Stew’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Retrospective: Season 6, Episodes 3-4

Well, after being dead for, like, one whole episode’s worth of time, Buffy is BACK! Let’s see what she gets up to next…

Episode 3

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

We kick episode 3 off in the aftermath of episode 2, with Xander, Willow, Tara, and Anya walking down the burning streets of SunnyDale and trying to find their way home. They talk about how they last saw Buffy and wonder if she is mentally broken. Willow says no, Buffy was probably being tortured in a hell dimension for who-knows-how-long. She’s probably just trying to recuperate from that.

Oh shit, Buffy was totally at peace or in heaven or something, right? This actually feels like a subversion on the Supernatural trope, even though this episode aired, like, four years before SPN would debut. But the whole “we brought her back from hell where time moves differently” just feels like what other shows do. AND they are overselling it, so they pulled Buffy from ultimate peace, right? Damn. I hope that’s the pay-off here; that would be so rad.

As we fade into Nerf Herder and the opening credits, we see Dawn take Buffy home, and Buffy is still seemingly out of it.

At the Summers home, Dawn guides Buffy through the rooms and reports in on the changes since, you know, Buffy died. She even cleans Buffy off from all the dirt after she had to dig herself back to earth. Buffy is still pretty monotone about the whole ordeal, which is annoying but I guess I always demand ramifications! It’d be weird if she was right back to normal. Spike turns up at the house and is taken aback by the returned Buffy. He says Buffy was dead for 147 days; Buffy says it was “longer” where she was.

Boy, they are really teasing this “Buffy was being tortured” thing, huh?

The rest of the gang barges in looking for Buffy, and a dejected Spike leaves in the background of the scene without any real focus being drawn to it. The team is pretty overbearing towards Buffy until Dawn tells them to back off. They start teasing the OTHER direction now, with Buffy non-committal to their questions about what the jet lag from hell was like, and I will immediately take back one (1) bad thing I ever said about this show if Buffy was fucking in HEAVEN.

Buffy just wants to go to bed, so she heads upstairs. Xander and Anya head out and run into Spike. He’s furious that they didn’t tell him they were bringing Buffy back. Spike thinks that Willow had nefarious reasons for not letting him in on the plan, but Xander shoots that down. Spike shouts a warning about magic having consequences and drives off on his new motorbike he stole last episode.

Willow and Tara get into bed together and have a chat about the day’s events. Willow wonders why Buffy isn’t happier if everything seemingly went “right”. We cut to Buffy in her room, looking at pictures of her friends. She sees their faces replaced by skulls.

Post-write-up note: This skull thing has not mattered at all so far. Did they forget to pay this off?

Willow and Tara wake up to a very disturbing and creepy scene of Buffy at the foot of their bad calling them bitches! She asks Willow what it was like to kill the baby deer, but when Willow turns on the light, Buffy is gone! Kind of a goosebumps-inspiring jump-scare of a scene that; good work, show! They check her bedroom and find her asleep in her bed. They call Xander for help. While on the phone, he sees a white-eyed version of Anya, cutting her cheeks with a knife!

So is this one of the episodes where the show gets its horror credentials? Those were some actual spooky moments for this program! I am all a-shiver or whatever!

The team has a meeting the next day, and Anya figures it is a hitchhiker, a being that tagged along on the return spell they cast to get the Slayer back. A now-more-normal Buffy approaches and asks what is going on, and they tell her. Cut to: The team, now including Dawn, doing research. Buffy excuses herself to go on the patrol, and we see Dawn with the white eyes now.

As the team researches, Dawn and her white eyes turns back and scolds them for what they did, then she breathes fire and ignites the books they were reading. As Dawn passes out, the mysterious foe leaves her body and a bad CGI lump thing moves across the floor and scurries away. This show has not gotten any better at visual effects six seasons in!

Buffy finds her way to Spike’s crypt. Spike notes he remembered the promise to protect Dawn, but he had failed her, and that’s why the Slayer had to jump off the tower. But he had been protecting Dawn every night since! He is kept awake at night thinking of ways he could have saved Buffy.

Willow discovers the demon is called Tamagenesis, and it was created into being by their spell, Fortunately, it will dissipate over the time unless it kills the target of the spell, Buffy. Unfortunately, now it knows that, as it was possessing Xander when Willow read that part! So it flees Xander and vanishes off to find and kill our heroine!

At home, Buffy is being stalked by Tamagenesis. It attacks!

Elsewhere, Willow and Tara start a spell to give Tamagenesis a physical form so that Buffy can fight it. Back at the fight, Buffy beheads the now-solid foe. This fight scene was not the focal point of the episode, and good for that because it sucked.

The next (or some other) day, Dawn is heading to school, and Buffy comes outside to give her a packed lunch. They embrace, and Buffy reports she is feeling better now.

Back at the magic shop, Willow is wearing a rug for a shirt, and I have to admit, I have always found those shirts sexy as hell. I don’t know what it is, but rug-textured shirts? Oh yeah. That works.

But anyway, Buffy comes in and says she WAS in hell, and she thanks them for pulling her out. After that moment, Buffy steps outside and runs into Spike. She tells him wherever she was when she was dead, she was at peace and she was happy. She thinks she was in heaven… and now she isn’t. This is hell for her, getting through each moment knowing what she lost. She swears Spike to secrecy on this matter.

Episode 4

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

We open with Buffy in her basement, stalking… a leaking drain pipe. Dawn offers to call a plumber, but Buffy insists he has it handled. She tightens the leaking pipe… and causes a watery explosion in the basement as pipes burst everywhere.

So I predict that this is going to be a funny-ha-ha episode of the show. We just found out our heroine was torn from heaven’s loving embrace, and now we are here for the hyucks! I’m going to get tonal whiplash from the creepiness of last episode to the presumed goofiness of this one.

Let’s talk about the heaven thing for a moment before we move on: as noted earlier, that’s pretty rad! As a comic book fan, I’m so used to characters coming back from the dead and not really talking about the afterlife. And even in Supernatural… we eventually saw heaven, but for years, it was just hell and purgatory for the boys.

But here, we have a character saying straight up, “No, I was dead, and this is what heaven is. Oh by the way, THERE IS AN ACTUAL HEAVEN”. That feels like a big deal, right?! I get that she doesn’t want to upset her friends by telling them what she lost, but still… you would think there would be some comfort in informing them that HEAVEN IS REAL AND AWESOME.

But what do I know? Exploding pipes are hilarious instead, am I right?

After the credits, we see that a plumber named Tito has stopped by and fixed the problem… but the bill is very pricey. The Scoobies sit Buffy down and explain that money is quickly becoming a problem, as mom’s medical bills have soaked up a lot of the life insurance she left behind. Welcome to America, kid! Too bad SunnyDale wasn’t in Canada, eh?

Anya suggests that Buffy start charging victims for saving their lives, and she is blown off by the team. Xander sides with everyone else, and Anya storms out. Xander catches up to her, and they have another exciting argument about telling everyone he proposed to her. He is very sweet about it, and Anya temporarily buys in, but then she remembers she is mad and storms off. Gripping! I hope this subplot lasts forever.

Backslash-sarcasm.

Buffy goes to the bank to get a loan, but it is quickly made apparent that she is not going to get one, as she has no job. Upon that declaration from the loan officer, a monster attack breaks out. While Buffy fights the monster, we see some gloved hands stealing money elsewhere in the bank. The beastie gets away, and Buffy asks if she can get a loan for saving the officer’s life.

Elsewhen, Buffy and Willow are discussing the former’s frustration at not getting a loan. Willow realizes Buffy is mad, and Willow is happy about it? Because Buffy hasn’t been expressing enough human emotions lately. The moments fades, and we move on…

At the magic shop, Xander and Anya are still bickering about spilling the beans. I’m already so tired of this, BTVS! We quickly move on to Dawn asking Tara to be allowed to research, and we find out that Dawn is 15. The team doesn’t want her researching, but hell… Buffy, Willow, and Xander were full-on fighting evil at 15. And I get that Bufy has super-powers, but Xander and Willow didn’t!

Dawn ends up finding the monster The Slayer fought at the bank, though, and I’m going with its name being M’Fashnick from what they said. HOPEFULLY I won’t have to spell it out a lot this article.

OH HEY, GILES WALKS BACK IN. GILES IS BACK! He and Buffy embrace while heartfelt music plays.

We cut to M’Fashnick or whatever walking down the street, then immediately cut back to Giles and Buffy in the training room. More heartfelt music! They reconnect a bit. Giles leaves Buffy to her training and goes to talk to the team. He is familiar with M’Fashnick as a mercenary demon.

We find out that our episode’s villainous monster is in the employ of Jonathan, Warren, and something other kid whose name I did not catch. For the uninitiated, Warren is the kid who made the Buffybot, the third kid is the brother of the guy who set the hell hounds loose on prom, and Jonathan… was always a good kid, who suddenly considers himself a supervillain.

Warren and the third kid… who cares? But Jonathan? Man, this is disappointingly uncharacteristic. Whatever, the demon wants their help killing The Slayer now. They agree. COME ON, Jonathan. This isn’t like you.

Giles is sleeping over at Buffy’s, and she shares her money woes with him. Giles is also under the belief that Buffy came back from hell. He agrees to help her with the money thing.

Back to the three nerds. Jonathan and the third kid don’t want to kill Buffy. But Warren is fine with it. Warren goes over the M’Fashnick and gives him Buffy’s address, unbeknownst to the other two.

Moving on from this nonsense, we cut to Giles and Willow in an excellent scene in the Summers kitchen. Willow anticipates Giles being impressed and congratulatory for her magicks, but he is, instead, scolding and dismissive. He accuses her of being an amateur who got lucky, and Willow threatens him with her power! Cooler heads temporarily prevail, but Giles notes that they still aren’t sure where Willow pulled Buffy from or what she has been through.

MORE SCENES LIKE THIS, PLEASE. Tense and impassioned! Willow giving a subtle nod to her move towards the dark side, and Giles just acting circles around everyone like always.

Buffy and Spike are outside, and they have overheard Willow and Giles’ disagreement. Buffy doesn’t know how to act around her friends now. They end up sitting on the stoop together. The kind of runtime-padding scene we have come to know and [verb] from six seasons of this show.

Giles and Dawn start a discussion about cereal, but M’Fashnick busts in and attacks. He is about to kill Dawn when Buffy grabs him. The ensuing brawl breaks a lot of stuff in the house, and that’s more important to The Slayer than it ever used to be. And I start wondering: Does SunnyDale homeowner’s insurance cover demon attacks? Do they have a rider for that?

Buffy grapples the demon into the still-flooded basement (I thought the plumber fixed this?), and beats him to death with a pipe.

These are very underwhelming battle scenes these days!

Cut back to Team Jonathan (or Team Warren… or Team The Other Kid). They finally say the other kid’s name, and it’s Andrew. They have used the money from the bank heist to buy… a flamethrower, a periscope (they are in a basement, you see, because they are unloved nerds), and some action figures. They decide to eventually try to hypnotize Buffy and make her their sex slave.

Jesus Christ.

You know, the weird thing is Joss Whedon thought Xander was his self-insert. And as insufferable as Xander is, Joss is actually closer to these three future sex criminals.

Back at home, the team is trying to put the house back together. Willows offers to do a spell to figure out who hired the demon, but a stink-eye from Giles puts the kibosh on that. The phone rings, and Buffy reports that it is Angel, calling to find out she is alive again. She leaves to meet him.

So that will either happen next episode, or on a show I’m not currently watching.