Entropy

Xander's new apartment that I've been unable to come up with a catchy name for. Sep keeps trying to sell me on The Non-Basement of Debasement, but I think she's lost her edge. The set dressers are really overdoing it with the red light that's everywhere, but I guess it's not as anvilicious as if they had used blue light. Because Xander is, quite clearly, feeling blue. He's sitting on the floor, listening to country music and drinking out of a dark brown bottle that's supposed to be beer, but he's cleverly covering the label so parents across the land can tell their kids that it's only sarsaparilla. He looks purty sad. Oh well. He gets up, grabs his coat off the chair, and takes off. As he walks down the front walk, the camera pans over to some bushes, and Anya steps out from behind them, looking like some sort of misplaced Spiegel model in her sensible gray turtleneck and mulberry overcoat. She turns to the camera and says, "The worsted wool of this stylish yet affordable coat will keep you warm on the endless string of cold and lonely nights after your beloved leaves you at the altar. It also comes in heather gray!" Also, her hair looks like chicken-fried ass. I guess she's in pain too.

Credits. No Oz, and only one shot of Giles. And people wonder why I don't give a crap about this show anymore?

UC Sunnydale. Willow waits outside a classroom and excitedly runs after Tara when she emerges. Willow: too damn upbeat. Tara: far too glib. Willow laughs too much at a throwaway comment from Tara, which is supposed to endear her to me but really makes me want to box her ears. "So this is becoming kind of a regular thing -- you and me after class?" queries Tara. "Only this time you stuck around." Willow isn't quite sure if she's busted for stalking her ex and makes an uh-oh face, but then Tara quickly inserts, "She's just a friend." This is in reference to the girl that bussed Tara on the cheek in the last episode. Willow invites Tara out for coffee, and Tara agrees that she's free tomorrow. Suddenly Willow and Tara seem to have been replaced by huge, anthropomorphic chickens in bad outfits -- what with all the head bobbing and squawking -- as they have a little stupid misunderstanding about whether they meant that they could bring dates to Caffeine Summit or if they are each other's dates.

Streets of Sunnydale. Buffy and Dawn walk down an open-air shopping promenade. Buffy suggests that they browse in a store, but Dawn nixes that idea, because it's one of the eight million places that Dawn stole things from -- in this instance, a toothbrush. Buffy razzes Dawn about the inherent uncoolness that is stealing tools of dental hygiene before they engage in a sisterly fight about who gets to drive the blame train for the whole affair. Buffy suggests visiting the pet store, and in response Dawn quips that she can't go there either because she stole "a pocket full of goldfish." Which was almost funny. Dawn is down on the puppy-captivity featured at the pet store, but finally agrees that they should check it out, since it's the only store around she can "show [her] face" in. Buffy expositions that it won't last forever, since Dawn has returned all of the merchandise that she'd nicked, "and we're paying for the rest." "I'm paying for the rest," asserts Dawn earnestly. Yeah? With what? You have no money. You have no job. As far as I can tell, you neither earn an allowance nor do anything that would allow you to earn an allowance. Unless you're going to shave off that shiny hair of yours and sell it to a wigmaker like Jo did in Little Women, you should either cram it or work in a reference to babysitting. Blah, blah, blah. Dealing with long-dangling plot points has never left me so bored.

Legion of Dim's Underground Lair. Jonathan is doing something with the stolen disk, utilizing one of those made-for-TV chemistry sets with the vials of different colored liquid and the squiggly tubing. I wonder if there's a whole cottage industry dedicated to these scientifically useless set-ups? Warren is in a big hurry, but Jonathan won't be rushed, because "if something goes wrong it's gonna surge and we'll be deader than an ex-girlfriend." Warren asks him to repeat that last bit, and Jonathan snaps something about trying to get some work done. Warren tries a different tactic, calling him "Short Round" and placating him with the possibility of the world becoming his evil oyster if he'd only let it. Jonathan doesn't seem swayed, telling Warren that after this particular mission is complete, they're going to go their separate ways. Warren wanders off to the background to talk to Andrew, who is wearing a shirt plastered all over with girly goldenrod and cornflower blue needlepoint flowers. I know! He must be wearing one of those magic chameleon shirts which blends into a background, and he was just sitting on an awful fugly couch. It's the only logical explanation. Andrew tells Warren that Jonathan has that "same look on his face -- the one that he had that time I highlighted in his Babylon 5 novels." Realization explodes onto Andrew's face as he continues, "Right before he told his mother on me! Warren, I don't think we can trust him." Warren coolly says that, luckily, they don't have to "for that much longer." "Is it gonna be that soon?" asks Andrew with a sad tone in his voice, making it clear that Andrew and Warren have already talked about getting rid of Jonathan. "It's gonna be soon," promises Warren. Of course, there was some sort of dairy joke in there that went over the heads of Andrew and the viewing audience, minus the residents of Wisconsin. Ah, dairy humor. The hallmark of every well-crafted show.

Xander. Steps into the Red Room. Sees Anya sitting at the table. She stands and paces, twisting her hands nervously. Xander launches into a big speech, trying to apologize. He's doing an okay job of it until he says, "All I had to do was say something earlier. I could have spared you from that nightmare." Anya, who has had a look of relief on her face until now, crunches her eyebrows and pointedly asks, "Said something about what?" Xander dissembles. Anya asks him point-blank, "Do you still want to get married?" Xander is silent. Anya gets sadder. Xander claims that it's a "complicated question." Anya says it's not. Xander says that he does want to get married "someday. When we're ready." Tears well in Anya's eyes, and she shifts her weight from side to side. Xander insists that he just wants to be "honest" with her. Anya spits, "Congratulations, Xander! On being honest now. I wonder what the medal will say." Heh. At this point, I'm firmly on Anya's side. Anya turns away, towards the camera. Xander says that he loves Anya and wishes that they could go back to the way things were. At the mention of "wish," Anya's face goes all vengeance-demony and she says, "I wish you were never born." Oh. Everything I said about being on Anya's side? I take it all back. Wishing in vain that some horrible and putrefying fate will befall your ex, leaving him a hollow, broken shell of a man unable to enjoy the pleasure of human company for the rest of his miserable days? A-okay. Doing so when you know you have the power to actually create such a state? That's a horse of a different color. A shitty color.

Back to the scene of pain. Anya turns back towards Xander and wishes that he "felt the pain of a thousand searing pokers boiling [his] heart in its own juices." Xander: "I know, honey. I totally deserve that." Anya is confused that her curse doesn't seem to be working. "I wish your intestines were tied in knots and ripped apart inside your lousy gut!" Xander says that they are indeed, and Anya gets a little happier, until she realizes that he's talking about "metaphor intestines." Totally unmoved by Xander's insistence that he loves her and wants to make it work, she disgustedly pushes past him and slams out of the apartment. Hmm, these two have some communications problems. (I'm going for the dramatic understatement there.)

Caf. Halfrek and Anya. Halfrek is nattering on about some guy she cursed so that he's plagued with paper cuts every time he picks up a piece of paper that isn't a child-support check. Halfrek is one of those annoying people who never talks about anything but her job. Also, her pinched little face and nasal voice make me want to set her hair on fire. Anya listlessly picks at a daisy as she complains that her best curses aren't working. Halfrek condescendingly reminds Anya that wreaking her own vengeance is against the rules. Anya wants to find a way around that, and Halfrek drops the harmless little suggestion that Anya could always find someone else to wish for her.

Dawn walks into the kitchen, spies a cluster of syrup bottles on the counter with Buffy manning the grill, and hesitantly asks if they're now an "International House of Something." Buffy chirps that it's just a "breakfast kind of morning," and asks Dawn what kind of syrup she'd like on her pancakes. "Syrups have kinds?" is Dawn's response. How can someone know about IHoP but not about flavored syrup? Buffy ignores this and suggests that they stay in for some sister time this evening. Dawn "ums," and Buffy worries that she's turned into the mom that tries too hard. Dawn's lip gloss is really, really shiny. Blindingly so. It's as if she decided that, since she doesn't have a character arc like last season, the shiny hair must not be cutting it, and she has upped the shiny ante in an effort to get more screen time. Dawn suggests that, instead of Buffy hanging with Dawn at home, that Dawn go patrolling with Buffy. Buffy sarcastically nixes the idea. In response, Dawn brings up the fact that the gang used to patrol all the time when they were Dawn's age. Instead of pointing out that by the time she wasn't that much older than Dawn, Buffy had DIED to save the world, and that patrolling isn't all shits and giggles, Buffy just reminds Dawn that she's really only eighteen months old. Dawn protests that all the bad stuff in the world is going to find her one way or another simply because of her family connections. Buffy doesn't point out that creepy things are usually drawn to Dawn through her own stupidity. That and the big neon "I'M A POTENTIAL HOSTAGE, AND NONE TOO BRIGHT TO BOOT" sign that follows Dawn around.

Espresso Pump. Willow fills Tara in on the penis monster from "Doublemeat Palace." Willow sums the monster's appearance up with, "If I wasn't gay before." Oh, right. Willow. Gay. They didn't mention that for, like, at least five minutes. I almost had time for the searing pain of the last anvil blow to my head to fade. Anya wanders up, and her hair has gotten much worse than last time we saw her. It's like the stylist told her, "Now tilt your head down, Emma honey, I just want to dry it a little underneath," and then forgot her under the dryer and got engrossed in the sixty-five-minute process of shining Michelle Trachtenberg's hair. Willow hugs Anya for some reason I can't explain, since they always seemed to kind of hate each other. ["'Kind of'?" -- Sars] Anya waves her hands around a lot and mumbles before sitting down. Willow makes a hollow "if there's anything we can do" offer, but of course she made it to Anya, who jumps right on that train. "You're lesbians so the hating of men will come in handy. Let's talk about Xander."

What follows is a montage of scenes, all set to the "wacky" hippo ballerinas music, in which Anya tries to get Dawn, Willow, Tara, and Buffy to wish something awful to happen to Xander. Hey, gang! Isn't it funny the way Anya is attempting manipulate Xander's closest friends into making his penis to explode or his "brains and guts to go blooey" by exploiting some of the gang's worst fears? Isn't it even more of a thigh-slapper that if one of the gang fell for this ploy, these awful things would ACTUALLY HAPPEN to Xander? Oh, yeah. That's comedy. In HELL.

Anya gets frustrated and gives up on Tara and Willow, shrieking, "God, what kind of lesbians are you? If you love men so much, go love men!" Oh, okay. That's funny.

Skip to Anya on Buffy's porch. Anya is at the end of her tether with trying to get Buffy to wish unspeakable pain on one of her most stalwart friends. Dontcha just feel for Anya in this scene? Anya pouts about how much Xander hurt her. Can't we talk about my pain for a moment? Specifically, the pain caused by Buffy's flared pants with squiggly designs down the side? I guess this answers the age-old question of what to get the toreador-slash-marching band enthusiast who has everything. Buffy is just about to sympathize with Anya by wishing for something when Xander wanders up. I wonder -- if Buffy had wished that everything had worked out between Anya and Xander, could (or would) Anya have been able to grant that wish? Xander seems to want to talk to Anya, but she stalks off after snapping bitterly, "Well, congratulations! They all still love you even after what you did to me." Xander wants to go after her, but Buffy stops him, telling him that Anya needs time to cool off. Xander throws a small fit and kicks the crap out of a little gnome hiding in the hollow of Spike's Stalking Tree (I think. There may be more than one tree in the front yard). Buffy's attention is drawn to the gnome, wondering how "that creepy little thing" got into her front yard in the first place and quipping that if she had known it was there, she would have crawled out of the grave much sooner than she did. Xander bends down to clean up the pieces and pulls a camera out of the gnome's hat. He says, "Looks like someone's been keeping an eye on all your ins and outs," and I snort, "Um, yeah, that would be Spike. But he's not the one who planted the camera." Xander can't hear me, of course, so he jumps to the conclusion that, given Spike's past behavior, he was the one who planted the gnome-cam.