Buffy The Vampire Slayer

UPN Episode Air Date 02/12/02

The preview showed a bizarre juxtaposition of characters and scenes form the past. We should have taken the hint.

Throughout the season Dawn has felt neglected. To her, Buffy is only around out of obligation and the Scooby Gang because they feel bad for her. At school Dawn is called into the Counselor's office to discuss her recent losses. She expresses her frustration with people leaving her and wishes they would stop. Meanwhile she continues her shoplifting habit while shopping for a gift for Buffy.

The party celebrating Buffy's birthday was to be a joining of new friends and old. At Buffy's request Tara is invited, leading to the inevitable question "What will Willow wear?"

In addition to the Scooby gang, there were a few other party guests. There was Clem - Spike's poker buddy with the big ears and the wrinkles, Sophie - Buffy's coworker with all the allergies, and Richard - the boy toy Xander and Anya invited to not set up with Buffy. These new friends combined with the old make for some interesting group dynamics.

It seems the school counselor was actually Halfrek, the vengeance demon that is in town for Xander and Anya's wedding. It seems Halfrek was the only person in Sunnydale that recognized Dawn's pain. The demon takes it upon herself to provide Dawn with justice.

While the Scooby Gang and party guests entertain themselves to no end, they come to realize they're trapped. The first suggested escape route is with magic. However since Willow is out of the magic business, Tara has to perform the spell. But there are no supplies in the house. Or are there? Willow has to disclose her stash so that Tara can try the spell. Tara's spell does nothing to free the gang, but it does free the demon Buffy slew the night before from its sword.

Now there's a demon that can hide in walls jumping out at people. His first victim is Richard who gets a sword to the mid-section. The cute ones always go first. This puts a little more pressure on everyone to find a way out while fighting the demon.

As the group begins to go stir crazy, Anya and Xander try to guilt Willow into performing magic. This made an unexpected twist. The people who urged Willow to quit magic are now begging her to do a spell. The writers must have put this in to show the level of panic the group was going through. The only other reason would be to give Tara an excuse to come to Willow's rescue. Tara does the right thing and steps between Anya and Willow, telling Anya she has to go through her to get to Willow. Clearly she still cares about Willow. Makes us wonder if there is still hope for this lovin' coven.

As time passes the group figures out Dawn has something to do with all this. Anya trashes her room looking for clues and instead finds her stash of stolen loot, much of it stolen from the Magic Box. This provokes a sisterly heart to heart.

By some magical Slayer intuition Buffy determines the school counselor has a role in this. As Buffy shares what she learned, Anya recognizes the modus operandi of her good friend Halfrek. Anya summons her to remove the curse. (Vengeance curses can only be removed by the demon that cast them.) Halfrek appears and is immediately stabbed in the chest by the metallic demon.

Woe is they. The group will be trapped in the Summers house forever. Of course this isn't true because it would lead to a very boring season, but the ultimate exit brings some entertaining insight to the group.

Overall the episode moved a little slowly, but that may have been intentional given the story line. A few sticking points:

The introduction of new friends could have proved interesting, but didn't. Clem was cute and had a few funny lines. Richard was a pretty package, but nothing interesting. Sophie's only role was to suggest that Buffy is able to make friends. The episode wouldn't have been lacking with these three gone.

The sisterly chat was necessary to prevent the Dawn story line from getting old. But now that Dawn has been forced out of this phase, what will she get into next?

The hints of jealousy between Buffy and Spike were fun, but clearly the next step here is for Buffy to come out to the Scooby Gang about her and Spike. Tara filling the role of Buffy's confidante is an interesting twist, and suggests that Buffy still doesn't completely trust Willow and still sees Dawn as a kid. However, the opportunities for entertainment as Buffy and Spike try to make their relationship mainstream are endless.

Once More With Feeling (aka Buffy The Musical) was referred to for the second time in two weeks tonight. Xander reminded Dawn that he summoned the demon that made them all sing and dance and was later forgiven. This still does nothing to explain his motivation for it in the first place. The attempt to act like it was normal by casually throwing it into other episodes only reminds viewers that it made no sense.

All and all, this was a decent episode. There was no forward motion in the major plot lines, but relationships advanced, a demon was killed, and a good time was had by all. Except for the dead guys.

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Sharon Goodson