Last Week:
A bunch of stuff happened and Buffy was kicked out of the Scooby Gang.

Ten Second Recap:
Buffy wanders the Earth like Caine from Kung Fu before turning into a squatter. The Scooby Gang bicker. Faith gets a visit from The First and a private tutoring from Principal Wood. Everyone else gets jiggy with it.

For a change, UPN didn't kill the momentum of the show, and actually gave us back to back new episodes this week. (I largely blame the long time between episodes for making parts of this season seem ridiculous.)

Remember this? Joyce Summers in Conversations With Dead People: "Things are coming, Dawn. Listen, things are on their way. I love you, and I love Buffy, but she won't be there for you. When it's bad, Buffy won't choose you. She'll be against you."

Touched begins moments after last week's episode with the Scooby Crew, minus Buffy, still in the living room arguing over a plan of action. Faith finally breaks up the bickering by using her newly granted leadership powers to tell everyone to just "chill."

Later Faith goes over the Rogue's Gallery of Season 7 bad guys and decides that The Bringers are the weak link in the armor of The First. After a brief fight with Kennedy, Faith decides to use her as bait to catching a Bringer. Silently, across the Buffy viewing audience, fans secretly hope Kennedy dies. Alas, it is not to be.

Meanwhile, Caleb and The First watch The Bringers working on some cave remodeling. Apparently there is something they are trying to keep away from the good guys/gals.

Having captured a Bringer, the gang discovers that Bringers are mute as well as blind, and it will be difficult to interrogate one. Dawn steps in with an idea to use a Turkish translation spell that is used to communicate with people that can't talk. She tells everyone how the Turks used the spell in everyday life, but that's really nobody's business but the Turks.

This show had better end quickly if that is the best pun I can come up with. Then again, how often do you get to use a They Might Be Giants reference in a Buffy review?

Spike and Particle Man return from the mission to the mission in Gilroy (FYI, there is no mission in Gilroy, just miles of outlet stores and an Applebee's). Willow explains to Spike that Buffy is no longer on the team and Spike reacts appropriately. After a fistfight with Faith, Spike leaves to sniff out Buffy's new hideout.

Willow uses the Turkish spell on the Bringer but doesn't get anything more than the Bringer version of "resistance is futile."

Spike finds Buffy and gives a last minute speech to make me like him and want Buffy and Spike to be together forever. Buffy buys it, but I still don't. He's no Angel. Interesting how Buffy can make a veiled reference to Spike trying to rape her and still want to cuddle with him.

Faith gets a visit from the ghost of Slayings past from Mayor Jenkins. Just as The First knew all the right wrong things to say to the people it visited previously, the Mayor begins to gently push Faith's buttons.

As the seeds of doubt begin to grow in Faith's mind, The First vanishes and Principal Wood shows up. Wood comforts her. They swap stories about The First's ghostly appearances and then swap body fluids. I think everyone saw that coming.

Speaking of swapping spit, Kennedy has kicked the other Slayerettes out of the bedroom for the evening and set candles aglow for a night of passion with Willow. Our favorite witch seems apprehensive at first, because of Tara I assume, but it's actually because she's a witch in bed and is afraid that if she lets loose on her witchy lesbian mojo than the other witchy parts of her will surface.

Next we get a steamy musical sex montage. Faith gets Wood. Xander gives Anya the old "one eye." Kennedy shows Willow what she can do with her pierced tongue. Buffy and Spike cuddle (boring) and off-camera, Dawn discovers Andrew isn't only stunted emotionally.

The next morning, Andrew spills the beans about what he and Spike discovered in Gilroy. (Garlic flavored ice cream!) The tablets reveal that there is a weapon that Caleb and The First are protecting. They mobilize an away team to look for it. Spike wakes up to find a Dear Spike letter. Apparently Buffy has run off to the Vineyard alone.

She arrives to find Caleb and asks what it is he's hiding. Instead of fighting Caleb this time, Buffy uses some moves she learned while watching Bulletproof Monk and dodges all his attacks. She eventually sneaks by Caleb and discovers a secret hidey hole. There she finds a magical axe.

How convenient.

For those of you not following Joss Whedon's Fray comic book, which chronicles the adventures of a Slayer in the distant future, Melaka holds the same axe in issue #7 (on sale two weeks ago), a nice little bit of Slayer continuity.

Touched was a step back from last week's shocking episode. The introduction of a weapon that The First fears is a little too convenient, and if it is actually how Buffy will defeat the Big Bad, then I'll be greatly disappointed.

It seems a waste to spend all season building up The First to be this powerful, unbeatable force only to introduce a secret weapon two shows before the end. I suspect, however, that the writers have something else up their sleeve. They usually do.

Next week, the original heartthrob vampire with a soul returns to Sunnydale.

Line of the Week:
Andrew: "I feel used and violated and I need a lozenge."

If I had a quarter for every time I've said that…

Michael Goodson