Never Leave Me

S07E09

Previously on Buffy: all of Season Seven happened. Seriously. I don't think these are the longest previouslys we've ever seen, but this sequence does take the prize for realistically recreating the enormous sense of ennui you feel when one of your blowhard acquaintances at work starts telling you about every detail of their weekend, with no editing or selectiveness. Here's my version, edited down to only the necessary moments (there's a lot of penetration, so be warned): Andrew stabbed Jonathan; this season's Big Bad Below appeared to the Scoobies as people they knew; some girls got stabbed; Spike sank his fangs into some humans; Buffy deduced that the Big Bad Below was controlling Spike, and brought him home to her house; someone swung an axe at Giles's head. The remaining minute and thirty seconds of these previouslys is just talking-head blah-blah padding.

Living Room Of Parentally Abandoned Women-Children. Xander measures the front window as Dawn and Willow tidy up the three remaining unsmashed knickknacks. As they work, Dawn, all pursed mouth of disappointment because her former bad-boy crush turned out to be, well, bad, speculates that Spike could've buried more bodies around town, and sniffily asks what they're waiting for him to do. Willow, seemingly conked out on Vicodin, whiskey, and Nyquil (the celebrity sleepy-time cocktail of choice), barely even looks at Dawn and drones, "It's not that simple." Either Buffy has gone evil-mind control bitch in this episode and robbed Xander and Willow of all ability to disagree with her, or her incessant "Me! Me! Me! I'm the Slayer! I'm the boss! I killed Angel, you know!" shtick has just broken their will to live. Nothing else can account for the way Xander and Willow zombie through this episode, mindlessly parroting the Buffy party line. Bitterly, from across the room, Anya snaps, "Shouldn't we stab [Spike] through the chest? Isn't that what we do when these things happen?" Well, only if we're consistent, Anya. But "we're" not consistent, Anya, "we're" the Slayer and we killed Angel et cetera, and only our evil fuck-buddies shall be suffered to live and get the benefit of the doubt. Anya appeals to Xander for some back-up, but Evil Buffy has worked her mojo on him, and he only manages to creak out a broken, "I have a house to put back together." Anya smiles faux-patiently and advises the zombie Scoobies to "prepare [themselves] for the possibility that William the Bloody is back."

We see some leather- and boot-clad legs striding down a Sunnydale street. A long black duster flutters in the breeze. The camera pans up, and the walker is revealed to be Andrew. Hoo haw. I laughed until I cried. No, actually I just cried. Andrew's all fixed glare and swagger until Warren pops up beside him to whisper sweet evils in his ear. Warren wants Andrew to get busy (but not in the way Andrew has so obviously longed for), and Andrew whines that he just wants to walk around in his coat and not have to do "wet work" anymore. I'm sure there's a few kinds of wet work Warren could talk Andrew into if Warren had a corporeal form, if you know what I mean. Ugh. Now I've managed to revolt myself just as much as I am revolted by Warren's never-ending, clunky, Star Wars-inspired pep talks. Better to be the captain of your own revolto-ship rather than a passenger on someone else's, I always say. The show is blahing on as I lose myself in a fantasy of captaining a whole crew of chastened minions at whom I can growl, "Swab the deck and climb the mizzenmast, ye scurvy, limey dogs! Aaarrr!" When I manage to shake myself from that beautiful reverie, Warren and Andrew are talking about how Jonathan's blood wasn't enough. Warren morphs into Jonathan, who looks particularly tiny in this scene, and claims that being stabbed was "the best thing" that ever happened to him. The Big Bad Below is one hundred times worse than all those stereotypical villains who love the sound of their own voices and talk too much, because the Big Bad Beneath loves the sound of, like, everyone's voices, and it just ends up talking that much more. BBBJonathan reassures Andrew that the failure of the ritual was not his fault, and that Real Jonathan was too little to have enough blood, and was anemic. Andrew still doesn't want to "kill anybody else," and BBBJonathan promises to work around that.

Buffy and Spike are preparing for another one of their sex romps as Buffy tightly lashes Spike to a chair in her bedroom. Um, didn't they break up? Oh, wait. My mistake. This isn't one of those shameful, naughty, my-friends-must-not-know, tying-up situations that Buffy implies bring her so much shame, but rather one of those prosaic, day-to-day tying up situations that come with the whole Slayer package. How confusing. For everyone. Actually, I'm less confused about that than about why this sluggish, limply acted embarrassment of show is still on the air, and why I'm still watching it. Spike instructs Buffy to "make it tighter." They have these Kegel exercises for that. Oops, sorry, I got confused again. He was talking about the bondage, er, the ropes. "If I get free, someone's gonna die," mutters Spike to rising-menace music. Someone like you, Spike? Cool. Tie a slipknot, Buffy! And not to give away the whole episode, but Spike does get free, of course, because Buffy tied him to a crappy bedroom chair, and no one dies. And it just adds one more grain of sand to my growing mountain of hate for Buffy that when Angel came back from Hell, he merited manacles in an empty house, but Spike gets soft cotton rope in Buffy's bedroom.

Credits. Finally.

Principal Wood has two students in his office. They look as bored as I feel. He admonishes them for some misdeed, threatens them with marks on their permanent record, blows a hole in the whole "myth" of the permanent record, and is basically only appearing in this scene to remind us that he still exists. He threatens the bored kids with the police, which makes them a little less bored but doesn't have the same effect on me. In fact, it takes a knock on Wood's door to wake me up from the comfortable little snooze this scene has induced. Knock knock. Who's there? A failed fifth-season plot device. A failed fifth-season plot device who? Dawn, silly! Yes, I realize there's no punchline there. I'm trying my very best to emulate my heroes at Mutant Enemy this season. Wood opens the door and tells Dawn, "I'm with students," which in office-speak means, "Fuck off." Dawn doesn't get it, and why would we expect her to? After all, for two seasons she's been all too immune from all the cries of "Fuck off" from the fans. Dawn delivers a little lie about how Buffy can't come to work because she's sick with the vomiting. Or, as Dawn puts it, "[Buffy's] exact words were, 'I've got stuff coming out of both ends.'" I laugh (probably the only time I laughed this episode), but it's more a bitter laugh of defeat than one of amused joy. Then for some reason the scene continues on. And on. And on. Delivering no new information and failing to advance the plot (what little there is) in any way. Okay, we remember that Wood exists, and we know Buffy's not coming to work so she can stay home and "tighten" Spike's "ropes." We give in. Have the charisma-free tertiary characters stop talking to each other, please.

Oh, good. Here's the charisma-free primary character now. Remember when SMG played Buffy as a likeable, sympathetic, and believable person? Well, too bad for you. Because now she plays Buffy as if she's been animated by the spirit of a self-loathing, yet plastically perky, Barbie and we're never getting anything different. Buffy is on the phone with Quentin Travers, who stonewalls Buffy about where Giles is. The camera pulls back, and we see that Quentin is sitting (a simple action which he manages to imbue with great pomposity) at a long table with a number of other people. Let's go way, way out on a limb and guess that these other folks are fellow Watchers. Apparently, Buffy's been close-mouthed, because Quentin tells his colleagues, "The girl knows nothing." He continues, saying that they all need to find Giles "as soon as possible." I couldn't agree more. I've been saying the same thing since "Tabula Rasa."

Spike. Chair. Buffy's bedroom. Talking Heads Of Great And Repetitive Boredom alert! Spike twitches and snerfs. Ominous music tries to make me care. It fails. Buffy asks Spike, "Can I do something?" "Yeah, fuckin' admit to Whedon that you aren't signing on for an eighth season so I can get my spin-off already!" snaps Spike. Well, you know he wanted to. Spike tries to tell Buffy to go, but then vamps out and growls at her. Buffy looks all shocked and clutches her pearls. Oh, please. This show is about six and a half seasons past the point where a vampire in vamp face could be shock-worthy, despite what Miss Gellar's face and the score are trying to tell me here.

Exterior shot of the house. Time has passed? On the show, I mean. It's actually slowed down to a crawl here in my room. Buffy and Willow mumble to each other in the hallway outside Buffy's bedroom. Spike's having "withdrawals" from human blood. That, or, you know, he's just tired of being tied to a chair with no TV. Zombie minion Willow offers up the blood of somebody else's demon ex-fuck-buddy (Anya) to save Buffy's demon ex-fuck-buddy. See how brainwashed she is? Even she now believes in the great untouchable sanctity of the Spike entity that Buffy is championing. Buffy directs her zombie minion to go fetch some pig's blood from the butcher. Zombie Willow seeks to curry more approval by badmouthing Zombie Xander's propensity for delivering lectures about "proper tool maintenance." That awful Xander -- he has skills and makes things. Doesn't he realize that to fit in with the rest of the Scoobies he must destroy things in an unskilled manner? Zombie Willow tries to further gain the favor of her mistress by asking how she is "doing in there," and Buffy replies that Spike is in bad shape. "I wasn't asking about him," drones Willow in some nightmarish stab at "sympathy." Buffy replies, "I'll be okay," in a highly successful impersonation of "dishonest and shut down." What did we learn there? That Willow has to try awfully hard to make a friendly gesture to Buffy, and that Buffy automatically and swiftly shuts her out. Why am I supposed to care about these people, again? Oh, right. Because they're in the credits and Sars pays me.

"She won't feel a thing. Just do it," instructs BBBWarren to Andrew, who is holding a knife. I think they're conspiring to put me out of my misery. God, I hope that's it. "What if she squeals?" asks Andrew. I promise to be very, very quiet. Just make it fast, boys. I can't take much more of this! BBBWarren tells Andrew to go for her throat, and we finally see the intended victim: a pink piglet. I immediately find the piglet more charming and endearing than all other characters in this episode put together. How 'bout a season of Piglet the Vampire Oinker? She fights hyena-infested teens who want to make her a tasty snack, she defeats her nemesis, the evil demon Chitlins, and she slays vampires with a thrust of her trusty trotter. BBBWarren gives Andrew another pep talk that draws on a mélange of tropes found in popular fiction, and Andrew shouts, "That'll do, pig!" before launching himself after the piglet. I'm told that's very funny if you've seen Babe. I myself never vowed to see another live-action talking animals movie after The Adventures of Milo and Otis. Why mess with perfection? Andrew flings himself about the room, but can't catch the pig, which runs away. She has a cute, cocky little gallop. It's pretty sad that all the human actors on the show have just been upstaged by the thirty-second appearance of a walking rasher of bacon. Sigh. The two stooges need another source of blood.

Butcher shop. Oh, I so totally don't see where this is going. I don't have a thought in my mind that Willow and Andrew could end up at the same butcher shop. Nope, no suspicion at all. So I totally won't be distracted and impatient with this scene, tapping my foot and waiting for Willow to show up so we can just move the hell on already. Nope. In fact, I've always had a secret desire to see an "Andrew goes shopping for dinner" scene, so I found this riveting and dramatically profound. This whole paragraph is a lie. Except the first sentence. Let's try again.

Butcher shop. Andrew is there to get blood. I realize that Willow will show up soon, and since I have very little interest in watching Andrew do anything, especially shop for groceries, I tune out most of the scene waiting for the moment when the plot might actually lurch into motion and creak forward an inch or two. Halibut, toothbrush, Neo, steak sauce. That's my new mantra for yoga meditation. A-ha, it's time to run into Willow. Literally, of course, because ME never hesitates to be as obvious as possible. Willow glares.

Commercials. Bless their whorish little hearts. Aw, not enough. Whore more! Whore more!

Willow chases Andrew down an alley on the studio's back lot. Or around the corner from the butcher shop, if you insist in living in a fantasy land. Willow's hair looks very pretty, and I'm once again forced to ponder how much prettier and animated Alyson Hannigan is than Willow is allowed to be. SMG probably has had some clause in her contract since Season Four that all other females on the show must be uglified so that she can shine. Andrew begs Willow not to kill him, and doesn't seem very convinced when she says she won't. Oh, I like Willow's wine-colored velvet shirt, too. SMG must have been away from the set the day they shot this. Andrew tries to tell Willow that he's a good guy now, but when she asks why he needed the animal blood, he can't think of a good reason except, "I'm bad. I'm evil." He goes on to say that he's protected by mystical forces. He stutters unconvincingly, "If you harm me you shall know the wrath of he that is darkness and terror. Your blood will boil and you will know true suffering." Willow gives him an amusing little look, like, "Um, okay." She's able to be amused, because she hasn't had to sit through a year of the comic-book stylings of Andrew like we have. This scene might have been a little amusing last season (though I would have still been resentful of the heartless nerd-mocking), but at this point it's just tedious and repetitive. Andrew sees everything through the lens of trashy fiction. Check. He cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. Check. I was getting this when I was an embryo, and I'm pretty ancient now, people. How about some adding nuance or dimensionality to Andrew's character? Too much to ask, I guess. ME must think the story is better served by a one-trick buffoon. Willow gets exasperated with being called a "she-witch" and shoves Andrew up against a wall, commanding, "Shut your mouth!" I'm all proud of Willow for a second, but then the script just replaces Andrew's cliché ramblings with Willow's. She decides to talk to Andrew on his level, I guess. "I am a she-witch. A very powerful she-witch, or 'witch' as is more accurate. I am not to be trifled with!" Groan. She continues on, but is nowhere as cute or charming as when she pretended to be her vampire double in "Doppelgangland." She ends her threats with a chirpy, "Okay?" Andrew nods, and she hauls him off by the lapels.

By Sep

Buffy goes back into her bedroom. This is like a French bedroom farce. Without the French, or the farce. That just leaves bedroom, and since there's not any sex, that doesn't add up to much. Buffy approaches Spike, who seems to be a little refreshed by the blood. He can't remember killing all the people since he's been back in Sunnydale; he's been "losing time." Buffy asks when the chip stopped working; Spike didn't know that it had. Buffy wonders about the lost time, which Spike isn't sure about, but he seems to think has been happening since he got his soul. Hope all you want that Buffy will ask an interesting question and you'll get some new information here, but hope in vain. Buffy's bound and determined to make the audience sit through exposition about things they've known all season, or even since last season. She wants to know how Spike got the soul. He grunted a few times and Joss gave an interview, Buffy. Too bad all the vampires don't know how easy it is. Sadly, the blood has now refreshed Spike enough for him to remember his role as self-pitying whiner this season. He again stresses that he got the soul for Buffy ("Thanks, uh, but I already have one of my own. Did you keep the receipt?") and then actually says that the "trials" and "torture" he endured to get the damn shoddy thing were nothing compared to the pain Buffy put him through. Boo fuckin' hoo. Buffy's exasperated (as am I) and accuses Spike of feeling sorry for himself (as do I). He claims he's being honest, and petulantly digs, "You used me." Dude, every time you screwed her, she wore a t-shirt that said, "I'm using you." She had "I'm using you" tattooed on her forehead! During every interaction you two had last season, planes swooped overhead, skywriting the words, "She's using you!" in fifty-foot letters! It's hardly a newsflash. There are tiny colonies of single-celled life at the bottom of deep fissures in the sea using their cilia to tell each other, "Buffy used Spike." Can we please move on?

No, because ME cannot remove their heads from their collective navels, I guess. He admits that Buffy clued him in about the using, but he never "understood it." "You hated yourself and you took it out on me," continues Spike. Yes! We WERE THERE and we SAW IT, and Buffy WAS THERE and knows what it signified, and even the damn deep-sea creatures downloaded a pirate version and SAT THROUGH IT, so what possible dramatic device does it serve to make us endure Spike talking about it? Spike claims that he now understands her because he's had these revelations about Buffy's actions last season. He doesn't understand her any more than he ever did. Which is to say, not at all. She mocks him for thinking he has insight into violence. Spike whines some more. This little piggy went to Africa, this little piggy got a soul, this little piggy ate human blood, this little piggy ate more, and this little piggy cried, "Wah, wah, wah, I hate myself," all the way home.

Xander brings Weasel Andrew a glass of water, unties him, and apologizes for Anya hitting him. They share some conversation about how crazy-bad Anya is, and Andrew baby-voices, "This one time I saw her having sex with Spike." Xander's face twitches. Usually, I'd just be saying that to indicate that he has a reaction, but in this case, Nick came up with a really good, subtle facial flinch. In a friendly tone, Xander shares that Anya had "killed a lot of men," and then sort of drifts into this strange story about "this one guy" Anya killed slowly by replacing his "heart with darkness." Scary memories of Xander's scenes in "Restless" drift through my head. The guy had to go on living his life "empty, without anything to look forward to." It works as an illustration of how Xander feels without Anya (or feels about Anya returning to vengeance, I suppose), but doesn't work at all as a credible threat to scare Andrew, and thus feels totally shoehorned into this scene. Xander realizes he hasn't been very scary here and hastily amends, "Well, then she tore out his intestines and rubbed it in his face and took pictures of it." Weasel Andrew is a little more impressed by that. Xander reassures him that Anya is downstairs, and explains that bad things have been afoot and "the girls are all looking for someone to blame." The Weasel insists that he hasn't done anything, and Anya suddenly stomps into the room, guns of fury ablaze. She shouts that Andrew is going to tell them what he's done, and tackles him and his chair to the ground. Xander leaps forward to pull her off the Weasel, and she snarls, "Get off, Harris!" and, carried away, slaps Xander in the face. Aw, Xander looks like his heart has been broken into tiny little pieces. Anya waves her fists and mouths a silent apology; she then jumps back onto Andrew. Boy, Emma's low-rise pants and high-rise shirt are conspiring to show a lot of back skin in this shot. Andrew screams that he'll tell them everything.

door, Spike is still sitting and Buffy is still standing around. They hear the shouting from Dawn's room. Buffy excuses herself to check on things, and as she leaves, Big Bad Below Spike appears behind the door. BBBSpike feels he has a problem.

Buffy enters Dawn's room. Andrew begs for help. Buffy asks if everything is okay, and we get a strange shot of Xander, Anya, and Andrew in a frozen tableau. Xander is slumped against a desk, moodily clutching his face, while Anya kneels over Andrew, her arm pulled back for a punch. Anya says everything is fine, so Buffy goes back to her room. She pauses outside the door; she can hear Spike talking and then singing to himself. He's singing the trigger song, of course. She goes into her room and peers about suspiciously. She asks Spike who he was talking to, and he's coolly distant as he claims, "I was just keeping myself company." He's clearly back under the influence of BBBSpike.

door, Anya has Andrew cornered against the wall. She tells him to talk.

Buffy's all, "Spike?" and Spike's all, "I'm fine." But he's not. Cue menacing music again. He asks for some blood. Keeping her eye on him, she goes across the room to fetch it, but as soon as she looks away, Spike vamps out and tears the chair apart. He knocks Buffy down.

In Dawn's room, Andrew is about to tell all. "We needed more blood to activate the Seal of Danzal--" but Spike's arms burst right through the wall behind him and grab Andrew, pulling him into his toothy embrace in the room. Xander gets a small smile at the damage, since he knows it's the only hope that he'll get any screen time.

We return to Andrew, who is squealing away. Oh no! Is Andrew going to die? Say it ain't so! I might expire from the lack of tension here. Buffy pulls Spike off Andrew and slams him against the wall. Xanya rush in. Spike looks over at Andrew, shocked and confused by his recent actions. Buffy crosses the room and gives him a good boot to the head, knocking him unconscious. There. Maybe now he'll shut up for a while. Can we rest now, Buffy? Can we?

In the living room, Buffy fills in Willow and Dawn in on the screaming and loud noises they must have heard. Buffy pulls the universe back around to its natural alignment (revolving around her, naturally) when she mentions that Spike wasn't at all interested in her when he got free, and in fact went straight for the wall. Huh. Why was the BBB trying to get at Andrew? I feel like I should care, since this was a "major" point of this episode, but I just can't. Xander asks for further clarification. Buffy explains that she and Spike were just talking, and then she left the room for a moment, and when she returned it was like Spike was a completely different person. Funny. That pretty much sums up how I felt about Spike around the middle of Season Five. Buffy mentions that before she went back inside the room, she heard Spike talking and singing to himself. "Maybe it's another musical," suggests Anya. Heh. One of only a few lines that didn't annoy me.

Buffy connects this song with the song Spike was talking about in the cellar. Xander concludes that the song is Spike's "trigger." He explains to the gang the role of a "trigger" in making "sleeper agents." Willow asks if this bit of lore is just something left from Xander's oh-so-convenient Magical Military Memory, but he corrects her: "No, it's left over from every army movie I've ever seen." Heh. Xander realizes that, since they've all been haunted lately, perhaps Spike is being haunted as well. Furthermore, "What if Spike's ghosts have figured out a way…to control him?" Buffy wants to know how they can override his trigger. Xander blithely mentions that usually sleeper agents complete their tasks and then blow their own heads off or steal a submarine. I could live with either of those. I'm almost over my death wish for Spike. Don't get me wrong -- I'd rather see him dead than see him at all, but all I really care about is that he just goes and leaves me in peace. Buffy decides that she's heard enough; it's time now to parcel out the real work to everyone else. She dispatches Willow and Dawn to do research while she leans back and has a margarita or something.

Sunnydale High. Principal Wood leaves his office late in the evening as The Ominous Violin Of Ambiguous Characterization plays. He walks through the halls, then stops at the basement door, which is, once again, left unlocked. Can someone in Sunnydale please cut a key for the Big Bad Beneath? Then they might not need that silly little "No Student Access" sign. Cut to the basement. Wood strides purposefully along, giving the impression that he knows exactly where he's going. He enters the room with the Seal of Danzig and sees Jonathan's body still splayed across it. He is, in a word, nonplussed. You couldn't plus this guy with this scene even if you had a whole plethora of plus-y things. Sometimes making words up is easier than really writing.

Cut to somewhere dank and dark where Spike is chained up. Finally. As long as he stays there, I don't need to see him chained up somewhere in direct sunlight. He's still unconscious and has a bloody lip. Buffy tromps down the basement stairs with a bowl of water. She takes a cloth and dabs at the dried blood on Spike's lip. He starts to come to, and his first words are, "Did I hurt anybody?" Well. I know Ace and I are awful tired of seeing you. So much so that having to sit through scenes in which you appear is actually a bit painful, but…oh. He was asking about people in the Sunnydale universe. Buffy fills him in on Andrew. Spike is confused as to Andrew's identity, but for some reason completely accepts Buffy explanation of "Tucker's brother." As if Spike went to school with the gang as some Sunnydale High exchange student from a hell dimension. Spike is all, "Boo hoo hoo, I don't know why I'm hurting people again when I went and got a shiny, happy soul just to prevent this." Buffy explains that he's being controlled by some sort of mystical force, and they're working on researching it. Spike: "Kill me." Buffy: "No." Sep: "If anyone is going to get the sweet release of death here, I'm first in line." Spike is all, "Do you know what I'm capable of?" And then proceeds to spell out exactly what he used to do to girls Dawn's age, implying that he used drain them very slowly so that they'd still be able to cry when he raped them. Spike still wants Buffy to kill him. And on my "which episode are they ripping off this time" scorecard, I heartily check off "Amends." As usual, Buffy is anti-death-penalty for vampires that she's slept with.

Spike hotly asks Buffy if she's ever stopped to think about why she's never killed him. That's the problem, Spike. She stopped to think and then forgot to start again. Buffy lists Spike's good deeds. He tells her to stop trying to justify her treatment of him, because they both know that the real truth is that Buffy NEEDS to be hurt by men. Whuh? What the freak is going on here? Do the writers have a dartboard labeled with different neuroses, at which they blindly throw a dart in order to choose how they're going to explain Buffy's schizo behavior each week? Because that's how it's coming off to me. A few weeks ago, Buffy had a superiority complex, then an inferiority complex, and now she's a masochist that confuses pain with love. Blah blah blah Buffy says that Spike is "alive because [she] saw [him] change." Spike dismisses this as "window dressing." Buffy gives him her standard "you're a better man now and I believe in you" speech and oh sweet Jesus please don't make me sit through ten more episodes of "Amends." I don't know why I should suffer. I was born with a soul. I never killed for fun. Bah. Thankfully, this scene is finally interrupted by the lights going out and a bunch of robed figures like the ones who have been stabbing all of those girls crashing in through the windows and doors.

By Sep

door, Anya has Andrew cornered against the wall. She tells him to talk.

By Sep

Commercials. Oh how I've longed for your sweet, sweet relief. The three millionth promotion for The Twilight Zone episode starring Brian Austin Green and Moira Kelly? Bring it on! Say what you will about The West Wing's critical acclaim, but I just want to point out that you know your career is in the toilet when you get second billing behind Brian Austin Green, an actor best known for having to dry-hump Tori Spelling for the better part of ten years.

Cut to a construction site. Principal Wood displaces a few shovelfuls of earth and dumps Jonathan's body into a ditch. That principal -- he's so stylish that he doesn't even get a speck of dirt on him when covertly dumping bodies. Ooh! I'm so glad we know for sure now that Principal Wood will be playing a part in this season's plot. And it's so fu-diddly-un that we still don't know whose side he's on. I mean, it's not at all like we've known all of that from the VERY FIRST EPISODE of the season. Except, y'know, the opposite of all that.

Casa Summers. Willow and Dawn grapple with the black robes. Buffy takes a few of them off their hands, but it's not enough to prevent Willow from getting knocked out. I'm pretty sure that Giles didn't tell you that your friends would need you around to get bonked on the head, Tabitha. One of the black robes runs upstairs, and Buffy gives chase. Dawn fights so well that I live in fear of a spin-off. Upstairs, a black robe pulls out a couple of Ginsu knives and goes to take care of Andrew. Bah. This fight is boring. Once it's finally over, Xander runs upstairs to check on Buffy. They quickly realize that there were far more of the black robes than the bodies account for. Buffy realizes that they must have been after Spike. They truck downstairs to find a pair of empty chains.

Back in the living room, Buffy leans down to inspect the bodies and notices their sewn-shut eyes. She realizes that they aren't being haunted at all. "I know what we're up against. The First." Dawn and Willow look blankly at her, because they weren't in much of "Amends" at all.

Stock footage of London. The camera pans up the exterior of a building. Inside, it's a mass of swarming confusion and tweed. One of the Watchers tells Quentin Travers that not only have all their files been wiped out, but they've lost contact with a number of their outposts around the world, and casualty reports are still coming in. That lady Watcher who wrote her thesis on Spike disconsolately says, "We are crippled." Quentin takes Lydia's arm and tells her that they're still captains of their souls. Quentin confirms to the assembled Watchers that the First Evil has "declared all-out war on this institution." He gives a rousing little speech to rally the troops and tells them that "it's time we strike back." He sets the wheels in motion for a little Hellmouth road trip. "These are the times that define us," he finishes, pompous to the last. Cut to an exterior shot of a building that is not at all the same building we saw in the establishing shot shown at the beginning of this scene. It blows up. Presumably, we're supposed to think that the CoW Headquarters has just exploded. Well, that might prove to be vaguely interesting.

By Sep

Pan across the beedy, steely eyes of BBBSpike. Shots of beautiful and sharp instruments of torture. We see an arm being lashed to a wooden frame with leather thongs. It's Spike, of course. An off-screen minion grabs something pointy and gouges Spike with it. He screams. I smile. The wooden frame Spike is tied to is raised and tilted forward. Blood from Spike's wounds (which are really nicely carved designs reminiscent of those Einstürzende Neubauten symbols that were such popular tattoos in the '90s. Hey, does this somehow tie into that Seal of Danzig that Andrew mentioned right before Spike used him as an impromptu wrecking ball?) drips towards the ground. "You wanna see what a real vampire looks like?" taunts the BBB, who has morphed into Buffy at this point. Minions chant. Blood pools on the seal in the basement, and the points of the pentagram start to glow and fold up. It's really reminiscent (and by that I mean "a rip-off") of Hellraiser. Quite sad, really, since Hellraiser was released a good fifteen years ago. The production crew must have gotten the Hellraiser effects package at a very deep discount. After the seal has finished its contortions, we see a wizened gray hand with long black claws grip the dirt near the mouth of the seal. The camera pans up the vampire (all four inches of him) and comes to rest on his wee snarling face. I hope it doesn't take Buffy too long to figure out that she can squash him with one well-placed stomp.