Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: During Buffy and Owen's date at the Bronze, after Buffy shoos away Cordy, Buffy turns and smiles at Owen. In the first shot, she's smiling with a closed mouth. Suddenly in the next shot, she's open-mouth grinning with her teeth exposed.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: After the crash, when the bus driver walks up to the vampire that he hit and asks "Can you move?" the blood that was on the right side of his forehead in the previous few shots vanishes.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: The second time we see the van going to Sunnydale, the creepy guy is delivering a weird sermon. At one point, we see him reflected in the driver's mirror, and he is gesturing with his right hand, which is up around his abdomen/chest area. It then cuts and suddenly his hand is down by his side.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: The second time we see the van going towards Sunnydale, the creepy religious zealot guy puts his arm on the seat behind the mother and child. It then cuts to a closeup of them, and we cannot see the creep's arm behind them. It cuts back to a wideshot, and suddenly his arm is behind them again.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: When Buffy gets up to walk over to Owen in the cafeteria, watch Willow and Xander... the directions they are facing change when it cuts to the wideshot. They suddenly are both watching Buffy in the wideshot, which they weren't before the shot cut. It's pretty subtle, so you have watch closely to notice.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: When Buffy, Xander and Willow are in the cafeteria in the beginning, Buffy says she's going to sit with Owen and Willow tells her "good luck." The way Willow is holding her fork changes between edits. (Specifically, it goes from pointed down to pointed up between cuts).
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date - S1-E5
Continuity mistake: When Buffy stakes the vampire in the opening scene, his arms go from up in the air to down by his sides between cuts right as she stakes him.
Continuity mistake: When Willow hides under the table in the classroom after fleeing The Pack, we see that it is on legs and doesn't touch the floor. Yet when Xander comes in and scans the room, he sees the table but Willow's feet aren't visible, even though they should be judging by the height of the table from the floor.
Continuity mistake: When Willow is unsuccessfully trying to tutor Xander outside towards the beginning of the episode, after Willow warns Xander he might flunk math, he reaches up and massages his face with his hand. When he does this, he has a pen in his hand. When the camera cuts to the opposite angle, the pen vanishes. Then, when the scene cuts to a wideshot about 10 seconds later, suddenly his hand is in a completely different position between cuts.
Continuity mistake: When the zookeeper catches Buffy and Willow trying to sneak into the hyena exhibit in the beginning, when Buffy and Willow turn around, they get close to each other but there's still at least 6-8 inches of space between them. When the camera cuts, though, they are suddenly pressed literally right up against each other, to the point they are borderline huddling.
Continuity mistake: When Buffy and Angel get to Buffy's house at the beginning, Buffy starts to use a first-aid kit to patch up Angel's wound. Angel's arm goes from down by his side to up on Buffy's shoulder between cuts. (It can be hard to see since it's close to the bottom of the frame, but it's noticeable. It seems like they cut out a few seconds to quicken the pace.) She's also a little bit closer to Angel between the same cut.
Continuity mistake: After Giles closes the library for "filing, " we see Buffy grab a crossbow off a shelf. It is upside down when she grabs it. Instantly between cuts, it is right side up. You can tell from the grip thingy that sticks out from it. (It looks like she starts to rotate it in the first shot, but it's instantaneously flipped over in the next).
Continuity mistake: Buffy's birthdate starts at 1979. In "I Robot, You Jane", when the demon pulls up Buffy's file in the school system, it shows her year of birth as 1980 and her year as sophomore. But when her file comes up on the student's computer screen, it's changed to 1979 and that she is a senior. It wasn't until towards the end of season 1 in "Nightmares" that her birth year is 1981 (on her tombstone before she comes out as a vampire). (00:08:30)
Continuity mistake: In the beginning, after the monk traps Moloch and closes the book, the positions of his hands gripping the sides of the book changes slightly between cuts. (Ex. His left hand is lower, then suddenly slightly higher between edits).
Continuity mistake: When Buffy and Willow arrive at school at the start of the episode, Willow is wearing very dark, completely opaque tights that look to be black or at best very dark navy blue. When Xander finds her in the next scene, which takes shortly after on the same day, she's suddenly wearing much brighter purple tights.
Continuity mistake: In the beginning of the episode, when Willow gets the email from "Malcolm" and says "He's so sweet! What should I write back?", she instantly goes from facing forward at the computer to facing sideways at Buffy between cuts.
Continuity mistake: After Buffy finds Morgan's brain, Willow pulls up Morgan's school file on one of the library computers without even touching the keyboard. One moment the monitor is on the desktop, the next it's showing Morgan's file.
Chosen answer: From what we see in the series, certain girls are identifiable as potential Slayers - Kendra clearly fell into this category. The identification method is presumably mystical in nature, but the Watchers' Council are pretty effective at that sort of thing, so they're quite good at tracking down the potentials ahead of time. Not perfect, though - it does appear that Buffy herself may have slipped through the net - certainly she had no inkling of what she was until she'd already taken on the role of Slayer. It is possible, however, that this was actually cultural - an American family would hardly be likely to turn over their daughter to some strange man for 'training', so the Watchers might have chosen to keep an eye on her covertly, whereas some other cultures (like Kendra's Jamaican parents) might be more willing to believe.
Tailkinker ★