Last Time on Buffy:
Giles distracts Buffy while Principal Wood tries to get his revenge on Spike. That turned out not so good for Principal Wood. Willow goes off to guest star in an Angel episode.

Ten Second Recap:
Faith returns, a new villain appears and Team Buffy suffers a big loss in the war on evil.

Let's see if I can avoid pissing off more Buffy fans this week…

Nathan Fillion (Captain Mal on the sorely missed Firefly) returns to the Whedonverse this week as a brand new villain, Caleb, for Buffy and Company to tackle. Like every other episode this season, he's in cahoots with The First and like his character on Firefly, his dialogue has an odd phraseology-zors.

Caleb reminds me of a Garth Ennis creation. His homage to his religious past, attitude towards women, all wrapped up in a shroud of strength and violence. Being a big Garth Ennis fan, I liked Caleb as soon as I figured out he was evil.

At the start of the season I discussed what I thought was necessary to create a good villain and how each season the writers have to give us bigger and badder threats for our heroes to tackle. If they didn't, we'd just say that Evil Guy B is not as dangerous as Evil Guy A was, so Buffy should have no trouble defeating him.

After defeating demons, gods, witches, a rogue Slayer, spirits, mutants, nerds and thousands of vampires, Buffy may have finally met her match, or at the very least defeating the First will come with a bigger price tag. Already Buffy has lost the innocents she was trying to protect and now poor Xander is also paying the price.

I have to give the writing team credit. I have no clue how this show will end.

Faith returns, but not for her own series...

Faith also returned to Sunnydale this week and picked up where she left off (minus the whole being evil thing). Eliza Dushku is so good in her role as Faith and so bad in every movie she's in that it still amazes me she turned down the chance to have her own Buffy spin-off. (It's worse -- she instead took a non-related pilot for Fox with exactly the same premise as the short-lived UPN show Haunted. -Derek)

Together Buffy and Faith rekindle the old magic. We see that Buffy's character has become more "Faith-like" since the two last teamed up. My wife hated the flirting between Spike and Faith, but I find it easier to understand than the "attraction" between Spike and Buffy.

Faith's speech about all men having fantasies tied in nicely with the role-playing games Caleb and The First were enjoying.

Buffy makes a bad call as Slayer Commander by ignoring Giles' pleas to take more time before confronting Caleb, but hindsight is 20/20. She took the risk that Caleb had set a trap for her and it cost her. I guess Buffy hasn't learned everything she can from her Watcher yet.

What did Caleb mean when he called Xander "the one who sees?" Did he means that he's the "Zeppo" that has been with Buffy from the start, thus watching her, or was it foreshadowing? I suspect the former, but I want to leave no nit unpicked.

Dialogue from Potential:
XANDER: They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie. To be the one who isn't chosen; to live so near the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes, 'cause nobody's watching me. I saw you last night, I see you working here today... You're not special. You're extraordinary.

DAWN: Maybe that's your power.

XANDER: What?

DAWN: Seeing. Knowing.

Xander is so much better at making speeches than Buffy.

This one's just for Goodson...

No Anya this week, which is a bit of a downer. Her character is usually the source of some good comedy and I was hoping that she and Faith might swap banter over their shared history of nailing Xander.

Instead, the big comedy moment of the episode was brought to us by Andrew. His story/dream sequence about Faith has to be the highlight of the year in my book. I never thought I'd see Faith fighting…well, you know.

In my review of Lies My Parents Told Me, I mentioned that it was my secret wish that Spike be killed before the conclusion of the series. This angered many readers and I expected that. I stand by my opinion that Spike's character is one that would do better to live fast and die young (relatively speaking) a la James Dean and Sid Vicious rather than be granted a happy ever after.

I have faith that the Whedon and crew can make Spike's final moments touching and heroic in a way that cements him as an immortal television character.

Agree or disagree. It's your right. How boring would it be if we all had the same opinion, anyway?

Line of the Week:
Spike: "Angel is dull as a table lamp and we have very different coloring."

Until next week, send hate mail to…

Michael Goodson