Nighttime. Buffy wanders through her house. She's wearing an awfully unflattering velour sweatshirt that makes her breasts look like two little mashed pancakes. We see that the living room is full of sleeping girls; they're dozing in chairs and on the floor. Buffy picks up a book about Greek language, then drops it on the living room desk because it's all Greek to her. The desk is covered in other foreign-language dictionaries, presumably being employed to communicate with the Junior Misses who don't speak English. Well, it's better than shouting at them and gesticulating broadly, I suppose. And let's pretend they ordered all those books off Amazon.com through the TWoP support link, okay? Buffy clicks off a light and wanders upstairs. She opens the door to a bedroom (her own?) and checks out the five or more girls crashed in there. She peers in through the connecting door to Dawn's (I think) room, and sees even more sleeping girls. Throughout all this, music of great saccharine poignancy is playing on the soundtrack. Buffy hears a sob, and turns to see one of the Junior Misses crouched in a corner on the landing. "Chloe?" she asks, amending, "It is Chloe, right?" Is Chloe crying because she's been missing for a number of episodes and nobody noticed? Maybe she ran away to the backyard with her snacks and pajamas all wrapped up in a little hobo bundle because she thought someone would come looking for her but nobody did. Buffy takes a few steps towards the crying girl and then gets tackled down the staircase by a figure who turns out to be the First Slayer. The First Slayer tells Buffy, "It's not enough!" Buffy wakes up gasping and looks around her room at the sleeping Junior Misses on the floor.
Spike and Anya are walking down an alley. Anya bitches about what a mistake she made when she "let [herself] become human again." Let herself? As I recall, she had no choice in the matter. She was all set to sacrifice her life to reverse her vengeance on the frat boys, and instead D'Hoffryn toasted Halfrek and turned Anya into a human. As one of the two decent episodes this season, I remember "Selfless" pretty well. Luckily, my mind has a special protection setting that blanks out all the crap episodes so I can sleep at night. Anyway, Anya's all "being human is yucky" and Spike's all mopey and sedated in his sloppy t-shirt and army jacket. He makes a little offhand comment about Anya not being so yucky, and she simpers. She goes on to complain about staying at Buffy's with all the multitudes of little girls, and Spike looks around impatiently as she rambles on. He replies that his plan to deal with it all is to get drunk as often as possible, which seems like a risky hobby for someone who could be repossessed by Evil at any moment and shouldn't be lowering his inhibitions. Or maybe it would make him less useful, especially if he drinks until he loses all motor control? Hmm. As they continue walking towards the bar, Anya slips her arm through Spike's and says, "Thanks for having me along. At first, I thought, 'Weird. Is Spike asking me out on a date?' Because that would just be nuts." Spike is utterly baffled by Anya's behavior here, I guess because he doesn't know that Giles only takes Anya out to dark alleys on dates. If Spike had walked Anya along a Sunnydale street to the bar rather than down an alley, they likely wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Shame on Anya for her wandering eye as soon as Giles leaves town, though. Still having lingering hard feelings about the crappy non-Valentine's day non-present he didn't get for her last episode? With very embarrassed body language, Spike assures Anya he's just out to get some alcohol, and she seems to understand he's not interested. Seems to, until she makes a joke about drinking him under the table and then joining him there. Then she's says she's kidding because she "likes [her] sex on top of the table." She seems mostly nervous and not very lusty here, and I'm wondering if this is her strange Anya way of initiating a conversation about their liaison last season. She could be uncomfortable with that memory and want to discuss it to clear the air. Of course, neither of these characters have shown any sign of even remembering they had sex up until this point, so I could be wrong. But otherwise, I'm confused as to why the writers felt an "Anya hits on Spike" scene would be useful or illuminating addition to this episode. Spike blows up and snaps, "Would you let it go? You're like a dog with a bone!" Anya replies, "So what?" which is my general reaction to everything Spike-related, and Spike explains, "It's my bone. Just drop it." Just then, a demon attacks Anya and tosses her to the ground with a message from Anya's former boss: "D'Hoffryn says you die." Spike knocks out the demon with two punches and helps Anya up off the ground. They run away. Spike, you run like a spazz!
Buffy sits at her desk and Principal Wood stands behind her. They're disciplining a "couple of chuck-heads who thought that a cafeteria fistfight would impress." Wood is not impressed. He dismisses the boys and expositions about how chaos is growing at the school, with fights, missing kids, and rising vandalism. He wants to know if "it" has started. "It" being the devouring from beneath that we haven't heard about in quite a few episodes, I guess. Buffy agrees that "the Hellmouth has begun its semi-annual percolation." In an unfunny meta-comment I totally missed on first viewing, she adds that things usually come to a head around May. Yeah, we all have to sit around and labor through sixteen episodes of filler waiting for May sweeps to get any action. It's not something to joke about, people. I'm utterly filled to the brim with not caring about this conversation between Buffy and Wood. He's worried about how "big" things are coming and plops a leather satchel on Buffy's desk, saying he's decided to give it to her. He explains it's an "emergency kit" that belonged to his mother. Okay, fine. But no, they have to go and make it all improbable when Wood adds, "Technically, it should have been passed down directly to you through the years, but after my mother died I just couldn't part with it." Dude, he was four, and we know his mother's Watcher lived. Why would he have had any choice in hanging onto it? They could have just left it at the perfectly reasonable explanation that Wood inherited the bag from his mother (maybe with a comment about how Nikki researched the origins of the Slayer or something) instead of making it problematic by insisting that it was an artifact that was stolen from the Slayer line by someone who had just graduated pre-school. That's it. I'm nominating this bit of dialogue as the thin brown line of the episode. What, you may ask, is this thin brown line? It's the bit of dialogue that distinguishes the mediocre but non-offensive from utter crap. And I would rant that we've never heard about the bag before, but some sharp-eyed viewers say this is the one Buffy had in her dream in "Restless," so kudos to the strange and random continuity there. Buffy gives an appreciative "Wow," and Wood says that the contents of the bag "have something to do with [the Slayer's] power." Buffy thanks him, after some prompting. Oh, Joyce. I know you raised your daughter better than that. Wood then says he wants to see where Buffy works, and Buffy giggles and shows him her desk and pencils. Wood smiles indulgently, but then says commandingly, "No. Where you do your other work." You're the boss, boss.
As Buffy explains all about the potential Slayers getting, uh, slain, she and Wood enter her house. She tells him that the Council of Watchers was destroyed, and although Wood blinks at that, he shows very little reaction for a man raised by a Watcher. Well, perhaps he already knew. Buffy is gesturing around the living room and calling it "Command Central" (as if anyone in her group is in command) when Andrew stalks angrily out of the kitchen, wearing an apron and matched oven mitts. He crosses his arms sulkily and whines, "Where the hell have you been? This funnel cake is kicking my ass!" The Summers kitchen comes equipped with a Presto FryDaddy? Funny, Joyce didn't strike me as a mom who would prepare deep-fried food. Well, maybe they bought it when they picked up the microwave because Molly whined that she couldn't live another day without some fresh fish and chips. (Oh, damn. I just did research and found out you can make funnel cakes in a skillet. But FryDaddy is such an inherently funny term, I don't want to remove that joke, so let's live with it, okay?)
Buffy introduces Andrew to Wood as "our hostage," but Andrew, all oven-mitted air-quotes, says he prefers the term "guestage." Wood is a little surprised that Buffy holds people against their will, so Buffy ends up stuttering that Andrew was evil but "now he bakes." As of this episode. Before, he just whined and annoyed, which wasn't much of a contribution if you ask me. Andrew is resentful that Buffy isn't keeping their "secret headquarters" at all secret, but, uh, Andrew? The First knows exactly where you are and you don't seem have any other enemies this season, so what's the secret? Andrew is worried that strangers will see "the big board," but Buffy reminds him they don't have one. Oops -- she's spoken too soon, because Andrew fetches a white board from behind the sofa on which he's drawn a map of Sunnydale and tracked "various incarnations" of the First Evil. Andrew has a FryDaddy and and white board with a multi-colored set of markers? This is what comes of sending morally ambiguous characters to Wal-Mart with Giles's credit card, isn't it?
Ace: My television is tiny. Does Andrew's drawing of The First really look like Tubey?
Sep: Naah. I think they're supposed to be devil heads, but one of them turned out a little square because of the way the mouth was drawn. I thought it was unlikely that ME was finally taking notice of us.
Ace: And thank fuck for that. I want nothing to do with those people. They suck!
Sep: Totally. Can someone tell Marti to stop calling me and leaving long, rambling messages about Spike's arc? It's starting to get old.
Buffy and Wood just roll their eyes and push past Andrew on their way to the backyard.
Out on the back porch, Buffy claims, "We do have a lot more working for us than just the 'big board,'" but she's obviously not talking about her skirt. That's not working for her, or me, or anyone. It's black and ruffly, with two tiers. The lower tier has an extremely asymmetrical hemline that leaves one calf bare but covers the other one completely. Wood isn't looking at her skirt, though, because he's just noticed that the back yard is filled with Junior Misses being led through pageant routines by Kennedy, who fancies herself G.I. Jane but comes across a lot more as G.I. Jerk. She's drilling the twenty or so girls in some lame "punch-block combo" which Chloe messes up, presumably because she hasn't been training with everyone because she's been hiding out in the back yard since "Potential." G.I. Jerk snaps that Chloe should "drop and give [her] twenty," and Chloe has no idea what she's talking about because, as we find out later, Winnie the Pooh is more her speed than boot-camp movies. G.I. Jerk clarifies, "Push-ups, maggot!" and Chloe rolls her eyes and begins as the rest of the girls stand by silently.
G.I. Jerk then turns to Buffy and Wood and crows, "I love this job! Did you see that? I called a girl 'maggot.'" I really, really can't wait for Kennedy to get an extremely grisly comeuppance. G.I. Jerk's not done pissing me off, though, because she checks out Wood and demands, "Who the hell are you?" It's Buffy's house, so shut your face, bratling. Buffy and Wood smirk at the stupid little girl who thinks she's cool. Poor Willow -- even in your current incarnation as a boring, mopey man-killer that I don't really have much affection for, you deserve so much better than Kennedy. G.I. Jerk brags that her girls are "ready to kick some ass" because she's playing out her fantasy world of clichés, and Wood reminds her that the First has no "ass you can actually kick." Millie notices that Buffy's guest is the principal and waves to Wood excitedly, so of course G.I. Jerk slaps her down. How much do I want Millie to pound Kennedy's face into the ground the way she purportedly did to the guy that was bullying her?
The Junior Misses go back to drilling as Buffy channels the words in her dream: "It's not enough." Principal Wood tries to reassure her, but Buffy muses, "Some will die and there's nothing I can do to stop it." God, I hope so. Please let one of the dying ones be Kennedy. Willow, carrying an armload of weapons, chooses this moment to come out onto the back porch. She's surprised to see the principal and tries to cover, saying the Junior Misses are training for some school pep rally. Buffy lets her know that Wood is in on everything. There's a brief exchange to inform us that Wood knows Willow does magic, and Willow leaves, saying he's much cooler than Snyder. But so much less funny and useful as an antagonist, sadly. Says Wood incredulously, "She really almost destroyed the world?" and then, "Remind me not to make her crabby." And right now, about fifteen minutes into the episode, Buffy begins to channel either the spirit of the First Bitch or Susan Lucci, which possesses her for the rest of the hour. She complains she only has "fighters with nothing to hit, a Wicca who won't-a, and the brains of [the] operation wears oven mitts." She really thinks Andrew is smarter than all of them, including Giles? Dude. And since every time Willow does-a the big magic she channels pure evil, I'd think Buffy would want to shut the hell up. She sounds so put-upon here, like the limitations of all her (volunteer) friends and support are such a fuckin' inconvenience to her and she'd be better off without them. Wood says he hasn't seen everything Buffy has yet and demands, "Show me the vampire." I'm starting to get a "these aren't the droids you're looking for" vibe off these demands Wood makes to which Buffy so quickly acquiesces.
Anya and Spike are bickering in the basement; Anya's pissed because Spike was too easy on the demon that attacked her the night before. She's afraid the assassin will just keep coming after her, but Spike defends his "wimpire" running away by saying that he needs to stay alive to keep protecting Anya. Or something. Is that why she's living at Buffy's? We haven't seen Anya under attack by D'Hoffryn's myrmidons since "Him." I'm wondering more and more why the show went so desperately off the rails from episode eight through twelve and who made the decision to try to force it back on track by revisiting themes and plots introduced in the start of the season. Anya rolls her eyes and stomps out past Buffy and Wood, who have come down the stairs.
Buffy explains to Spike that she's showing Wood the whole Slayer operation, and Spike says he's glad that they have another "good guy" joining the fight. Wood challenges Spike, "Is that what you are? A good guy?" and Spike's hackles rise a little. He says he "hasn't heard any complaints," but then admits that he has in the past; he just killed the complainers. Buffy tries to smooth things over, saying that Spike was joking, but both Spike and Wood know he wasn't. Spike clarifies that Coca-Cola Classic Spike did that. New Coke Spike is the useful guy who gets drunk and falls down. Aw, not really. New Coke Spike is the guy with the "big deal" soul which he then claims is private. He wants to know if Buffy is telling everyone about it now. Um, maybe just the people she thinks might stake you otherwise? Shut your ungrateful piehole, Spike. Tiny Good-Now Spike and Much Much Larger Ambiguous Wood stand toe-to-toe and bandy about tension-filled soul-related blather. Wood asks Spike where he was before he came to Sunnydale, but doesn't get an enlightening answer. Buffy finally tires of standing dumbly by and herds Wood back upstairs; Spike lashes out at Buffy with a sexual slur, as he often does when confronted with his own jealousy. I'm not going to act surprised he's still doing that because, hey, having a soul never stopped all the other misogynists I've known.
Buffy and Dawn are tidying up a bedroom. Dawn has checked out the emergency bag Wood gave Buffy and summarizes the contents as "trinkets, weapons, one very large text book," and a large, locked box. Then there's a little riff between the two of them where Dawn teases Buffy that she's decided to flunk out of school and then teases again that instead she's paying someone to do her homework. If she weren't joking, I'd suspect Andrew as the payee. Anyway, it's nice to see someone genuinely laughing and having fun on the show, and I was so charmed that I didn't even realize that of course, in Marti's world, any fun must be punished. Punished, I tell you! In this case, Dawn follows Buffy into the bathroom, and they find Chloe. Dead. Hanging from the ceiling. Dawn shrieks.
A bunch of Junior Misses run into the bathroom and stop in horror. Buffy commands, "Dawn, get a knife. I'm cutting her down." Everyone in the house really has been reduced to playing Buffy's slaves now, huh? I wonder if she dresses Andrew up in a little chef outfit and makes him wait on her at dinner. And perhaps she drops her muddy boots to Spike's cot and expects him to clean them before morning. Well, we wouldn't want Buffy to expend any of her precious energy by going to fetch her own damn knife, when she needs it to show off in front of the principal. Dawn is about to go when the First appears in the bathroom as Chloe. It goads Buffy about Chloe being dead. The First is a master of the obvious. Tiny Evil Chloe says she talked all night to Tiny Dead Chloe, who was a good listener. Do you think the First appeared to Chloe as Buffy, telling her all sorts of awful things? I think that might've been cool to see, especially if we didn't know it was the First at the time. Then Tiny Evil Chloe taunts Kennedy for calling Chloe a maggot, and implies that that sent Tiny Dead Chloe over the edge. Buffy impotently tells the girls not to listen, but I don't see why she doesn't just herd them all out of there and keep up some loud running commentary to drown out the First. After all, from what we've seen of the First's past behavior, it seems like the embodiment of the phrase, "Ignore it and it will go away." There's no reason on Earth to just stand there listening to it. Now, I'm not naming names here, but if The First Evil manifested itself as, say, a whiny cat in Buffy's house, that might really put people on edge and degrade their quality of life. Especially if it did the door thing. Now the cat wants in. Now the cat wants out. Now the cat wants in. I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! YES, YES, LATCH! I WILL DO YOUR EVIL BIDDING!
Ahem. Sorry. Tiny Evil Chloe tells the girls that evil is coming and "this" is almost over. Can't fool us, though -- we know it's not over until May. Buffy attempts to be brazen, and Tiny Evil Chloe uses Buffy's voice to repeat what she told Wood earlier: "They're not all going to make it. Some will die, and there's nothing that I can do that will stop it." So what, Tiny Evil Chloe? Buffy already told the Junior Misses that to their faces on at least one occasion. "T.T.F.N.," concludes Tiny Evil Chloe, and vanishes from the room. Buffy has to ask what that means, and Rona explains, "It's 'ta-ta for now.' It's what Tigger says when he leaves." Millie adds that Chloe loved Winnie the Pooh. The real Tigger says that, or the stupid Disney one? Because I don't recall the real Tigger speaking in abbreviations. I don't have my childhood copies of Milne's books here with me to check, however. Everybody just stands there staring at the body for a minute longer, and then Buffy, who hasn't lifted a finger at all in this scene or made any effort to mitigate the appearance of the First, snarls, "Dawn, where's that knife?" Oh, get it yourself, bitch.
Buffy buries Chloe in the backyard. I laugh and laugh, because I think to myself, "Just like a dead kitten!" I know, I'm sick and twisted, but it just seemed so much like the funeral of a goldfish or something that only a child would take seriously. Did Buffy put Chloe in a frickin' shoebox? Do you think Dawn will come out in a few minutes with a little cross made out of popsicle sticks for a headstone? I must say, the digging seems to really be wearing Buffy out. Where's that Slayer strength? She's panting and wiping away the sweat. Oh, wait. What's that? You mean she was supposed to be wiping away a tiny tear of sorrow? Whatever.
All the Junior Misses are gathered in the living room. Sniffling can be heard, and their postures are dejected. Willow's at her computer. Doing what? Emailing Chloe's family? "Oh, sorry -- that child we kidnapped from you? Dead." I mean, I don't seriously think they're kidnapping these girls, but I also don't understand how Giles talked twenty or so families into putting their daughters into the hands of perfect strangers. Not worth thinking about, though, I suppose, since the people writing the scripts obviously haven't. Buffy stomps into the room with her shovel and begins her rousing speech: "Chloe was an idiot. Chloe was stupid. She was weak." Oh, okay. I thought she was a scared fourteen-year-old girl who came up against The Source Of All Evil, but I know better now. Buffy continues that anyone who wants to join Chloe should go ahead and off themselves too, and she'll "find room for [them] to [Chloe] and Annabelle." And I'm sorry, but I started laughing here again because -- Annabelle is out there too? It really is like a creepy little pet cemetery. Throwing down her shovel, Buffy angrily sneers, "I'm the Slayer. The one with the power. And the First has me using that power to dig our graves." Well, you've been saying all along that people would die, Buffy. What's with the petulance now? It's not like anyone in the room helped Chloe string herself up there. And is what Chloe did any worse than what Andrew and Spike have done under the First's influence? And yet I don't recall a single speech from Buffy about Spike being a stupid, weak idiot. And now comes the real kicker. The bitch-out to end all bitch-outs. Buffy actually has the balls to say, "I've been carrying you. All of you. Too far, too long. Ride's over." What the fucking fuck? I mean, seriously, what the fuck? She's been carrying them? She can't even carry her own knife, as evidenced in the scene. I've been over and over this in my mind, and I simply can't fathom what all of them were supposed to be doing that Buffy thinks they haven't done. And who's the only person in the room who had a prophetic dream that Chloe was distressed, and then ignored that dream? Was it, perhaps, Buffy? Yes, I think it was. I also can't see fuck-all that she's done that they haven't helped with. She told them they were an army in "Bring on the Night," and as far as I can tell, they've all been following her orders ever since.
Kennedy jumps up and tells Buffy that she's way out of line. Go back to the kids' table, Kennedy. Kennedy looks to Willow for support, but Willow says Buffy is right. Damn, she's whipped. Kennedy insists that Buffy is not the most powerful person there -- Willow is. Willow just makes big sad doe eyes, and Buffy tells Kennedy that she's new and she's wrong. You see, Buffy's the most powerful because she uses the power she has. Um, yeah. She uses it to moon after Spike, date the principal, and do crap work in her day job. I'm really impressed. Also, the potential Slayers? Innocents, as far as I'm concerned. Not yet called. Not yet powerful. Buffy is supposed to protect the innocents -- protect the people. There's nothing in the phrase "warrior of the people" that implies to me that the warrior gets to sneer at and bitch out the people if they don't all run around doing her bidding and psychically divining her holy wishes before she articulates them. But Little Miss Entitled isn't done yet. She puckers up her mean little mouth and sneers, "The rest of you are just waiting for me." DUH! All the responsibility sitting a little uneasy, Miss Bitches-A-Lot? Well, stop blaming that on other people. They didn't make you the Slayer. Xander reminds Buffy that they consider her their leader and they follow her. Buffy's infuriating reply? "Well, from now on I'm your leader as in 'Do as I say.'" I've only got an angry, "Huh?" for that. Instead of pointing out that's just what everyone has been doing, Xander reminds Buffy, "Let's not forget, we're also your friends." Not the point I would've made there.
Anya pipes up that she's not Buffy's friend, and gets an angry, "Then why are you here? Aside from getting rescued, what is it that you do?" in reply. I'm really totally baffled as to what Buffy's point is here. "Pony up supernatural powers or leave"? People now have to possess superpowers to hang with The Great And Mighty Buff? Why doesn't she just toss Anya, Xander, Dawn, and the Junior Misses all out on their ears, then? Anya says she's there to "provide much needed sarcasm," but Xander thinks that's his role. I believe the real Xander and Anya have died, and their Sarcasm Calling has passed on to Ace and me. Buffy says Anya (and the others?) are there because they're scared, thus dismissing the seven years of bravery Willow and Xander have shown fighting at her side. She tells the room that they can be scared, but they should "be useful while [they're] at it." Has she given them commands that have gone unfulfilled? Is that why she's pissed? Argh. Willow claims that everyone is doing their best. Buffy says that's not enough, because the First knows their capabilities and is already laughing at them. I'm pretty much laughing right back at it, Buffy. As you should be. But no, Buffy wants everyone to surprise themselves by doing even more than they're capable of. There's a long pause, and Spike stirs. He sighs and starts to leave the room, but is stopped by Buffy demanding, "Where are you going?" Spike looks around and smirks that Buffy's speech obviously doesn't apply to him. As he walks away, she shoots after him, "Fine. Take a cell phone. That way if I need someone to get weepy or wailed on, I can call you." Ouch! Spike's pissed, but Buffy shrugs that he's been "holding back" since he returned with his soul. Spike admits that he doesn't relish the kill as much these days, and Buffy sneers, "You were a better fighter then." "I did this for you," explodes Spike, and it's my turn to sigh, because I thought we already went over this in "Beneath You." Spike says he changed because Buffy wanted him to be different, and Buffy's face gets incredibly mean and ugly as she shouts that she wants a dangerous killer Spike, not a wimpy nice one. Looks like Buffy's now done with destroying everyone in the room, though, and she tells Dawn to put the Junior Misses to bed and bring her the Slayer Emergency Kit. What was that about how Buffy has to do everything around the place again? Bitch won't even fetch her own heirloom.
Later, in the living room. Wood, at Buffy's invitation, has joined Buffy, Xander, Anya, Kennedy, Willow, and Dawn in opening the Slayer Emergency Kit. Buffy snaps the lock off the mystery box in the bottom of the bag, and Xander pulls out a bunch of metal things. Dawn is suddenly able to read the book from the bag, which is in Sumerian, and thinks they're dealing with "an origin myth. The story of the very first Slayer." Miss Forgets-A-Lot now remembers that she dreamed of the First Slayer "the other night." She didn't, however, remember that dream when she saw Dead Chloe in the bathroom earlier. Oh, yeah, you're really carrying everybody else, Buffy. And what a fine job you're doing. The screen goes black until it's illuminated by the flame of a single match. Xander lights some sort of oil lamp whose wide, flat base has a spiral pattern carved into it. Already this scene has a creepier vibe than most of the season. Dawn, reading from the large and helpful instruction manual included in the kit, instructs Xander to take one of the…um, okay. I have a problem. What the hell do you call these things? I know the internet is a generally a boon to the slow-witted such as myself, but how do you even do a search on "those cut-out stencil-y things that cast shadows when illuminated from behind"? I'm going to draw on my extensive linguistic knowledge here and call them doohickeys.
So. Again. Dawn tells Xander to attach the doohickeys to the base one at a time, and the shadows will tell a story. "First there is the earth," reads Dawn. Xander affixes the corresponding doohickey to the base of the oil lamp. As it throws its shadow on the wall, a distant drum begins to beat. It's obvious that the Scoobs can hear it too. "Okay. So far so creepy," sums up Xander. At Dawn's instruction, Xander puts the remaining doohickeys in place. The story is that after the earth, there were the demons. Then came men who "found a girl" and took her to fight the demons. "They chained her to the earth," says Dawn, with a quick glance at Buffy. I thought that was actually a nice, subtle way for Dawn to acknowledge the burden that Buffy bears. Most importantly, it was accomplished without any overblown speeches. The living room is now a cacophony of drum beats and screams. As the last doohickey is put into place, the shadows begin to spin and move on their own. Dawn begins to have trouble reading the words in the book. "Something about darkness?" she guesses. But the book quickly begins to translate itself as the drums crescendo. The gist is that Buffy "cannot be shown" but rather must "see for [herself] but only if [she's] willing to make the exchange." As Dawn says this, a portal opens from the middle of the oil lamp. Buffy approaches it slowly, and I snigger at her boots. Quite a feat considering the skirt they're paired with. "It means I have to go in there," deduces Buffy. Willow is distressed at this suggestion: "No it doesn't. Where does it say that? It doesn't say that!" Wood and Xander also try to talk Buffy out of it, but she's gotta do it because it's the plot of this episode. Willow worries that "we don't know where you're going or how we'll get you back." Buffy looks pensive, but their concerns slide off of her. She instructs them to "find a way" before jumping into the portal. It snaps shut behind her, taking all of the mysterious Slayer origin accoutrements with it. Riddle me this: if this kit was supposed to be passed along from Slayer to Slayer, why does it disappear if anyone actually uses it? No time to think now, though, because there's a bright flash of light, and a large black demon disappears. Xander just has enough time to quip, "Ah, this must be the exchange student," before getting thrown into the table.
Fight! Fight! Fight! I love fights. They're so easy to recap. Kennedy suggests that Willow send the demon back magically. Willow looks unsure, but starts to mumble something; the only effect is that she's backhanded into the wall for her troubles. I'm usually immune to Wood's charms because I find him a little too well-formed for me to consider hot -- like, I get an inferiority complex just by being attracted to him -- but then he adopts his super-cool ninja fighting stance and it's all over. I know that doesn't seem very convincing, that I'm attracted to someone because he stands well, but that's just the state of Sep's nation. Wood hurls his little throwing stars before tackling the demon. He too is quickly rebuffed. The demon quickly dispatches Kennedy, Dawn, and finally Spike, the latter getting thrown through the ceiling and landing upstairs somewhere. The demon bursts through the French doors in the living room and disappears into the night. I cringe a little when the house takes yet another beating, and I think it's a sad state of affairs when I have more sympathy for Casa Summers than any of its inhabitants. The gang regroups. Sadly, there are no Kennedy-shaped casualties. They quickly realize that this demon is beyond their abilities, and they need Buffy back pronto. "Looks like it's spell o'clock," asides Xander to Willow. God, just don't let it be another locator spell. Every time Willow does a locator spell, a little part of me dies. Anya is doubtful of Willow's ability to re-open the portal without going off the deep end, but Willow doesn't see that they have any other options. Especially as they don't know where Buffy has ended up.
Cut to…Joshua Tree, it looks like. Buffy has been dumped in the middle of a desert very much like the one from "Restless."
Back at Casa Summers, they're in brainstorming mode. Xander suggests looking for info in the instruction manual, but now that it's whisked the Slayer away, it's re-translated itself into ancient Sumerian. ["It looked to me like the whole thing had been erased." -- Sars] Willow, on her way to the kitchen for the first aid kit, has Kennedy yapping at her heels and hounding her to get down with the witch-fu. "Worst thing that happens is that you go brunette." God, Kennedy! Could you please shut your motherfucking mouth when it comes to subjects about which you know NOTHING? You didn't even believe in magic until a couple of episodes ago, and if people who have known Willow for years are apprehensive, maybe you could pay attention to that instead of thinking that you are the be-all and end-all of all there is to know on any given subject. And in the course of writing that, it's just become clear to me that Kennedy is, without a doubt, going to be the Slayer. From the doorway, Anya suggests that they just leave Buffy there. "If she's so superior let her find her own way back." Heh. Go Anya! "The First is already up and running," counters Xander, "Every second that Buffy's not here is an opportunity for it to show up and rip us to pieces." Except, y'know, it's INCORPOREAL. Jeebus! At least we only had to suffer through that "Ben is Glory. Wait! Are you saying there might be some sort of connection between Ben and Glory?" crap for a single episode. Sure, Xander could be talking about the Bringers, but we haven't seen a lot of them lately, and the show has tended to differentiate between The First and the Bringers so far.
Dawn tries to make the conversation more productive by asking Willow how she'd go about bringing Buffy back. Willow doesn't know, but under Dawn's questioning she admits that you'd start with the principles of physics. "You can't really create or destroy anything, just transfer," she explains. Anya makes a pffff noise. "Magic works off physics," insists Willow with some force. And here I thought it worked off of a crappy metaphor for either lesbian sex or drug addiction. "Not without a catalyst. If you're talking about transferring energies you need some kinda conduit," retorts Anya. "Like a Cracken's tooth," says Willow, starting to get excited. Hmm. Anya then uses her special ability to annoy Willow as a way to get her to clarify her own thinking on a subject, if only to prove Anya wrong. Clever girl. No wonder Giles likes her. Kennedy reminds everyone that the book said they would need something to exchange. They decide that it should be the original demon, and that it doesn't necessarily need to be alive. Well, that's convenient. "I vote dead. The demon's mine," says Spike, steadying himself against the doorway. Kennedy snides, "I hate to say it, Big Bad, but you look like you can barely stand. We're trained. And the only thing we know for sure about this demon is it kicked your ass." My God. Kennedy has actually put me in the position of being pro-Spike. For that she must die. That, and the fact that she's a charmless little suck-baby. If there's anything I hate more than a brash blowhard, it's a brash blowhard in the body of a teenager. Spike heads out the door with the cryptic explanation that he's after something he needs.
Joshua Tree. Buffy comes across three old men in "African" dress sitting in the desert with their staffs. She introduces herself, but they know who she is already. They're expecting her. That's just how these mystical things work. Which also explains how Buffy can understand the language they're speaking while we need subtitles. Based on my cursory knowledge of the case system they're using, I think it's Swahili. I'm sure that if I'm wrong, someone will tell me within four minutes of this going live. The internet is just like that. The men rise and begin to circle her, saying that they have been there since the beginning, but now it is almost near the end, because Buffy is the Hellmouth's last guardian. Huh. Is that a tacit way of admitting that the Slayer line no longer goes through Buffy? Buffy is impatient to get back and deal with The First, which would be nice if she ever got around to doing something about it. The shamans say that they have no knowledge to give her, only power. Buffy starts to call into question the reality of her being on this plane at all, speculating that it's only a figment of her imagination. And then? Shaman #3 just cracks his staff against the back of Buffy's skull, knocking her out. Mmmm. Let's watch that again. Aaaaah. Once more. With feeling.
Willow pours a circle of green sand on the floor of the living room which will contain the portal. Suddenly Xander wants to wait for Spike to get back with the demon. The other demon, that is. Not the demon that is Spike. Willow has to get started right away, though, because a portal like this one "could take days." Could someone tell the witch she only has ten minutes of airtime left? Willow steps into the circle, sits cross-legged, and begins chanting in Latin. Nothing happens. She turns back to Dawn to tell her to make a pot of joe -- it's gonna be a long night. Of course, right then, a bolt of CGI knocks Dawn and Kennedy backwards. Willow turns around with the requisite black eyes and screams. Why does she have to scream all the time? Magic never used to involve so much screaming. What part of physics is that based on? Snort.
Buffy comes to bathed in bluish light. She looks around, and she's in a cave. Chained up in a cave, actually. A cave whose floor has a spiral pattern. Chained to the earth. Y'all see where this is going? "We are at the beginning," says a shaman. But I hear him say "Kwanza," which everyone here generally celebrates at Christmas. Christmas = presents. Death = your gift. Will this show finally be put out to pasture as a gift to the viewers? I can only dream. The shamans tell her that they've brought her to the source of the Slayer's power. Buffy is already "bursting with power," and isn't interested in any more. And I agree. Especially if it's going to make her even more long-suffering. I really think that this Slayer origins story is about two seasons out of date, though. I mean, who cares about how Slayers came into being at this point? I'd be satisfied if someone could just explain to me why Buffy turned into such a beeyotch. "The first Slayer did not talk so much," notes one of the shamans. But Buffy does. She also shops and sneezes and doesn't sleep on a bed of bones. They begin to pound their staffs and make drum beat noises reminiscent of those at the shadow show. A shaman brings out a black box and lays it down in the middle of the spiral. He takes off the lid as he tells Buffy that her true strength, the energy of the demon's spirit and heart, lies within. Buffy realizes that this is probably exactly how the First Slayer was created.
A black mist rises out of the box. The shaman tells her that it must "become one" with her and will prepare her for her fight with The First. "By making me less human?" Ruh-roh. I see tentacle sex in the future. Buffy screams, which for some reason disrupts the black smoke. It quickly recovers and then attempts to go up her skirt. Ah. The dreaded Martiphor. Could someone please get this woman some rape-crisis counseling? I'm sick and tired of being subjected to week after week of her working out her screwed-up sexual assault issues. What kind of freak is she that she would think it's an okay message to send that Buffy is attracted to the man who tried to rape her? Why does the Slayer's power, arguably the greatest physical power that a female in the Buffyverse can aspire to, have to be rooted in the act of rape? Why? Why must this woman bring the label of rape to everything? If, say, Wood steals a kiss from Buffy, does that mean we're going to be subjected to Marti working out her "mouth rape" issues? Buffy struggles and grunts. "Make this stop," she grits out through clenched teeth. "This is what you came for," says a shaman. Well, now. If that isn't the mystical vision quest way of saying, "You must have wanted it or you wouldn't have come back to my place." Hmm. Is that phrasing right? Is that what a rapist says? I'll have to ask Britboy. He would know, because he's a man, and if there's one thing that Buffy has taught me this season, it's that all men are rapists.
Quick switch to first-person-cam. The camera finds Spike rifling through boxes in what I guess must be the SHS basement. He finds what he's looking for and shakes it out. It's his old coat, which we last saw at Casa Summers. Jump cut to Spike putting it on. When I stop and think about what that coat symbolizes, I can't help but be a little disgusted. Spike might as well be wearing the flayed skin of Wood's mom. "Dramatic" music plays. Spike strides down the halls, coat billowing in his wake. I have to laugh here. He walks past Wood, who is lurking in a doorway. Wood: "Nice coat. Where'd you get it?" Spike: "New York." Wood looks pensive. Seems Wood wants to check out the information the First gave him about Spike killing his mother before he takes any action, which is a prudent course, I think, since The First is, y'know, evil. It makes an interesting parallel to Buffy, who was only too happy to go off and hack Anya to bits earlier this season.
Casa Summers. Willow is chanting in Latin, and boy, does she sound pissed. "Screw it!" she screams. "Mighty forces, I suck at Latin, okay? That's not the issue. I'm the one in charge and I'm telling you, open a portal now!" When that doesn't work, Willow reaches back with CGI-fingers and drains the power she needs from Anya and Kennedy. Is that what the nice witches in the Coven taught you to do, Willow? I don't think so. In any case, the portal opens.
By this time, Buffy has had just about enough. "You think I came all this way to get knocked up by some demon dust?" She realizes that while she can't fight the black smoke, she can kick some shaman ass. She conveniently finds a burst of strength and rips her chains free. She takes on the shamans, avenging "whoever that girl was before she was the First Slayer."
Spike. Spike kicks ass too. He's found the demon and is clearly having quite a fun time whaling on it. He breaks the demon's neck, then lights a match on the felled demon's horn to a backdrop of electric guitar power chords. Yeah. It really is as cheesy as it sounds. I think one of my problems with this season is that I have no trust in the people putting this show together. Am I supposed to like Kennedy, or is my reading of Kennedy as a miserable little suck who needs to be taken down a peg or four the interpretation that the writers wish me to make? Am I supposed to get excited about Spike putting on his Slayer-skin coat and stomping around? Because I find it a little pathetic that his sense of self is tied up in an artifact that so obviously symbolizes a life that Spike has left behind. Should I be getting the message that Spike can't go back anymore, that he can't be that person either, or does ME actually want me to find this sludge empowering?
Back in the cave, Buffy walks up to the main shaman and breaks his staff. Immediately, the black smoke and the other two shamans disappear. "I knew it. It's always the staff," she quips. Did you get that? By breaking the phallic symbol of male oppression, Buffy has broken free from the patriarchy and can now negotiate life on her own terms. Except that Marti is still in charge, so Buffy will have to be content with negotiating life on her own terms while simultaneously being attracted to the guy who tried to rape her. "We offered you power," rationalizes the shaman. Buffy snaps, "Tell me something I don't know." The shaman places his palm against the side of her head. The light gets very bright, and Buffy's eyes grow huge.
Casa Summers. Spike wrestles the demon corpse into the portal, but we can't see it because they already used up the CGI budget for this episode. With a white flash of light, Buffy is back in the living room. Everyone looks very ill at ease as the piano tune of "I hate you all. You used to be my friends but now you suck" tinkles away.
Kennedy is walking slowly down the hallway on her way to bed. Willow trots up the stairs behind her. She wants to know how Kennedy is doing. "After you sucked the life out of me?" clarifies Kennedy archly. Willow thinks that Kennedy needs to know how she is "when [she's] like that," and goes on to explain that Kennedy was the most powerful person in the area, and that's just how both the magic and Willow work. Yep. Willow gloms onto whoever is most willing to shore up her flagging self-esteem. Kennedy brushes Willow off, telling her that they'll see each other in the morning. God, I hope they've broken up.
Willow opens the door to Buffy's room. Buffy is all hunched over in bed, huddled under the covers with her little mouse hands curled against her chest. What happened to having a lighter tone this season? I'm ready for it. What with Chloe swinging in the wind and Buffy almost being mystical mist-raped, we're at about our thirty-seventh consecutive hour of unabated, grinding misery. Buffy thanks Willow (the lesbian) for rescuing her from the (evil, rapist) shaman, and then admits that she was "hard" on the Scoobs. Willow zombies that Buffy doesn't need to worry about it. Buffy still thinks she's made a mistake. Not by saying such awful things about her supposed friends, mind you, but by turning down the power she was offered, "because [she] didn't like the loophole." Willow seems upset, but covers with an "It's okay. We'll get by. We always do." Wow. How very Little House on the Prairie of her. If I could put aside my burning hatred of Buffy for a moment here, I would admit that I don't blame Buffy one bit for refusing that power. Her strength has always been her humanity. I still hate her, though.
Buffy tells Willow the shaman showed her that "the First Slayer was right" -- the power that she has isn't enough. Willow presses her, "What did they show you?" Suddenly a snarling übervamp pops into the foreground. In fact, as the camera pulls back, we see that there's a whole freakin' army of them. I don't see how any power a shaman could have given Buffy would have been enough to defeat all of those little critters. But more importantly, can we trust that the information Buffy received from the shaman is valid? We certainly don't know that Wood is strictly on the up-and-up. He doesn't seem to have left any sort of paper trail, and there are a number of other ambiguous actions of his that have yet to be accounted for. How do we know that the bag was really a memento of That '70s Slayer? Giles, the only other person who would be able to vouch for its authenticity, was conveniently absent. (His turn to do the Costco run, I assume.) In fact, the last time we saw Wood, he was communicating with The First. How do we know that he hasn't been corrupted? What if Buffy's vision quest was somehow staged by The First as a way to demoralize her even more? Of course, having said all that, it can't possibly be true, because it makes a certain kind of sense, and as we all know, sense has no place in this show anymore.