Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I hate the second half of the season. The "previously" just gets longer and longer. This one recapped the whole thing with particular emphasis on Andrew; Boy Hostage.
(Right, this is going to be confusing because there are flashbacks, fantasy segments, fantasy flashbacks, real time/life and mockumentary cam-corder scenes. Just try to watch the show. It's rather good.)
Currently on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In a Masterpiece Theatre setting Andrew introduces a tale he likes to call "Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyres". We then watch Buffy in action in a graveyard until Anya rudely interrupts the fantasy by yanking Andrew and his video camera out of the bathroom before the Teen Slayers remember that they have martial arts training and no one would object to using Andrew as a punching target. Break to credits.
Back in the graveyard Buffy finishes off the vampires and then threatens Andrew if he doesn't stop videotaping her. Cut to Anya pulling Andrew down the hall ready to threaten Andrew if he doesn't stop the insane videotaping. Andrew mentions interview, unique perspective and Anya goes all Nora Desmond.
In the basement Andrew uses the Whiteboard of Planning to show the Gentle Viewer what they're up against. Then it's upstairs for breakfast where he introduces the various Teen Slayers and Scoobies. The scene shifts into some wind-tunnel, slo-mo segment. Buffy wants Andrew to stick the video camera someplace but the other Teen Slayers and Scoobies are warming to the idea. Buffy distracts them all with another speech, which thankfully Andrew skips out on and takes us with him.
Andrew confesses to the camera that he used to be a super-villain and we get a skewed perspective of an evil scientist's lab with attentive lackeys Jonathan and Warren. Reality seeps in before the sight of Kennedy and Willow flirting reminds Andrew of when he met Dark Willow. We replay the scenes from Two To Go with Andrew's lines redone and then Buffy goes to work and we break for breakfast.
Because this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and not Andrew the Videocamera Geek we need to show what's happening in her life. Basically, all the plots from the first two season and happening all at once, right now. She puts a Band-aid on Principal Wood's head (he didn't duck fast enough to miss the first rock). They look over the school blueprints and decide that the seal in the basement is focusing the Hellmouth influence so that everything is happening much more intensely. They finally decide that maybe it would be a good thing to close it down. But first they get up close and personal with it and the Seal takes over Principal Wood who accuses Buffy of doing the nasty with Spike. Buffy snaps him out of it (slamming people into brick walls does that).
Andrew does his very short Dawn segment and then makes sure that future generations will know what a craftsman Xander is by lingering lovingly over the window sash. Andrew then corrals both Xander and Anya for a joint interview that turns into a psych session where Andrew encourages Xander and Anya to discuss the whole stranded at the altar thing. Andrew then video tapes Spike getting all threatening and then tapes it again when Spike misses his mark.
The conversation between Xander and Anya continues except that it isn't live. Andrew is playing and replaying the scene, mouthing Anya's lines until Buffy and Principal Wood arrive to tell him that it's his turn to save the world. Or something like that.
Flashback to Mexico during the summer break where Andrew and Jonathan are sharing a dream. They wonder what it all means, reestablish that they are hunted men with a dark past and do some mutual ego building before the present intrudes. Willow is using a shiny rock to get Andrew to remember all the details of his re-seduction to the dark side. He flashes back to recount how The First posing as Warren got him to buy a special dagger which he's been storing in the knife drawer. It has writing on the side which Andrew, summoner of demons, can read. Willow uses the translation to do some research and she and Buffy come up with a plan that they don't bother to tell anyone. Spike, Principal Wood, Buffy and Andrew head off to the school.
Oh, there's a fantasy scene with the Legion of Evil Geeks dressed in tunic-togas and playing harps and dancing in a primary coloured, Teletubby induced nightmare but... least said the better.
The school is in the midst of a Lord of the Flies moment. Fires burning in barrels, lockers pulled down, graffiti and brawling students. Spike and Principal Wood hold the door way to the Seal while Buffy and Andrew head down. On the way Andrew recaps why he killed Jonathan. Actually, he recaps twice. The first time he killed Jonathan because he and Jonathan struggled and Jonathan was stabbed accidentally. The second time he killed Jonathan because the Seal possessed him and he had no control. They reach the door and hear some chanting. Entering they see five students that have been turned into Bringers and the Seal is glowing.
Meanwhile, Xander and Anya are on Spike's mysteriously wide cot having just had their "one more time" time. Both are sad, resigned. That's it for the tender moment, back to the fight.
Principal Wood and Spike beat up on students. Principal Wood almost stakes Spike but a student tackles him before he can. Buffy beats up/off the five Bringers and tells Andrew the plan. According to Willow's research the blood of the person who opened the Seal will close the Seal. How much blood is open to debate so it may not actually kill him. Andrew tries to rationalize and explain but Buffy stops him. Life isn't a story. Telling what happened again and again and changing it and modifying it makes it a story, not the truth. The truth is that a lot of people are going to die, a lot of girls, maybe Buffy, likely Andrew. She grabs Andrew and holds him with his feet on the edge so that he's angled over the Seal. Knowing that Buffy is going to kill him he finally admits that he killed Jonathan, that he knew that Warren wasn't really Warren. As he cries, tears fall to the Seal and it goes inert and Buffy releases him so that he falls onto the Seal. Buffy tells him that the Seal wanted tears, not blood and that she wasn't going to stab him. But she can't answer him when he asks what she would have done if the tears hadn't worked. Meanwhile, upstairs the students, stunned and dazed, stop fighting and wander off.
In the bathroom studio Andrew looks into the camera. "Here's the thing. I killed my best friend. There's a big fight coming and I don't know what's going to happen. I don't even think I'm going to live through it. That's probably the way it should be. I guess I'm..."
Abrupt cut to black.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
Okay, was southern Ontario the only area where the closed captioning was paid for by a TOOTHPASTE company? And not just any toothpaste but one specially formatted for sensative teeth.
I really liked this episode. It reminded me of the episode Zeppo a lot without being anything like Zeppo.
I know, just know, that when Andrew's playing D&D with Jonathan and Warren he always played the assassin thief. But when he played with people he didn't know - he played the paladin.
There's a movie called CQ. Umm, let's see... 2002 MGM. It also has a story teller sitting in the bathroom narrating the story of his life.
Are the vampires taking lessons or did someone turn the gymnastic team?
Vampires have no reflection. Old fashioned cameras used mirrors. Modern digital video doesn't. I just made that up.
It's nice that the students went to the trouble of bringing in oil barrels so that their arson was contained.
Return of the white board. I want Andrew to do my company's presentations.
Now I can answer the question "Mommy, where do baby Bringers come from?"
I've read two interviewers who have both asked Tom Lenk, the actor who plays Andrew, if there is an Andrew/Dawn romance in the works. Therefore I have started a list:
5) "Warren was cool. And wasn't Jonathan just the cutest thing?"
4) "Mmmm, Patrick Swayze."
3) "Mmmm, Captain Archer."
2) Xander looks to him for advice on how to be gay.
1) When given a choice between videotaping two girls making out and a window that Xander has put in he chooses the window.
RANDOM QUOTES
Anya: "What are you doing?"
Andrew: "Entertaining and educating."
Anya: "Why can't you just masturbate like the rest of us?"
Rona: "I mean if we win it would be nice to have a record."
Amanda: "If we don't save the world, then nothing matters."
Kennedy: "Catchy, Amanda. We should make that our slogan."
Andrew: "Honestly, Gentle Viewers, these motivating speeches of hers tend to get a little long."
Andrew: [after the flashback] "Well, shall we see if Buffy's still talking?"
Buffy: "...yada yada yada ... we need to be an army ... blah blah blah..."
Andrew: "She's not done. Even Willow looks bored and she usually can take a lot of that stuff."
Andrew: "Yeah, it wasn't easy. I had to meet this demon guy who sells all these weird weapons and stuff."
BB as Warren: "Show me."
Andrew: "Well, I didn't buy them but he had poison arrows and this sort of collapsible sword..."
BB as Warren: "Show me the knife."
Andrew: "Check out Spike and the Principal. There's something going on there. Sexual tension you could cut with a knife."
Andrew: "Oh God. Struck down before I achieve redemption."