Previously on BtVS: Giles came back! At least, I think he did. Jury's out on that one. But onward! The remaining contestants in the Potential Pageant are comin' to town, Spike's a guest of The First's hospitality (such as it is), and Buffy has decreed that "we band of buggered" is now an army. Oh, and Willow's nervous about her magick. Surprise.

Buffy rescues a newly arrived Potential named Rhona from her welcoming committee (aka pack o' Bringers) and explains that "safe" in Sunnydale is a relative term. Meanwhile, Willow's sleeping on the floor, nervous about Kennedy's flirtatious invitation to double-up in the bed. Kennedy's inquisitive, she comes from a wealthy family, she's ignorant about magick, and she's very into Willow. I kinda like her.

Downstairs, the Potential Pack is swapping tales of impending death. Way too many competing faux accents in the room. So, do we know how to hurt The First yet? No, no change there. Eve (negative nellie with what barely passes for a badly mangled Southern accent) wonders why Buffy's worried about saving Spike, what with his whole recently-killing, being-a-vampire-ness, and Buffy (brace yourselves for the shock) can't really explain it. In lieu of an explanation, Eve's willing to accept a plan, but Buffy doesn't have one of those either. Giles suggests Bell Joxer's Eye (guaranteed to be misspelled, so it will henceforth be Joxer the Mighty), and Anya strenuously objects, clearly freaked about the whole proposition. Buffy says Spike doesn't have a lot of time, which is our cue to cut to...

Spike, still bound to the wall. A Bringer guard guy comes over to harrass him with a knife - but Spike kicks his legs up around the guy's throat and snaps his neck. Wrenching his arms free, he easily dispatches the other guard and breaks for the exit to see Buffy standing there, waiting for him. Soft music swells, and Spike lurches forward... against his ropes. D'oh! Fantasy psych-out, and First!Buffy's there to make fun of him for it. It/she tries to convince Spike that Buffy isn't coming to his rescue but stops short at the sound of Spike whispering something to himself. Moving in closer, we can hear his mantra: "She will come for me, she will come for me, she will come..." Damnit, I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but... *swoon*

Anya is unsuccessfully trying to convince a multi-spleened ex to open the gateway to Joxer the Mighty's dimension, even offering sex as part of the bargain, but Ugly's not biting. So Giles offers a different trade: if Ugly opens the gateway, Buffy won't kill all his patrons and burn his business to the ground. Well, well. Gateway achieved.

Willow answers the phone, happy to hear a familiar voice from the coven (the one in Devon who helped her be not evil anymore), but Althanea doesn't have time for chit-chat - the coven's seer apparently saw one of the Potentials arrive in Sunnydale a couple days ago, and Buffy needs to go find her. The finally untie Andrew from the chair, having no time to spare babysitting him anymore, but he doesn't seem eager to run. Seeing Buffy and Xander head off, Dawn makes a pretty damn fine observaion. Namely, more help is all well and good, but is a house full of scared, untrained people necessarily gonna be all that helpful?

The Potential Pack tries a little ineffective training in the basement, but Eve and her accent are full of "Why are we even bothering? We're all just gonna die anyway." Way to bring the room down, Eve. Actually... see, that's part of why I'm having so much fun this season - every scene is another fun opportunity to play Spot The First. And my money's on Eve - she's trying way too hard to depress everybody. Sure enough, Buffy kicks in the motel room door to find Eve lying dead in a pool of blood.

Andrew's all about wanting to be a useful member of the team, especially since he feels so alone now, and Dawn makes with her second good observation of the episode: Andrew probably wouldn't feel so isolated if he hadn't murdered his only friend. Andrew rightly points out that Spike's a killer too - a recent one, even - and Dawn tries to explain the difference. True, Spike killed people, even after he got his soul back, but at the time, he was being controlled by The First. My initial instinct was to say that Andrew was too, but he wasn't quite. Like, First!Warren was pushing him, making promises Andrew was too weak to refuse, but he still chose to kill Jonathan. Spike was completely just "not there" when he was killing. Completely unaware of what he was doing.

Aside from Spot The First, that's another thing I'm loving about this season... It's frustrating but fun to see how my feelings about Spike can fluctuate from moment to moment. His character has become so complex, and he's done so many things - both noble and evil, with and without his soul - that I'm finding I can damn him and praise him in the same breath. I still miss his sarcastic, gleeful, evil side, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm hoping will happen for/to him this season. But I do know that his character arc will be incredibly important to how this season goes for all concerned.

So Buffy gets home and orders First!Eve away from the others. First!Eve's all "Or you'll...?" but decides she's already had her fun and promises the others a toothy visitor when the sun goes down. Poof goes Evil; the others are glum and way too scared about what's coming to be of any real help. Job well done, Evil. The Potential Pack is spooked and good. In fact, they're too spooked to offer anything but "We're all gonna die" when Buffy tries to get them all to talk strategy for when Supavamp swings by later. Kennedy agrees that it looks bad, but says they should least try. Unfortunately, the others seem to be more about hopeless despair. Buffy, Willow, and Xander share a glum look of understanding and adjourn to the kitchen to share poignant looks of "What are we gonna do now?"

Side note, just in case I haven't totally outed myself already as a very large geek. Andrew tries to offer a rousing comment about the Justice League sticking together to fight "The Imperium and its shapeshifting alien horde" and my first thought is... "Huh, well they did recently have to defend the Earth against Imperiex, but I don't remember any shapeshifters..." Sigh. This from the girl who recognized The Trio's notes as Klingon. Damn right, I'm cool.

Aaanyway, the sun goes down, as it often does, and sure enough, the Bringers come to party. The Potentials weapon up, and Kennedy gets points for going straight for the crossbow. Willow takes a moment to try and deal with her uncertainty about the magick she'll have to use, and then Supavamp comes calling. It pounds the door down, and Willow goes black-eyed as she erects a magickal barrier to keep it at bay. But she's not gonna be able to hold it long. Buffy orders a retreat, and they all head out the back door.

Meanwhile, Giles and Anya emerge from Joxer the Mighty's crib with some disturbing news. Apparently, Buffy's resurrection has thrown the Slayer line into disarray, giving The First its opportunity to join the festivities. Anya looks crushed as she blames herself and the others for bringing Buffy back, crestfallen to realize that the world would be better off if they'd let Buffy stay dead. Except that unless we get some more facts not currently in evidence, that's crap. Buffy coming back in S6 didn't do a thing to the Slayer line. No new Slayers showed up after The Gift - there was just Buffy up and running around again... much the same way she'd been doing ever since she died in Prophecy Girl. That's where the Line went cockeyed. If she needs to blame anybody, plain ol' Xander should suffice, as he's the one whose efforts doubled us up on Slayers. But Joxer said the screwy Line was a recent development. Feh. I'm sure to an Evil that's been around since ever, a few years is chump change, but until I see otherwise, I'm going to operate under the assumption that this theory is, well, crap. And as much as I like her, Anya has plenty of other stuff to feel bad about without throwing this on the pile.

But back to the fleeing. With Tuvok (still don't know how to spell Supavamp's name, so I'm not gonna) on their heels, Buffy tells the others to go on ahead while she tries to slow it down. Xander insists he knows a place they can go. Kennedy volunteers to stay and help Buffy, but they tell her to go with the others. They split, and Buffy charges Tuvok with absolutely no success. She literally bounces off of him. She smashes a vial of holy water on his face, and he recoils in pain, giving Buffy time to try and lead it away from the others, but he's not taking the bait. When Buffy looks back, he's already gone.

Xander leads the pack to a construction site where they should be safe, but as we've learned, "safe" in Sunnydale really is relative, especially when Tuvok shows up to rip you apart. He advances menacingly, and the girls all cower behind Kennedy. She readies her crossbow and takes aim, then suddenly, someone hits the floodlights. The group looks up to see Buffy standing above them, satisfied that the Supavamp is right where she wants him. Kennedy takes courage from her appearance and raises the crossbow again, but Willow ushers them all off to the side, telling them it's "showtime".

Said showtime begins with Buffy gloating and swaggering. You'd think she would know by now that whenever she does this, she's about to get a severe beating, but Buffy's ready to throw down. The fight begins, and Dawn figures it out. This was planned. They lured the vampire here for the confrontation, preferring to get them all out of the already much-abused house to a place where Buffy could take this thing on without them all being in the line of fire. As a matter of fact, as we flashback to the earlier, failed pep rally, we see that there was a lot more going on during those poignant looks. Over the din, we hear Buffy's thoughts, and so did Willow. That's when they collected Xander and went into the kitchen where they could silently concoct their plan.

Thing number three about why I love this show: that three friends who've fought alongside each other for years can, in fact, develop telepathy. If one of them is a powerful witch, that is. Willow has previously reached into their minds, and it's been well over a year since Xander said he knew that he didn't have to talk out loud to answer her. It's a natural and logical extension of that, then, to believe that Buffy could reach out to Willow the same way, and Willow could be the conduit for their conversation. So that's what I love. New psychic abilities that not only have actual precedent but reinforce the bond among these three.

Well, sure enough, the showdown begins with Buffy taking a hell of a beating. The Potentials want to help (a good sign, that), but Willow tells them to wait. Finally, Buffy gets the upper hand, wrapping a length of barbed wire around the vampire's throat and pulling until his head is sliced cleanly off. He's dust. Buffy closes with a semi-rousing speech to the troops, and they all file out. The First is there, surveying the scene, and it is not a happy camper.

Meanwhile, Spike. He sees "Buffy" standing before him with a knife and invites the figment to do its worst. But she uses the knife to cut him free. Disbelieving, Spike puts a hand on her shoulder to convince himself she's really Buffy. She doesn't flinch. In fact, she almost smiles as they leave.

No new Buffy next week. Damnit.

Thoughts

Hey, that was... huh. I'm not actually sure. It had all the elements, but I think it suffered a little from its main theme. Like, spending an hour watching people be all scared and pessimistic didn't make for the grippingest drama, you know? And the fightey bits were pretty cool, but they weren't at their best. There were some good highlight moments during the big fight, but it was kind of disjointed - they sort of went from highlight to highlight without the clean flow they usually have. Not sure if that's the choreography or the editing, but considering how defiantly Buffy threw down the gauntlet, I kind of expected more from the showdown. After weeks of repeats (with yet another one next week), I guess I was hoping for a little more from the episode overall, especially since they went and titled it "Showtime". Not much of a standalone ep, being stranded in the middle of repeats probably didn't do much to help it. But I think when I sit down to watch it along with the others, it'll have more of an impact.

Giles was gorgeous, as usual, but I'm still convinced there's something not right about him. Less evident than in the last episode, but it's still there. He's not touching anything, other than to lean against stuff, kinda like Not!Spike did. We still don't know how he got away from Baron Von AxeBringer, and that's a story that *so* needs some closure. He's being very non-committal about stuff, too. He definitely seems to be helping the good, but I'm still tweaked about him dumping everything on Buffy's shoulders last ep and wandering off while she was calling for him. And he may not have brought a change of clothes, but I couldn't help but notice that it's insanely early in the morning, Anya's in a little slip of a t-shirt, and he's still got his coat on inside the house. He better not be dead. Unless it's a powerful "Strike me down, and I'll go all ObiWan on your ass" kind of dead. No, strike that. No dead Gileses. After this week, I don't think he's The First in disguise, but like I said - something ain't right there. I'm gonna keep eye on him. Not like I wouldn't be doing that anyway ;p

James? Wonderful as always. Not much Spike tonight, but I really enjoyed what there was. Spike's faith in Buffy was very touching, and I was glad to see it rewarded. Looking forward to seeing how that mutual faith gets them through the season. I still miss the old Spike, but this guy's kind of interesting too. Hey, and I just noticed this ep that there's a Buffy/Spike musical theme! You know, one of those musical cue/refrains to underline a "couple" moment. B/A had one, B/R had one, now there's one for B/S. Huh.

It was so freaking fabulous to see the threesome working together again! The mental mojo was *very* cool. Of course, it'd be nice if they remembered that Giles is one of the original Scoobies too, but he's off being vague and mysterious, I guess. Also? I really like Kennedy.

One problem I had with this episode is much the same as I had with the end of the last one (and several others throughout the series). Buffy's grandstanding does *not* do it for me. When Buffy talks big, she's inevitably about to get her teeth kicked in. And it's still far too early in the season for her to be talking big. She does seem to be aware that this fight is going to cost 'em something fierce, but if she's going to decide that they're an army now, she needs to find a way to lead the troops. Not just to shoulder the burden of leadership but to take charge and actually *lead* them. Tell them she knows they've been dealt a crap hand, but she's been there too. They can stand up and fight, or they can wait to get killed. Yeah, that's expecting a lot from them, but that's the way it is. Being frightened and uncertain is perfectly understandable, but a house full of timid folk isn't gonna do them much good. Hopefully, they'll take heart after Buffy's display of garrotting skills.

Hey, you know what I really loved? "She will come for me." Aside from being a fabulous moment from Spike/James, something hit me - the first pronoun in that thought is usually "he". For once, it was profoundly refreshing to see an able, gorgeous man waiting for a woman to come to his rescue, instead of the other way around.

All in all? Not a favourite episode, but with some standout moments, it wasn't a stinker either.

Quirks

Why was Anya so allfire spooked about going to visit Joxer the Mighty? I mean, it was kind of ooky, I guess, but she balked like it was some dangerous, harrowing quest they wouldn't return from. Sure, she had to go chat up an unattractive ex, but the big scary? Eh, just a little wind.

Like I said above, I'm gonna quibble with Anya's assumption that she, Xander, Willow, and Tara are to blame for The First coming out to play. If resurrecting Buffy, thereby skewing the Slayer Line, is the problem, then that already happened way back at the end of S1.

Body Count

4 Bringers - assorted killings by Buffy
Eve - stabbed by Bringers
Supavamp - garrotted by Buffy until decapitated

Haiku

Andrew unwanted
Only has himself to blame
for being alone

Dreaming of escape
Buffy isn't really there
"She will come for me"

Anya full of fear
Quest is full of what dark threat?
Wind will muss her hair

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