Previously on Buffy: "Triangle" in Season Five told us that Anya once dated a man whom she turned into a troll. Willow came back to Sunnydale, and Anya gave her a recap of events so far. Spike-in-the-basement was all whacked out and crazy. Anya went back to vengeance, but her coworkers felt her job performance was sub-par.
Summers house at night. Dawn is giving Willow the full benefit of her experience with a week or so of high school: "My advice to you is: do exactly what everyone else does." As she helps Willow fold clothes and place them in a dresser in Buffy's old room, Dawn continues her mantra of fitting in, which includes wearing the same thing as everyone else and generally to simply "nod and smile." That's really the best advice one human can give another, isn't it? Willow is indulgent of the advice and reminds Dawn that she has been to college before. Buffy and Xander enter the room, carrying boxes. I guess they've retrieved Willow's stuff from Sunnydale Temporarily Evil Discount Storage, or wherever you store the effects of your friends who have sucked up all available knowledge of black magic and tried to destroy the world. Buffy asks if Xander has spoken to Anya recently; he hasn't since "Same Time, Same Place." Xander wants to call Anya, and when Buffy warns him not to get his hopes up, he unconvincingly insists that he's enjoying being a single guy. Then he confesses that he worries about Anya because she seems so sad, and Willow and Dawn, who have been unpacking in the background, join in the conversation. "She should try acting like everybody else more," suggests Dawn (I think she means everyone else besides creatures from the realm of the fantastic here), and I want Dawn and Buffy to consider co-writing an advice column for the school paper, what with their vital advice about conforming at all costs and having no hope. Buffy hasn't really picked up on Anya's "sad vibe" and is more concerned about her "vengeance vibe." Xander protests that Anya just "turned back to what she knew" when he dumped her at their wedding. He claims that Anya's heart isn't in vengeance anymore, and with some time, she'll return to the fold of people who just fantasize about violent revenge and don't actually have the magical power to act on it. "It'll just take some time. I really think she's coming around," he opines.
Because TV is the kind of place where a blunt statement like Xander's would be oh so uninteresting unless immediately directly contradicted, we cut to a dead guy lying on the floor. Slow camera pan around a scene of mayhem -- eleven, maybe more, young people lie sprawled around a room, all dead, splattered with blood, and with a large gory wounds in their chests. Blood puddles across a pool table. The camera finds Anya slumped against the wall in the dark. She stares blankly. Her white retro dress is covered in blood, as are her hands, which lie limply in her lap. "What have I done?" she breathes. From a distance, the ethical dilemma of the week approaches.
After the commercial, a man and a woman wearing khaki Trading Spaces shirts enter the frat house, along with a tall, rather svelte woman with an expensive-looking haircut who says, "Okay, we've had some time to clean up a bit, now let's start taking up this bloodied carpet and see what's underneath!" Heh. I made that up. I can just see Frank painting the sub-floor red and tossing down a few rag rugs as a solution for the problem, though.
Serious change of scene. The color of the film has gone sepia. Old-timey scratches run along the edges of the screen. We're inside a rustic wooden dwelling. Anya, with long brown hair and wearing a medieval-looking dress, wanders onscreen, cuddling a bunny. See, in the last scene she just finished ripping the hearts out of frat guys, and now the innocent rabbit-stroking provides a dramatic contrast and -- oh, I bet you got that, right? A caption reads "Sjornjost, 880." Anya puts the bunny down with a kiss. Enter a mountainous jolly sort who looks suspiciously similar to the troll we saw in the previouslys, only with no horns, hammer, or green make-up. Yep, that's Olaf, pre-trolling. He addresses Anya in what seems to be improv Swedish, except that this is ninth-century Scandinavia, so they are probably speaking improv Old Norse. It's really quite convincing for most of the scene, and I applaud both of the actors. Olaf refers to pre-vengeance demon Anya as "Aud." He tells her he's hungry, and she worries that he's injured, as he smells of "blood and musk." He laughs that off, saying that some wretched trolls are no problem for the mighty Olaf. "The mere though of them makes me bend at the knee and flex!" he brags, doing just that. Aud asks him to sit, and goes to fetch him some mead. Olaf looks around the room at the abundant quantity of rabbits and asks if they're increasing in number. Aud mentions that rabbits breed quickly (probably a cliché even in the ninth century), which causes Olaf to leap up and declare, "All this talk of breeding…it makes me want to breed!" Aud smiles indulgently, but has him sit back down for his meal. Looks like she's going to serve him some of Trader Joe's mixed baby greens out of a fine hand-crafted oak bowl I think I saw on special on the Pottery Barn site. She mentions that she has devised a plan to give her rabbits to the people of the town, "exchanging them not for goods or services but for goodwill and the sense of accomplishment that stems from selflessly giving of yourself to others." Olaf laughs, and his captions read, "Ha, ha, ha!" He calls her logic "insane and happenstance," and makes a major tactical error by laughing about how the bar matrons speak of Aud. Aud is pissed to hear that Olaf has been to the bar, but he says it's not his fault that people don't like Aud because she "speaks her mind and is annoying." Suddenly, I feel much kinship with this Aud. Aud is worried that a rival called Rannveig was at the bar, but Olaf insists he's not interested in Rannveig. Apparently Rannveig's hips are "large and load-bearing," and they pale in comparison to Aud's narrow hips. He pulls her onto his lap and assures her he could not want for another. She begs his forgiveness, saying that she just loves him so much she could burst.
Back to today. Anya turns on the water in a sink to wash her bloody, bloody hands. She washes frantically and then looks up at her blood-smeared face in the mirror. Out, out damn spot and so on.
Over the last part of that scene, we hear Spike-in-the-basement, who is not hallucinating, say, "I don't trust what I see anymore." He's sitting in the basement talking to a sympathetically listening, not-at-all-hallucinated Buffy. He tells her he's been seeing things, and then rambles on about what a nutjob Dru was. Yeah, been there, bought the Season Two DVDs. Move on, Spikey-boy. Spike-in-the-basement is all rational as he ducks his head and humbles that he's not worthy of the great Buffy's help. She tacitly acknowledges the soul by saying that he's "different" from last season when he attacked her, but he still feels he can't accept her help. Not-at-all-hallucinated Buffy consoles him, saying, "Spike. It's me. It's you, and it's me, and we'll get through this. And oh, by the way, could you please tell me more charming reminiscences about the creature that murdered my friend, tortured my Watcher and electrocuted me?" Okay, I made that last part up. Not-hallucinated Buffy actually just touches Spike's hand and repeats, "We'll get through this." The camera pans away from not-figment-of-Spike-in-the-basement's-imagination Buffy to the left, and we see...oh, Jesus Christ!...real Buffy, wearing a completely different outfit and speaking in a completely different tone of voice! She stalks in and says: "Spike[-in-the-basement]. This basement is killing you. This is the Hellmouth. There is something bad down here. Possibly everything bad." We did not see that coming at all! We thought hallucinated Buffy was real Buffy and then the scene completely turned on its end like that! Curse you, Hellmouth, and all your everything-badness! Spike-in-the-basement looks at her and giggles insanely. Buffy tells him to act like a guy with a soul, and Spike-in-the-basement replies, "Scream Montresor all you like, pet." This week's Buffy doesn't react to the literary reference. Maybe she was just confused, like me, about who was supposed to be Montresor and who was supposed to be Fortunato in that little fantasy of Spike-in-the-basement's. "Get up and get out of this basement," she commands, but poor Spike-in-the-basement doesn't have anywhere else to go. How about a nice rest home for the criminally insane? Surely there's one with a vampire wing somewhere in Europe? Maybe where the Council was keeping Kralick?
Campus of UC Sunnydale. Willow is walking and talking with someone we're supposed to assume is a faculty advisor, I think. The advisor assures Willow that they'll get her caught up, and calls Willow her "best student." The advisor admits that she did notice a drop-off in Willow's grades the semester before, but then Willow "aced all [her] finals like, boom, magic." Willow laughs guiltily. Man, when she was tooling around the countryside turning people's skin-jackets inside out, she also took the time to send a little doppelganger to UC Sunnydale to take her tests and do well on them? I'm impressed -- that's serious multi-tasking! Willow's advisor tells her to come to office hours, and in the background we see Anya wandering about, wrapped tightly in an trench coat. Which is odd, because no one else in the scene is wearing a trench coat, or any coat, for that matter. In fact, it appears to be quite sunny in Sunnydale today. Hmmm.
Willow's professor leaves, and Willow catches sight of Anya. She calls out to Anya and excitedly tells her that she's there to start attending college again. Willow's excited about getting surprise quizzes to make up for the ones she missed, but then sort of trails off, observing Anya's strange demeanor. Well, strange in a different way than her usual strange demeanor. Willow asks Anya what she was doing in the fraternity house, and Anya very badly lies that she has a new boyfriend in the fraternity. Willow is excited for Anya, who mendaciously overshares, "Yeah, we just had lots and lots of sex." I guess that might explain her rumpled state, but not the glum look on her face. Oh, but wait. Sex with a frat boy. That actually would explain the glum look, too. Willow is making nice until she notices a splotch of blood on Anya's wrist. Anya hurries off. When Willow goes to investigate the frat house, I catch the full view of her outfit. Like the slim red t-shirt, like the black pendant. The brown skirt is okay, but the red tights must go, and although I like the high boots, they appear to be black. Why would anyone wear black boots with a brown skirt? Why would anyone who wasn't dressed up as a ladybug or a she-devil for Halloween wear red tights? These are important questions.
The frat house interior looks a lot like one of the buildings that was frequently used in Season Four. Willow opens the front door. The living room is empty, except for huge smears of blood. There's gore everywhere. Willow steps to a side room and opens the door, presumably viewing the carnage we saw earlier in the episode. Willow looks surprised and queasy, although not as surprised and queasy as I would look had I just opened the door on a room full of bloody corpses that had had their hearts violently ripped out of their chests just hours earlier. I guess after a flaying or two of your own, you get inured to these things. Someone is whimpering over and over, "I take it back I take it back." Willow approaches a closet in the main room and opens the door to find a girl crouched on the floor. She tries to reassure the girl, and then asks what happened. To summarize, the girl was invited by one of the fraternity guys to a party, where he proceeded to dump her in front of everyone else as a sort of on-the-cheap party entertainment. Whatever happened to good clean fun in the form of keg stands and tiki torches? The girl explains that as she cried, all the others laughed at her, so she yelled at them, "I wish you could all feel what it's like to have your hearts ripped out." Uh oh. The forbidden "W" word. Willow reels as she realizes what Anya was doing outside the house. She asks the girl what ripped the hearts out of the meanies. It was a spider, and as Willow asks where it went, we see it climb up the wall behind Willow.
Willow turns as the Thief Of Hearts spider-demon jumps down on her. I guess it's still hungry, since the shriveled heart of your average fraternity guy doesn't make much of a meal. Willow raises up her arms and, saying an incantation, forms a yellow protective bubble around herself. As she holds off the ToH, Willow, all black-eyed, turns to the girl in the closet and snaps, "For God's sake, shut your whimpering mouth!" Poor girl -- she was probably hoping her day wouldn't get any worse. The ToH tries to attack Willow with its heart-eating sucker mouth, but she summons enough magical force to throw it out through a window of the frat house. Looking a little spaced out, Willow turns back to Closet Girl and apologizes for yelling at her.
Back to our sepia and scratchy Swedish village. "Troll!" shouts a villager as his neighbors run about in a panic. Wow, Sweden in the 880s looks a lot like southern California live oak territory. The camera follows a group of villagers as they run away shouting, "Hide your babies and your beadwork!" Cue Olaf, now rendered all green and trolly by a spell of Aud's. Olaf the Troll tries to explain who he is, but the villagers think that "the troll is doing an Olaf impersonation." Hee. These Sjornjost scenes make me giggle with their sheer silliness. The villagers are armed with pitchforks and various farm implements, but for sheer silly value, they decide to "hit [Olaf] with fruits and various meats." Much racing about amongst the live oaks. Aud watches from a distance. She looks very pretty in that brunette wig. The camera swings around to her face, and we fade out of the sepia tone and into regular color film stock. D'Hoffryn walks up beside Aud, who doesn't seem at all surprised to see him. Maybe demon/human relations were a little more friendly in 880. D'Hoffryn compliments Aud's work, and she converses with him about how she cast the spell. Poor Aud seems so very empty and remote in this scene -- not at all animated like she was earlier. The villagers flee from Olaf in the background. D'Hoffryn introduced himself, and Aud replies, "I am Aud." Hee. That's a funny pun. You know that saying that goes, "Puns are the lowest form of humor"? That always confused me. I mean, I wondered who decided that, and what the highest form of humor was, and why the phrase always seemed to be uttered only by the very humorless, who wouldn't seem qualified to judge. Anyway, this is 2002, and the saying is obviously obsolete. It comes from an older era. An era before the fart joke. Fart jokes are quite clearly the lowest form of humor, and I suggest that we petition the correct powers that be to have the saying updated for modern times. ["The lowest, and yet consistently the most reliable. Hee. Farts." -- Sars] "Are you?" chuckles D'Hoffryn. He tells her that her true identity is "Anyanka," and explains that he represents a "family of sorts" made up of vengeance demons. Anyanka/Aud says she's never heard of them; she "doesn't talk to people much," because they seem to find her literal interpretations irksome. "Come here, tiny man," shouts Olaf as he pursues a townsperson. "You are small and toy-like!" Anyanka/Aud and D'Hoffryn ignore the fuss. D'Hoffryn tries to seal the deal by telling Anyanka/Aud that her job with him would be to "help wronged women punish evil men." Anyanka/Aud muses, "Vengeance…" "But only to those who deserve it," amends D'Hoffryn. Anyanka/Aud: "They all deserve it." D'Hoffryn, casually: "That's where I was going with that, yeah."
Buffy sits in her cubicle at Sunnydale High, balancing a pencil cup on her forehead. Wonder what her Franklin Covey day planner looked like this morning? 10:00 AM -- surf internet. 10:45 AM -- long bathroom break (fiddle with hair). 11:00 AM -- build tiny sculptures from paperclips. 11:15 AM -- be bitchy to vampire in basement. 11:45 AM -- improve desk tchotchke balancing skills. Her phone rings, startling her, and of course the pencils and cup fall to the ground, because this week Buffy's super-fast Slayer reflexes are less important than a cheap sight gag. It's Willow on the other end of the line, breaking the news that she's encountered something strange and violent on the UC Sunnydale campus. Buffy grabs a pen to write down info. I sure hope she doesn't leave notes like that lying around the office. Buffy says she'll get Xander to go after the ToH with her, and then Willow seems to tell her about the manner of death. "Ripped out the heart? My god," says Buffy, shocked, but then inquires immediately afterwards, "Hey, did you get that physics class you wanted?" Strange girl.
Halfrek and Anya are hangin' at Anya's pad. Hallie congratulates Anya on her antics at the frat house and says that the other vengeance demons are equally impressed. Anya's all mopey, however. She frets about all the screaming and the blood inflicted by the "Crimslaw" demon. Hallie's all haw-haw about what "feisty little guys" those Crimslaw demons are, and rambles on until she catches the look on Anya's face. Anya supposes she's just "rusty" at the hardcore vengeance, and Hallie assures her she'll get over her disturbed feeling "in no time." I guess that reassures Anya, or so she tells Hallie. Then Willow walks right into the apartment, proving that not even vengeance demons feel the need to lock their doors in Sunnydale. Which just makes me feel for Anya a little bit more, because as a vengeance demon, I don't think she needs a residence on the human plane at all. One part of her is still going about the human life she tried to assume after "The Wish," while the other part goes about the vengeance demon business. Willow tells Hallie to get out, and Hallie doesn't take too well to Willow's tone, but Anya says it's okay. Hallie orbs out -- oops, wrong show! Hallie teleports out with her usual flair, leaving Willow and Anya alone together. "Anya, you have to stop this," Willow says -- recent experience her guide, I suppose. Anya tries to excuse the slaughter, saying that the party-goers were "humiliating" Closet Girl, but Willow doesn't want to hear the excuses. She tries to communicate to Anya that she wants to help. Obviously amused at what she perceives as Willow trying to take the moral high ground, Anya laughs mockingly. "Flayed anybody lately, have you?" she sneers. Anya then protests that the partygoers "got what they deserved" before shouting, "I am a vengeance demon! Do you understand that?" Willow quite simply answers, "No." Good for her. I don't think she should get mired in some crap argument about Anya's choice being valid. She's offering to help if Anya wants to stop, but that certainly doesn't entail condoning or pretending to understand ripping a dozen people apart over a puerile prank. Anya, seemingly on the verge of tears, unconvincingly repeats, "They got what they deserved."
Xander and Buffy, carrying swords, wander through the live oaks. I wonder if they'll stumble over the incongruous remains of any ninth-century Swedish villages. Sunnydale archaeologists baffled! Buffy and Xander chat about Willow returning to school and then stumble, not across a Swedish village, but rather the remains of another person with his heart pulled out. Xander gets a little nervous about the demon, then loses all sense and grabs some black, tarry substance hanging from a tree. Oh, Xander -- you know you'll have demon goo all over you by the end of the fight, so why start now? They hear a skittering in the trees above them, and then Xander gets zapped with some more of the black, tarry stuff. Buffy shoves Xander completely off-screen as the Crimslaw demon drops from the trees onto them. Buffy fights the large chunk of computer-generated imagery. The demon traps Buffy on her back and menaces her with a pink proboscis, but once she throws it off, it presumably won't head off to Africa to gain a soul. Nope, it just heads back up into the trees. Xander hurries back from the county, or wherever Buffy shoved him to. They scan the trees, and as Xander proposes going home for more weapons, Buffy throws a battle ax upwards. It falls down again, lodged in the dead Crimslaw demon. I noticed in this scene that Buffy's blouse is belted and her pants are belted. Hmm -- well, sure, her slacks have been very loose this year, but really I think the solution would be to tailor them a little bit, not bind her into her clothes like something out of Japanese porn.
Buffy and Xander arrive at her house, their conversation revealing that they have no idea Anya was involved with summoning the Crimslaw demon. When they walk into the living room, they find mopey Willow, who says, "I know where it came from."
A little bit later, Willow has explained where she's spent her day. She reveals for the first time to Buffy how many bodies she found, and Xander gets all snippety that she didn't let them know Anya was involved as soon as she found out. He demands to know how Willow could hide that knowledge, but then Buffy defends Willow, saying, "She didn't tell us because she knows what I have to do. I have to kill Anya."
Anya and Hallie sit laughing at a huge banquet table. There are dead men everywhere in the room. The captions reads, "St. Petersburg, 1905." Anya and Hallie are dressed in time-appropriate fashions, and Hallie enjoys the mayhem Anya has caused. Anya trills with false modesty that she merely grants the wishes inside the women who call her. Fireballs explode outside the window, and Hallie suggests that they go out to watch the Winter Mansion being razed. Anya's all business, however, and suggests a trip to a local brothel to search for wronged women instead. They sip their champagne and don't react at all when a flaming Russian flails through the room. Hallie chides Anya for being such a workaholic, and encourages her to enjoy the revolution that she is "somewhat responsible for." Anya feels the revolution is a done deal, though, and says in a bored voice that the "workers will overthrow absolutism and lead the proletariat to a victorious communist revolution resulting in socioeconomic paradise on Earth." Hallie bugs her a little more about taking some time off, but Anya claims, "Vengeance is what I am."
Back at the Summers house, Buffy tries to tell Xander that Anya is no longer the girl he knew. Xander suggests that there are options besides simply killing one of her "best friends," and Buffy claims that she's already considered the alternatives. However, she doesn't clue Xander in to the fact that Anya isn't and never was one of her best friends. Nor does she deign to discuss what options she considered, or why she dismissed them. Xander's not willing to give up yet, and suggest that they could "fix" the deaths, since they were caused by a mystical source. He looks at Willow, who says she doesn't have enough power, and didn't even when -- she trails off, and I'm not sure if she's referring to when she raised Buffy, or when she tried to raise Tara, or when she went all black and veiny and tried to destroy the Earth. Buffy assures Willow that it's okay if she can't help with the dead guys. Buffy and Xander bicker some more about the necessity of killing Anya, and Xander protests, "This isn't new ground for us! When our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them." Willow makes a face and protests, "Sitting right here!" C'mon, Red. You were doing so well with the personal responsibility thing. Buffy looks at her lap and claims that this situation is different, which Xander counters by saying that he still loves Anya. Buffy knows that, but tries to defend not killing Willow by pulling out the old "demons vs. humans" card. I'm all for that rule where vampires are concerned, but I don't think it works so well in this situation, especially since Anya is so obviously suffering from very human conflict over all this, and was trustworthy enough to be called up for sister-sitting duty recently besides. Xander gets snide about what a "simple" decision this must be for Buffy and then leaps up, snarling, "You know, if there's a mass-murdering demon that you're, oh, say, boning, then it's all gray area." Hee -- go Xander! I'm not really taking sides in this argument because I think both Buffy and Xander are both right and wrong here, but I really think it needed to be said that Buffy totally put aside all her Slayer standards in order ride Spike's man-pole, and she's never really admitted that to or faced it as far as I can tell. She's mumbled about how it was bad for her, but never seemed to realize what a betrayal of her calling it was. Buffy wins The Lame Comeback Of The Century Award when her only reply is that Spike is "harmless." Harmless except for the whole part where he could and did harm you, Buffy. Nice self-preservation instincts there, honey. Let's kill Anya because she could hurt men. Let's not kill Spike because he can only hurt Buffy. Uh, where was I?
Buffy reminds Xander that Anya has chosen to become a demon twice, and says she doesn't care what Anya is going through. And I think that's fine, but I'm not sure why the killing has to happen so damn quickly. The Scoobies have dragged their feet over plenty of other villains before, most of whom hadn't had sex with Buffy. Buffy turns away, then turns back when Xander accuses her of stepping back from them and her humanity to act like she's "the law." He implies that she can't understand how this feels. "I killed Angel!" is Buffy's angry retort. The room is silent as Willow and Xander stare at her. Buffy works the melodrama, claiming that she loved Angel more than she will ever love anything in life, but she put a sword through him anyway. Actually, she also says she "killed" him, but I'm going to ignore that misstep. Aw, poor Buffy -- who will discover the secret garden of her heart and nurse all her stunted trees of love back to health? So young and so lacking in hope. That's not sarcasm, by the way. Well, not all of it. I'm all over the map with my sympathy in this scene. Willow tries to lighten the mood with a little joke about how the Angel-stabbing "worked out okay," but Buffy's not done being all recriminatory and "I killed my boyfriend and you didn't nanny nanny boo boo." She reminds Xander how he and Willow cheered her on. "Do you remember giving me Willow's message? 'Kick his ass'?" "I never said that!" exclaims an angry Willow. That doesn't slow Buffy down, however, and she snarls about how the situations are always going to be complicated and different and she'll always have to be the one who draws the line. She whines about how they complain that she cuts herself off, but claims that she has to, since "human rules don't apply." "There's only me," Buffy concludes, "I am the law." And as if we haven't just sat through this scene, Xander's response is, "There has to be another way." Buffy, almost compassionately, tells him to "please find it." Willow closes her eyes in sadness as Xander storms out of the house. Buffy goes to her weapons chest and pulls out a big sword. She starts to leave, but then turns back to Willow, who hasn't moved from her chair during the whole argument. Willow says she can't go with Buffy and that she's sorry. I think she can't go both because she can't watch Anya be killed and because she can't and won't use her magic to help. Buffy leaves. Alone. Because she's the Slayer. And they're alone. Always alone. Except for the forty million times this show has driven home that Buffy's best assets are her friends. Willow sits for a moment, then gets a looks of realization.
She hurries into -- well, I'm not sure which room. Either the one she used to share with Tara, or the one she's using now. Ack. Oh well. Anyway, she riffles through a few drawers filled with clutter and pulls out the talisman D'Hoffryn gave her in "Something Blue." A short time later, Willow sprinkles some powder around the bathroom and chants a D'Hoffryn-summoning incantation. She grabs the talisman and continues the ritual. D'Hoffryn enters in a flash of thunder and lightning, doing a big, showy demon entrance with raised arms and voice-alteration. Catching sight of who summoned him, he drops the theatrics and says in his normal voice, "Miss Rosenberg. How lovely to see you again." D'Hoffryn figures he's there because Willow wants to join the family, and he compliments her on her flaying of Warren. "That was water-cooler vengeance," he smarms. "Lloyd has a sketch of it on his wall." Hee. I thought that was a fun line taken at face value, but then some smart poster pointed out that Deep-Throaty Demon from Spike's trials last year did indeed have a sketch of a flayed man on his wall. Then it got less funny and more strange. Willow prisses that she's not that Willow anymore, but gets called on it by D'Hoffryn, who mentions that he felt the old Willow manifest briefly just that day. Willow wants to change the subject to Anya, which elicits a big sigh from D'Hoffryn.
Anya is back at the frat house, staring at a big blood smear on the wall. Xander enters and snides at her, but then claims he's there to help her. "Everyone's so considerate today," sneers Anya, "I should've slaughtered people weeks ago." Xander apologizes for everything he did to Anya, who responds that he's just fixed everything. Except that she means "not." He tells her that Buffy's on her way to perform her Slayerly duties (alone, remember), and Anya's all, "Oh, I'd like to see her try." Better think of something else quickly, Xander; none of this seems to be working. Xander babbles about how he can't believe all his friends are talking this way about killing each other, but Anya tells him everyone is just doing their jobs. Buffy enters with her big sword. Xander tells Buffy to quit it, but both she and Anya tell him to get out of the way. Then Anya gets into her demon face and smacks Xander across the room. Right around this moment, I began to have a very bad feeling about what Anya was up to here. Granted, she's a demon, and has taken pride in a job well done, but I don't think we've ever seen much evidence that she's fond of a physical fight. I'm also pretty sure that she could just teleport out of Sunnydale and never come back to face the angry Slayer. So right here I began to get the sense that Anya was looking for her own destruction in this scene. Trapped between two lives that seem equally untenable, devastated by having murdered so many, she just wants her whole experience to end. Buffy and Anya fight. Despite the fact that Anya is unarmed, she seems to have the upper hand, and Buffy ends up swinging at empty air much of the time. Buffy is resolutely silent in the face of Anya's taunts until she picks herself up off the floor and apologizes to Anya. Anya doesn't understand the apology and rushes Buffy, who kicks her into the wall and then drives the sword right into the middle of her chest, pinning her to the wall. Anya tips her head back with an exhalation of air.
Back from commercial, we have a flashback to Xander and Anya in their apartment from last season. The title reads, "Sunnydale, 2001." Xander naps in the orange chair I remember from his basement domicile from Season Four, and Anya sits nearby on the sofa. Apparently, this is an interlude from the first night of "Once More, With Feeling" when all of Sunnydale broke out into song. Anya's wearing a pink 1950s dress, and she has incredibly long blond hair, which I don't recall being the case in OM,WF, but okay, they're doing a "thing" here (as the writers would say). Anya asks Xander if the singing earlier was strange, but he doesn't wake up and instead mutters from the depths of a dream about how he just wanted a "happy ending." Outside the apartment, we hear a brief snatch of what sounds like David Fury and Marti Noxon singing about how Fury has gotten mustard on his shirt. Anya closes the door and surveys her sleeping honey. She then breaks into a clunky and mostly uncatchy song that recaps her experiences so far. Upon further analysis of the song, I've decided that the lyrics are fine and sometimes amusing, but the tune alternates between grating and boring. Big points for the lyrics that go, "I've boned a troll, I've wreaked some wrath, but on the whole I've had no path." I know revisiting OM,WF and giving Emma a chance to sing again probably seemed like a cute idea when ME came up with it, but overall, I wish they hadn't; it ended up seeming self-indulgent rather than artistically necessary. To summarize, Anya has no idea who she is or what her value is, and hopes to find some self-worth in becoming Mrs. Xander Harris. She feels that becoming part of a couple must confer some sort of special benefits; otherwise people wouldn't risk opening up their hearts to one another. She sings about her plans to help the relationship if it starts to fail: "I'll show him what bliss is, welcome him with kisses." She continues, "He's my Xander and he's awfully swell, it makes financial sense as well." Well, I suppose that's a reason. Still singing, she makes an entrance out to their balcony, where she's suddenly wearing her wedding dress and veil. The song swells to its climax: "I will be his Mrs. I will be --"
Cut to a silent shot of current Anya back in human face, pinned to the frat house wall with the sword, unconscious or dead. Ouch, what a painful cut. I don't know why, but Anya and her story touch me in ways Spike's never did. I know their plots are very similar, but with Anya, I'm all a mixture of horror and disgust at what she was and is, and lip-trembling pity at how she became that way. Whereas similar scenes with Spike leave me rolling my eyes and fantasizing about walling him up in the basement. Isn't life complicated? Xander, to a number of gory smears on the floor, regains consciousness and calls, "Anya!" I think perhaps part of why I can now stomach Anya's story over Spike's is that I feel the writers are finally being honest about her. Much of the action in this episode takes place in a house smeared with red reminders of just what horrors Anya is capable of, and that just seems much more honest than the pathetic fence-sitting to be found in demon-egg trafficking. If ME had been truly honest about portraying Spike's past nature, and not tried to whitewash it for two seasons in order to hook him up with the heroine, I think I might have been a little more sympathetic.
Anya comes to; screaming in pain, she pulls the sword out of her chest. She pants and tells Buffy that she should know better -- "it takes a lot more to kill a vengeance demon." Buffy says, "I'm just getting started." I think she did forget that she couldn't kill Anya with a sword, or else she just figures this will be a gradual hack job. Poor Buffy. She's such a strange mixture of cold and goofy this season, and I didn't much care for her demeanor in the living room scene with Willow and Xander, but still, being obliged to hack apart someone I know as part of my higher calling is just impossible for me to get my mind around. We have a replay of the earlier fight scene, except that this time Anya has the sword and Buffy only Slayer quickness as her defense. She knocks Anya down, grabs the weapon, and prepares to deliver another impaling, but is tackled and knocked down by Xander. Everyone scrambles to their feet, and Anya yells, "Stop trying to save me, Xander!" Ooops -- they shouldn't have bothered getting up, because D'Hoffryn chooses this moment to teleport into the room, accompanied by lightning that knocks everyone back down again. D'Hoffryn tells them to continue and then, as Buffy, Xander, and Anya stare at him from the floor, he wanders over to look into the room full of corpses. "Oh, breathtaking," he celebrates. "It's like somebody slaughtered an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog." Ha! Oh, I mean, "how cruel." Well, no, actually, I mean that that's the kind of irreverent and dark humor this show has been missing for years. Don't tell me Cruella D'Willow was dark. She wasn't dark -- she was dorky and humorless. Dark is making jokes at dead frat boys' expense. Dark is the cheery, fatherly Mayor knowing factually that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Dark is the malicious joy in mayhem enjoyed by some of the villains in past seasons, and the way the viewer could too easily be sucked in to feel that dark joy.
Buffy jumps up, ready to attack D'Hoffryn, but he reminds her that he could teleport out of the room before she'd have a chance to take a swing. He goes to help Anya up, bitching mildly about the Slayer's propensity to solve "all her problems by sticking things with sharp objects." Anya stares at D'Hoffryn, looking utterly destroyed and apprehensive while he natters on about his conversation with Willow, whom he deems a "firebrand." Poor Xander's immediate reaction is, "Stay away from Willow!" D'Hoffryn deems Xander "gallant" and says he can understand what Anya saw in him. He then continues to explain that Willow suggested Anya should no longer be a vengeance demon. He looks at Buffy and, using air-quotes, says, "I think we already know what 'Lady Hacks-away' wants." Hee! I do like the complicated way that D'Hoffryn's mocking of the Slayer punctures all of Buffy's earlier breast-beating. I don't think it negates what she was trying to say, but it does present another viewpoint. D'Hoffryn muses that no one has asked Anyanka what she really wants and Anya, in a tiny voice, says, "I want to take it back." Sniffle. She approaches D'Hoffryn, repeating that she wants to "undo" the killings. Thinking it over, D'Hoffryn says that it won't be easy, but it can be done, although something must sacrificed to balance the scales. Anya sets her jaw and swallows as D'Hoffryn continues that the sacrifice must be "the life and soul of a vengeance demon." Anya simply says, "Do it," ready to die to correct her (most recent) wrongs. "Wait!" shouts Xander, and once again is told by Anya to stay out of it. Xander suggests that there must be an alternate price, but Anya tells him he can't help her. "I'm not even sure there's a me to help," she explains, then adds, on the verge of crying, "This is my wish. Undo what I did."
D'Hoffryn claps his hands, and as Xander reaches towards Anya and yells, a bright yellow light fills the room. Everyone turns towards it to see a smiling Halfrek materialize. A pause, then horror on Anya's face as Hallie is consumed by a pillar of fire that shoots out of her screaming mouth. Stunned, Buffy and Xander turn back towards D'Hoffryn and Anya gasps in pain, as if she's been stabbed in the chest again. All pretense of affability swept aside, the true D'Hoffryn shines through as he snarls, "Who did you think you were dealing with? Did you think it would be that easy to get away?" Oof. He says he did it because Anya wished it, which I suppose profoundly brings home to her the sense of how all the women she "helped" felt when their idle, angry wishes actually came true, with horrific results. Nasty D'Hoffryn continues, "Haven't I taught you anything, Anya? Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain." Xander, all heart, makes an impulsive move towards D'Hoffryn, but Buffy stops him. Pimpin' ain't easy for D'Hoffryn, but he tells them, "I've got plenty of girls. There will always be vengeance demons. But now you, Anya, you're out." Weeping, Anya whispers that D'Hoffryn should have killed her, but he assures her that she might still have a chance to die. "From beneath you it devours," he shares. "Be patient. All good things in time." He teleports out. Anya stares at Buffy and Xander, then plods out the door. Buffy tells Xander to follow Anya, and we hear the sound of the college boys stirring from the other room.
Anya walks away from the frat house, her face streaked with tears. She stops when Xander calls to her, but tells him to go away. He responds that no matter what has happened between them, he doesn't want her to be alone "in this." She tells him that she should be alone. "My whole life, I've just clung to whatever came along," she tries to explain. Xander gently says that he didn't mind the clinging, but Anya's "Thanks, for everything" is a very final dismissal. Xander sighs, and giving her a last glance, he starts to leave. "Xander," Anya calls after him, "what if I'm really nobody?" Aw, her heart's fear. I think this scene has me more sniffly on second viewing than the first time, when I was just too shocked to really have it sink in. "Don't be a dope," Xander reassures her, and heads off. I know some viewers were upset that he left her there, but seriously, she told him not to help her and to leave her alone about sixty-seven times in this episode, and he couldn't have pushed any more without being a creep. Anya watches Xander go, then walks away in the opposite direction.