It was okay--much better than the past couple of weeks, I think.

Thoughts:
Removing the chip was stupid. Spike had a soul when the First made him kill people. Removing the chip entirely made it all the easier for the First. Everyone is apparently aware that Spike can now turn murderous at any given moment. Giles was right. Buffy was at least thirty kinds of wrong, wrong, wrong. Let's endanger all the people in Buffy's life, because she can't handle Spike being gone.

Muzzling vampires is wrong? If chipping Spike laid the path for him to turn 'good', then the chip was a good thing. In fact, if chipping vampires can make them good, it'd make Buffy's slaying slaughter of redeemable creatures. Which seems much wronger to me.

Jonathan! I missed you! Why did Andrew have to kill you? And, it's nice that Andrew wasn't automatically pulled to the evil side

Kennedy still creeps me out, doing nothing to dispel the feeling of possessiveness she gave off last week.

Xander gets stabbed in the gut and nobody takes him to be checked out for internal damage? Poor Xander; I rather like him, when he's not being a tool.

Giles, Giles, never leave again. It's nice to know somebody is capable of remembering the whole evil thing. For people who were "taking the fight to the First", they sure have a hard time getting away from their social lives.

I wonder if the First is setting Spike it up to make it look like Spike killed the principle--that would fracture Spike off from the group, and allow the First easy access to whatever it thinks it needs Spike for.

Next week looks... uh. I have no idea. The girl-power music just confused me. But I think I saw , so maybe we'll have some actual overall plot movement (I'm completely unspoiled beyond one casting spoiler in the future, but my money's on the moral of the season being )

(Edited because I forgot this board requires spoilerizing of the previews)

overall a real dissapointing episode.
The stunt casting of Ashanti, whoever she is, was lame and she couldnt act. Neither could the Principals Mother.
The whole Zander date thing was lame. Didnt he end a potential marriage because he didnt think he could be in a relationship?
The whole wire on the Andrew just seemed badly written. Would "The First" really have put up with that crap?
And the Cantonese Potential Slayer....
Ha haa. Funny, we cant understand her. That type of humor might work in a sitcom or a Teen movie but not here.

I did like the interaction between Woods and Buffy and the stuff about Buffy defending Spike but the rest of it was filler crap and a bunch of scenes that were very poorly written.
You know your in trouble when the funniest line is Andrew making a reference to Scott Bacula "Ahhh, Captain Archer."

The Buffy writing was really great there for awhile at the beginning of the season but this reminds me of the lack of cleverness that hung over the show last year.
Like Gile said and I think it summed up the episode, why are all of you dating and fooling around when something is trying to kill us.
Surely the Scooby gang have been around the block to know this by now.

Yeah and next week, a great music video from the looks of the preview.

UPN really promotes Buffy all wrong.

"Redemption is hard."

Actually, even though I caught flack for the "Giles ducked" explanation/prognostication, Giles, in fact, caught the handle part of the axe as it was approaching his neck, and then went all medieval on the Bringer's ass.

I enjoyed the "origin" of Robin Wood tonight. It brings instant conflict on 2 sides of the "good fight" for Buffy and company.

The whole rearview reflection thing has been blown out of proportion. Sure, Spike probably doesn't show up in the mirror, and Wood doesn't let us, the viewers, know what he saw, but for all he knows, Spike could have been a demon with other characteristics that include the non-reflective properties, but his suspicious were finally proven true when Spike went into Vamp-face-,mode, and he uttered his pronouncement of Spike's Vamp-ness. Not a big deal, and it doesn't require any retconning or ME pulling something out of a hat to explain it away. But the look on Buffy's face in the car was priceless when Wood asked how they knew one another.

I loved the Chinese girl who only spoke Cantonese, I busted out on almost every one of her lines. Classic comedic bits sprinkled in by my favorite Buffy-scribe, Jane Espenson. She really does know how to do the small character interaction bits while moving the bigger story along. Perhaps the only big lapse was the Lyssa character, who had a very small throwaway reason for doing to Xander what she did. But it's not enough to ding the writing because everything else was so much good and fun.

Giles being uptight be the whole situation, and who can blame him when you got the Scoobs out on dates. Andrew backing down the First, and even doing some wire-work (but why doesn't the First know that he was wired in the first place? I guess the First's attention can't be everywhere all the time). Anya's love'em/hate'em attitude towards Xander is just juicy flavored bits that make this episode fun to watch and enjoy.

From my recollection of Season 5, I thought's Robin's mom had a bigger 'fro, though.

BTW, I thought SMG looked very nice tonight, sure, she's thin, but I thought she looked "right" in this episode, like she was happier than going through the motions of previous episodes.

"Did you find the gun?"
"Yeah, it was in Buffy's undewear drawer. She has nice things."
"Show me."
"Well, I didn't take them, but she has thongs and regular underpants..."
"Show me the GUN."

I can't remember the last buffy that had this many good one-liners...

"Bidet of Evil"
"Gay me up. Let's gay."
"*sigh* Captain Archer."

On another note, why do they always make cantonese sound so annoying and nasally??? Granted, it doesn't sound as nice as mandarin, but they really made that girl sound whiny. Either that or she didn't really know how to speak cantonese.

Can't a fella just try to get "some"? I think a relationship was the last thing he was thinking about. Pretty good casting call with Ashanti though, "It's Murdaaa". OK, bad rap reference....

It's already beed established that the first has no power to harm people in it's "vapor" state. So there is really nothing it could do unless it had control of another "person".

My only question now is, I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before.

Andrew brings the goods again.

the "Giles Incident" is finally explained.

that Oriental chick had some serious _ _ _ lips...

Thought the principal "dismissing" the First was cool...until it had him believin' Spike killed Mama. Unless it's true...

Oh Ashanti, where should I begin? There really aren't enough negative adjectives in the world to describe my feelings about her. Decapitation wasn't enough.

Glad to see that I wasn't the only one befuddled by the onslaught of whatever chick band they forcefed us during next week's preview. It literally assaulted my senses...

I have two questions about this episode:

1. How did Xander send a text message to Willow???

2. When Giles was sternly reprimanding everyone for not having their priorities straight, was it inappropriate for me to burst out laughing at that moment? I mean - everyone had these deadly serious looks on their faces, so I'm not certain if the scene was being played for laughs. But Giles scolding them while holding up pictures of dismembered stick figures just struck me as hysterical.

I really liked this episode. The second Robin Hood (er, I mean Wood) said his mother was a slayer killed by a vamp, I thought of Spike's fight on the subway and figured he KNEW it was Spike already, but when he showed up at dinner without a problem, I assumed I was over thinking the situation. Glad to see it brought back where I expected it, but with the twist of the First guiding him.

The whole Giles thing was just brilliantly executed in my opinion. One of the things I love about Buffy is that it assumes it's viewers are intelligent and then plays from there. With Giles, they proceeded from the assumption that we'd be smart enough to figure out the subtle "is Giles dead" and then played off of that as an actual plot point. I love it, and I love how quickly they dismissed it ("the Bringer's shoes squeeked").

All in all, this was just classic Buffy. The comedy was spot-on, and all the actors seemed reinvigorated into their characters. The Xander plot was pretty stupid, but it had its moments. I'm guessing this is our "calm before the storm" episode. We usually get a light-hearted fun ep before big things start to go down, although with UPN's asstastic promotion department, who knows wtf next week will really be like.

das

I missed the pre-opening credits "previously on BtVS" section. Was there any further explanation of Giles' escape other than the squeaky shoe line later in the ep?

Yes. It opened with him blocking the Bringers axe swing, disarming him, then killing him with his own axe.

• Quoth 12thmonkey •<HR SIZE=1>I missed the pre-opening credits "previously on BtVS" section. Was there any further explanation of Giles' escape other than the squeaky shoe line later in the ep? <HR SIZE=1>

Well, they opened the episode with the shot of the axe coming down, him stopping it with his hand, and then kicking some ass and then shifted to a scene with him explaining to the Slayerettes about how it was all instinct and training and such just before Spike tackles him, and they have a nice exchange where Giles points out that if he were the first, why'd Spike try to tackle him? Then he catches on that Spike was actually able to tackle him without pain, which shifts into discussion on the decision to remove the chip.

das

Thanks for the update, das

Does anyone know whatever happened to slayerette Chloe (Lalaine)? She hasn't been on in awhile.....

Well, it is true. See season 5. That's how Spike got his long, black coat. He took it off of the slayer he killed, Principal Wood's mother.

Pretty good episode, less of Kennedy is a good thing. Although the way she was crowding over Willow was kind of creepy. Chloe seems to have just disapeared without explanation, is it just bad continuity or what? I liked that Anya was jealous and then concerned for Xander. Andrew is now officially a scoob. Anyone else notice that Andrew and Dawn seem to have some kind of chemistry?? The preview for next week was kind of funny, so that means that something horrible is going to happen hehe.

How many people saw the connection between Wood and his momma slayer before last night's episode? I would doubt many did (since we didn't really have all that much to go on before last night's episode). But it's really a cool twist.

I had the same question. Did they explain that and I just missed it? Seemed like they pulled that out of their ass, since they needed a way to know Xander was in trouble. Other than that, I loved last nights episode. Plenty of funny moments.

Nope ... never saw that coming. I figured he was some freelance guy; in fact, I recall refering to him as a "watcher" in the Highlander sense. I think it's a great concept, though.

das

I agree. Didn't they cut right from a shot of Willow trying to figure out the text message to a shot of Xander completely tied up? That had to be on purpose. Poking fun at their own flaw. Or not.

Ashanti: not good.

Andrew: continues to get funnier.

On the surface, your and Gilies' logic is surely correct.



My speculation. I could be wrong.

Probably. That doesn't make the decision any less irresponsible, stupid, and wrong. Spec:


On a seperate note, I'm sort of outlining my nightmare season/series finale as things progress, and have come up with two potentially cringe-inducing plotpoints (Pure speculation, spoilerized because if I'm right, you may not wanna know):

The whole 'Spike with a Chip' story has been a parallel to the movie A Clockwork Orange - and whether you agree or not, the message is, as Buffy says (I don't remember the exact words), "You can't fight wrong by doing wrong", or 'The ends do not justify the means.'
I think Vampires are portrayed as redeemable. However, the chips haven't been perfected and souls are hard to come by. Of course, the chip isn't really redemption.

As for this episode - I like most others seem to have realized the Wood-Spike (heh) connection as soon as he said 'Vampire' and yeah, I thought she had a bigger 'fro when she died.

Re: the Xander text message. Maybe it was a 'I'm getting some' message he sent before he got tied up. I don't think the continuity supports this, but it is possible.

The preview

The whole crux to Buffy's choice in removing Spike's chip is her playing to Spike's "William" pathology/psychology. Basically Buffy sees that Spike with a soul is an entity who wants to be a better man for Buffy, the one who believes in him. We've seen evidence of Spike's arc in how he's come to soak in Buffy's underlying trust to refuse to do evil's bidding because he knows now that there is someone out there that believes in his innate goodness before he was a vampire, and in some respects, he wants that part of himself back, and only by becoming virtuous can he seek redemption for his past crimes/sins. Buffy realizes all of this, and made the ultimate choice to trust Spike (with soul) by having his chip removed.

When people say, "Classic Buffy episode" or Classic Buffy Dialogue," it leads me to believe they are holding it up to the Best of Buffy in the past. This was no where near good as say episodes from Season 2 or 3.
It was written slopily and scenes that never would have been played for laughes just inserted to complete a episode over all.

Aim higher.

Something to ponder -

What will Robin Wood "Robin Hood" do when he realizes that the leather coat that Spike wears belonged to his mother?!?


And I too am confused as to how Xander sent a text message when he was tied up?!