love with her immediately, from the first moment he saw her.......it creates a bit of  a problem since in the very first episode when Buffy meets him for the first time, he says to her "You know I thought you'd be taller......bigger muscles and all that"; like he'd never seen her before.  Also, in the intro, we see Angel get turned by Darla in "1753". The year we're *in* is 1998. The difference is 243 years, which is what Angel's given as his age numerous times over the course of the series.  But....he was in his 20's when he was bitten, so when he says he's 243 years old, he's wrong.  He should be like, 268, or something, according to the timeline they've given us.  Or else they should have shown him turned at a later date to account for how old he's said he was. One more curiosity.  The whole thing with becoming a vampire is eternal life, right? So why would a vamp willingly give itself up to death just to deliver a message, as the cloak-vamp does to Buffy when it delivers Angel's meeting-terms? Just wondering. ((New:  FLAW found by LIz, from the Atheneum Board:  When Angel witnesses Merrick informing Buffy that she's a slayer, Buffy's sucking on a lollipop.  As the point of view switches back and forth,  the lollipop in Buffy's hand / mouth changes appearance...in other words, at least two different suckers were used while filming this scene, and when it all got spliced together they used footage from each shooting, involving the different lollipops.  Nice catch, liz   ;)     )) THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE:       This is the big intro to the last episode of the season.  It lays a little groundwork for us about the whole achathla demon thing, and shows us a little background on how Angel and Dru became what they are.  It followed up on the missing disk with the restoration spell on it, and Kendra was killed.  We don't find out what slayer was called next until next season, but we know it's gonna happen.  This episode, and the conclusion of it, are another couple episodes that "change everything" BEST LINE:        Lots of good ones in this, and the second part of the ep.  Spike had a good one when they brought him in to look at the stone.  He looks at it and goes:  "It's a big rock.  Can't wait to tell my friends.......they don't have a rock this big."

"Becoming, pt. 1"

What's with the timeline discrepancy, anyway?  What's your theory on this?