"The thing about magic, there's always consequences," warns vampire Spike (the marvelously moody James Marsters), who has become Buffy's living-dead soul mate. So when witchy Willow (the deceptively adorable Alyson Hannigan) casts a harrowing spell to bring Buffy back, little does anyone suspect she is being dragged from a blissful afterlife. In a powerful scene that ranks with the best writing of any show this season and delivered with austere agony by the remarkable Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy reveals to Spike, "Wherever I was, I was happy.... I think I was in heaven, and now I'm not. I was torn out of there, pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard and bright and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch - this is hell."
Then came the landmark musical episode, a wildly ambitious, sensationally entertaining and unexpectedly moving experiment in form by the show's gifted creator Joss Whedon. He not only wrote the exceedingly clever music and lyrics, ranging from pop rock and ballads to intricate show-tune pastiches, he directed this pivotal hour in which dark thoughts are revealed in song, each perfectly suited to character. (Among the standouts: Anthony Stewart Head, whose departing Giles will be missed.) Though a bereft Buffy sings of "Going Through the Motions" while dispatching graveyard demons in an opening anthem, no one is coasting this year.

"Give me something to sing about," she pleads in a
climactic number - then, as she and Spike passionately kiss
at the final curtain, Buffy gives fans something to swoon about.

At moments I could have sworn
I'd died and gone to TV heaven. - Roush Rave