THE REPLACEMENT

After the basic recap of "previously on Buffy the Vampire..." were we really rehash the Dawn plot and then cut to two thirds of the couples: Xander/Anya and Riley/Buffy.  The four are at Xander's basement studying (Buffy), giving massages (Riley) and trying to give massages (Xander) to girlfriends with dislocated shoulders (Anya).  Xander's parents arrive home and, much to Xander's embarrassment, begin a major battle upstairs.  As a cloud of dust settles on Anya, Xander decides that maybe it's time to move.  And, because this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and not Dawson's Creek, we cut to a demon performing some dire ritual just before we go to the credits.

When we come back the four plus Willow are apartment searching.  Actually, they're once again torturing Anya.  See Xander finds this great apartment with lots of light, a ceiling fan and a bedroom that gets the Buffy and Riley Seal of Approval.  Only problem is the first and last month rent, security deposit, cleaning deposit as well as all the other rents as Xander's construction gig is about to come to an end.  Anya is angry that she's being shown pretty things that she can't have and storms off.

Meanwhile, at the magic shop, Giles is cleaning up odds and ends when he is jumped by the demon.  However, the demon wants the Slayer and leaves.  After the gang arrives, and Giles describes the epic battle a couple of times, they do a bit of research and find that the demon is named Toth and that he uses weapons and devices to fight.  He's also rather focused, seems to be targeting the Slayer (which causes Riley's "Man Protect Woman" instinct to kick in) and stinks.  Next stop, city dump.

After a brief chit chat with a scavenging Spike the Scoobies are jumped by Toth who shoots a green beam of magic from a tube at Buffy.  However, Xander pushes Buffy out of the way and takes the hit which punches him back and into a big heap of garbage bags.  By the time the Scoobies regroup Toth has disappeared and so they all help a groggy Xander home.  As they leave we are treated to a second Xander, lying unconscious in the garbage.

After the commercial break Xander awakes, finds himself in the dump and so heads home.  Unable to unlock the door he peeks into his window where he sees the other Xander dressing for work.  After tripping over the walkway he runs to the nearest payphone to call Buffy.  However, while waiting for Buffy to answer he spots the other Xander and decides to follow him.

Okay, Xander who got helped home is hereafter referred to as Blue Shirt Xander and the one left to sleep with the garbarge is Hawaiian Shirt Xander.

Blue Shirt Xander goes to the construction site and works until the foreman calls him into the office where he is told he is doing an excellent job and the boss wants to make him a full time employee.  In charge of a interior work.  With a raise.

Hawaiian Shirt Xander gets brained by a Porta-Johnny door and falls off a makeshift scaffold while spying.  He is also very suspicious of a small shiny disc that the Blue Shirt Xander keeps playing with.

Blue Shirt Xander returns to the apartment, finds that his credit check was good and that he can have the place now that he has a full time job.  He can also, apparently, have the building manager who gives him her phone number.

Hawaiian Shirt Xander trips all over the corridor while eavesdropping.  And when Blue Shirt Xander comes out of the apartment HSX confronts him, only to get punched and knocked to the ground.

HSX rushes to Giles but BSX has beaten him there and now Giles, Buffy and Riley think that BSX is the real Xander.  So HSX rushes to Willow's and convinces her that he is the real Xander (not that she knew there was a choice).  HSX suddenly realizes that Anya might be in danger from HSX and rushes to her place where he finds an answering machine message from HSX to Anya telling her to meet him at the apartment.

Willow heads to Giles where they all get confused about which is the real Xander until Giles announces that they are both the "real" Xander.  Apparently Toth's plan was to split Buffy into a human Buffy and a Slayer Buffy and then kill the weak human.  When one half dies, so does the other.  Buffy and Riley rush off in Giles car to stop either Xander from doing anything rash while Giles and Willow do more research.

At the apartment BSX and Anya are having a sensitive chat about being human, mortality and denture adhesive.  This is rudely interrupted by HSX bursting in with Anya's gun.  Riley and Buffy arrive in time to stop Xander from committing what would have to be the strangest case of murder/suicide in history and convinces the two Xanders that they are just two sides of the same coin.  Which, by the way, is what the "magic hyptno disc" was, a flattened nickel.  As they prepare to leave Toth arrives, Buffy and Riley kill him and Xander looses his cleaning deposit. 

At the magic shop the two Xanders, now dressed the same, are becoming more and more similar which Anya finds very intriguing and suggests that maybe she should take the boys home and then slap them together in the morning.  However, Willow breaks the spell and everything is as back to normal as it ever was.

Later Xander, Riley, Buffy and an unwilling Anya help pack up Xander's place and Xander and Riley take a moment to talk girls.  Riley assures Xander that Anya loves the whole Xander package, not just the "positive" bits that were BSX.  Xander says that he kinda envies the relative sanity of the Riley/Buffy relationship.  Riley says that when he's with Buffy it's like he's split in two with one half going crazy with excitement and the other half all still and quiet because he knows that she's the one.  

"But she doesn't love me." 

(At this point, across the world, there is a stunned silence followed by the sound of stampeding feet as thousands of fanfic writers head to their word processors chanting "toldya, toldya, toldya" and starting their next B/W or B/F or B/A or B/C or B/ABR (anybody but Riley) story.) 

Buffy returns for a kiss, Xander stands there confused and stunned and then the screen fades to black.

Random Quotes

Giles: (grabbing talisman at random) "Rabbit foot!!  No!!  Wait!!"  (grabs another talisman at random)
Toth: "That is a fertility god."

Xander: "So, you bought the magic shop and you were attacked before it was opened.  Who's up for a swinging chorus of the "I Told You So" chorus?"

Xander: "There comes a point when you either move on or buy yourself a Klingon costume and go with it."

Xander: "Just wait 'til you have an evil twin.  See how you handle it."
Willow: "I handled it fine."

Giles: "Oh dear God."
Buffy, Willow & Riley: natter natter, ignore ignore.
Giles: "I said, Oh dear God."
Buffy: "You always say that."
Giles: "It's always important."

Riley: "Psychologically this is fascinating.  Doesn't it just make you want to lock them up in separate rooms and perform experiments on them?  <pause and the look> Just me then."

Giles: "We just need to arrange the candles.  Also, we should continue to pretend not to have heard all the disturbing sex talk."
Willow: "Check.  Candles and pretense."

Riley: (at Xander surveying the empty basement) "Getting nostalgic?"
Xander: "No, I still can't find the damn remote."  (Okay, he didn't say that.  But *I* was thinking it.)

Riley: (to Buffy) "There's no part of you I'm not in love with."
Riley: (to Xander) "But she doesn't love me."

Random Notes:

1. The episode was written by Jane Espenson who has written Band Candy, Gingerbread, Earshot, Harsh Light of Day, Pangs, Doomed, A New Man and Superstar.  (I included those three episodes from season three as they are pretty cool episodes, especially Earshot which is, in my opinion, the Hush of that season.)
2. The episode is directed by James Contner who in season four, directed The Initiative, The I in Team, New Moon Rising and Primeval as well as the Epsenson written The Harsh Light of Day and Doomed.
3. This was a Tara-free, Dawn-lite and Spike-lite show.  Only seven more Taraless shows to go.
4. Okay, what does Riley mean by "But she doesn't love me"?  We can simply accept it at face value (Buffy doesn't love him) or yet another sign of his amazingly low self esteem (As evidenced by his reaction when Angel and Dracula and any other dark and brooding walking angst shows up).  Not to crush the hopes of a million subtexters but the boy could be wrong here.  Either way, this is set up for major angst somewhere down the road (but hopefully not as long as the 19 shows between Dopplegangland and New Moon Rising).
5. Willow, Riley and Buffy all spend a lot of time ignoring this episode what with Xander's parents, Anya and Xander's tiff about the apartment and finally Anya's theory on group sex vs cheating.  Willow's reaction, a plastic cheerful grin was the scariest.  Riley's coughing was the most creative.  Anya's little leg hug at the beginning was rather sweet.
6. Why didn't Spike suddenly get two little lamps when Toth's beam hit it?