Stew’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Retrospective: Season 6, Episode 9

With all the whacky hi-jinx of amnesia left behind in last episode, we open today’s BTVS with Buffy coming across a simple, non-supernatural mugging. She starts kicking the muggers’ asses, but then Spike intervenes, causing a jolt of pain from his implant when he tackles one of the ne’er-do-wells. He asks Buffy if she wants to help get his rocks off, but she declines and leaves him behind. He yells after her that she has no one else in her life, which is just objectively untrue, and he knows it.

At the Summers’ household, Willow has a sad score playing behind her as we remember that Amy The Rat still exists. Willow just kind of instantly figures out how to turn her back human after all of this time, and then… does so. A naked Amy reappears and lets out a scream as we kick off with Nerf Herder for the episode. Ah, for the good ol’ days of this show when EVERYTHING was handled as effortlessly as this was.

We move on to Team Loser–that’s Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew–breaking into a museum to steal a diamond. Rusty the security guard comes upon them, but Jonathan fires a freeze ray at him to turn into a guardcicle. Team Loser gets away with their ill-begotten diamond.

Oh Team Loser. After the last two episodes, I had forgotten what wasn’t working for BTVS this year. But now it’s back. I can not believe this trio is a whole recurring “thing”. Can Buffy just kill them soon?

Back with Willow and Amy, the latter of which (the latter of WITCH, haha!) is very twitchy and upset about the world. She is startled by a passing siren! So that’s a thing. Rats are twitchy, I guess, so so is she. She remarks that it felt like she was in the cage for weeks, and Willow lets her know high school is over. Amy demands to know how long she was trapped as a rat!

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

Buffy returns home. She goes up to Willow’s room, and the two start talking before Amy re-emerges from the bathroom, shocking Buffy. Willow says it’s nice to have another magic user to be friends with, and this upsets Buffy because seriously… what DOESN’T upset that girl? They could rename this show Mopey The Vampire Lamenter. She stops talking to Willow and heads back downstairs.

Buffy overhears a news story about the frozen security guard and heads off to the museum. She runs into Spike there. They argue about kissing some more, and Buffy refers to him as an evil, disgusting thing. She slaps him, and he instinctually decks her back… only to find he doesn’t get a shock from his implant! But he pretends he does. As Buffy walks away, he grins a malicious smile.

Spike immediately goes out on the town prowling for prey. He finds a girl left alone and corners her, but when he strikes to feed, the implant jolts him, much to his confusion.

This guy. Is just. The worst. I’ve really got to have a talk with my wife about how he is her favorite character. This is the second time that, the second he thinks he is implant-free, he tries to murder innocent people. And, to be fair-ish, I suppose Buffy doesn’t know this scene just happened, but STILL. WHY DOESN’T SHE JUST KILL HIM? If she does ever find out that this happened and STILL doesn’t kill him, I will completely give up on her as a worthwhile protagonist.

Dawn and Tara are still hanging out together. They had a movie date day, and Tara promises to always be there for Dawn. She reassures Dawn that she didn’t leave the Summers’ house because of her. They talk about Willow, but Tara is reluctant to commit to coming back.

At the magic shop, the team is reading about the museum guard, and it turns out he will live. BTVS makes the mistake of showing the newspaper headline about his survival, and I quickly pause the TV to actually read the article. The headline is about the guard, sure, but the article itself is nonsense about child prodigy geniuses. That’s right, television program, I caught you in a deception! I read the entire newspaper page because it’s somehow more gripping than getting back to Buffy kvetching about Spike.

My favorite paragraph is “An award-winning scientist, Mr. Chen recognized theological thesis by age 11, became a working journalist at age 13, and succumbed to alcoholism before her sixteenth birthday”. So Mr. Chen used she/her pronouns, but also went by MISTER Chen, which is super curious. It also never says when she won her award or was a scientist, just the journalism career thing.

It IS entirely possible I’m putting more thought into this fake newspaper article that just flashed on the screen for two seconds than I am supposed to, but… no. No, that doesn’t feel right. BTVS must have wanted me to do this. And I hate to disappoint.

Meanwhile, back at the plot of this episode, Willow says she can get information on why the guard was frozen, and she pulls out a computer. Buffy and Xander are initially relieved that she is just back to her hacking roots, but Willow ends up magic-ing the machine to deliver her the information she needs about the missing diamond. Willow has learned nothing from Tara leaving, and this subplot marches onward!

Team Loser are inspecting their stolen diamond when Spike barges into their home. Spike wants them to look into the chip in his head. He threatens to break a Boba Fest toy if they don’t do as he says.

Willow returns home and meets up with Amy, who wants to go out and live some life. Amy trick-talks Willow into going out with her, so they head out to party.

Back with Spike and the Losers, Warren processes the data and reveals to Spike that the chip is working fine. Spike realizes there is nothing wrong with him, so something must be wrong with Buffy.

Dawn and Tara return home, and Dawn tries to talk Tara into staying until Willow gets home so the two of them can talk. Tara ends up deciding to stay just to protect Dawn. So she is going to be home and see Amy is back and that Willow is still doing magic, I guess? Or just get jealous of Amy? Or maybe none of these things, who knows?

I wonder how those child geniuses are doing…

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

Back at The Bronze, we get ANOTHER EPISODE with a band playing! But it’s not as much of the focal point this time, as it heads into the background ambient noise while Willow and Amy play pool with magic in full view of everyone. Two dudes come over and ask Amy to dance. Amy, thinking that the dudes are the problem, enchants another woman to come ask Willow to dance, but Willow rejects her.

After a bit of dancing, Amy feels done with the duo, but they pressure her to keep it up. Willow and Amy cast a spell to put the two of them in the dancing cages above the floor.

Over now to the magic shop, Buffy, Anya, and Xander can’t research their way into figuring out what stole the diamond. Xander and Anya determine they all need to keep an eye on Willow, who might be getting seduced by the darkness of magic. Spike calls up and demands Buffy meet up with him. Buffy agrees, but then blows him off to keep looking through books with her friends.

After leaving the shop, however, Spike is there, pissed off that she ditched him. He baits her into smacking him, so he whacks her back and reveals there is no pain; he interprets that as that Buffy came back from the dead “wrong”.

After the commercial break, the two continue to fight, as Buffy is incredulous that she is the problem. She insists that Spike’s chip is broken or removed, but he counters with the truth: it’s just her that he can hurt. The two brawl into an abandoned building.

Back at The Bronze, Amy and Willow are admiring their handiwork with the two dudes dancing in their cages. Then Willow turns the band on stage into another band. After that, the two start casting spells willy-nilly to change things to their amusement.

Spike and Buffy are still fighting elsewhere. Spike stands by the assessment that he is in love with Buffy, but she argues that he just loves the pain she inflicts on him. The brawl must continue…

As we head back to The Bronze, Willow is bored of their hexes and returns everything to normal. She wishes for some place “bigger”, and Amy agrees that it’s way too early to go home.

Back at the fight, The brawl turns into really violent making out, wrecking the building around them. Then they start banging as everything collapses. End of episode, as Willow and Buffy are both making terrible life choices as the credits roll.

Hey, let’s go back to that newspaper article! “The infant of Lubec talked within a few hours of birth, learned Latin and French by age three, and predicted his own death by age four–from PLEASE SEE WAGE, A6”

FROM WHAT, NEWSPAPER ARTICLE?! Don’t leave me hanging! Xander never went to page A6!

(If you are curious, this can all be found at 18:08 of this episode)

*******

Anyway, yeah, we are reaching the rising action of a season that would be VASTLY better if it wasn’t centering around Team Loser as the big bad so far. They are just so non-threatening and ridiculous and not even a little entertaining. But the Willow subplot is developing brilliantly, and Buffy/Spike is what it is. Next time, we’ll be dealing with repercussions from sexytime, I assume!