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Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 12WARNING: SPOILERS
Guess what, everyone? This week's episode didn't stink! As a matter of fact, I must say I'm impressed.
The latest instalment of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" was dark, dark, dark, with a refreshing absence of dumb reminders such as "will Anya and Xander get married or not?", and only adash of the whole "Willow is still battling a magic addiction". We could have done with a bit less of "Dawn is annoying and whiny and how the hell old is she anyway? Six? Geez, grow up immediately please!". (Dear Michelle Trachtenberg: Don't worry, we don't hate you. You're very talented. However, the whining must go. Throw a tantrum next time they give you a whiny script or something. Sincerely, those "Buffy" fans who are tired of whining.)
Annnnnyway, it was a good episode. I've fallen back in love with "Buffy", and that stupid Double Meat Palace episode is but a figment of my imagination.
We open with certain ... noises that insinuate two people are engaging in a certain ... activity.
We see Buffy and Spike curled up on his floor and wrapped in a rug (they have no clothes on underneath). Buffy comments on the pretty rug, tells Spike he made his home look nice, and chats a bit about how she needs to give her own bedroom a makeover because her New Kids On The Block posters are "starting to date me". Funny.
As Buffy Marthas on, Spike realizes with shock that the two are actually engaged in a conversation and that Buffy didn't punch him and sprint off the moment the deed was done, like she usually does.
Then, of course, Spike kind of ruins everything by reminding Buffy of how she came back from the dead a bit different (because he can hurt her even with that stupid chip implanted in his brain) and how she's an animal and such. This makes Buffy very cross.
Then, of course, this leads to yet another "where is this relationship going" conversation (for a really, really old vampire, Spike sure is clingy. Sometimes he sounds like he's read too many Cosmo quizzes).
"Do you even like me?," Spike sighs.
"Sometimes," answers Buffy. (I love you Spike! Sorry.)
Then there's some handcuff action (ewwww) insinuated ... and over to the geek trio.
The three geeks -- who I used to like then thought were annoying and then, by the end of this episode, found them interesting again in a disturbing kind of way -- are working on a gadget that will make any woman their sex slave.
"And I know just where to start," cackles Warren, the geek leader who is also nastier than the other two.
Annnnd credits. (Man that was a long opening sequence).Oh no! Double Meat Palace episode flashback, because we return from commercials to find Buffy wearing her ugly fast-food outfit and saying: "Double Meat is double sweet." Gross.
YAY! Tara's back! Buffy takes a break and goes to chat with her best friend's witchy ex-girlfriend. Tara assumes Buffy wants to talk to her about Willow and her magic addiction, but nope. Buffy wants Tara to research the spell that brought her back to life because she thinks she "came back wrong". (Guess what, everyone! "Came back wrong" is the new "Angel is my soul mate" in terms of frequency of usage and such.)
Tara promises to look into it, even though she doesn't think there's anything wrong with Buffy at all.
Meanwhile, the geeks are preparing to use their new "sex slave" gadget for the first time. Warren (the bad geek) is all fancied up in a suit and looks for the perfect victim and finds her in his ex-girlfriend (Catrina, I think?), who broke up with him after the whole robot girlfriend incident which eventually morphed itself into the Buffybot storyline.
Warren's ex is less than thrilled to see him, but he puts on these stupid glasses and the shiny metal ball in his hand goes all wonky and -- bingo -- she's hooked.
"I love you, master," she says.
Back at Buffy's house, Buffy comes home from work to find Xander and Dawn dancing while Anya and Willow watch.
"Are we singing again?" screeches Buffy. (Funny allusion to the musical episode, which will live on in our hearts forever).
No musical episode, though. Xander is just practising his dancing skills for the wedding.
Willow, Xander and Anya are planning to make their way to the Bronze and invite Buffy, who's pooped from all the fast-food activity and says she just wants to stay home and hang out with Dawn.
But little Dawn has other plans and is going to sleep over at a friend's house. At first, Buffy is suspicious due to the Halloween episode when Dawn used that line and ended up making out in a parked car with a vampire. But, Willow checked and Dawn is, indeed, sleeping over and there will be parents present.
Buffy looks a bit hurt, so it's Dawn's time to shine, sorry, I mean WHINE.
"You're never home anyway," Dawn huffs. (Okay, Dawn, we get it. She's not spending enough time with you. Please cut it out now.)
Dawn leaves, and a depressed Buffy agrees to go to the Bronze with her pals.
Back at the Geeks' place (oh, and they've moved since the invisibility episode so as to hide from Buffy), the losers are getting all excited about having their very own sex slave. (Please note, if this episode hadn't taken a very serious turn later on, and we didn't see the geeks in a darker light, and if they'd just kept on be quip-making wacky high jinks machines, this scene and storyline would have been bad news and troublesome and would have made me very, very angry. But it did get darker and we do see that the geeks aren't the lovable dolts we thought they were and the creators don't try to make a joke out of the incident because what these boys are about to do is very, very, very bad.)
So the geeks are all fighting about whose sex slave Warren's ex-girlfriend gets to be first. (However, the other two geeks are unaware that she was his girlfriend.)Warren gets first dibs but the spell wears off, Catrina accuses him and the other two of attempted rape (which, my dear friends, it would have been, magic spell or not) and tries to make a run for it. She and Warren scuffle, and poor Catrina ends up dead.
The geeks go into shock and panic when they find out Warren used to go out with the victim so there will be a link from her murder to the three geeks. Eventually, they decide to get rid of their two biggest problems all at once by framing Buffy for Catrina's murder. (And now, dear friends, here's where the episode gets dark and good.)
At the Bronze, Xander and Anya are dancing all fancy-like, Willow is wearing some seriously fugly clothes (an old lady blazer type thing), and Buffy looks a bit pouty.
Willow gets up to dance and Buffy wanders around the bar and goes up to the second floor.
"You see, you always end up in the dark, with me," Spike whispers from behind her and then ... parental warning time.
During Buffy and Spike's Bronze activity, he makes her watch her friends dancing and having fun down below so she can see how different her life is from theirs. He's working on making her distance herself from her pals, you see. He wants her with him, he doesn't want to share. He's sort of like one of those boyfriends from those educational videos on physical and emotional abuse in relationships they used to show during health class and high school assemblies. In short, he is bad news. (Just in case you couldn't tell from the black leather jacket, peroxide blond hair or, you know ... fangs.)
Note: Spike is very sinister in this scene, which is good. He's been a tad too cuddly lately. I'm glad the writers are reminding us that he's bad news. It makes things a bit more interesting. I still love him, though.
The next day, Willow is making her way to the Magic Box to meet up with the Scoobies when she runs into Tara, who's just leaving. (Researching the spell Buffy asked her to, no doubt.) There's some awkward conversation between the two and we feel sad for Willow.
As Tara leaves she tells Willow to tell Buffy she needs to talk to her and that "it's important", da-da-dum-dum.
That night, Buffy is patrolling and finds herself at Spike's door. There's a very soap opera-y shot of him mooning on one side of the door and her looking uncertain on the other side. When Spike finally opens it up though, she's gone.
"Don't think about the evil bloodsucking fiend," Buffy says to herself as she walks away. "Focus on anything but the evil bloodsucking fiend."
Just then, Buffy hears the sound of a girl crying and is attacked by creepy looking demons. Then, time goes completely bizarre, the scene skips, then Spike is there fighting with her, then time seems to have jumped back and he doesn't seem to know there's a fight going on. Then the girl is lying on the ground and then there's more fighting, then time goes wonky again and Buffy hits the girl, who falls down a hill.
Buffy rushes down and realizes the girl (who is Catrina, by the way) is dead and Buffy freaks out, assuming she killed her. But, we see another Catrina peek at Buffy from behind a tree and run off.Spike drags Buffy away from the body and tells her he's going to "sort it out".
Meanwhile, Warren and the other geek (Andrew, I think) are waiting in the van, and Catrina (or is it?) jumps in and morphs back into the third geek (Jonathan, I think). So he conjured up the demons, made himself look like Catrina, made Buffy hit him, and then fell down the hill but the real, dead Catrina was already down there, so he could run off and let Buffy think she was the murderer.
That night, Buffy has bizarre dreams that involve the dead girl, staking Spike and doing other things with Spike. She wakes up, gets dressed and goes into Dawn's room.
Buffy wakes Dawn up and tells her she loves her. Dawn understandably gets suspicious. Buffy explained that she hurt someone and is turning herself in. Dawn gets huffy and says Buffy wants to leave her and yells at her to go. (Actually, there was way, way more whining than that, but why dwell on the annoying?)
Just before Buffy walks into the police station, Spike jumps out and tries to stop her. He says he took care of it and that "no one will ever find her". Just then, two police officers run out of the building saying there's a body in the river. So much for that plan, Spike.
Spike tells Buffy he loves her, she punches him. Then, he turns all vampy and she beats him up and screams that there is "nothing good or clean inside you". He loses his vamp face but Buffy keeps on punching him. It's sad. I feel sad for Spike even though he's bad. I also feel sad for Buffy, who doesn't want to have feelings for Spike. Buffy stops, looks at his swollen face and starts crying.
Finally, she gets up and walks into the police station, but while she's there, she overhears the name of the victim and connects Catrina to Warren and quickly flees.
The next morning, Buffy and the Scoobies have gathered at the Magic Box. Anya explains that the demons Buffy saw mess with time and Dawn asks Buffy if she's not leaving then and Buffy says no and tries to comfort her but of course Dawn whines off somewhere.
At the geek abode, the geeks are checking on the police files via their computer and discover that Catrina's death is being considered a suicide. The geeks realize they're "getting away with murder" and are thrilled (except for the little one who morphed into Catrina. I suspect he may turn against the other two). It's funny (funny creepy not funny 'ha ha') how in one episode the geeks went from mildly amusing/annoying comic-book style villains to sinister, nasty people.
Back at Buffy's house, Tara is explaining to the slayer that she didn't "Come back wrong". There were a few, minor molecular changes to her physical make-up or something, which Tara presumes confused Spike's chip enough to allow him to attack her.
But this doesn't make Buffy happy. She starts sobbing in fact. (You see, she needs an excuse for her bizarre behaviour. If she had in fact, "Come back wrong", then it wouldn't really be her interacting with Spike or it wouldn't really be her fault.)
Buffy confesses to Tara about her relationship with Spike, and Tara tries to comfort her. Buffy begs Tara not to forgive her, she wants to feel guilty. She cries some more.
The End.
Overall: Gooooood stuff. Melodramatic, dark and sinister and emotionally layered. There was way more going on here than some simply staking and a couple of quips. Dawn was annoying, but hopefully that will end SOMEDAY. Four stakes out of five.