Kiss or kill?
Buffy realizes that she is in love with a vampire, and ponders what to do. On the one hand, Buffy says (reflecting Xander’s somewhat self-serving letter-of-the-law argument), she simply should get over her feelings so she can kill him: Xander’s argument from duty: “Angel’s a vampire. You’re a Slayer. I think it’s obvious what you have to do.” This is similar to Faith’s argument in Revelations: “Vampire. Slayer. Dead vampire.” If taken as an absolute moral principle, the contingencies of a particular situation (e.g., that Angel has a soul) do not matter. However, killing Angel goes against a different principle which states that slayers should not kill those who have souls, a principle Buffy will later embrace as her moral line. Buffy and Willow both argue that Angel hasn’t ever hurt Buffy–he has in fact tried to help her. She finds it hard to kill someone who she has reason to think is good and that she feels for. Darla ends the dilemma by making it appear as if Angel attacked Joyce,
