Previously on Buffy we recap very efficiently the Big Bad Sitch and the fact that Faith is in charge and Buffy ain't. Cut to...
Chaos. Using a hand held camera we quickly see that the once cohesive force that followed Buffy into the Vineyard of Evil is now doing a headless chicken impersonation. The king is dead and all of sudden the peasants are trying to figure out what to do. Amanda wants a parliment with procedure and rules of order. Kennedy wants a nobility class where those that have been there longest get the biggest say. Dawn wants to stop feeling like a shit for throwing Buffy out of the house. Giles wants quiet. Willow wants everyone to stop arguing about the best way to argue. Finally Faith puts her foot down and tells them to get some sleep. Then the power goes out.
Mopey Buffy meanwhile is walking and watching the citizens flee. She finally breaks into an apparently empty house to crash. After taking the owner's gun away and talking in suitably zombie-mopey talk he flees from the crazy woman. Cut to credits.
Okay, this is a very hard episode to summarize for some reason. Not because it was particularily complicated but more... disjointed.
Theme One: Why it's Called an Army and Not a Democracy.
The rabble have two chaotic meetings with everyone trying to talk at once and complain. Spike and Andrew arrive and Spike is clearly not happy with the situation at all to the point where he and Faith have a bit of a tussel. The rabble then bitch and moan about what they should do and why they should do that and who should do what until Faith puts her foot down and takes control. As she puts it, she's not Buffy but she's no longer one of them. She's in charge and she wants info and she wants them to go get her a Bringer to question. And they do. The Bringer tells them that the Bringers are busy building an arsenal under the ground.
Theme Two: Why Buffy is Like a Great Big Super-Ball.
Spike finds Buffy using his super-smell power. She's fairly depressed and convinced that what getting kicked out was for the best. She even admits to the fact that she always distances them, even her friends and that she can't seem to stop doing it even though she kinda thinks she should be able to. Spike, in his own unique and twisted way, tells her why he loves her and that starts her regaining her confidence because she is a great, big super-ball.
Theme Three: Meanwhile, In the Vineyard of Evil.
Caleb and First Evil as Buffy don't do much but talk. And talk. And talk.
Theme Four: Why Aphrodisiac and Apocalypse are So Close in the Dictionary.
Buffy, all emotional turmoil, asks Spike to stay with her for the night. He holds her, playing with her hair as she sleeps. Faith is visited by First Evil as the Mayor. He plays on Faith's want for love and acceptance and her fear of never being wanted or accepted. He plants a healthy dose of paranoia over Buffy being angry at Faith and blinks out. Woods comes in and they chat about moms and dads and when he goes to leave Faith jumps him. Kennedy, somehow, manages to get all the Teen Slayers out of Willow's room so she can have her wanton way with the witch. (Sorry, practicing alliteration.) Willow is afraid that losing control 'that way' will lead to losing control in other, more dark vein and black eyed ways. Kennedy makes some analogy about kites and strings and we prove yet again that this isn't WB. Anya and Xander, sharing a tub of ice cream in the kitchen, complain a bit about the noise (which for some reason is louder in the kitchen then in the bedrooms) before deciding that you can never have to much breakup sex.
Theme Four: Why Buffy is Like a Great Big Super-Ball Part 2.
Buffy, all refreshed and chirper, returns to the Vineyard of Evil and makes like Yoda, bouncing all over the wine casks and barrels with Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger ease while Caleb punches air in Matrix-like slow motion. Finally Caleb pushes aside a barrel revealing a hole. Buffy dives into the hole and finds what the Bringers were digging up and Caleb was gloating over... an axe still partly embedded in a rock. The words "who soever pulls this" begin to form in Buffy's eyes.
Theme Five: Why Does Everyone Assume That the Bad Guys Can Only Make One Trap?
Faith sends the four Scoobs on a Buffy spying mission and they aren't seen for the rest of the show. Faith takes a bunch of the more experienced Teen Slayers (including Kennedy and Amanda) to check out the armoury. They are jumped by a bunch of Bringers but win. Kennedy finds a tunnel and they all follow it to a locked box. Faith kicks open the box to find a bomb with the countdown at 007 [tick] 006 and she [tick] 005 [tick] orders them all out and we...
[tick] Fade to [tick] black [tick].
RANDOM THOUGHTS
This, at first glance, has nothing to do about Buffy but went to see X-men 2 on the weekend. The first thing was the coming soon for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen starring Sean Connery as Alan Quartermain. As it's a favourite comic of both Xander and Andrew I'm sure they'll be all excited. If they survive. Second was the line from the movie itself when Bobby's mom asked if he ever tried just not being a mutant. As it was an exact quote from the Buffy episode Becoming Part 2. "I-I mean, have you tried *not* being a Slayer?". Things like that amuse me. Plus, Magneto was reading Once and Future King and, dang, didn't that axe look like Excaliber? Except for the general axeness of it.
Touched. Good title. Much touching.
Kennedy has a tongue piercing.
Giles use of the term 'dumb' is politically incorrect and used soley for an easy laugh. [shakes finger in general direction] tsk-tsk.
Aphrodisiac to Apocalypse... six words between and two of them have to do with bees. Go figure. [humming in head 'birds do it, bees do it, slayers and Scoobs do it.'
Looks like Wood got a first hand look at Faith's Use 'em & Lose 'em School of Dating.
Plot thingy. How did Spike know Buffy was right about the Vineyard when a) Spike didn't know that the thing is at the Vineyard, only that it exists and b) that Buffy was advocating going to the Vineyard? Willow's revisionist account didn't go into the why.
Apparently the shooting script has the translation from Turkish for the spell. "You are getting very sleepy. Very, very sleepy. I do not have a pocket watch but then again, you do not have eyes. Speak to us."
RANDOM QUOTES
Man: "You just can't order me out of my house!"
Buffy: [in zombie mode] "Why not? All the cool kids are doing it."
Vi: I don't want to die.
Anya: Don't worry. It's far more likely you'll stay alive long enough to watch most of your friends die first. And then you'll die.
Spike: (re: Andrew): He's a breath of fresh air, isn't he? Thank God I don't breathe.
Giles: "Kennedy, he can't see the knife."
Andrew channeling the Bringer: "I can feel the knife."