All The Way

Buffy clomps into the store's basement, grousing about last week's looping customer spell. At the bottom of the stairs, she bumps into Spike. She's startled, and tells him to get a bell for his neck. He might as well; he's been her lapdog for long enough. He's there to get some Burba weed. "Stir it in with the blood; makes it all hot and spicy." Tabasco, Spike. Look into it. Get a little celery and you could have a truly authentic Bloody Mary. Especially if the blood came from someone named Mary. Buffy wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes until Spike admits that he was stealing the root. Heh heh. I said "root." She asks him for help locating the mandrake. He shows her and then murmurs, "Feel like a bit of the rough and tumble?" Buffy and I are both shocked. I mean, he had this tone and this look and hey, it was an honest mistake. At Buffy's surprised face, he clarifies that he meant patrolling. Nope, she's staying at the store. Spike shrugs. He had plans: "The Great Pumpkin is on in twenty." Buffy shakes her head. "So much easier to talk to when he wanted to kill me." And so much easier to watch, too.

Upstairs, Buffy is sent to assist Giles at the register. Scariest scene this season! There's a long line, and he's ringing people up and falling behind on the bagging and I have to watch with my hand over my eyes. I have Post-Traumatic Retail Syndrome (those in the know call it PTRS for short). Giles and Buffy bicker about whether Buffy should patrol. Giles reminds her that demons take Halloween off but Buffy, hit by the continuity stick, asks him, "Yeah, what about costumes that take over your personality or wee little Irish fear demony things?" Giles counters, "If anything calamitous should happen, history suggests it'll happen to one of us." Giles wins. Buffy bags.

An old guy, who looks like Jimmy Corrigan all grown up, slowly walks down a Sunnydale street, humming "Pop Goes The Weasel." He heads into a house full of nifty tin toys and places the bag he's been carrying on the counter. He then looks out the window at children trick-or-treating, chuckles, "Give you something special this year!" and pulls out a big knife and checks the sharpness. I know I should increase my coolness points here and say that I saw misdirection all along with this character. I could say it and you'd never know. But honestly, I didn't get a sense of misdirection. I just saw him being all creepy and checking the knife and I thought, "Huh." That's it. "Huh." My brain is going to mush. Maybe it's time to think about grad school or less TV-watching or something. ["I actually had one of those flip-floppy meta moments where I thought, 'Oh, we're supposed to think it's misdirection, but it's really not, so that's the misdirection.' Then my head exploded. What was that about less TV-watching?" -- Sars]

Der Zauber Kasten. The store has closed, and the gang lolls around exhaustedly. Anya, however, is ecstatic about the piles of money she and Giles pulled in. Giles begins handing out cleaning supplies, but Willow suggests that she do a cleaning spell. "It'll be like Fantasia!" "And we all know how splendidly that turned out for Mickey," snipes Giles, handing Willow a broom. Giles, marry me. And -- no kidding. I wouldn't want to take part in any spell that's been compared to a nightmare of overzealous zombie brooms. At the register, Dawn and Anya are partaking of a little booty-shaking Anya likes to call "The Dance of Capitalist Superiority," and in a daze of admiration, Xander speaks aloud what has heretofore been taboo: "I'm gonna marry that girl." Meaning Anya, not Dawn, because that would be just gross and wrong. Well, grosser and wronger. Going to join Anya at the register, Xander announces their engagement. The group's reaction is mixed: Dawn is excited, Tara smiles sweetly, Willow looks hurt, and Giles and Buffy are surprised. I'm skipping over ensuing Anya/Xander stuff because it doesn't give me any warm fuzzies. In fact, this relationship leaves me colder than a iceberg-dwelling penguin's ass. Buffy asks Giles if he knew of the engagement, and he says no, "Unless I've blocked it from my memory, much as I will Xander's vigorous use of his tongue." He then cleans his glasses and Buffy demands, "Is that why you're always cleaning your glasses!? So you don't have to see what we're doing?" Hee.

Later, the gang is throwing an impromptu engagement party at the Summers's house. Buffy apologizes for the lack of preparation, and Tara promises that for the party, they'll have decorations. Shrugging, "Why wait?" Willow casts a spell that festoons the room with crepe paper and glowing orange lanterns. Tara and Giles share a concerned look. Later, Willow fills a chip bowl in the kitchen while Tara protests that they could have just bought decorations at the grocery store. "Why use magic when you can do something naturally?" Willow doesn't get it -- she uses magic to fight monsters, so why not use it for other things? Tara tries to explain her concerns, but Willow accuses her of "always coming down" on her for using magic that "couldn't harm a fly." Not a fly, maybe, but I'll bet Giles didn't enjoy being blind that one time. They continue to bicker, but are interrupted by Dawn. In the living room, Buffy gives Xander a super-strong hug and expresses amazement at his wedding plans. Blah blah blah Dawn wants a tattoo. Nobody cares. I actually liked the Dawn character last season. What happened? Then Dawn's all like, See ya! and Buffy's all like, What? and Dawn explains that she's sleeping over at Janice's. She is apparently going there without a jacket or an overnight bag, which perhaps should set off alarm bells in the Buffster. Buffy can't decide if she should let Dawn go, in light of the engagement party, and tries to defer to Giles, who defers back.

Looks like Buffy decided to let Dawn go. She's walking down the street, now wearing a jacket but still with no overnight bag or even one of those cute little sleeping bags you can buy kids for sleepovers. I still have mine -- it's all soft and cottony and yellow with tiny flowers. I've been refraining from commenting on the clothes in this episode (my patented Clothes Insult Generator is in the shop), but I sure don't like Dawn's boots. They're knee-high and all loose around the top. Anyway, Dawn gets a sneaky smile and takes a detour down an alley. She hears scary noises, but then runs into her friend. They establish that they've tricked their respective guardians; each parental type thinks their hormonal little darling is staying at the other girl's house. Bored now. I hope something awful happens to Dawn because she, of all people, should know better than to pull a stunt like this. And unlike teen Buffy, Dawn can't even protect herself. Dawn and her large-foreheaded friend vamp around 'cause they think they're so bad-ass, and I weep with not caring.

At the park (oh, racy) Dawn and Janice McForehead meet up with a couple choady high school boys named Zack and Mike, or something. Forehead is already friendly with Zack, and apparently Dawn and Mike have seen each other around. Mike, or Tad, or whatever his name is, has on a Sunnydale High letterman's jacket, which briefly makes me ponder whether Sunnydale High was closed down or relocated when Buffy blew it up. There's lots of eyebrow flicking before the kids head off for a naughty night of, well, egging houses and letting air out of tires. Dawn is too old to dress up but she thinks this eleven-year-old crap is cool? Hormones really fuck you up. It's sad. Oh no! It looks like Zack tried to de-pants Forehead! Her jeans are all squished down low around her hips in danger of showing pubes. If I were her, I'd be a little more pissed off...or wait. I guess she's just sporting those super-low-rise pants so fashionable with the kids today. Yuck. Neither flattering nor appropriate for a high school freshman. Giggle giggle. Dawn likes Tad, or Chip, or whatever. Chip likes Dawn too. Oh, write it on your frickin' Peechee notebook and spare me the tepid teen romance because I DON'T FREAKIN CARE! Doesn't this show ever have commercial breaks anymore? Forehead is bored like me, and then the lamest juvies in the world spot the house of the creepy, humming man we saw earlier.

Xander sits on the stairs at Buffy's and feels his testicles withering with marital anxiety. He's joined by Giles, who adds to his angst by talking about moving in, buying a house, wedding arrangements. Not sure if he's purposefully trying to disturb Xander, but either way, go Giles.

Boring juvies stand outside Toy Man's house. Dawn's just like an appendix, you know? She's a part of Buffy that used to have a purpose, used to lead somewhere, but now she's just this pointless little dead end that could possibly fill up with half-digested storylines and get all toxic and kill the show. Mutant Enemy, if you can't do anything better with Dawn than limp teenage clichs, it's time to just throw out the pickle. Get a new, crisper one, if you know what I mean. Which you probably don't. Zack and Tad talk about how the old guy, Mr. Kaltenbach, is a "total loony tunes" and then dare the girls to smash the pumpkin on the porch. From Dawn's pants, a desperate voice declares, "I'll do it." Well, she actually said it with her mouth, but you know she was thinking with her pants. She walks up to the porch, and as she's about to smash the (really cool) pumpkin, the Toy Man catches her arm. The pumpkin smashes, and Tad runs to Dawn's aid. The Toy Man laughs suddenly and invites the kids inside for "something special." At this point, I hope he hits them all over the head with a bat and carves jack o' lantern faces into their boring, inconsequential, hackneyed teen tummies but I know that ain't gonna happen. Commercial break, please?

Nope. Inside, Dawn, Forehead, and Chad sit on the couch, bored, as Zack plays with a toy robot. The Toy Man used to design toys, and when he says, "Jeepers, I was the best," he reminds me more than ever of Jimmy Corrigan. I can't read Jimmy Corrigan comics because they are just too darn sad, and don't forget, I suffer from PTRS, so I have to monitor my mood carefully. Toy Man loved designing toys until some undefined thing happened ("one little mistake") and his toy-making job was taken away. He cackles and invites Dawn into the kitchen to help prepare the "treats." Chad's still hoping to score with Dawn so he volunteers to lend a hand. "Hands are good. Always use more hands," drones Toy Man as he leads Chad away. Forehead wants to leave; Dawn agrees, but Zack isn't worried. He fiddles with a jack-in-the-box; when it pops out, it's revealed to have no head. Do you think we're supposed to find this old guy creepy and menacing? Whoever wrote this script is over-decorating that Christmas tree, if you know what I mean. Upon reflection, you probably still don't. In the kitchen, Toy Man picks up his big sharp knife which is sitting to a foil-covered baking tray. Suddenly, Chad/Tad/this-show-makes-me-mad is behind him in vamp face. I'm totally not surprised. Like, no surprise whatsoever, and I can't even recall whether I read spoilers for this episode. So either I did read spoilers and it's my own fault for not being surprised, or else somehow I knew along that those two teen toads were vampires and it's ME's fault for being so boring and predictable. And that's why you shouldn't read spoilers, kids. You never know who to blame, and knowing precisely who to blame is everything in my book.

Yay! Commercials!

Tad bites the Toy Guy, and as he kills the poor old coot, the covered tray falls to the ground and is revealed to be harmless Rice Krispies treats, decorated with little pumpkins. And other than crying at Giles's departure in the premiere, the pity I feel for the Toy Guy now is the only emotion (other than boredom and ennui) that Buffy has caused in me all season. Poor Toy Guy. My jaded old heart is breaking. Tad comes out of the kitchen and claims to have merely swiped the old man's wallet. The girls run out of the house, giggling, as Zack and Tad follow. They debate whether they should eat the girls or turn them. Great. Just what the world needs -- vamp babies siring babies. It's a sad epidemic of stupidity.

At Buffy's house, Anya blathers as Xander's testicles slither even further up into his body. Babble babble. Buffy says that all that matters is the couple's happiness, and Anya rhapsodizes about having found Xander. Xander looks like his tummy hurts. I know mine does. Xander's been sitting on that fence so long he's got barbed wire coming out his nose. Xander and Buffy retire to the porch, Xander practically gasping for air after feeling his world close in on him in the living room. Buffy tries to cheerlead him into feeling good about things, obviously projecting her own longing for a quasi-normal life onto him. Xander rather unconvincingly agrees, "I'm wallowing, not drowning." He stands to go back in to the party. Buffy, however, has decided to go patrolling with Spike instead. She takes off, and Xander hangs his head and takes a deep breath before going back inside. I'm amazed he can walk at all, what with those blocks of ice encasing his feet.

Dawn and Tad walk down the street and talk about things. He asks Dawn if she's a sophomore. Her response is, "I wish," which really doesn't seem right to me, considering that Dawn said, "Yeah? Those monks put grades K through eight in my head. Can't we just wait and see if they drop nine in there too?" in "Tough Love." But I suppose, in the grand scheme of revisionist history this show is foisting onto us vis--vis Spike and the very existence of Dawn, that the least of our worries is if Dawn should actually be in tenth grade. She is rather old to be a freshman, though. I guess that's what happens when you play hooky as a big green ball of dimension-altering energy for fourteen years. Let this be a lesson. Josh hands Dawn a wad of bills as her part of the take and quips, "And so begins her life of crime." Dawn muses that he's a little late to be corrupting her, as she hasn't "paid for lipstick since forever." Blaine is thrilled by the news that Dawn is both "cute and bad." He notices Dawn shivering and strips off his letterman's jacket to hang around her shoulders. They share a Look, but just then Forehead shows up, Big Gulp in hand, wondering where Zack has gotten himself to. Blaine says that he's fetching the car.

Cut to Zack pulling some dead guy out of a sedan. A. Sedan. Yup. This isn't your sire's Oldsmobile.

Buffy walks down the street contemplating stuff as she wistfully watches the happy children and happy couples. She's distracted by some sirens and wanders over to see some paramedics wheel a woman (with very obvious fang marks on her neck) into an ambulance.

Phone rings at the Summers's. Giles answers it. It's Forehead's mother. Uh oh! The jig is up. After finishing up the conversation, Giles goes into the living room where Willow and Xanya are shaking their groove things. Tara sits alone on the couch. Giles shuts off the stereo, to mild protest, and explains the situation. He dispatches Willow and Tara to go downtown to look for Dawn while Xanya holds down the fort and Giles heads over to Spike's.

Forehead and Zack spill out of the hijacked car and go to make out in the woods or something, leaving Dawn and Jake inside. Dawn vainly tries to make small talk. She worries that Jake might want his jacket back, but he brushes her off with, "Cold doesn't really bother me." Dawn jokes that Jake is Superman. He quips, "No. But I do have a few special powers." Dude. Wall-eye is not a special power. He leans in for a kiss, but Dawn fumbles for the radio. Jake notices that Dawn is shaking and oh god just kiss already. The only people most teenagers are remotely interesting to are other teenagers. I have zero interest in this storyline. "I just wanna taste you," murmurs Cliff. I don't know what's creepier: that line as uttered by an ostensibly sixteen-year-old boy, the fact that Dawn falls for it, or the fact that Cliff hasn't blinked in the past two minutes.

Ugh. We're back to more kissing. These two look more like they're passing a golf ball back and forth between their lips than kissing. Yeah. It's just as unattractive as it sounds. Dawn pulls back into a little blissful puddle of goo. She catches her breath, and Skip quickly realizes that that was Dawn's first kiss. Dawn tries to play it off, but caves under a look from Skip. She immediately starts listing all the things she did wrong, ending with, "And I'm pretty sure I drooled on you." Why stop there? I'm pretty sure she drooled on two thirds of the viewing audience. Duncan pulls Dawn into another kiss and assures her that it was perfect.

Bronze. It's a Halloween bonanza. Willow and Tara walk through the dance floor, looking askance at a couple attired as Luke and Leia and dancing rather, uh, suggestively. "Do they know they're brother and sister?" asides Willow to Tara. Tara wonders if Dawn really would be here but Willow says that "it's where [Willow would] be if [she were] fifteen and on the lam." Except not her, of course, because at fifteen she was a "spaz." Good to see that Willow's self-perception isn't skewed or anything. Willow and Tara head up the stairs to the catwalk. Willow complains about not being able to find Dawn in the throng of hormones and bad outfits, and begins to chant. Tara demands of Willow, "What are you doing?" Willow, extremely nonchalantly, explains that she's simply gonna move everyone who isn't fifteen and a girl into another dimension for just a moment. I mean, duh. So does Willow know a spell for everything? That seems pretty damn specific. If I asked her for a spell to, say, find the cell phone plan with the best coverage and value for my consumer dollar, could she do that too? So could a good spreadsheet, butanyway, Tara looks absolutely shocked at Willow's intention. Willow completely doesn't get why anyone would think that it's maybe a bad idea to shift everyone in the Bronze to an alternate dimension. Right! It's not like Willow has ever had trouble with that sort of spell before. Aside from Willow's reckless disregard for the safety of innocent people, what is so frightening is her absolute confidence. Her hubris doesn't allow her to consider the ramifications, or even the possibility, of failure. Tara pipes up with, "What would Giles say?" Angry, Willow casts some sort of mute spell and the background noise vanishes. "Are you taking his side now?" she rages at Tara. She accuses Tara of talking to Giles about her behind her back. Tara reaches into her back pocket and pulls out her spine, spitting out that Willow's involvement with magic is becoming dangerous. "What do you want me to do? Just, just sit back and keep my mouth shut?" "That'd be a good start," snaps Willow. "If I didn't love you so damn much I would," retorts an obviously peeved Tara. She turns on her heel to leave and angrily reverses Willow's mute spell.

Dawn. Kip. Kissing. Lip mikes cranked up to ten. Cameron accidentally bites her. More smooching. Dawn runs her hand up Trip's arm and then up to his face. The camera angle changes to show that he's now wearing his vamp face. Granted, I don't go around playing much tonsil hockey with vampires at my age, but wouldn't you feel the transformation? Dawn opens her eyes wide in surprise. Well, I guess this should clear up any nagging doubts as to Dawn's familial ties to Buffy. It proves that they really are sisters. Sisters who obviously have as their family motto, "Vampires. Not just for staking anymore!"

Buffy barges into Spike's crypt, but he's nowhere to be found. She calls out to him, and he steps out from the shadows somewhere, busting on her for not knocking, then asks if Giles has caught up to her. After he expositions the Dawn situation, Buffy strides to a chest and tosses Spike a crossbow, saying, "We have to find her."

One of Sunnydale's many cemeteries. Giles plods through the mist, waving his flashlight beam around. He hears a girl scream and doesn't run, but rather briskly jogs in the direction it's coming from. He shines his light onto a vamp feeding off a teen girl backed up against a tree; he assumes it's Dawn and backhands the vamp with his flashlight. Giles goes to check on the girl and discovers Forehead. I don't know how Giles even knew her, but there you have it. By this time Zack has recovered. He claims that Forehead was asking for it, but what he really means is, "Let's you and me fight now. Old fussy dude." Giles is more than willing to oblige. He gets his ass kicked around a bit, but then remembers that he saw Karate Kid on TBS and does this front-kick thingy that sends Zack into a nearby tree, impaling him with an conveniently-placed branch in the process.

Dawn flees from the car with Todd giving chase. He's all, "I thought we could hang out." Dawn is repulsed, but then he makes with the sweet talk and she's not going anywhere. "It'll only hurt for a second," he reassures her as he bends towards her neck. Dawn lets him because. You see. If you remember. Okay. There's no good reason for Dawn to let him do that, and it's no end of annoying, but that's just what she's about to do until Giles arrives with a quippy "I bet that's what you say to all the girls." That dialogue iswell, I was going to say, "That dialogue is Rip Van Winkle, it's so tired." But then I remembered that Rip actually slept for a hundred years and would presumably be rather well rested, and therefore the metaphor wouldn't work. But then I couldn't think of a literary figure who stayed up for a really, really long time. An Anti-Rip Van Winkle, if you will. Maybe Rip Van Winkle on some sort of coke bender. I don't know. I give up now. Anyway. Todd quickly grabs Dawn by the throat in the hostage hold. Giles purposefully crosses the clearing, saying, "Now you have a choice, son. We can do this the easy way or we can do this the har" Giles is interrupted by the sudden illumination of headlights. Many vamps get out of their tastefully appointed Cadillac Cateras and Pontiac LeManses and surround him. The hell? Okay. I guess vampires like to make out as much as the person, but someone is really going to have to explain for me the love for the mid-sized sedan. You're a hot young undead creature of the night. You don't play by society's rules, maaaaaan. Don't tell me that you're going to drive the Subaru Legacy for its roomy interior yet competitive gas mileage.

A host of vamps advances on Giles. A hand claps him on the shoulder, and he starts until he notices that it's attached to Spike. Cue Buffy. As soon as she takes in the situation, she interrogates Dawn: "Were you parking? With a vamp?" Dawn protests that she didn't know about the vamp part; she "just met him." "Oh. So you were parking in the woods with a boy you just met?" snaps Buffy in full mom mode. Bicker bicker. Random vamp who looks a lot like Mort, Harmony's minion, from one of those episodes during The Days Of Chauvinistic Swine And Tubers (also known as Season Four), pipes up with, "Excuse me. Can we fight now?" Buffy asks if anyone is actually here just to make out. A couple of normals slowly raise their hands. Buffy points at them with her stake: "Aw, that's sweet. You run." Heh.

Fighty fight fight. One of the vamps growls, "Die, Slayer!" before getting staked. Brian grabs Dawn. "Your sister's the Slayer? I knew there was something about you!" Dawn knees him in the groin, because that's the very last thing she wanted to hear. La, la, la, vamps are staked. Over near a tree, Spike and Mort are debating the merits of the closed- vs. open-shop system in terms of designated holidays. You see, Spike's union, and that means that vamps take Halloween off. Ah, Spike. Defender of tradition. You all remember how Spike has always had the utmost respect for the old ways, right? Right? RIGHT? Anyway, Spike stakes Mort with his little crossbow, and while he's reloading, he's tackled by another vamp. The bolt flies harmlessly through the air. Buffy is busy with the only competent fighter of the lot. She flips him over a Mitsubishi Diamante or something. He rips off the antenna and tries to strangle her with it. She breaks free and does that thing where you run up to the nearest vertical surface and run up it, flipping yourself over in the process. I wish I could do that. Although I guess I don't have much need for it in my day-to-day life. It might make filing more exciting, though. I could close the door with my feet! Anyway. Buffy opens the car door as the vamp rushes her, and he busts out the glass. She pulls him through the window and then slams the door on his head, decapitating him. Nice work in that scene. The stunts are slowly growing tolerable again.

Cut to Dawn, who is sneaking home or something. She hears a noise behind her and spins around, walking slowly backwards. Brian comes up behind her: "Trick or treat!" He wrestles her to the ground and pins her there. "I thought you really liked me," she stutters. "I do," he assures her, "and you like me too." Dawn agrees. He leans down for a little nibble, then arches his back and explodes into dust from the errant crossbow bolt Dawn found on the ground and stuck straight up from her torso. Hey! If you look very carefully, you can see Contrivance sneaking away in the edge of the shot. Dawn sobs. Well. Wasn't that just the Reader's Digest condensed version of the Buffy/Angel arc for the After School Special set? I mean, without any of the emotional investment and pathos, stirring score, or compelling storyline.

Casa de Summers. Buffy apologizes to a departing Xander and Anya for ruining their party. Anya brushes it off, saying that it gives her more time to plan the shower, and wonders where one might procure some male strippers. Xander takes slight offense. Anya protests that she was joking, but mouths, "We'll talk," at Buffy as they leave. Willow makes a throwaway comment to Buffy while Tara, her body language very standoffish, announces that she's going to bed. Willow rushes after her. Giles, icepack on jaw, tells Buffy that Dawn's behavior must be addressed. "You're right. I'm glad you're here to take care of it," Buffy says before prancing up the stairs. Way to set a responsible example, Buffy. Giles goes in to have a talk with Dawn. I go to get a snack because I had enough of this during my teen years.

Upstairs, Willow is trying in vain to apologize to Tara. Tara isn't really having it, though, and just says, "Can we not do this now? I'm tired," as she removes the approximately seven thousand decorative pillows from the bed. "Okay," agrees Willow, "Let's just forget it ever happened." This gives her an idea, and she goes to her dresser, picks up a flower, and whispers, "Forget." We know that something magical has happened, because the flower glows. Clearly a sign of the supernatural. She shuts off the lights and gets in bed with Tara, who immediately snuggles up to her, oblivious to their earlier fight because Willow just WIPED HER MEMORY. It's interesting that some spells don't require a special incantation but just one everyday word. What if Willow came home and said, "Oh darn. Forgot milk." And the gang is all, "Milk? What is this milk of which you speak? I wish I had a cool, refreshing beverage to go with these cookies but alas, nothing seems to adequately complement them." And then we would be sad for the poor Scoobies exiled to a life of cookies without milk.

week: I've got a theory. That Joss hates Sep.