“The Gift,” by Joss Whedon

Zoom! As a special fannish gift, we get a little clip from everything that’s gone before! I call these blipverts—who gets the reference?

As “The Gift” opens, we’re still in the eye of the hurricane; things haven’t yet gotten apocalyptic with between Team Slayer and Glory. The story opens in the alley behind the Magic Box, with a disposable vamp of the week. It’s been a while since either we or Buffy has seen one of these, and it’s all so five years ago: the vamp hasn’t heard of her, and neither has its would-be victim.

“You’re just a girl,” the latter says, choking a little on his surprise at still being alive.

Ah, if only, thinks Buffy.

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“Weight of the World,” by Doug Petrie

“Weight of the World” is about those moments when our faith breaks, just enough to give us an excuse to beat on ourselves forever after. Like a lot of BtVS storylines, its heart is a very common experience, made more intense because it’s delivered in a high-stakes, supernatural, universe-ending wrapper.

The story picks up just after Dawn gets grabbed by Glory. As you’ll probably recall, our Slayer went into total shutdown mode once the two of them were gone. Those Scoobies still on their feet are left scrambling—and arguing about what to do.

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“Spiral,” by Steven S. DeKnight

“Spiral” is one of those episodes that starts right where its predecessor left off. Dawn’s secret has been exposed, and so Buffy scoops her up and runs like a terrified antelope. It shouldn’t work, but Willow slows Glory briefly. Then, after running at super-blurry cheetah speed to catch up with them, she foolishly pauses for the traditional pre-victory exchange of taunts... in the middle of a busy road.

This turns out badly for Glory when a big truck smashes right into her, and very well indeed for Buffy when the impact then causes Ben to take over custody of the shared BenGlorious bod. It’s nice for us because we get Ben in a dress again. There are worse things, though it’s not a fabulous dress.

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“Tough Love,” written  by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

With Joyce gone and the weight of the Dawn on her shoulders, Buffy has conceded to the inevitable: she has to drop out of university. “Tough Love” opens as she’s expressing her regret over this turn of events to her poetry professor.

She’s not the only one racking up personal losses. Ben has been missing for two weeks, and his supervisor at the hospital seems to consider this a firing offence. Which: fair enough. He is a doctor, after all.

Ben only gets a moment to savor that sense of having been cheated of his dreams before Glory takes him over again. He fights the transformation, but fails. The Goddess is back and, she says, she is hungry.

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“Intervention,” written  by Jane Espenson

One week after Joyce’s funeral, we open on a cozy domestic scene at the Summers home. Dinner is over, and Giles is helping with dishes. Buffy says that she and Dawn are getting into a routine. Naturally enough, Giles takes this as an opportunity to suggest she resume her super-uber Slayer training.

Buffy balks. Recent events have made her fear that she has become too emotionally shut off. Could all the killing, death, mayhem, slaughter, hospitalizations, betrayals, fire-setting, blood-letting, and demon-bludgeoning be to blame? She talks about her various recent failures to share, citing the break-up with Riley, her remoteness, last week, from Dawn, and finally admits she isn’t even sure if Joyce knew she loved her. “Maybe being the perfect slayer means not being able to love at all.”

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“Forever,” written and directed by Marti Noxon

There are no ‘previously on BtVS’ scenes last week, for reasons that are indelibly burned on our hearts. Only one thing happened and we all remember it, am I right?

So! “Forever” starts with a bit of a decoy action: Buffy’s in a room full of coffins, and we’re invited to imagine she’s doing something fun, like hunting bloodsucking fiends. Or... well, there’s not much in the way of other fun you can have in a room full of coffins. At least, not alone. I suppose nowadays if you had a good camera phone you could take some interesting selfies. 

(And put them on the internets. And get denied gainful employment, later, as a result...)

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“The Body,” written and directed by Joss Whedon

We’ve all known this was coming, folks, and we’ve talked about it quite a bit. You’ve debated whether it’s all Dawn’s fault. We’ve talked about this life change being necessary both for the overall story arc and for Buffy’s growth as a (super) human being.

So how do our beloved Sunnydale Scoobs deal with Joyce quietly passing away while everyone’s busy doing their own thing?

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“I Was Made to Love You,” by Jane Espenson

In the wake of Spike’s shocking and wholly unexpected declaration of love last time, Buffy has been left feeling creeped out and dirty. And since Glory hasn’t bothered to come up with a readily pummelled snake-monster and the Byzantos are off gathering their forces—or sharpening their swords or maybe training up a few new slaughterable holy lambs—she needs something else to beat on if she’s gonna productively deal with these entirely valid feelings. Her choice? Xander in a sumo suit.

Xander and Giles are quick to assure her the problem lies with Spike. But sick, sad love must be in the Sunnydale air, because elsewhere in town a cute little pixie of a woman is getting dropped off in a bad neighborhood, and she says she’s looking for true love.

[Read More... Also, Joyce has a date.]

“Crush,” by David Fury

Buffy has been single for long enough now that she’s allowed to sit in the Bronze watching, fifth wheel-like and somber but not actually crying, as WillTara and XandAnya boogie to the music. This happens a lot on the show: we see that point where one of the main characters has moved out of the just broke up phase and into some variation of wishing they weren’t the single one. Remember Willow and her vicarious smoochies?

As she’s doing this, Spike shows up and tries to chat—he’s going on about the flowering onion snack again, for one thing. Do they deep fry it in blood or something?

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“Blood Ties,” by Michael Gershman

Holey Hellmouth, Vampfans, Buffy’s twenty! That’s not quite a Slayer record—I think Nikki Woods lived to be twenty-two—but it’s still very impressive, don’t you think?

Joyce totally does. She is basking in the warm glow of no longer being seriously ill, and naturally enough wants to throw her hard-working eldest a party. Buffy, on the other hand, isn’t sure it’s a good idea to take any focus away from the Glory hunt. She expresses this concern to the gang. They wisely advocate partying hard and working smarter, by homing in on the thing that would seem to be their one potential tactical advantage when fighting a deity.

Which is? Beating Glory to the nifty-sounding Key thing she’s after.

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“Checkpoint” by Doug Petrie and Jane Espenson

“Checkpoint” opens with the Scoobies meeting about Giles’s fact-finding trip to visit the Watchers. They’ve learned something and have decided to deliver the message in person, which thrills Buffy not at all. Dawn is trying to eavesdrop on them, no doubt hoping to glean a little knowledge about the whole key thing she overheard last week.

Buffy’s deeply stressed, about the Watchers, the eavesdropping, about the everything. But she’s doing better than Glory, it turns out, who’s so deep into one of her need-a-sanity-fix fits that she’s pretty much helpless. Dreg and Jinx feed her a local mailman, who staggers off in a demented state to look for his hat. Jinx then mentions that time’s getting short if she wants to use the Key. Glory’s all cheery, though; she figures Buffy knows where it is and she can just wring it out of her.

So, you know, not a dumb villain. I’d say she’s brighter than Angelus.

[Brighter than Angelus isn’t a terrible band name, is it?]

“Triangle,” by Jane Espenson
Season 5, Episode 11

“Triangle” opens with XandAnya snuggling at the new, improved so-not-a-basement Chez Xander, talking over Riley’s (allegedly) sudden departure and how very much Anya would prefer it if their relationship didn’t blow up in her face all of a sudden. Xander agrees he’ll give her lots of warning (to which we can all say “Ha!” or perhaps “Yikes!”) and she moves on to thinking that maybe they are immune from relationship disaster because it’s Buffy who is self sabotaging.

This leads to them speculating about how well she’s dealing with the break-up, which in turn takes us to Buffy herself. She’s not all warm and snuggly. No, she’s saving a nun from a vamp and then asking her whether the poverty-chastity-humility lifestyle, emphasis on the chastity, comes with good food and medical benefits.

[Read more after the tragically off-screen wimple-swapping...]

Season 5, Episode 10: “Into the Woods”
Written and directed by Marti Noxon

By now, everyone has been waiting forever for Joyce to get out of surgery, so let’s cut to the hospital waiting room for the good news, shall we? The procedure was a complete success! Everything’s going to be okay! Joyce will live forever! Hurrah!

Everyone’s happy except the doctor, who gets a rib-crushing Slayer special of a hug as his much-deserved reward. (And also, probably, hundreds of dollars per hour.)

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Buffy and Dawn are entertaining Joyce at the hospital, waiting on a surgery date while the Scoobies cover patrol. And by Scoobies, I mean just the starter pack: Xander, Giles, and Willow. They take out two female vampires in a battle which is both comic and an excellent demonstration of their years of experience and ability to do the teamwork thing. Sure, it looks bumbly, but could the three of them have killed two vampires, sans Slayer, in S1?

Afterward, Willow celebrates her two-kill evening while Xander continues to be the Chorus of Riley’s Damnation, pointing out that Iowa was supposed to come along and tip the odds in their favor by being soldierly.

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“Shadow” opens with the grim spectre of Joyce getting a CAT scan while her daughters wait for news and contemplate the many frightening possibilities. Dawn tries to distract herself with some whimsical wonderings about who put the cat in the scanner, and what I notice most here is that there’s no doubt that Buffy loves her, even now that she knows the truth. Somehow, that makes this all easier to take.

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Buffy is taking down the disposable demon of the week when it turns out he’s got a longer shelf life than most, and a wicked luck roll too: he sticks her with Mister Pointy and she ends up running for it. She’s good at running when she has to—it’s something I respect about her—but this guy gives chase. What’s his deal? Did he just eat a motivational speaker?

Fortunately, Riley saves the night (thanks, Riley!) and hauls Buffy home for first aid.

[So he was a supervamp, right?]

WillTara are enjoying cohabitation, winding up what seems to have been a pleasant evening with a bedtime story about their cat. But Tara’s tempted to get a bit of a study on: she is worried about keeping up with Willow, magically, and being of some use to the Scooby gang. Willow assures her she’s essential, though, and snuggling wins out over hitting the books. 

Before they doze off, they pause to wonder if Buffy found anything on her recent mission. No? Maybe? She’d have called if it was Apocalypse time. Oh, wait, it’s only autumn. Things are only just gearing up. Zzzzzz.

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Who doesn’t love an episode that starts with terrified, sprinting monks with a name like the Order of Dagon? These guys, they’re in full-bore flee mode, because something’s after them, and their head start is tragically skimpy. What’s more, they have a plot coupon—otherwise known as a ‘key’—to protect... and that’s all we learn before whatever it is they’re so very afraid of busts in on their spellcasting sanctum and turns them into so much lunch.

But that was all two months ago. Here and now, Buffy’s staking a big biker vampire in an abandoned parking lot. It’s a quippy, efficient kill, all in line with her current stake smarter, not harder Slayer philosophy. A supernice security guard then shows to shoo her off the property. He thinks she’s looking for a rave, and helpfully tells her to take a suspicious mystical item—a glowing ball, later to be identified as also an item from the Of Dagon collection—with her.

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Shiny focused Buffy is standing on a tomb, listening to the worms turn in one of the many Sunnydale graveyards as part of her all-new, all-slay commitment to excellence. It appears to be working out: she leaps down and stakes a vamp before it can even clear a grave. But she's not alone out there this evening: before she can go for the double, Riley whales on and stakes a second fangy attacker. Then Spike attacks the third.

Once this last vampire is, like his predecessors, dust, Spike tries to whip up a little trouble in BuffRileyland. He can't help it: he's not a Riley shipper, and that's how he deals with his pain. But neither of the humans is looking for an argument, even one about whether Riley should be patrolling alone anymore.

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