Episode Report Card Couch Baron: C+ | 4 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Hell is in the eye of the beholder
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.28.1998
Lily, crying in an alley, is approached by Ramon. He offers some words of comfort, and when she utters Rickie's name, he places her as Lily. He invites her to Family Home, where he says Rickie is waiting for her, and she accepts. Yeah, that's pretty dumb of her. But she's not the dumbest person in this episode. More on that later.
We see the inside of the blood bank in dim light. A shadow appears outside the glass pane of the door. The doorknob rattles, then is ripped out of the frame. Slayer strength! Cut to Buffy rifling through some files. She finds Rickie's, which lists him as a "candidate." The portly doctor from earlier enters and asks Buffy what she's doing. Buffy: "Breaking into your office and going through your private files. Candidate for what?" Heh. The woman threatens to call the police, but Buffy, barely looking up, rips the phone out of the wall. Slayer strength again! I love these gratuitous displays. Buffy wonders whether other kids are missing like Rickie, and then launches into a diatribe: "I don't want trouble. I just want to be alone in a quiet room with a chair and a fireplace and a tea cozy. I don't even know what a tea cozy is, but I want one." Hee! "Instead, I keep getting trouble, which I am more than willing to share." I love snarky Buffy. Not mean Buffy from the last scene, but snarky Buffy. The doctor reveals that she passes on the names of the healthy kids to an unnamed man. Cut to Ramon preparing Lily, who's now wearing a government-issue-looking smock, for a ceremony called a "cleansing." Sounds ominous. Lily, get out of there! Anyone who'd dress you like that is no friend of yours.
Graveyard. The Scoobies, including Cordelia, are preparing to lure vamps into their web. Oz asks, "Is everybody packing?" and there's a cute shot of Willow, Xander, and Oz each pulling out a stake and a cross. Shouldn't Bait Girl get a cross too? Oh well. They separate. Cordy follows Xander, they snark a bit, and he tells her to leave his hiding place and act "baity." Cordy wants to know the plan, so Xander explains, "The vampire attacks you. The vampire kills you. We watch. We rejoice." BWA HA HA! They continue to fight. Willow can hear it all from her hiding place, and the look on her face screams her soon-to-be-classic line, "Bored now." Behind her, the vamp that got away at the beginning of this episode appears.
Ramon instructs Lily to kneel in front of a small rectangular pool. He explains that the pool is to "wash away the past," but Lily thinks it looks dirty. Yeah, looks like someone's been shirking his pool-cleaning duties. No wonder you got fired, Ramon.