Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Freshman.

Episode 57 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 5 Oct 1999.

Time for season 4!

Buffy hasn't picked her college courses...big surprise. She's not totally in it. She was never an academic girl, but she's schooled in the ways of slayin'. Ok, so I haven't done one of these in awhile. I'm rusty. Bear with me. I'm always jealous when I see kids going off to college in pop culture. The whole idea of leaving home and living in a different place and meeting new friends you'll have for life. My experience at college didn't happen until I was in my mid-twenties and I was already all growed-up. I only made a couple of friends in college and I don't hang out with them much anyway.

Willow's hair looks awesome. She's officially not a nerd-girl anymore and visually transitioning to lesbian. Oh, god, Riley already? Buffy looks so cute in her flowery dress. She looks grown up. Ack, roommate with the Celine Dion poster! I bet it's so weird living with a stranger...but if you bond, I bet you're friends for life...see? Jealous again. If I had it to do over, I would absolutely apply to multiple colleges and go to school at 18. It seems so cool to JUST have to go to school and not work right away after high school.

Buffy feels alienated. I don't remember her being so insecure at the beginning of the series when she started Sunnydale High. Totally cute blonde vampire chick kills the first other freshman Buffy bonds with. Buffy goes to see Giles and finds he is listening to David Bowie and is with a beautiful woman visiting from England. Giles is so sexy.

Buffy asks Giles for help and Giles tells her she can handle the situation herself. She feels rejected. Tons of going-to-college-not-really-metaphor. "Are we going to fight or is there going to be a monster sarcasm rally?" The cute blonde vampire is named Sunday. That's so cool. Buffy doesn't do well in the fight and has to run off. She goes to see her mom and her room is all taken over by art gallery stuff. She is getting no comfort anywhere. When she gets back to the dorm, the vampires have stolen all her stuff and left a note in her handwriting to make it look as if she'd taken off, which is their M.O. when they kill a freshman. Next, she tries the Bronze for comfort and Xander is there! He's been on the road during the summer having a Kerouac adventure and shit.

He seems a little more confident. He immediately notices Buffy is not adjusting well and councils her. This is one of Xanders first forays into the "heart" of the group. He's really just been a clueless doofus most of the time. They finally figured out his character. The road trip did it...made him all manly and self-assured. He cheers her up and they go investigate. They find their lair. Buffy accidentally drops in on them prematurely (falls in through a skylight) and they're kicking her ass for a bit before Buffy gets her confidence back and Xander steps in with Oz and Willow. Giles shows up after they kill the vampires, so they're all together again at the end of the episode.

And there's a glimpse of dudes in army attire tasering a vampire during the very last scene and credits...

Bootstraps.

I am really only interested in myself, in my journey and the journey of those I love. I'm getting to the point where I am admitting my libertarianism. I want to be free to do what I want all the time. I want my money to be MINE. It's not fair that a family of four with only one member working gets several THOUSANDS of dollars back from taxes, when my husband and I get less than a thousand when we both work and have 5 dependents (two ferrets, two dogs, and a cat). Our dependents don't matter to the government and our lives are worth less of the MONEY WE MADE because we aren't breeders (I mean no offense to those with child...though I won't be propagating, I understand the species needs to continue. I like humanity.). My money should remain mine. However, I believe in funding libraries and parks and roads in a mandatory way, I don't think we should fund other human beings we don't know. It simply isn't fair that I work and make about the same as a person who refuses to work and gets disability.

I'm getting ranty, but really, I don't understand why more people don't admit that they feel the same. Why would I care about some random homeless person? I don't know this person's situation...perhaps if I did, my feelings would change and if I bonded with said person, I might CHOOSE to help them if it was within my power to do so and if I felt that helping them HELPED them to help themselves. It's not my problem if someone I don't know has no job and no home. Who has the energy to care about every starving stranger on the planet? Really?

I believe in freedom. I believe in taking responsibility for your own life. And if you choose your destiny, you should get to use the fruits of that self-made destiny for whatever you want. If a native from another country, for some weird reason, wants to live in America, let them. If a person wants to live on the streets and drink a lot, let them do it. Perhaps they're not as unhappy as we think they are. And if they are: not my problem.

Consenting adults should get to choose all aspects of their lives. The only people that should be limited are those that take choices away from others. Jail is not for people that imbibe substances or enable others to do so. Consenting adults can alter their consciousness if they want. What do you care?

Marry who you want.
Live where you want.
Dress how you want.
Spend your earned money on what you want.

FREEDOM.

There are a lot of ways I don't want to live my life, so I simply don't make the choices that would lead me to an unwanted life. Live and let live, man.

Mdna.

I've been trying to sort out how I feel about Madonna and I finally put my finger on the adjective I've been grasping for: underwhelming. Her new album is underwhelming...pretty much everything since "You Can Dance" has felt empty to me...well, that's not fair. Let's sum up her discography.

1. Madonna (1983): intriguing.
2. Like a Virgin (1984): still has my attention.
3. True Blue (1986): ok, this chick is sticking around.
4.Like a Prayer (1989): evolution = adaptation = success.
5. Erotica (1992): ok, now you're pushing it, Madonna. Perhaps it's time to admit you're 34 and act less like a teenager.
6. Bedtime Stories (1994): first time working with interesting electronic producers...GOOD evolution, mostly.
7. Ray of LIght (1998): acting like an adult and playing to your strengths...GOOD evolution, mostly.
8. Music (2000): bad Madonna! I don't even want to talk about this one.
9. American Life (2003): or this one. Badddd Madonna.
10. Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005): Better. This is who you are, Madonna...a disco princess singing cliches whilst utilizing the best producers money can buy...GOOD. Self-actualization? Will you stop now, while you're ahead?
11. Hard Candy (2008): I never even listened to this one...I didn't want to ruin the "Confessions.." buzz I had going.
12. MDNA (2012): no, Madonna. BAD Madonna. STOP singing. You're 54 and your heart is not in it anymore. You sound hollow. There is one passable song on this album while most of it is unlistenable. STOP. You made MIA sound lame...how is that even possible?!?!

To be fair, Madonna has always been mediocre. Her music is background for folding clothes or...dancing? I don't even dance to Madonna, so what is she good for? Ray of Light was the last album Madonna had any emotion or anything semi-new to say. She feels so generic. She thinks she's subversive and shocking even still. She thinks she's still the same brassy blonde she was 30 years ago. It's painful to watch. I would be willing to let Madonna be sexy at 54 if her face was still her own, but I am not buying into her image anymore. I hope Lady GaGa doesn't evolve in the same patterns as Madonna forever, because her trajectory is boring. I hate when artists fuck it all up at the end (Tori Amos, I'm talking to YOU) to the point of retroactively embarrassing themselves when they were still relevant. "Live to Tell" and "Oh Father" MEANT something to me as an 11-year old girl, but I can't look at her the same knowing she's been barely phoning it in for the last 14 years.

And don't even get me started on her lyrics. They're the worst! I was going to spend time looking up a bunch and making a little quiz, but I can't even be bothered with spending that much time on her lyrics as I'm about 80% sure the twenty minutes it would take to compose said quiz would be more time spent than the composition of the lyrics themselves...

She's infected me to the point than I am now phoning in this blog entry the way she does her career. I have as much expression on my face as the Botox robot she looks these days. I'm surprised I can even fling insults with all this apathy. Perhaps there's a bit of animosity toward this character that meant something to me in my preteen years.

It seems we're dealing with yet another career trajectory we need to cut off before the gangrenous part...I'm calling that time period 1998. What do you think, dear readers?

This is going to sound really pedestrian...

both in that I am talking about walking, but also in the "commonplace and dull" sense of the word, but really, let's take a moment.

It was only January 2007 that the first iPhone was announced. Think back to those dark ages before smartphones. I am still amazed at what I can do with one object.

Today I took a hike at Wildcat park. I had four things with me: car keys, neoprene bottle with 14oz of water, my headphones, and my phone. During this hour and a half hike I:

*recorded a video of ducks by a dam
*recorded a voice memo of nature sounds in the forest by Shoal Creek.
*took pictures of nature.
*made a phone call.
*used voice commands to "play Queens of the Stone Age on shuffle"
*texted my mom.
*took notes on ideas for zine articles both via voice dictation and typing.
*listened to internet radio (both soma.fm's "Underground '80s" station and Pandora station based on Covenant).

Other things I could have done include:

*checking Google maps if I got lost in the wilderness.
*looked up local flora and fauna on the internet and catalogued it all.
*read a book (I almost sat on a rock and read awhile).
*played Scrabble with my feet in the creek.
*posted a blog with my feet in the creek.

...you get the idea...

Was this walk a little TOO multi-tasky or is it dreamy to be able to seamlessly do whatever you want with one device? I am still in awe that my phone takes such great pictures (see below and above). I am seriously considering getting rid of my digital camera because I think I've used it once in the last year. Who needs a decent digital camera (not professional is what I mean by decent--I still see a use for digital SLRs and the like) when you've got a swell one in your phone?



I'm still amazed that I can be rocking out to the Dum Dum Girls, get a phone call, answer it with my headphones, and when I hang up, the music resumes. I STILL think about how awesome that is EVERY TIME. It's a phone. It's a camera. It's a music player. It's the internet. It's a handheld gaming device. It has my schedule in it. It has my grocery list.

As Nick from "New Girl" questioned in the last episode: Is it possible to be sexually attracted to an object? Yes, Nick, yes it is. Of course I don't mean that literally, but the reverence with which I worship my smartphone is pretty lofty. Remember life before this? It was not bad, just with the saturation turned way down.

All this is not to say that being constantly connected is always the answer. There's still a simple elegance to grabbing your iPod and walking out the door. Sometimes these hikes are taken with ONLY my entire music library. No phone. No camera. No internet...just sound. And that's still pretty freaking amazing too...to have your entire music library in your pocket. I know it's no surprise to anyone that I love technology, but damnit, I really really do...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Graduation Day, Parts 1 & 2.

It's time to settle in for a two-parter...take a deep breath, get out the shot glasses for the Angel shirtless drinking game, and let's settle in for approximately an hour and a half of cheesy Buffy goodness!

Episodes 55 & 56 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 18 May 1999 (part 1) & 13 July 1999 (part 2).

Everyone's picking up their caps and gowns. They are maroon (yech) like we had at Joplin High. Willow is all sentimental and nostalgic, JUST like I was at the end of senior year. Xander says he won't make it out alive, which is the whole Joss metaphor, of course. High school = hell/demon playground. I'm feeling nostalgic, too. I like the familiarity of the school backdrop. The soda machine that looks like it's from the '50s, etc.

Faith kills a professor brutally. She stabs him in the stomach! That's a little much, don't ya think? More Mayor/Faith bond reassurances. Since when does Willow ride a bike to school?

Anya tries to ask Xander out and he reveals that he may not make it to next weekend 'cause of the Ascension and all and she freaks...she's seen Ascensions before, so that adds to the cryptic. She has information and tells everyone. This is the first revelation of the Buffy mythology that the demons that walk the earth aren't PURE demons, only part and that an Ascension is when a human becomes a PURE demon. She decides to leave town. Buffy makes her mom leave town as well. Willow is trying to find a spell to stop the Ascension and getting nowhere. This is the time for her and Oz to do it, apparently. Impending doom and all that. Rowr! It's so sweet to see two normal people on this show do it. They're consensual, similar ages, no weird desperation or malice. Just sweetness. If only all of our first times were this nice.

Buffy and Angel are fighting and Faith shoots him with a huge arrow. Angel has LIFTED his shirt for Buffy to bandage him...take a half shot. Angel has clearly been poisoned.

Ooh, Oz topless! Bonus shot! Anya tries to convince Xander to run away with her. She likes him! "When I think that something could happen to you I feel bad inside...like I might vomit!" This is THE moment where Anya's super bluntness really presents itself. Yay for Anya regularity! Angel topless and squalling with fever. Take a shot!

Buffy quits the Council when they won't help cure Angel. Giles immediately, and stoic-wordlessly, backs her up. Xander looks yummy in a minty sweater.

The only way to cure the poison is to drain the blood of a Slayer. It takes Buffy a minute, but she decides to kill Faith. Xander tries to talk sense into her. Buffy gets Faith's knife and goes to Faith's new apartment. Faith looks like any teenage girl laying in her bed listening to girl rock, reading a magazine, and eating Twizzlers. It's almost sweet, for a minute. Buffy's wearing her red vinyl pants. I used to have pants just like that in high school. They're probably in a landfill now, as I left them in my wind-desiccated house. When Faith sees her knife during their fight, she says, "That's mine." Buffy replies, "Well, you're about to get it back." but she doesn't say it like a badass. She says it with a catch in her throat, obviously tormented by what she has to do.
She stabs her in the gut and Faith jumps into a passing truck to keep from helping Angel, though she seems resigned to die.

Begin part 2...

The Mayor discovers Faith's empty apartment and is very upset. He genuinely does care about her. Angel mistakes Willow for Buffy and makes a whole speech about how he was wrong and he can't leaver her, etc. Angel is STILL topless, but I don't recommend taking shots for every scene he's topless, 'cause you'd be pretty sloshed.

Buffy offers herself to him, of course...the fact that her friends don't suspect she'll do something so stupid is a little lame. This is her atonement for killing him last season. Of course when he drinks from her she has to trick him into doing it and it's all erotic and shit. He stops himself, but she's unconscious so he takes her to the hospital. Note: he puts on a shirt to go to the hospital. This is what classy men do. they put on shirts to go out in PUBLIC. Just sayin'.

Faith is also in the hospital. She's in a coma. The Mayor overhears a nurse talking to a doctor about "another young girl with severe blood loss" and he goes and starts to suffocate Buffy. Angel stops him. Everyone's mad at Angel, of course. Further reinforcement that he should get out of town. I totally see the logic in that now.

Ooh, it's the first Buffy/Faith dream. Faith has all her stuff in boxes at her apartment and Buffy asks her how she's going to fit all this stuff and she says "Not gonna. It's yours...just take what you need. You ready?" Then she touches her and Buffy wakes up. I would argue this is the very beginning of Faith's redemption. Buffy showed vulnerability by trying to kill Faith and Faith understands her a little more now. So she chooses to give herself to save Buffy, in that dream-like metaphor way. This is also a turning point for Buffy, because I'm pretty sure she never forgives herself for putting Faith in a coma and is harder and more like Faith forever more...as a survival tactic. She HAS to become harder to save the world all the time. To live her life as a Slayer. She is graduating, man! That's deep. OMG they're in the same hospital room! Buffy kisses Faith on the forehead like she's thanking her. Another of her resurrections. She has a lot of those. Anyway, she has a plan when she wakes up, of course. She tells Xander he's the key to this whole thing. Is this another Apocalypse we can say Xander has thwarted? I'm going to count it.

Wesley decides to help.

The Mayor is all excited about his speech. Cordelia is so skinny...glad she bulks up when she's on Angel. Her and Wesley share an awkward kiss and they sort of mutually hate it and thus the sexual tension is resolved.

And the Mayor turns into a giant snake and the entire senior class takes off their robes to reveal weapons. They are an army that Xander organized. Snyder gets eaten. That's for all the teenagers that hated their principals. Cordelia stakes a vamp. Harmony gets bit. Buffy distracts the Mayor with Faith's knife and they blow him up along with the school. I wonder if the high school graduates that survived the tornado feel like this...their school got destroyed on the DAY they graduated. Spooky.

Angel has told Buffy he's not going to say goodbye, but she looks for him afterwards...

Giles saved Buffy's diploma from the wreckage. "You've earned it." Sweet Giles, how I love thee.

Angel and Buffy make eye contact right before he walks away. Sad moment.

Everyone meets at the end to have a reflection moment. I love those. Jokes and stuff.

Oz: Guys, take a moment to deal with this. We survived.
Buffy: It was a HELL of a battle.
Oz: Not the battle...high school.

I am about to embark...

across the south. Tomorrow night we will be in Alabama. Sunday night we will be curled up on the couch of my best friend Kim watching something ridiculous on TV in Fort Pierce, Florida. Tuesday we will be staying in Vero Beach for Michael's birthday at a really cool quirky hotel on the beach.

I love traveling. Less the older I get, I will admit, but I do love being on the road. Right now I'm envisioning myself in the backseat of the car watching the South roll by the window as I listen to my Strict Machine (160GB iPod). It's calm in my daydreamy world. Road trips are especially awesome when my Asperger's self doesn't have to drive, as this time I will likely not have to drive.

I always return from the road more enlightened. More knowledgable about myself. More ready for my life. It's like taking your life and balling it up and throwing it far enough away so that you can still see it, but you can't reach it without considerable effort. It leaves you able to examine yourself from a distance. When I return I will be so happy to be home, but I will appreciate my life more than usual...I will have the relaxed exhaustion of a person that's soaked up a lot of sun and had a little time to think about everything.

Ooh, I need a raunchy paperback to read on the beach! I can't take my iPad or library books to the beach! What should I read? Perhaps Stephen King's Firestarter or my favorite Poppy Z. Brite. I've read that SOOO many times, however. Perhaps an Austen?

I love the theme of chicks of horror. Firestarter. Carrie. Bride of Frankenstein. Barbarella (not really horror, but she has that feel or campy powerful awesomeness). Return of the Living Dead 3's Julie. Kabuki. Queen of the Damned. Perhaps that could be my obsession! I'll start collecting something!! Ok, everyone, that's my thing: girls in horror. OMG, that is my obsession. I've always loved wicked witches and bad girls...who doesn't really?

Music archiving.

I must have control of my musical environment. I recently turned my iTunes Match back on after several months of having it off after a fiasco with a Tina Fey audiobook not showing up in my audiobooks correctly and it erased my play counts from the months that Match was off. This may mean nothing to you, but it screwed with my world, I tell you!

As I've mentioned before, I am listening to all 80GB of my music this year. From January 1st until yesterday I had listened to over 900 songs and I was keeping track by using the play count data iTunes automatically keeps and it was all for naught! Luckily, I still have my last.fm stats and I still remember almost everything I've listened to this year, so today I painstakingly went through my entire music library (9477 songs, mind you) and fast-forwarded to the end of each track I know I've listened to this year so far so that iTunes would know that I've played it.

Needless to write, but I will, it took hours -- about 4, to be almost exact about it. This is an obsession. How many people would even notice that their play counts are different after messing with setting on their iTunes? How many people even mess with settings on their iTunes? How many people even know what iTunes Match even is? How many people even know they have play counts in their iTunes? How many people that know about Match and play counts and all that would even care if they knew their play counts were messed up?

My archiving nature is screaming so loud right now. It seems completely arbitrary which songs it counted and didn't...my counts are nowhere near accurate now, nor were they before this fiasco. Thank goddess/Buddha/Jesus/whoever for last.fm.

The glitch also erased my most recent mix. Thankfully, I keep a detailed notebook of my mixes. What's wrong with me?

I have also been preoccupied lately with how much awesome music is out there and how little time in the day, in my life, there is to listen to it all. Every moment I don't have headphones in or around my ears I feel guilty for not consuming music. I want it at all times! Even past the point of having a headache from all the brain-processing. I'll pop a few ibuprofen and dive back into the distortion!

I have a problem.

Hi, my name is Mixtress Rae and I am a music nerd.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Prom.

Episode 54 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 11 May 1999.

Buffy is talking about couple stuff as Angel and Buffy wake up from a nap together. Getting a drawer and mirrors and such.

Ooh, Anya asks Xander to the Prom!! Yeay for the beginning of Anya.

Joyce has a serious talk with Angel about how Buffy has no future with him. She does it real classy-like. "I know you care about her. I just hope you care enough."

The Angel/Buffy breakup happens in an underground tunnel. The tunnel wherein the classic line is uttered, "No, you have something face." when Angel says "nothing" is wrong. This is the first time I've felt anything while watching them break up. I still agree it needs to happen, but I don't like that this means stupid Riley is coming. Grumble.

Xander finds out Cordelia works at the boutique and that her dad is in trouble for tax evasion and the whole family is now poor. Then the Hellhound breaks in. The Hellhound trained to attack people in formal wear...so the prom's out, but no, Buffy is going to save the day so everyone can have a normal prom, goddamnit!

Xander paid for Cordelia's dress because she didn't make enough money in time to pay for it herself. How sweet is my TV boyfriend? The sweetest, I answer.

My boyfriend in high school didn't take me to the prom either, but it was because he was a jerk-face and backed out at the last minute, so I had to go alone.

I don't know if I have said this before, but Sarah Michelle Gellar is the only person I have ever seen who doesn't look stupid when she runs.

This is the episode where Buffy gets the cute handmade umbrella award for saving everyone all the time: Class Protector. Angel shows up to dance with her one last time. Sweet.

I SO need a prom do-over. Who's with me?

Brash.

Bold. Ballsy. Blunt. Blousy.

These are all B-words.

No, but seriously, these are all things I think of myself as, when in reality, I do a lot of another B-word...backpedalling. I am the eternal peacemaker, like my astrological sign (Libra). I am constantly trying to control my environment, but instead of CREATing my own environment, I am manipulating space so that everyone is harmonious, and I am sick of wasting that energy.

The truth is, I have original ideas and weird thought patterns lurking around in my brainspace and I would like to choose to use these skills more often than the ones I have wherein I am well-liked and peaceful. Yes, I am generally unaffected and I genuinely want others to get along and extreme emotions confuse me, as they confuse one of my idols in this life, the fictional character of Spock and a new hero, Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, as previously mentioned in this blog like three days ago.

You see, the thing I admire about all of my heroes (Buffy, Courtney Love, Spock, Sheldon, etc) is that they don't care what you think. Secretly, I don't care what you think, either, but I do want to be liked, so I pretend to make sense for what I perceive is the benefit of others, but really makes my interactions with them boring and generic. The self that I project in my blogs and zines are closer to who I really am than how I act in the social stratosphere. It is not as if I am trying to hide or am ashamed of who I am, I am just trying to survive in a world that I have chosen to perceive as bland.

But the world is anything but bland. The world is rich and exciting and full of incomprehensible beauty. I fiercely love a lot of things in this world. I will fight for yearly vacations to the beach and the desert. I will throw large percentages of what little money I possess at breathtaking electronic devices or the donation to internet radio stations I like. In short, I do what I want and you're not the boss of me!

And I realize that I am a grownup and no one wants to be the boss of me (I don't even think my boss at work really wants to be the boss of anyone), so my outcry is really only towards myself in this regard. I want to be more openly who I am. I want to come out as the secret Courtney Love that I am. If you ask me about this blog tomorrow in person, I will most likely act the part of the wrong B-word: blase.

The only boys I have ever truly been able to fall for are the ones that knew me in high school and I used to think the reason for this was because it takes me forever to get to know and trust someone and while this is part of it, I think another reason is that I was more myself in high school than I ever have been as an adult and people that knew me in high school knew the real me. For some reason I have attached adulthood to this weird cage of bourgeois. I have done all these things to distance my body from this norm (tattoos, piercings, weirdo thrift store clothes), while my manner has been quite tame in comparison. In high school, my goth style was an enhancement of my weird self instead of counteracting tameness.

It sounds as if I'm barely holding back an over-brimming crazy, and perhaps I am, but this crazy is who I am. I am someone who blurts out weird things and likes to get into conversations that are meaningful and cause people to question themselves. I will always advocate for the outcast and try to get someone to see another's point of view. Accuse me of having an agenda. The thing is, we all do...those that embrace this agenda and put it out there in the world are those that get it done. They are usually also called "Bitch" which is another B-word I embrace fully.

My biggest pet peeve is when someone expresses a driven desire to do something, but they don't because of what someone else will think. But, I am capable of something almost as bad, if not more so...I profess that I don't care about things I'm not doing that I secretly wish I was doing. I'm not an extrovert. All of this madness happens within for the large part, so it is not as if I will suddenly be different, I may perhaps blurt out my weirdness a little more often until I become more confident overall. I want a manifesto. I want to write myself into thinking I am a mythological being. I want to be my own muse.

I want my self-actualization to be glittery.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Choices

Episode 53 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 4 May 1999.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember which episode this is, but I have always really enjoyed the concept of choice. It was one of the main themes that drew me to the mythology of "The Matrix" and I really enjoy when pop culture symbolism harkens back to the reality that everything we do in life is our choice. No one is forcing your hand. You do as you wish and the consequences/rewards follow, NOT the other way around. There's nothing more intolerable than people who think life happens TO them. If you are a person that tends to blame fate or thank God, give YOURSELF a little credit once in awhile.

Now, let's begin. The Mayor is giving Faith a beautiful knife in the opening scene. Buffy and Angel are killing vampires and wondering if they're in a "rut" in their relationship. Credits.

Buffy thinks that she can't go to college 'cause of being the Slayer. Faith is reaping the rewards of her choice to align herself with the Mayor with her new knife and the doting he places upon her. Xander is choosing to forego school to get "On the Road" like Kerouac. Cordelia is being mean as per usual. Buffy has decided to stop waiting for the Mayor to make his move and go on the offensive. Faith kills another human (I think he was human).

Willow is wearing a velvety witchy dress. Xander sees Cordelia working in a boutique which is a big deal because Cordelia shouldn't have to work because her daddy is rich. Intrigue?

Angel and Buffy are nice in a rut. They work well together fightin' evil...like a choreographed dance. Oh no, Faith has Willow captive. Everyone is fighting over the choice to trade back the thing the Mayor wants for Willow or, as Wesley wants, NOT trade and possibly sacrifice Willow. Everyone is yelling and arguing and Oz walks up and throws a pot, shattering it against a wall. He has made his point.

Willow kills a vampire by levitating and then staking him with a pencil. Cool. She then escapes and finds the Books of Ascension. Faith finds her and Willow gives her a rousing speech about how she could have made a better choice. She was also a little TOO insulting, but hey that's the innate meanness of Willow.

When they all meet up with the Mayor makes a rousing speech about how Buffy and Angel are doomed. He, like Spike did earlier this season, says a lot of very insightful things. Like how dismal their future will be. "You're immortal, she's not." Just as they're making the trade, Snyder shows up and ruins everything, opening the box and unleashing the contents; ew, a huge spider. Turns out there are 50 billion in the box and the Mayor has to eat them all. Ew.

Willow has chosen to stay in Sunnydale to go to school.