Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Touched.

episode 142.
airdate: 6 May 2003.

Everyone is arguing about how to organize things now that Buffy is gone. Faith finally speaks up and tells everyone to just get some rest and everyone can hatch a plan in the morning. Then the lights go out. Electric company has skipped town at this point is the presumption.

Buffy is wandering the streets watching people leaving their houses. She breaks into a house thinking it would be empty, but someone is there still. She scares him out of his own house, waxing existential. Spike and Andrew have to wait in the church throughout the daylight until they can head back. Faith is stepping up in a big way, shutting Kennedy down. She tells everyone that while she's not the one that's been on their backs this whole time, she's also not one of them anymore. She asserts herself as their leader.

Kennedy is bait. They kidnap a Harbinger and bring him back to the house to wring information out of him, but he has no tongue. Dawn knows about a spell that can help him talk without a tongue. Spike and Andrew get back. They have to break the news to Spike that Buffy is gone. He calls them traitors. Faith and Spike fight. Spike leaves to go find B by smell.

Everyone else continues with the spell. The Harbinger talks through Andrew. They're a collective, like the Borg. He (they) say something about building an arsenal underground at the edge of town. Giles slits the Harbinger's throat declaring that's all the information they need. Spike finds Buffy in that house. Buffy is depressed. Spike tells her she's not a quitter.

Back at Slayer Central, they've decided they fight in the morning. There's a place Giles and Faith decide upon on a map, not sure if it's the vineyard. The Mayor/the First shows up to taunt Faith.

Buffy is admitting that she's cut herself off from everyone, she always has. Having all kinds of insight into who she is, with Spike as mirror from a different perspective. Tells her the only thing he's ever been sure of in his 100+ years is her. Tells her he's not asking her for anything. That he loves her not just because he wants her...but because she's "a helluva woman". There it is! Buffy asks him to stay with her and hold her. So sweet.

Wood comes in after Mayor/First leaves. Faith gets defensive for a second, then tells him why she's spooked. They talk. Wood is more likable as he relates to Faith than he has been this whole season. Faith is missing B, but Wood is making her feel better. Faith seduces him. Kennedy has kicked everyone out of her and Willow's room so they can do it. I guess they haven't yet. Willow is hesitant, worried about being out of control. Kennedy tells her she's safe with her and then they do it. Anya and Xander are eating ice cream. Anya is jealous that everyone else is having sex. They end up doing it, too. Buffy and Spike cuddle all night.

Andrew is saying that Caleb and the First are protecting something at the cellar, like B thought.

B has left Spike a note, no, it's letter-sized. B shows at the cellar. Faith and the girls are somewhere else fighting the Harbingers...decoy. B is fighting all Neo-like. B finds the magical Slayer multi-weapon thing. Faith finds a bomb with 7 seconds left.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Empty Places.

episode 141.
airdate: 29 Apr 2003.

Today is the day I finish this Buffy project. Bittersweet, really.

Everyone is leaving town. Even the regular folks know it's time to get out of Sunnydale. The realest Apocalypse. Buffy isn't just going to hold back evil for a bit this time. She's going to change the world.

Buffy and Willow are at the hospital with Xander. Buffy is bailing to work on Apocalypty stuff. Xander is making jokes already. Willow tries to go along, but she starts crying. Restore Xander's goddamn eye, Willow!! This is a mystical eye death. You can fix this.

Morale is bad. Everyone feels hopeless. Anya and Andrew are trying to update the Potentials on how to kill the Ubervamps. Dawn starts asking tons of questions about how Xander is and Buffy evades. Tension everywhere. Buffy decides to leave soon after she arrives. Faith is holding down the fort, so to speak. Buffy goes to the school alone, the way she feels. Alone. Chosen ONE. She sits at her desk and cries looking at a picture of her, Willow, and Xander. Caleb comes in, mocking her crying "just like a woman". They fight. Short fight. He knocks her out and leaves. The bad guys never take their unconscious Slayer opportunities like you'd think they would.

Giles has a mission for Spike. They've found something out about Caleb, sending Spike to investigate...sending Andrew too. Faith suggests taking everyone out to blow off some steam. She takes 'em to the Bronze. Buffy gets home and everyone's out but Giles. Buffy is upset Giles sent Spike out without her input. "You sent away the one person that's been watching my back." That's a bit of an overstatement, B. She's making herself "other" when she doesn't have to be. She's also pissed that Giles let Faith take everyone out. The cops try to take Faith away on outstanding warrants. She goes outside with them and they pull guns on her. A few of the officers stay inside and keep everyone else locked in so they can't help Faith. The girls stand up to the officers and get outside to help Faith who is being beaten. Buffy arrives, tells the girls to go home, then "has a talk" with Faith. Faith suggests the girls need to mess up sometimes. Buffy is talking about the girls' safety and Faith brings up the fact that they weren't very safe when she led them into the vineyard. Good points, F! B punches her, then leaves.

Andrew is riding on the back of Spike's motorcycle. It's a bit of a road trip wherever they're going. Wood and Faith meet. There's gonna be a big meeting at the house. Xander gets home from hospital.

Buffy has a plan to go back to the cellar. Spike and Andrew arrive where they're going. A church that took in Caleb a bit ago. An inscription on the wall in a secret room in the church got Caleb all angry. He killed everyone but this one guy. The inscription says, "It is not for thee. It is for her alone to weild." The power. The Slayerness.

B thinks they need to go to the cellar because the bad guys always go where the power is and no one has been protecting the Hellmouth or the seal, only the wine cellar, so this must be where the power lies. Faith says no, they shouldn't go back in there without proof. Giles weighs in next. Buffy gets defensive and asks Giles if he sent Spike away so everyone could "ambush" her. Willow also says she's  worried about B's judgment. Buffy tells them it can't be a democracy, unfortunately, because democracies don't win battles. "There needs to be a single voice....you need someone to lead you." Anya replies, "And it's automatically you." Xander next. We all need to realize that, like it or not, Buffy is the reason two girls are dead and Xander's eye is gone. Buffy is standing her ground about "being together on this" and unwilling to compromise her plan. She tells them to fall in line. Someone suggests Faith be in charge. Faith recoils and says B just needs to "take a siesta". Kennedy suggests a vote. Buffy says "I can't stay here and watch her lead you into some disaster." Dawn tells her "Then you can't stay here." They're ousting her. Faith goes out to talk to B on the porch. B tells her "Don't be afraid to lead them."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lies My Parents Told Me.

episode 139.
airdate: 25 Mar 2003.

1977 is when Spike kills Wood's mommy. And Wood sees some of the fighting. In present time, Spike saves Wood. He wants to avenge his mom, anyway. Giles is ranting about the new library at the school: "Not a book in sight!" Giles and Buffy talk about Spike, his trigger, his chip, and his soul in front of Wood. Giles is going to put a bug in Spike's head so they can find out what the trigger of the trigger is. It takes him back to his past, reading his poetry to his mother.  She's sickly with tuberculosis. She begins singing to him. It's the jaunty tune that triggers him. He goes nuts, then the bug crawls out of his eye. Giles asks him about the song. He's reluctant to talk, but through flashbacks we see that after he was turned he wanted to turn his mom, but Dru was against it. Ok, another hole in the plot: In season 6 Spike mentions he had to crawl out of his grave, but his mom just revealed that she'd been worried about him being missing, presumably for the days it took for him to change. She would have thought him dead if he had been buried, yes? Since Dru turned him on purpose, wouldn't she have kept his body somewhere so that he didn't need to resurrect from a grave? Spike turns his mom. Willow gets a call from L.A. from Fred. She has to go away for a few days. Buffy unchains Spike against Giles' wishes.

Wood talks with Giles about the "problem" of Spike. Wood mentions the name of the Watcher that raised him and Giles puts it together that Spike killed his mom. Wood says Spike's "an instrument of evil" and wants Giles' help. Keeping Buffy at bay for a couple of hours while Wood kills Spike. I forgot Giles agrees to this. He takes B out for a training session in the cemetery. Wood is "looking after" Spike in the meantime. Takes him to his garage which is decorated with crosses. Wood pulls up the mp3 of Spike's trigger song on his computer and plays it because he wants to feel less guilty about killing Spike by killing the monster in the man.

Another Spike flashback. His mom is changed now and she is super mean to him and doesn't want to spend eternity with him. So the lie both Wood and Spike's mom told their sons was that they were important to them, but they were a lot less important than they needed to be. The lie Giles is telling Buffy is the deception of distracting her while Wood attempts to kill Spike. Giles intuits that Buffy would sacrifice Dawn to save the world, if faced with the same choice now. She agrees. Wood is actually doing some damage to Spike. Spike's mom tries to rape him, he kills her. Flashbacks endeth and he comes to, he's worked out the trigger after getting some closure on the whole killing-his-mom thing. He's gotten over it and is now fighting back with Wood. Spike is all Neo now. Just in case we were still worried about the trigger, Spike goes over and plays it from the computer again and he doesn't change. He tells Wood he's going to kill him and bites his neck.

Buffy realizes Giles is distracting her and she runs to Spike. He didn't kill Wood after all. Spike tells Buffy he gave him a pass and let him live because he killed his mother. Buffy goes to Wood's aid. He's pretty beat up. Buffy tells Wood she understands, but Spike is a warrior they need. Buffy threatens Wood that if he ever tries to kill Spike again, he'll kill him and B will let him. "The mission is what matters." which is the same thing his mom used to say to him.

Giles tries to explain to Buffy. Buffy says to Giles, "I think you've taught me everything I need to know." She shuts her bedroom door on him. Giles, why? Damnit, Giles.

Commentary notes [5.1.13]:

Commentary by David Fury, Drew Goddard, James Marsters, and D.B. Woodside: I'm almost ten minutes into the commentary on this episode and haven't had anything to say yet. This scene wasn't really shot in New York, this shot was hard to do, bla bla. No new insights into the show itself. James isn't talking a lot, which is sad. It is kind of cool to know that the shot where the stone that drops from Spike's eye took 30 minutes, just to shoot a rock and get it in frame. If it were me doing that I'd be so impatient and think I was wasting my time, but art takes time, man. I love it. I read a quote today from Gloria Steinem...something like "writing is the only thing I do that I don't wish I was doing something else while I'm doing it." I'm paraphrasing, but that was essentially it. And I love that thought. When you're doing your thing, taking half an hour to get a two second shot of something is worth it. It's your fucking art. You take hours/days/weeks to paint a masterpiece if you're a painter and these things can be translating to any passion. Weeks to knit an afghan. A month to write the first draft of a novel. Etc etc. I love it. I want to do the art!

Ew. They picked the actress that played Spike's mom because she looked like an older Buffy and they named her "Anne" because that's B's middle name. Oedipal stuff. Ew. 

Spike is an anomaly as a vampire. He's the only vampire on the entire show that retained a portion of his humanity as a vampire (without a soul). When Angel becomes Angelus, he doesn't retain any humanity and no other vampire really does either. They might have a semblance of their former personality, but no empathy, really. 

The scene with Giles and Buffy in the cemetery was shot like ten days apart or something. They're not even in the same space at the same time. Weird. I notice the disconnect now that I know about it. I felt weird about that scene before, but I thought it was because I was mad at Giles for plotting to take out Spike.

Originally the scene with Giles and Buffy included Giles admitting that he killed Ben. That makes me feel better knowing that. It makes sense that he would choose that moment to tell her, when he's giving a speech about when to sacrifice and when not to sacrifice people for the greater good. Nice knowing a version like that exists, as Lloyd Dobler would say...

This episode is about killing your parents, both literally and figuratively. B has to shut out Giles after what he did. Spike actually literally kills his mother. Wood has to live on when his mother has been killed, and he has to move on without the kind of closure he thought he'd get. Spike has some closure too, beyond whatever closure he might have felt by killing his mother.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Storyteller.

episode 138.
airdate: 24 Feb 2003.

Andrew is telling his version of everything that's going on through his own video diaries. It's super hilarious and awesome, of course. He's interviewing everyone and following B around as she slays. Buffy gets into another speech and Andrew slips out of the room as B tells everyone about the vision she saw. Via Andrew, we get a much needed reprieve from Buffy's speeches. Andrew is retelling the story of him being a "super villain" and "facing Dark Willow". It's also cute. I love episodes like this.

Everything is crazy at school. Buffy is trying to help everyone. A girl is disappearing, someone throws rocks at Wood, a kid explodes from stress. Andrew interviews Anya and Xander. Anya tells Xander "You still love me." Buffy tells Wood about the vision at the seal. He gets possessed for a second, calls Buffy a "whore". Xander and Anya love each other and both admit they don't know what that means. Andrew gets it on tape and watches it over and over.

Flashback to Andrew and Jonathan in Mexico. They dreamed about the First Evil. There was a flash of the row of cheese from "Restless" too for a sec. Why are they dreaming about it? They don't have special powers or anything and I can't imagine the First really finds them useful enough to lure them back to Sunnydale. They're questioning Andrew, since he was the first to see the seal. The knife the First had him get to kill Jonathan has an inscription on it. So maybe since the knife was in Mexico, that's why the First used him for its bidding. There's been rioting at the school. They're taking Andrew to the seal because he knows the language on the knife that the seal responds to, or something. There's still kids rioting and they're violent. When Andrew and Buffy get to the seal they find chanting kids that have turned themselves into Harbingers. Anya and Xander did it. They're unsure what this means. They decide it was probably a "one more time" and now they're ready to move on.

The seal is glowing. Buffy tells Andrew his blood (the blood of the one that opened it) is the thing that closes it. She taunts him. He cries. When his tears hit the seal, it closes. After it closes (or stops glowing, rather) the rioting upstairs stops. Andrew tells the camera he might not live through the fight and that he killed his best friend. He's finally dealing with what he did.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: First Date.

episode 136.
airdate: 11 Feb 2003.

Let me just start by saying that it makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER for Buffy to go on a date with Principal Wood. He's not my type (he's too clean), but it's not the whether-or-not-she-could-be-attracted-to-him thing that's throwing me, it's that there's a big honkin' evil brewin' and it's out of character for her to let loose and go on a date with some guy that she THINKS doesn't know her sitch, plus there has been ZERO flirtation between them before this episode. ZERO. It would be too exhausting for B to do something like this. I guess it fits in with her periodical I-wish-I-could-be-a-normal-girl whine, but it just feels flimsy. It feels like the writers did this as a way to integrate Wood into the storyline quickly and make Spike jealous at the same time. Another episode I just want to get over with, so let's do it...

We finally see Giles responding to the ax incident with some serious BADASSERY. Hot. See, it can be hot for a man to kickass too, but in mainstream pop culture it's just taken for granted that every male protagonist is a badass and that's boring. On Buffy when someone is a badass, they've earned it. Giles is recounting his story of being a badass in the cemetery with B, Amanda, Kennedy and a new Potential from China, when Spike attacks him. Giles notices his chip didn't go off and Spike notices simultaneously that Giles isn't the First, which is why he attacked him (which is also weak plot-wise, because why would Spike launch himself into Giles if he suspected he wasn't corporeal? He would then fall facefirst into the ground if Giles was the First and reveal he no longer has the chip, as he did do, if he wasn't. Ugh. So many things to criticize in this season). In my hastiness of bitching about the plot details I paused the DVD and Giles just asked Spike how it was supposed to help if he was the First that he just launched himself into him. That helps a little. So now the topic of discussion is why isn't Spike in pain? Buffy and Spike explain. Giles is upset, like he would be. He's regularly touching things again. It's soooo obvious. Urg. 'Course I say this now, but I didn't notice it the first time around.

Giles confronts B about making the decision to remove Spike's chip. Buffy tells him Spike can be a good man. Giles tells her he can hear in her voice that her feelings for him are "coloring her judgment". He's not wrong, but I think she made the right decision. If she chose to repair the chip and Spike kept to his path of redemption, it would have malfunctioned in another three years maybe anyway and they'd never know if he really means to be good. This way, if he intends to be bad again, B will know definitively and be able to make the choice to kill him. This is all my two cents, not something that is said in Giles and Buffy's convo.

Xander sees Ashanti at some outdoor tool place and asks her out. He is always so charming when he meets a cute girl and asks her out. Boys, THIS is how you pick up a girl. Study Xander Harris on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He employs humor, awkwardness, and doesn't AT ANY POINT mention her looks. This is such a cliche and should never be done. Here endeth the lesson.

Wood asks B out by simply saying, "I'd like to take you out to dinner tonight, if that's all right." Lame. If these two men were asking me out, assuming I didn't know either of them before the meeting and all I had to go on was their style of the asking, I'd choose Xander every time. Even if the Xander-outer-package were something other than Xander's cutie face. Wood has a weapons arsenal behind a dry erase board in his office.

Buffy thinks she might like him. Willow and B are having a normal BFF convo about getting a date which is sweet. Then Xander comes in and shares about his date.

Willow: She evil?
Xander: She's interested in me, so there's a good chance, but I'm hoping for the best.

Jonathan/the First tries again to get Andrew on their side. Tries to convince him to kill the Potentials with the gun Willow got when she was turning into Warren. Anya is telling B she thinks Xander's date is not a real date, that he's trying to make her jealous.

Buffy: Well, it's not working...
Anya: Are you nuts? Of course it's working! Observe my bitter ranting and the shrill edge of hysteria in my voice!

Buffy runs into Spike in the hallway and Spike lets her know he knows about her date and acts real big about it. It's so hot when he's mature. Willow, Kennedy, Dawn, and Amanda are researching Wood and can't find anything from before he moved to Sunnydale. Giles thinks people shouldn't be dating right now. Wood is leading B through a dark alley to a restaurant. They get ambushed by vamps and they both start fighting, staking them all in no time. She's confused, but he isn't. He knows she's the Slayer. Ashanti and X are talking about Anya on their coffee date. Another disparity between these two men's dating styles is that Xander asked Ashanti to coffee and Wood asked B to a super-fancy dinner. I'd rather the less-pressure coffee situation.

Wood hired B because she was the Slayer and he knows something big is coming and wants to align himself with B for the fight. He's known about B since before he came to Sunnydale, possibly why he came. He reveals that his mom was a Slayer, killed when he was 4. So that makes 1975 the time period if he's ten years older than B and it's 2003? Why doesn't she put this together immediately that his mom is Spike's second Slayer? Whatever. B asks him if he has any Slayer powers and he says no, but his mom's Watcher raised him and taught him some skills. Andrew finds the gun and shows it to Jonathan/the First. Andrew asks him about his weaknesses. Andrew is wearing a wire. Willow is listening in the basement on headphones.

Ashanti has Xander tied up at the seal and she's planning to bleed him. Ashanti has a nice Akasha vibe going on. Willow gets a text from Xander in code. Spike goes to get Buffy. They know Xander is at the school because Willow did a locater spell. Spike, Wood, and Buffy in a car together. The seal starts to open as Wood cuts Xander down and B and Spike are fighting Ashanti. After Buffy beheads Ashanti, she checks on Spike first, before Xander or Wood. Xander asks B how her date's going. Wood gives a pointed look to B and Spike. Nipped THAT in the bud real quick, thank gawwd.

Everyone makes fun of Spike for demon's being attracted to him. Giles silences them from their joking, makes them get serious. Killjoy.

Buffy and Spike talk. Spike tells her the First told Andrew it "wasn't time for me yet". Spike says he should go before it is time for him, leave town. B says she needs him, because she's not ready for him to not be here. Spike asks about Wood. She doesn't say anything.

Wood is being haunted by his mommy/the First. She's beautiful. She tells him Spike is the one that killed her. Wonder what's going to happen now.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Killer In Me.

episode 135.
airdate: 28 Jan 2003.

Giles is still not touching things. I didn't realize they dragged it out this long. Giles is taking the girls out to the desert for a vision quest like the one he took B on in season 5. Spike is chained up in the basement. Kennedy faked the flu to stay home with Willow. Spike's chip starts malfunctioning, going off without reason. Kennedy takes Willow to the Bronze on a "mission". A mission that's really a date.

Spike is dealing with some intense neurological pain. Kennedy and Willow are relating. Buffy is trying to call Initiative dudes. When they get back to the house, Kennedy kisses Willow. Willow turns into Warren during the kiss. Kennedy is freaked out. Willow looks in the mirror. She runs downstairs and everyone else freaks out. Willow thinks she brought it on herself because she feels bad about killing him. Buffy offers to help. Willow says she'll figure out how to fix it herself. Kennedy follows her. Buffy and Spike go to the Initiative caves. Spike thinks there might be some sedatives down there, 'cause they used them on him before when he was captive there.

Xander gets a call from England. The Council-guy describes the sitch we saw with Giles' head almost getting an ax in it. They (Xander, Andrew, Anya, and Dawn) realize they haven't hugged him or seen him touch anything since he arrived. They have to find him in the desert, since he's alone with the girls. That's so lame that he couldn't touch anything for like 4 episodes. He seemed weird the whole time. Shouldn't have dragged it out so long.

Willow goes to consult with the old Wiccan group she tried to join when she was a freshman. Amy is there and she apologizes to Willow for being a bad friend and shizz. The group tries to help. Willow calls Amy a "dumb bitch" and slaps her. The "glamour" of Warren is making her turn into him.

Wouldn't there be like, NO oxygen in the Initiative after 3 years being sealed off? They hear something, decide something must have survived. Kennedy pokes around after the Wiccas disassemble and Amy mentions something about Kennedy being a Potential, when she hadn't mentioned that. "Oops" says Amy. WillowWarren is buying a gun.

Everyone attacks Giles in the desert. It's funny. He's not the First.

B kills the thing in the Initiative. Then all the lights turn on and the combat dudes show up. Riley has sent them to give Buffy whatever she needs to help "assface" (what Riley called Spike). The dudes give B the choice to either repair the chip or take it out. Big decision, B. Whatcha gonna do? Time to work without the safety net?

Amy tells Kennedy she did a penance malediction spell. Willow's subconscious chose the way she'd be punished. Amy is jealous of Willow. Amy transports Kennedy to B's backyard and WillowWarren shows up with the gun, trying to reenact when he killed Tara and shot Buffy. Kennedy talks Willow into triumphing over Warren. Willow feels super guilty about kissing Kennedy, because it means she let Tara be dead. Kennedy kisses her back into Willow. Lame.

Commentary notes added 5.2.13: 

Commentary by David Solomon and Drew Greenburg- I'm almost thinking it's not worth my time to listen/watch the commentaries not done by Joss Whedon. It's mildly entertaining to hear their cute stories about what happened during the filming of the episodes, but I feel idle when I have nothing to write about, like now. When I originally wrote the blog above, I had a lot more to say. Usually in these commentaries, which is why I haven't watched many of them until now, there's a lot of stroking each other's egos. "You acted so well in this scene!" "Sarah did incredible here." "Remember when you broke your finger and couldn't shoot this scene?" Which is all normal stuff people that made a thing would say while watching the thing, but not particularly interesting.

Every single scene with Warren/Willow was shot (every line AND every angle) by both actors. In the Initiative scenes when they were lit with only flashlights, the camera-operators were wearing mylar so that when Sarah and James shined the flashlights in their direction it reflected back at them. Cool.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Potential.

episode 134.
airdate: 21 Jan 2003.

Spike is being used in a lesson. He pretends to attack the Potentials while B teaches them skills. There's some sexual tension between Buffy and Spike. I know this makes me a big girl, but some of my favorite scenes are the ones where Spike gives one of his "you're a helluva woman" speeches to Buffy.

Giles thinks the First is in remission for a bit. Buffy is doing another speech about it. Telling the Potentials they're special. Dawn is sitting on the stairs feeling left out because she's not one of the Potentials.

Willow just got news. A Potential is in Sunnydale according to someone in the coven. B is taking all the Potentials out for a group patrol. Willow is doing a spell to lead her to the Potential in Sunnydale. The light hits Dawn so they think she's a Potential. It's a big deal. Dawn has to process. She sneaks out.

B takes the Potentials to a demon bar. They run into Clem. Dawn runs into a friend from school. She got attacked by a vampire. She trapped it in a school-room and ran away. She was on her way to Buffy's to get her, because people talk. So Dawn and her friend (Amanda, I think) go back to the school. Dawn thinks she can fight it, since she's a Potential. The vamp is after them now that they've opened the door. They run. Dawn hits it with a fire extinguisher.

B is giving the Potentials a tour of a crypt. A vampire wakes up, recently turned. Buffy is telling them to know their environment and how to use it. As she's saying this Dawn is fighting pretty valiantly in the chem lab. Buffy and Spike lock the girls up in the crypt to kill the vamp on their own. As Dawn and Amanda are fighting the vampire a bunch of Harbingers show up and grab Amanda. This is Dawn's moment of realizing she's not the Potential, Amanda is. But the really cool thing is that even though she's not, she was the one fighting while Amanda was cowering in the corner. Dawn believed she was a Potential. Maybe there's not something totally special about the girls called. Dawn can fight because she believes she can. Because it's all about knowing your own strength, your environment, all that stuff Buffy said. So now, not only are Dawn and Amanda fighting the vampire, they're fighting the Harbingers. Dawn surrenders her weapon to Amanda who does some serious damage all of a sudden. Buffy shows up with Spike, Xander and Willow. Buffy is never told they thought Dawn was a Potential.

Xander gives Dawn an extremely moving speech about how they (Potentials, Buffy, Magical Willow, Werewolf Oz, all their friends with special powers) will never know how it feels to be ordinary, like he and she are. He tells her he saw how she handed the reigns to Amanda the second she realized Amanda was the Potential. He said, "You're not special, you're extraordinary." It was great. Really wonderful moment. I gotta wonder if Joss knew about them already.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Never Leave Me.

episode 131.
airdate: 26 Nov 2002.

Xander is fixing the house. Anya, Dawn, Willow, and Xander are worrying about Spike being evil again. Warren is trying to get Andrew to kill someone else. Jonathan didn't have enough blood to open the seal, apparently; anemic.

Bondage fun with Spike and Buffy. Well, not as fun as their bondage used to be, presumably. But, um, he's tied to a WOODEN chair. Like he's not strong enough to get out of that. And he's tied up in Buffy's room? Wowwww. Ok.

Dawn goes to tell principal Wood Buffy is sick and is way graphic about it. She really needs to call the Council about stuff. The Council doesn't know where Giles is. Spike is having withdrawals from human blood. Andrew is supposed to kill a pig. It's really cute. The pig AND the attempted stabbing. He has to go to the butcher shop instead to get the required blood. If he could just go to the butcher shop this whole time for the blood required, why did he have to kill Jonathan in the first place? Willow sees Andrew at the butcher shop because she was there getting some blood for Spike. Andrew and Willow have a fun nerd-off. Willow drags him to B's as hostage. They tie him to a chair and "torture" him for information. It's hilarious. Anya slaps him. Buffy's room is so girly. It's so contrary to how she dresses and who she is. I suppose she's still clinging to the girliness of her youth?

Spike explains that having a soul is about self-loathing and he understands why B had sex with him, because she hated herself. "As evil and as wretched as I was, I never truly hated myself back then." Buffy hears Spike singing through the door before she goes back into the room after checking on Anya and Xander. He breaks through the chair, as predicted, and pulls Andrew through the friggin' wall, biting him.

Buffy explains the sitch to everyone and Xander intuits that the song is a trigger. She hatches a plan: Willow and Dawn are in research mode and Xander is doing something. Principal Wood goes to the basement of the school and finds Jonathan's body on the seal.

Back at B's, they now have Spike chained up for REAL this time, in the basement with metal chains. Spike tries to convince Buffy to kill him. Taunts her with information about how badddd he used to be. She gives him a rousing speech about how he can be a better man, that she believes in him.

Wood is burying Jonathan. He does NOT know how to cover a grave. Pretty boy ("with perfect almond shaped eyes. Is he an Egyptian prince?" says my husband) has never operated a shovel in his life, probably. I think they picked the wrong actor for this character. He's so vanilla for a Slayer's son.

Harbingers break into Buffy's house and wreak a ton of havoc. They take Spike. B tells everyone it's the First because B recognizes the Harbingers. There's pandemonium at the Council. Casualties. The First Evil has declared war. Quentin wants to fight back, finally, and is giving a big speech, then they blow up, like the building, with explosives and everything.

The Harbingers are bleeding Spike at the seal. Why would they choose him? It would only alert the Slayer to what they were doing. The seal activates and the first Ubervamp comes out. He's scary and stuff.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sleeper.

episode 130.
airdate: 19 Nov 2002.

Buffy wakes Xander up at 4:30 in the morning looking for Spike. He's digging a grave, humming a jaunty tune.

London: a black robed figure is killing people from the Council. Willow arrives home to see Dawn amidst the wreckage of their house. Dawn tells her about her mom talking to her. Willow tells her not to trust what Joyce said to her. Xander and B talking about Spike when he gets back. I think they put Vaseline under Spike's eyes to make him look so sweet. B mentions Holden (psychoanalyst-vampire) and Spike doesn't bat an eye. Buffy convinces Xander to get Anya to watch Spike, not let him leave the house, in case he is killing again.

Buffy gets home and Willow explains what they went through the night before. "This big evil that keeps promising to devour us? Well, I think it's started chomping."

Anya starts snooping around while Spike is sleeping. He's naked. One thing about this show I'm not sure if I've mentioned: men are almost always the ones shown naked. Spike has been shown in a lot of almost-nudity, in a sexualized manner, several times. And Angel too. I believe most of the gender roles on this show are just straight reversed. Spike does look yummy laying there with a little side-flank showing. I'm really starting to think that it's not that women have less sexual desire, just that our sexuality is so fused with guilt and so NOT pandered to, at all, in our culture, that we just think we don't think about it. Having desire and not following through makes us teases. Not having desire makes us prude. But we're supposed to react sexually to a man just because he WANTS us. I'd rather see some effort, myself. A little side flank, perhaps? But not overly sexualized, like women. I'd like NO ONE to have to be overly sexualized, please. Nudity shown on Buffy is almost always male, sexy, but not flaunted in a trying-too-hard or vulnerable way. Male or female, confident, just-there nudity is a concept I can get behind!

So, Anya's snooping and Spike wakes up. She tells him she wants him, again. He rejects her and she's a little offended. After the sun goes down, Spike leaves and Anya let's B know. Spike hums a jaunty tune again and B is following him this time. Watches him flirt with a girl and take her off somewhere. There's a big crowd (some kind of festival?) so it takes a second to catch up to him. When she does, she taunts him, "You know you want it. You know I want you to." Then he bites the girl. Then he runs away guilty as B turns into Spike. You get that it's the First at this point, yes? Next scene the real B pushes Spike out of bed asking him if he killed the girl. Spike says he talked to the girl is all. Tells her he can barely live with what he did, says it haunts him. He says he talks to other women because he can't talk to her. Tells her he got the soul for her. That he passes the time, but it's still all about her.

B tells Spike that Holden told her he sired her. Spike is genuinely confused. B says he looked like he was on the prowl, not lonely. Asks him what happened. Spike is fuzzy on the details but he knows he wouldn't forget the taste of human blood.

The next night Spike starts to worry he did do it. Xander tries to stop him from going out, but he punches him. And it hurts, so the chip still works. Spike is asking around for a girl he remembers talking to at the Bronze. Aimee Mann is playing. He's in the balcony drinking out of a flask. A vampire comes up and starts hitting on him. She tells him he bit her. They start fighting. Spike stakes her and she falls over the balcony, dusting as she falls, interrupting Mann's "Pavlov's Bell". Everyone stares for a second, then the band goes on. Buffy is trying to find Spike. As the band is leaving, Mann says, "Man, I hate playing vampire towns." He he. Spike is on the payphone to B, telling her he's starting to remember doing bad things. Then he's faced with himself telling him he's going "against the plan". Spike shows B to the house where he's been burying the bodies. He's telling Buffy everything. As he's telling her everything he remembers, which isn't much, the fake Spike starts singing the jaunty tune. Sees him change. They fight. The buried resurrect as they're fighting, so B has to fight all of them. Suddenly Spike remembers everything and he freaks out, leaving B to fight the others alone. She kills 'em all real quick.

Spike is cowering in the corner. He offers her his chest. Buffy can't kill him. He asks her for help. She says she will. B isn't letting Spike out of her sight.

Giles finds the other Council members, something comes up from behind with an ax....credits.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Conversations with Dead People.

episode 129.
airdate: 12 Nov 2002.

This is an important episode, so don't fuck it up, Stephanie.

Take us home, Angie Hart. Love this song. In fact, I think I need to post the lyrics, because it was made FOR this episode, so it's important and relevant to the storyline:

Night falls, I fall
And where were you?
And where were you?
Warm skin, wolf grin
and where were you?

I fell into the moon and it covered you in blue
I fell into the moon
Can I make it right?
Can I spend the night?

High tide, inside
The air is dew
and where were you?
While I died
and where were you?

I crawled out of the world
and you said I shouldn't stay
I crawled out of the world
Can I make it right?
Can I spend the night....alone?

As the lyrics state, everyone is alone in this episode, and they (spoiler!) will talk to dead people. Buffy is in the cemetery. Willow is falling asleep at the school library. Dawn is at home alone.

Andrew and Jonathan are shown for the first time this season. They're coming back from Mexico. They're both having "from beneath you it devours" dreams, only Andrew translates it as "It eats you starting with your bottom."

Willow sees Cassie in the library, mentions Tara. Dawn is being terrorized by some weird spirit and can't turn the TV off, etc. Buffy is fighting a vamp that turns out to recognize her, but she doesn't recognize him. He majored in psych, so he psychoanalyzes B and it's really one of the better analyses of Buffy on the show. Dawn is hardcore being poltergeised or something. She hears her mother's voice on the radio and sees her mom a few times. Jonathan and Andrew arrive at the new school library. They are still hilarious, in case you were wondering. Andrew sees Warren. There's some sort of plan orchestrated by dead Warren. Andrew has to sacrifice Jonathan at the Hellmouth. Cassie tells Willow Tara couldn't come herself because of what Willow did. "You killed people. You can't see her. That's just how it is." It breaks my heart when Willow says "Tara". We see Spike meeting and later walking with a woman. Cassie tells Willow she can't use magic every again. Tells her she's going to kill everybody. Jonathan makes a sweet speech about how all the pain of high school has melted away with time. Dawn is doing a spell to cast out the poltergeist. Buffy admits Spike loved her but she didn't want to be loved. Psychoanalyst-vampire tells B she has a superiority complex and an inferiority complex about it. Dawn casts the demon out, then sees her mom. Cassie is trying to convince Willow to either give up magic completely or kill herself. This is when Willow realizes this isn't Cassie talking for Tara. We see Spike bite the chick he was on a walk with. Joyce tells Dawn Buffy won't choose her when "it's bad", then she disappears. When Buffy mentions Spike's name, psychoanalyst-vampire mentions that Spike is the name of the vampire that sired him.

Andrew stabs Jonathan. Cassie threatens Willow. Mentions "the whole balancing the scales, mortal-coil thing? I'm over it." That's the clue that it's the First. Jonathan's blood fills the Seal over the Hellmouth. Buffy slays. Spike kills the girl. Dawn is sitting in the middle of her destroyed house that looks a lot like mine looked after the damn tornado.

Commentary notes 5.2.13:

Commentary by Nick Marck, Jane Espenson, Drew Goddard, Danny Strong, and Tom Lenk- Joss wrote the segments with Buffy in the cemetery, Marti Noxon wrote Willow and Cassie's part, Jane Espenson wrote Dawn's horror part, and Drew Goddard wrote the scenes with Jonathan and Andrew. This is the only episode without Xander. Now THAT is an interesting tidbit. Cassie was originally supposed to be Tara, but Amber Benson wasn't available. 

Both Cassie and Joyce were the First and they can be in more than one place at a time. That's what I assumed, but it's nice to confirm it. Jane here is talking about how Buffy is a very moral show. Everything character-driven, personal consequences, etc, but no conclusion on if there's a god or not ("eh, jury's still out"), leaving it up to the viewer to put in their own theology into the mix. Though I'd like a more Atheist stance myself, I get why they did this. Religious symbolism (crosses, cemeteries, hell and heaven dimensions) is powerful and interesting, even though I so KNOW there's no "God". 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Him.

episode 128.
airdate: 5 Nov 2002.

Xander is putting Spike up, at Buffy's behest. Everyone wants to know why Buffy is choosing to help Spike. She doesn't know what she's feeling. Dawn doesn't get people and their complicated feelings of love. Pf course, as she's ranting about "what's up with love" she sees a boy in a letter jacket she decides is the bee's knees. He's not, in case you were wondering.

Buffy is fighting a demon for Anya. D'Hoffryn is sending demons after Anya, apparently. Anya is trying to figure out who she is and trying to be alone, but B thinks they all need to help each other.

Ugh, I so don't care about lovesick-for-football-boy Dawn. Dawn tries out for the cheerleading squad in Buffy's old outfit. Dawn is crying over this boy that she says she loves when she's known him less than 24 hours. She's acting super-psycho, so of course there's a spell involved.

Buffy has weird bangs.

Xander, Buffy, and Willow are Bronze-ing it. They see the boy there with Dawn dancing pretty provocatively in a skimpy shirt. A girl confronts her outside when Buffy makes her leave. There's hair-pulling. Then Buffy gets transfixed too as soon as he puts the jacket on. Groooooss. I just can't even comment on the grossness that's happening right now. Yes, this is going back to the beginning of the series. Dumb high school hijinks. I like it better when it's the main characters and what they're going through. Buffy is making out with Letter-jacket boy and Dawn sees. Xander, Willow, and Anya work on breaking the spell. Xander has an actual flashback to "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered". Xander gets Spike to help. They go talk to RJ's older brother. I guess Xander knew him in high school. The letter-jacket used to be his. Passed down from his dad. RJ comes over to the house and bewitches Willow and Anya too. Now all four of them are fighting. They all separate to try to get the boy. Willow is doing a spell, Buffy is going to kill the principal, Anya is robbing a bank, and Dawn is going to kill herself on the railroad tracks. Lame. Xander stops the spell. Ew, Principal Wood is listening to lame elevator music. Like a Narada sampler or something.

Xander distracts Buffy before she slays. Willow does a spell to find Dawn. Buffy saves her just in time.  Xander and Spike steal the jacket and burn it.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Selfless.

episode 127.
airdate: 22 Oct 2002.

Anya-centric episode. Xander, Buffy, and Dawn are helping Willow unpack in Buffy's old room as Xander is explaining that Anya isn't into vengeance anymore. She's going to come around. Then we see Anya sitting amid a dozen dead fratboys.

Anya, 880. Her name was Aud then. I think that's pretty much the coolest name ever. Her troll comes homes from work or something. They have rabbits everywhere.

Anya, in present time, is washing blood from her hands. Buffy is talking to Spike. He's telling her he's seeing things lately. Buffy wants to help. She tells him "It's you and it's me and we'll get through this." She's overly comforting...then the real Buffy comes in. She wants him to leave the basement. He tells her he doesn't have anywhere else to go. Willow sees Anya leaving the frat-house and tells her how excited she is to be coming back to school. Anya has a cover story of a boy she's sleeping with. Willow notices blood on Anya's hand and goes into the frat-house to check it out. She finds a lot of blood and then a crying girl in the closet. The girl tells Willow a story about being humiliated in front of all the frat-boys and she says she said "I wish you could know what it was like to have your hearts ripped out". Oh no, Anya. It was a gigantic spider that Willow threw out the window real quick.

Back to 880: Anya has just turned Olaf into a troll and D'Hoffryn visits her, introduces himself. Suddenly they're speaking English. He renames her Anyanka and offers her a job.

Willow calls B to tell her about the spider demon. Halfrek is congratulating Anya on her frat-boy mayhem. Anya is upset. Willow goes to confront Anya. Anya tries to tell Willow those boys got what they deserved. Xander and Buffy go to find the spider demon. They find it. Buffy kills it. They go back to Buffy's and B talks about "hitting the research" but Willow is there and tells them how it got there. Buffy says she has to kill Anya.

1905: Halfrek and Anya are celebrating after she facilitated a huge massacre. Xander is defending Anya. He wants there to be some way to not have to kill Anya. "This isn't new ground for us. When our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them." Buffy makes a big speech about how someone has to draw the line and "it's always going to be me". Xander is telling her she acts like she's "the law" and she totally does. He brings up Spike. Buffy really could try to talk Anya out of being a demon...give her a little chance. Xander leaves to try to find another way as Buffy leaves with a weapon. Willow does a spell to summon D'Hoffryn. She wants to talk to him about Anya.

Xander finds Anya, lamenting about her kill. Warns her Buffy is on her way. Then she arrives and Buffy and Anya fight. Buffy stabs her in the chest.

2001: Flashback to "Once More, With Feeling" episode. Anya sings a sweet song about becoming his wife. Flash-cut to Anya waking up from being stabbed. She pulls out the sword. They fight some more and Xander pushes Buffy out of the way before she stabs her again. D'Hoffryn arrives. Deal is this: the life of a vengeance demon to take back the lives of the frat-boys. Anya chooses to sacrifice herself. D'Hoffryn chooses to kill Halfrek instead, right in front of them. She's ousted as a demon and she wishes she was dead. Xander goes after her. He tells her she shouldn't be alone. Anya tells him she's always let herself be defined by others. She needs to be alone for the first time. Anya is so interesting.

Commentary (by Drew Goddard and David Solomon) notes added 5.3.13:

Anya and Olaf (actors that played them, of course) spoke 8 pages of Swedish for the scene with Aud and Olaf. Aud is the name of an actual Viking woman known for her sense of humor and money-managing skills. How hilarious is that? God, I love the name Aud. LOVELOVELOVE. I have to make a character named Aud in a novel or something.

The thematic death of the vengeance demon in Anya was when Anya gets stabbed just as she's saying, "I'm a vengeance....."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Help.

episode 126.
airdate: 15 Oct 2002.

Buffy, Dawn and Xander crawl out of coffins in the mortuary in order to stalk a potential vampire. So, usually they don't rise 'til they get to the cemetery...why do they think this one will rise before the grave? Seriously, was someone else writing this season. Joss, you still there? The chick does come back and Buffy slays.

It's B's first week talking to the kids in her counselor role. Xander and Willow are talking about whether or not she can control her power. Xander makes a power versus control hammer analogy that's pretty awesome. They're visiting Tara. That's such a piece of total scheibe (I know that's not accurate, but I am approximating without German characters) that Tara's gone. She was the most like me of any character, I think. She was shy, goth-like, sweet, and wise. Not that I think I'm wise, but if I were more actualized as a person, I'd be a lot like Tara, I think.

B is talking to a cool chick (pictured) who says she hasn't been doing her homework because she's not going to graduate high school. Buffy asks her why she's not going to graduate and she says next Friday she's going to die. Buffy first suspects suicide, but she says she doesn't want to hurt herself, there are just some things that she knows. Buffy tells the principal. He says, "We just do what we can." Buffy gets Dawn to befriend Cassie to see why she thinks she's going to die next Friday.

Buffy is snooping around a lot and Willow and Xander think she's "seeing paranormal where there's just normal." They find out Cassie's dad is a drunk so they go talk to him. He yells at them, drunkenly. He only gets his daughter one weekend a month and it was last weekend, so it's not him. Cassie sees them outside her dad's house and she convinces them she wants to live, but she simply won't get to.

Buffy goes to see Spike, ask him if he knows anything. He refers to himself as William a lot now. He starts beating himself up because he "hurt the girl", meaning Buffy. Buffy's detective-ing and it's the day Cassie's supposed to die. Buffy is doing really well being a counselor. She just wants to "help". Some boys are doing a ritual in red hoods. They've kidnapped Cassie. Buffy stops them, but they've already raised the demon. Buffy slays, Spike shows up. They save the girl. Cassie tells Spike, "She'll tell you. Someday she'll tell you." Aw.

Buffy even stops an arrow from hitting Cassie on the way out, but then she dies of a heart condition or something. She was going to die no matter what. Sometimes you just can't help. This is very after school special. Lame.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Same Time, Same Place.

episode 125.
airdate: 8 Oct 2002.

Before I start this ep, I wanted to mention that I read an academic paper on the character of Spike today (slayageonline.com) and the author (Andrew F. Herrmann) mentioned two reasons Spike was never looking to get his chip removed, which are both totally DUH. Why didn't I think of them? So, the first reason is that in Buffy they've always been very clear about the human/mystical rules. Human deaths have to be dealt with by human rules and vise versa. Spike's chip is a human device. He would not have gone to a shaman to take the chip out of his head. I was completely distracted by the plot device of Spike saying over and over that the Slayer will get what she deserves. It just threw me that Spike would be using the same language he has always used when his intention was to KILL the Slayer. And he kept calling her "bitch" too. If he was as remorseful as we now know he was, why was he using that language? The only reason is to make us, the audience, THINK his intentions were other, and that's just cheap. Anyway, the second reason Spike was for sure intent upon a soul (and I REALLY feel like a dunce for this one) is that he could hurt Buffy with the chip. He didn't need it to be removed in order to kill her, if that was his intent. I feel sooo stupid for that one. So Spike's character growth (with respect to Buffy) is essentially thus: he was obsessed with killing her and failed, so the want to possess her changed from kill to fuck...then after being neutered he learned a bit of what it's like to be good, so that fuck turned to love and then when he realized even while in love with the girl he could still have it in him to try to rape her, he had to change. He had to BECOME the "man" he was on the precipice of becoming for the last couple of years. Cool.

Ok, on with an episode NOT entirely to do with Spike: Dawn, Xander, and Buffy are waiting for Willow at the airport. Xander is bragging about how he saved the world with his mouth (talking). They don't see her get off the plane.

We see the scene replay with Willow getting off the plane, not seeing anyone waiting for her.

A demon attacks a graffiti artist.

Willow arrives back at Buffy's. Her old room is now Buffy's, I think. No one is home. The guys get home at the same time she did, but don't see her. So they can't see or hear her. Or feel her, because they're sitting on the same couch she's laying upon. Except Willow hears the door shut when Xander closed it and they hear something upstairs just as they shut the door. Why would they hear that, but not anything else? Willow sees Anya. Anya sees her back. She's remorseful about the destruction of Anya's shop, which she is still cleaning up. Anya's wearing labradorite, I think. Willow goes to find Xander at his site, but doesn't see him. She finds a de-skinned guy that Xander and Buffy are looking at too. Xander and Buffy are suspecting maybe Willow did it. Willow goes to the school to find Buffy, or Dawn, or Spike (Anya told her Spike's "insane in the basement".). She finds Spike. Spike is talking to both Buffy and Willow, but since he's crazy, no one thinks anything of it. "Everyone's talking to me. No one's talking to each other." Now we see it from Xander and Buffy's POV. Again, why is he in the basement of the school?

Willow goes to Anya's apartment for help. I heart Anya, reason 357:
Willow: So, will you help me?
Anya: Is it difficult or time-consuming?

Anya and Willow do a spell to reveal all the demons in town. The Hellmouth section on the map catches on fire. Willow asks Anya to teleport to a spot on the map she thinks might be the thing that killed the boy and Anya says she's only allowed to teleport on official business now and that her job isn't as fulfilling as it used to be. "Turns out it's really upsetting." They kind of bond. Dawn, Xander, and B are in research mode. Dawn finds a demon that paralyzes its victim, then uses its huge fingernails to strip the skin off him/her. They decide to use Spike to lead them to the trail of blood that the demon had to have tracked back to its lair. Spike leads them to a cave. Willow finds it too. Dawn gets slashed by the demon and they take her out and seal the cave, essentially sealing Willow in. The demon is taunting Willow, talking about her friends leaving her to die. Buffy calls Anya to come watch Dawn while they go back and kill the demon. Anya mentions helping Willow and they're all like "You saw Willow?" and Anya mentions she was going to a cave. So now they know Willow might be there in trouble. They take Anya with them after all. Poor Willow is getting eaten. Anya sees Willow when they don't and Anya reassures Willow that Buffy and Xander are there. Buffy kills the demon and Anya goes to find help and Buffy and Xander start talking to where Willow is and then she appears. The next morning Buffy sees Willow meditating in her old room. Meditation healing. They talk. Willow tells B she was so worried about seeing her and Xander, that she did the spell. Buffy admits that she thought it was Willow that did the flaying. Willow understands. Buffy meditates with Willow to help her heal. It's sweet.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Beneath You.

episode 124.
airdate: 1 Oct 2002.

Germany, a "Run Lola Run" sequence...another girl running from something unseen. She's super awesome-looking with pink hair and a nose ring. She gets killed. She says after she was killed, "From beneath you, it devours." Buffy's first prophetic dream in a looooonnng time. In the last ep the speech the First (all the different dead folk talking to Spike at the end) was talking about going back to the beginning. Going back to Buffy basics. It's a bookend. Spike is hunting rats in the basement. There's an earthquake. Xander is driving the Summers' women to school. Buffy's first day as a counselor. First thing she does is go try to find Spike.

Back in England, Willow is preparing her trip home. She's reluctant to go. He asks her what she's afraid of. What if, what if, what if? He tells her to trust herself, but he can't guarantee her friends will want her back.

A woman walking her dog. The dog gets eaten and she runs into Xander and he takes her back to B's. Spike shows up looking normal, says he needs to talk. He mentions the basement and they're all like "What? Why didn't you tell me?" Spike says something is coming. "Big, ugly, and damned." He says he can lend a hand if she'll let him. Xander is flirting with Nancy, the one whose dog is now eaten. That probably wasn't grammatically correct, but something is wrong with my brain today. It's all fuzzy and lame. So, I refuse to care about grammar, damnit!

The plan is that Xander take Nancy home, Buffy and Spike are going after whatever ate the dog, and Dawn is staying home. Xander reminds Buffy Spike tried to rape her and she reminds him she can take him. Dawn threatens Spike, tells him if he ever hurts Buffy, he'll wake up on fire. Buffy asks Spike what happened to him. He tells her it's something about the angry dead in the basement. She's still shaken up about the attempted rape. She confronts him about it. He says he can't say sorry or ask for forgiveness, but he's changed. He basically tells her he's there, and she can use him if she wants, for help with Apocalypses and shit. She says there's something he's not telling her and he says there is, but since they're not BFF anymore, he's not telling. He leaves.

Xander is super charming. Nancy asks him out, the ground dog-eating thing is after them. It looks like a penis with teeth. It comes out that Nancy has an ex who's a psycho. Nancy made a wish to Anya, apparently. Xander, Nancy, Buffy, and Spike find Anya at the Bronze. Nancy is a little overwhelmed by all the drama between everyone (Spike with Anya, Anya with Xander, Spike with Buffy). Anya notices the soul in Spike. Spike and Anya start fighting, then Buffy jumps in. He's mean. Nancy leaves and the worm-monster that is her ex is after her again. Buffy and Spike help her. Xander talks Anya into reversing the spell. Spike stabs the worm-monster just as he turns back into Nancy's ex and Spike's chip goes off. So we know he still has that. He looks shocked for a second. Then he starts muttering crazy again after apologizing to the guy. Buffy calls the police. During Spike's rant he says "From beneath you, it devours." He runs. Nancy leaves. Xander and Anya show. Buffy goes after Spike. Finds him in a church. He's super nutty. Keeps talking about a "spark". Ok, he wanted the soul. He starts talking about trying to find the "spark". The missing piece that would make him fit. Through his mutterings, Buffy realizes the "spark" is his soul. She asks him why and he says, "To be the kind of man that would never..." He hugs a cross, sizzling. "Can we rest now?" Buffy is crying.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lessons.

episode 123.
airdate: 24 Sept 2002.

Season opens in Istanbul. Nice music. A woman is being chased.

Buffy is teaching Dawn to slay. They're talking about something ominous that's back. The high school. Where the hell were they going to school this whole time?

Giles is riding a frickin' horse in a peaceful countryside. Willow is making a flower grow with magic. Willow is talking about how everything is connected. Willow is learning from the Devon coven, I guess. Willow no longer has the choice to not do magic, because it's a part of her and she is responsible for/to it. "In the end we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed." says Giles.

Dawn's getting ready for her first day at the new high school. Xander has the blueprints for the high school. The Hellmouth is now under the principal's office. Buffy gives Dawn a cell phone as a first day of school gift. Do they EVER use that cell phone, aside from mayyyybe this episode? This is 2002, so it's still believable that a small town like Sunnydale didn't use them a lot then, I suppose. I had one starting in like 2000. Everyone is suuuuuper worried about the rebuilt high school when no one has even really mentioned the Hellmouth for three years. This episode is very bright, though. Already, we're meant to think this season won't be nearly as dark as the last. Buffy meets the principal before Dawn even makes it to class. "That was suspicious." It's much brighter than the old high school. I'm not into that. Buffy pokes around. She immediately sees dead things in the bathroom, of course. Buffy barges into Dawn's classroom embarrassing her.

Halfrek and Anya are having coffee. Halfrek tells Anya she's not very hardcore as a vengeance demon anymore. Also tells her there's something coming. "It's a bad time to be a good guy."

Buffy goes to tell Xander about the angry dead she saw in the bathroom. Dawn sees something in her class later. They're acting like she doesn't know anyone, but wouldn't she? It's not like everyone would be new...new to the school, but wouldn't some of her classmates have existed at whatever other school they went to during the interim of the school being rebuilt? Dawn sees someone crying in the bathroom that also saw something. They start getting attacked.

Meanwhile, Willow is freaking out about something. She feels the earth, some of it is deep black and not good. Something about the Hellmouth opening and "swallowing us all". They're not wasting any time on fluff episodes this season! Buffy runs into the principal again and he tells her he's read her file, all the violence in her school past, etc. Dawn and the chick she met in the bathroom find someone in the basement. The angry dead are talking about how everyone dies there, etc. Dawn calls Buffy, she goes to help her. The angry dead are taunting Buffy, telling her she let them die, didn't protect her, etc.  The high school was built on their graves.

And there's Spike in the basement. Why would he be in the school's basement? That doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't he be at home in his crypt? He looks different. He's crazy. Muttering. Not making any sense. He's been cutting himself, tried to cut out his heart. Buffy can't figure out what the angry dead are. Spike knows..."manifest spirits controlled by a talisman". Buffy asks Spike to help, but he's too nuts, so Buffy leaves him. Dawn is fighting the angry dead, Xander is looking for a talisman, per Buffy's cell phoned instructions. Buffy shows and helps fight. They're just holding off the angry dead while Xander finds and destroys the talisman. Buffy saw it earlier in the bathroom. He does and the angry dead disappear. Dawn asks Buffy how she knew about the talisman and she says "There's always a talisman." So she's hiding her knowledge of Spike, of course.

The principal sees B again and convinces her to be an almost-peer counselor. Warren is talking to Spike, then morphs into Glory, then Adam, then the Mayor, then Drusilla, then the Master, finally Buffy. They are not wasting ANY time. They've already introduced the Big Bad, revealed Spike, and Buffy already has her new job and something spooky has already happened at the high school. Whoa.

Commentary (by Joss Whedon and David Solomon) notes added 5.3.13: 

The cemetery during the teaser is actually an indoor set. So THAT'S why this scene looks so weird. It really doesn't look like the outdoors. It's all yellow. The shots in England were shot in Tony's front yard. I'm so bored with these commentaries. This is only the seventh one I've watched. Am I not a real fan? Maybe they're just bad in the seventh season. And I'm watching them backwards so maybe that will add an element of interesting to it. At least in the ones with Joss, if he's not interesting, he comments on the absurdity of his uninterestingness.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Grave.

episode 122.
airdate: 21 May 2002.

Buffy wakes up right after Giles arrives. Willow taunts Giles. So, like, I'm totally scared of Willow right now, but it's still pretty cool. When she reminds Giles he called her a "rank, arrogant amateur", then her eyes turn black again and her voice gets all deep and she says, "Well, I've gone pro." it gives me goosebumps of villain awesomeness. I can't help it. She could rip out someone's beating heart like Akasha right now, or set things on fire with her mind like Carrie. She's a force!

Giles has some good magic to counter Willow. He binds her in a ring of energy. Buffy and Anya both hug Giles. Giles heard about what's going on with Willow from a coven in Devon. "Dark force powered by grief." Buffy updates Giles on everything that's been going on. "Dawn's a total klepto. Xander left Anya at the alter and she's a vengeance demon again. I've been sleeping with Spike." Giles just stares at her for like five seconds, then starts laughing hysterically.

Willow uses telepathy to manipulate Anya into letting her out of the binding spell. Giles said he should never have left. Buffy says he was right to leave. She tells him it took a long time to feel like she was really "here" in the world. She still doesn't understand why she's back. She asks what will happen to Willow. The coven is trying to find a way to extract her power without killing her but there's no guarantee she'll be herself. Willow comes in just then and says "Willow doesn't live here anymore."

Xander is feeling sorry for himself. Tells Dawn Spike tried to rape Buffy.

Spike glimpse #4. He's been through trial 2. Trial 3 has something to do with bugs. He says something about the Slayer "getting what's coming to her" etc. It sounds menacing, but could be interpreted either way. I'm just not sure his original intentions were good.

Tons of destruction at the magic shop. Giles is pretty beat up. Willow sends a ball of fire after the boys (and anyone protecting them) so Buffy will run after them to try to help, so she can have Giles to herself. She tortures him a bunch. Giles tells her she'll burn out her mystical energies soon. She steals all of Giles' magic. She gets high on the magic for a moment, says she is connected to everything. Suddenly she feels pain, emotion, everyone's pain. Giles tells her she can stop the pain. She agrees.

The ball of fire reaches Jonathan, Xander, Dawn and Andrew. Buffy pushes them out of the way just in time, but the ground opens up and Dawn and Buffy fall into it. They were in the cemetery, so now they're surrounded by coffins. Andrew and Jonathan run for "Mexico". Anya emerges to be with Giles, who says he's dying, that he can feel Willow, that she's going to end the world. Buffy can't climb out of this grave. Dawn confronts Buffy about the attempted rape. Buffy tells her she is trying to protect her. Dawn tells her she can't protect her from everything. Xander wakes up and Buffy instructs him to find some kind of rope to get them out. Anya teleports into the grave to tell B Willow plans to end the world. She's on her way to a Satanic temple that she's unearthing from underground. Anya says Giles said "No magic or supernatural force can stop her." Anya says she wants to get back to Giles because he doesn't have a lot of time left. Buffy yells for Xander, but he's gone.

Willow talks to B telepathically, tells her "It was me who took you out of the earth. Well now, the earth wants you back." Monsters come out of the earth. They each have a sword and Buffy asks Dawn to help her. Finally, they'll let her grow up a bit. Willow begins the destruction at the Satanic temple. Xander steps in front of Willow's magic. He makes a carpenter joke. She throws him. She never targeted Xander. Dawn kills her first creature. Cool moment. They're fighting back to back.

Willow starts her thing again and Xander gets in the way again. Xander tells Willow she's his best friend, so where else would he be if the world is going to end? "Is this the master plan? You're gonna stop me by telling me you love me?" The first time I saw this on May 21st 2002 I thought, wayyyy before this moment, that someone just needs to tell her they love her. And this is exactly what Xander does. She keeps knocking him down and he keeps getting up to tell her he loves her. He tells a cute story about kindergarten Willow. "I love crayon-breaky Willow and I love scary vein-y Willow. If you want to kill the world, start with me. I've earned that." Every time he says it, she slashes him, but he keeps saying it. Keeps walking closer to her. Then she starts crying and he hugs her. The earth demons stop attacking and Giles sits up at the magic shop. Giles explains that Willow has been stopped. The magic she stole from him was good magic, reconnected with her humanity. Giles knows Xander saved them all. He reconnected with her humanity.

Buffy starts crying. Happy crying. She doesn't want the world to end. She doesn't want to return to the grave. She hugs Dawn and tells her she'll start trusting her and she's sorry for the last year. Says she's excited to see the woman Dawn will become. So the season ends with Buffy climbing out of the grave, just like it began, but this time, Sarah McLachlan takes us out with the Prayer of Saint Francis. Yeah, baby. "It's in giving that we receive."

Spike: He's survived the trials. "Make me what I was." "We will return your soul." So, there you have it. The language was ambiguous, so I still don't know. Maybe he reveals it in the next season. Cool. I'm so ready for season 7. It's a really good season.

Commentary (by Jim Contner and David Fury) notes added 5.4.13: 

I'm going to try to be more involved in these commentaries. No more opening Tumblr in a different tab and spacing off. They wanted to have Buffy fight the dragon that was unleashed when the hell dimension was opened with Dawn's portal at the end of season 5, but couldn't because of budget. That would have been cool, because yeah, they never dealt with that. What happened with that dragon? In the episodes where Sarah has to laugh, they always talk about it in the commentaries. She's an actress that can do everything but laugh, apparently. And I didn't use to notice this, but now I can't NOT notice it. It's kind of sad because I now can't enjoy the Giles/Buffy laughing scene in this episode.

They wanted to destroy the Magic Box in the scene between Giles and Willow because of the symbolism of their epic magic fight. I still just can't stand watching property get destroyed. Never have been able to not cringe during scenes like that, though it's even worse now, post-tornado. Post-myownhousebeingdestroyed. Right after, I couldn't even handle seeing intact houses (like in "Modern Family", "Gilmore Girls", etc) because I would unconsciously imagine them being destroyed AND also because I was seethingly jealous of people that had intact houses.

Anya, like Spike, was meant to be a short-lived character, but fortunately, the writers/directors etc saw how awesome Emma Caulfield  was and wrote her in as Xander's love interest. Xander's love interests (Anya and Cordelia) is one of the reasons I love Xander, because he appreciates blunt women.

This is the only season finale not written or directed by Joss. Of course, he still decided most of the major plot points and Xander's speech mostly storyboarded (I hope that's the right word) by Joss.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Two To Go.

episode 121.
airdate: 21 May 2002.

So the "two to go" in the title refers to Jonathan and Andrew and also two to go in the season. It confuses me that she's targeting the two boys that didn't kill her girlfriend, but we're supposed to believe that killing a human changes a person. Willow now CANNOT be reasoned with and we need to start really being scared of her. Here we go!

Anya, Xander, and Buffy are in pursuit. Xander is nauseated thinking that Willow did this. Anya teleports to the jail to try to help Jonathan and Andrew. Buffy runs super fast to get there and Xander feels impotent because Willow ruined his car and he doesn't have special powers. Andrew and Jonathan are hilarious. So glad we get to have Andrew next season. Anya shows up and briefs them on what's up. Anya tries to convince the prison guard to let them out. Willow shows up outside like a black tornado. She makes a dramatically unnecessary entrance. She's throwing policemen and pulling the bricks out one by one. While Willow is wasting time being dramatic, Buffy comes in the front door and gets them out. Xander has a getaway police vehicle. Willow catches up as Jonathan is expressing how he can't believe what they're running from is Willow who used to pack her own lunches at school, etc. Luckily she starts running out of juice and they're able to get a bit ahead.

Dawn convinces Clem to let her out to help Willow somehow.

Spike glimpse #2. His first trial begins. He has to fight a big burly dude with flamey hands.

Dawn has convinced Clem to lead her to Rack. They're back at the magic shop. Anya has found some protection spells. Since they suspect Willow is running low on magic, they know she's probably re-juicing. So she goes to Rack, of course. She sucks all the magic from him. Clem and Dawn arrive shortly thereafter. Dawn and Willow meet for the first time since Tara's death. She's killed Rack. Dawn tells her she misses Tara too. Willow taunts Dawn. Buffy arrives as Willow is threatening her.

Xander and Anya are trying to translate Sumerian for the protection spell. Xander confesses that he saw the gun right before Warren raised it, but he froze. Xander feels useless.

Buffy tells Willow "You have to remember you're still Willow." Willow tells B the only thing she had going for her was Tara and now she's gone. Buffy starts with a speech about living. As they're talking Willow transports the three of them to the magic shop. Her magic doesn't penetrate, 'cause I guess a protection spell is in effect. Anya is standing behind a shelf chanting.

Spike glimpse #3. Still fighting flaming hands guy. He's all singed, but he prevails. Trial 2 begins now.

Willow does a spell to make herself super-strong and her and B go at it. Destroying everything in the magic shop. Xander takes Dawn, Jonathan, and Andrew and runs. Anya stays behind to work the protection spell. Just 'cause she's strong doesn't mean she knows how to fight...'course she does, but that's never a thing in shows. Strength does not necessarily equal skill. Willow discovers Anya chanting. Willow knocks Anya and Buffy out. "There's no one in the world that has the power to stop me now."

Then Giles shows up!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Villains.

episode 120.
airdate: 14 May 2002.

Ambulance arrives and Xander leads the medics to B. Willow is wailing upstairs and doesn't even notice the sirens. Willow invokes Osiris to bring Tara back. She is refused because Tara's was a human death by human means. Willow comes out as the ambulance is leaving with Buffy and asks Xander how it happened. She hears the word Warren and leaves. Xander was probably too freaked to see all the blood on her shirt. He tries to call after her, but has to get in the ambulance.

Warren goes to the demon bar bragging that he killed the Slayer with a gun in her own backyard. They all laugh hysterically, because it was on the news and she lived, so now they know the Slayer will be after him. Willow enters the magic shop and sucks all the dark arts books dry. Her eyes and hair turn black. Anya tried to stop her, but couldn't. Dawn gets home and finds Tara.

Warren has gone to see Rack. He needs magic to fight the Slayer, he thinks. Rack tells him he really needs to worry about Willow. At the hospital they're working on Buffy still. It looks dire. Willow comes in and saves Buffy by magically pulling the bullet from her chest and healing the wound. Willow's eyes turn to normal after Buffy wakes up, says they have to go find Warren. Warren is trying to skip town. Buffy, Xander, and Willow are in a car. Willow is controlling the car with magic. She stops the bus with Warren on it with her mind. She chokes Warren, but it's a robot decoy. Buffy tries to stop Willow; this is when she tells them Tara's dead. Buffy tells Willow they'll find Warren, that he'll go to jail, but they can't kill a human. Xander tells her the magic is too strong and she won't come back from it. She looks at them a long minute then says she's not coming back, then walks away shooting them back with lightning to keep them from stopping her. When they get back to the house they find Dawn in the room with Tara. She's been there for hours.

The coroners come and take Tara. Xander says Warren will be a dead man if Willow finds him. Dawn says, "Good." Buffy does her speech about how we don't do it that way, we can't meddle with humans, bla bla, but I'm with Dawn and Willow on this one. Warren needs justice. Dawn wants to come with them to find Willow, but B says she should be where she feels safe and Dawn says she wants to go see Spike. B says ok and Xander starts to protest "After what he did to..." but she stops him. So maybe he did know what Spike tried to do...yeah, he did.

When they get to Spike's, Clem is there. He offers them lemonade. Clem is housesitting for Spike, tells them he left town. Buffy asks if Dawn can stay with Clem. Clem is the cutest. We glimpse Spike in the desert somewhere. He goes into a tribal-y cave with lots of spooky cave paintings. Something with glowing eyes asks if he seeks him. Spike says yes. "You want to return to your former self?" The glowy-eyed demon tells Spike he used to be a legendary warrior "look what she's reduced you to?" "..and you demand restoration?" 'Course, what does Spike want, is the question? I'm not entirely sure if what he wanted originally was the chip removed or his soul restored. I'd like to think he wants his soul, but does he? Does he really? It would solve his cognitive dissonance. It would get him closer to the object of his desire. Is this what he truly wants? I need clues. Must pay attention. Spike needs to endure lots of trials to get what he wants.

Xander goes to talk to Anya and she tells him what happened. Anya can feel that Tara is gone. And tell where Willow is. Xander asks if that's leftover from her demon days and she says "not leftover". So now he knows she's a vengeance demon again. And Buffy comes in shortly after and she now knows too. They go together to find Willow, the three of them. Warren puts an ax through Willow's back. She gets up and pulls it out. He launches an explosive at her and she turns it to ice. Warren tells her it was an accident, killing Tara. He captures her in a viscous fluid of some kind. She gets out pretty fast and has vines trap him in a tree.

Willow realizes Tara wasn't the first girl he killed. He says some shithead stuff about all women being the same. He starts screaming for help. Willow gets the bullet she took out of Buffy and magics it slowly into his chest. She sews his mouth shut. Anya, B, and Xander catch up to her as Warren is apologizing, telling Willow she's not a bad person. She interrupts him, "Bored now" and skins him. "One down" she says.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Entropy.

episode 118.
airdate: 30 Apr 2002.

The troika are hunting vamps on vehicles. They miss, Buffy kills them while Spike taunts her.

Xander is listening to sad music and drinking at home. He goes out. Anya was watching him from the bushes.

Willow and Tara are flirting at school. Tara reassures her the woman she saw her with the other day is just a friend. They're all giggly. Buffy and Dawn are spending the day together.

Warren and Andrew are talking about how they're leaving Jonathan soon, or more exactly, that they won't have to worry about him much longer.

Xander gets home and Anya is there. Xander apologizes to Anya about everything. He tells her he was an idiot, that he should have said something earlier about not being ready to get married and her face falls, just as she's starting to get hopeful. She thought they'd just redo the wedding when he wants to start over dating. As her back is turned, her face morphs to demon. She's gone back to vengeance. Anya has been trying to curse Xander herself, but she needs to have someone else make the wish for her. B is trying to spend more time with Dawn, but Dawn suggests she hang out with her, go patrolling, learn some skills. B says no, of course.

Willow and Tara are having a coffee date when Anya shows up and tries to get them to wish horrible things upon Xander. They sympathize with her pain, but won't make any wishes. Anya talks to Dawn next. Then Buffy. Anya's been wearing all red both days she's been back. Xander shows up as Anya is talking to B and she storms off. Buffy talks Xander into NOT following her and he kicks a gnome in the yard. It breaks and they find a camera inside. Xander suspects Spike. Buffy goes to confront him. He tells her "I don't hurt you". She tries to tell him to get over her, but he kicks her out. Anya decides Spike is the one that could wish Xander harm as he comes into the shop in search of a numbing spell, or a de-love spell. Anya produces some whiskey and they drink together. Jonathan is doing a complicated spell for some unknown reason. They've found the location where they need to go, whatever that means.

Spike and Anya are drinking together, lamenting their lost loves. Anya, ultimately, is also an evil creature on a path to redemption. She sure went back to being a demon pretty quickly. So I guess I should be happy for Xander that he got out of that relationship. Perhaps it wouldn't have worked anyway. Willow is trying to find the location of where the camera went back to and she finds out there are other cameras all over town, in places where they all frequent (Xander's site, Willow's school, the Doublemeat Palace, and yep, the Magic Box!).

Cheesy side note: the whiskey they're drinking is Evan Williams and it was supposed to be something Giles left behind at the shop. Giles would totally drink something classier, like Maker's Mark or something. Come on!

Just as Spike and Anya have decided to take solace in one another, which I totally get, by the way. They're both hundreds (in Anya's case, 1000+) years old. They used to be evil and then fell for really nice not-evil humans that left them. It makes COMPLETE sense that they'd do it after sharing a bottle of whiskey. Anyway, just as they're beginning to do it, Willow pulls up the video feed for the Magic Box and Xander, Willow, and B see them doing it. Dawn walks in. Willow notices that Buffy looks really upset. Xander has gone out with weapons. Willow notices. Dawn goes out to talk to Buffy. Willow comes out to tell Buffy Xander left with her ax. Buffy has to go save Spike now. After the sex, Anya feels guilty and it's clear that will never happen again. Spike is respectful without words. As he is leaving he barely misses the ax. Anya stops him from staking Spike just as Buffy shows up.

Xander is meannnnnn, here. He is so not my pretend boyfriend in this episode. He tells her he feels sick looking at her because she "had sex with that". Spike says, "Good enough for Buffy." So now it's out. Everyone knows. Xander leaves, then B. Then Spike and Anya. Everyone is alone.

Except, Tara walks into Willow's bedroom and says the following: When things fall apart, they fall apart so hard. You can't ever put 'em back the way they were. You know, it takes time. You can't just have coffee and expect, there's just so much to work through. Trust has to be built again on both sides, we have to learn if we're even the same people that we were, if you can fit in each other's lives. It's a long, important process, and...can we just skip it? Can you just be kissing me now?

And they're reconciled. This season doesn't have much reprieve from the pain, but it sure does make those moments so much sweeter.