Faith has taken Buffy's body and is trying to take over her life. Meanwhile, Adam manages to stir the vampire population into action.
I've come to expect better than this from a Joss Whedon episode. It's not that it's bad in any way, it just doesn't seem to have a direction. Once Faith is in Buffy's body, she seems to lose all desire for revenge or any plan to do anything, enjoying instead the family that has been long denied her. Now, the emotional aspects of the episode are well-played, but halfway through you get the feeling that nothing much has happened, and the solutions will have to come thick and fast and overly conveniently at the end of the episode.
And they do. The means to switch Buffy back is provided by Willow with no problem at all, despite it needing a trip to the nether-world, a visit that could have been fascinating if it hadn't have taken place off-camera. The Willow/Tara relationship is also getting less subtle by the minute, and I can't believe that Willow hasn't noticed how Tara feels.
All the elements that were set up in part one aren't used to their potential in this second episode, especially the Watcher's Council crack troops, whose main function seems to be to take Faith (Buffy) and cart her off to England. All well and good but caging her and keeping her out of the action doesn't make for a very interesting story. A confrontation with Giles would have been good to see, but there's no more than the brief meeting seen in This Year's Girl.
Try as I might, I still can't see Adam as a threatening character either. Yes, he's a different kind of killer, ie a thoughtful one, but somehow having a vicious malevolent killer who comes up with some kind of plan is far better than one striving to find who and what he is by examining people from the inside. He needs a gang and a really exciting apocalyptic plan or he just isn't going to cut it as a series villain.
There are some good aspects to the episode. Faith's crisis as she tries to work out whether she is good or bad and what she wants to do with her new lease of life is well done without going over the top. The vampire in the church unafraid of anything are actually more frightening than Adam, and get to die and some fantastic ways. The special effects team have done themselves proud. The final fight sequence between Faith and Buffy is particularly vicious and exciting, leaving you gasping for breath, but at the end it doesn't really seem worth much. Hopefully the rogue Slayer can be put to better use in Angel.
***
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