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Wednesday, January 9, 2002

Review: Buffy gets graphic (and a haircut)

By STEPHANIE McGRATH -- AllPop

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 10

It's been a long time since we've seen a brand new episode of 'Buffy', and we are every so happy to welcome the return of our favourite little heroine.

This week's episode revolves around invisibility rays and Buffy's hair (which is actually the more interesting story line. Cut: good. Colour: bad. Please have blonder hair. What's with this trying to look natural business -- you're a vampire slayer who cares about reality?)

Buffy

We find our slayer (who still has long hair at this point. Actually, I think it's a wig) packing up anything that might remind Willow of her magical addiction. (Remember, the last episode was the very special "Willow is addicted to magic" episode that ended with Dawn in a car crash and Willow having the ex-magic binge shakes. Now Buffy and company are trying to help Willow kick the hocus-pocus habit.)

*Note: Usually I'm a fan of Dawn. I think her character is pretty cool, but during the opening scene she kept whining about the need to pack up candles and such. Then she continued to whine for the entire episode. The whining is really bugging me.

During her magic-cleansing process, Buffy finds Spike's Zippo. Ahhhh, she needs to cleanse herself of Spike like Willow needs to cleanse herself of magic. Get it?

Meanwhile, the geek trio is making an invisibility ray with the diamond they stole awhile back. Two of the small extra-geeky geeks wish it looked "cooler" -- banter, banter, geek-speak.

*Note: I used to really dig these geeks. Now they are getting annoying. Please leave.

CREDITS

Willow is wearing some very comfy looking pyjamas and trying to make an omelet. Buffy yells for Dawn to hurry up and get ready for school. Dawn enters, with her arm all bandaged up (from the car accident that Willow was responsible for). Willow asks if she wants an omelet. She doesn't. Buffy tells her she should eat, and Dawn snaps "Thanks for the concern".

Mee-ooow, that Dawn is getting tres lippy.

Just then, Spike rushes in, covered in a smoking blanket (the sun burns vampires, remember?). Spike says he was just going for a walk and decided to drop by. (Okay grade-eight boy.)

Dawn goes to get ready and Willow decides to have a bath, which leaves Buffy and Spike alone in the kitchen. Spike calls Buffy some pet names and talks about how much he loves her hair and then ... whoooaaaaa ... a brief scene that doesn't show much but still manages to be explicit at the same time. I shall say no more.

Then Xander, who is going to drive Dawn to school, bursts into the kitchen and puts an end to the Buffy/Spike action. He thinks Spike is still trying to hit on Buffy and that it's gross and the affection is one-sided and blah blah blah, please get a clue, Xander.

As Dawn and Xander get ready to go to school (maybe you should go to class with her, Xander. Maybe you could learn how to get a clue there), they find a social services worker named Doris at the door. She testily notes that Dawn is running late for school. Buffy thought their meeting was on Wednesday and, joke of all jokes ... it is Wednesday. He he he.

Dawn looks disgusted and leaves.

Doris looks around at the messy house, thinks Spike is Buffy's boyfriend, and due to the blanket assumes he sleeps there and hears Willow upstairs and thinks that she and Buffy are romantically involved. And then she spies a bag of herbs that Willow uses for magic and assumes it's the dreaded marijuana.

"It's magic weed," whines Buffy. (That was pretty funny.)

Doris tells Buffy that she's on probation and at risk of losing her guardianship status of Dawn. This makes little Buffy sad.

After Doris leaves, Buffy and Spike bicker for a bit before he reaches into her pocket, retrieves his Zippo, and leaves.

Buffy runs upstairs and proceeds to hack her hair off. (Cause Spike liked it, remember?) The next scene finds her at a salon asking her hairdresser to "just make me different".

Meanwhile, the geek trio are making their way to an all-woman's spa with the invisibility ray in tow. (I think they want to make the ladies' clothes invisible. Because they're geeks, get it?)

Anyway, the two little, extra-geeky geeks start fighting over the ray when Buffy comes prancing out of the salon with her perky new do. (The hair looks pretty snazzy, by the way. Remember how I told SMG to get her hair cut a few recaps ago? I was right. It's still not blond enough, though. It's a bit mousy in hue, actually.)

So the geeks fight over the ray and accidentally turn it on and the ray, of course, hits our little Buffy, making her invisible.

At the Magic Box, Xander and Anya are making their seating arrangements for their wedding. (Although this may seem stupid and outdated, it is necessary if you are planning a formal wedding. You would be amazed at how many distant acquaintances could potentially hold a grudge against you FOREVER for putting them at a "bad" table. I've seen it happen.)

The Scoobies

Annnnyway, Buffy walks in all invisible and such and there's some discussion about her being invisible but mainly Anya is interested in her haircut. (See, that's so meta because "Buffy" is such a pop culture show that the physical appearances of the characters are just as important as the story lines, and our dear creators know this.) Buffy then leaves to go for a walk.

Anya and Xander wonder if Willow had something to do with the little invisibility problem and whether or not she's in a magic relapse. Xander confronts her and she is understandably insulted, but she's also very interested in Buffy's new haircut.

Meanwhile, Buffy goes for a walk and basically enjoys her invisible status, as she takes away an ugly purple studded hat from a poor fashion victim and then makes her way to social services.

Now this is funny:

First she moves Doris's coffee cup all over the place to make her think she's going crazy. Then, when Doris is good and confused, she makes the cup dance and whispers "kill, kill, kill, kill Doris, kill everybody".

Doris screams at the cup/Buffy to "Shut up", and everybody in her office thinks she's craaaazy. That's funny.

When she goes to the washroom to calm down, Buffy finds her report on Dawn and gets busy.

Then ... Doris returns from the washroom and hands the file over to her boss. Every page says "All work and no play make Doris a dull girl," and the printer then starts printing pages and pages of the same line (sort of like in the Jack Nicholson flick "The Shining", which is really, really scary.)

Doris's boss tells her to take the day off, and Buffy has won this round!

Outside the women-only spa, Willow is spray-painting some things and scratching paint off other things. Xander asks her what she's up to. She's using brain power, not magic. (Hoorray! I love geeky, Encyclopaedia Brown Willow. I was getting tired of the witchy stuff.)

Willow finds black paint on a parking meter and thinks it's from the same black van that's been stalking Buffy. (And it is, because it belongs to the geek trio, remember?)

Willow spray-paints something invisible that Xander tripped on. It's a pylon. She hands it to Xander who plans to examine it back at the Magic Box.

Now we find ourselves in Spike's dark and dank home. The door opens, but no one walks in. (Actually, someone does, the invisible Buffy does, in fact).

Spike thinks it's a ghost and tells it to get lost, then the ghost punches him and rips his shirt off. (Only it's not really a ghost, it's Buffy.)

"Buffy?," he asks.

Oh-NO! Xander and Anya touch the pylon and realize it's turned to mush! Will the same thing happen to Buffy?

Over at the geek-pad, the geeks are realizing that the ray will kill Buffy, too. The two little ultra-geeks are upset, but the taller, meaner geek is happy. He tells them that "we're villains".

"We're not killers, we're crime lords," they respond.

Xander goes over to Spike's, hoping to find Buffy and warn her. Spike's entire place is a mess and when Xander gets to Spike's room -- whoooooaaaaa -- now that may be a tad too much for prime time. I realize she's invisible, but still. (OMG, explicit town is here to stay I guess.)

Xander looks understandably grossed out and asks Spike what he's doing (he can't see Buffy, remember?).

Spike says he's "exercising".

"You really should get a girlfriend," Xander tells him. (Yes, yes he should, and that girlfriend should be Buffy because they have good chemistry. They're funny together, not all cranky like she and Angel and not all boring like she and Riley. Annnnd I don't care about that whole "true love" business with Angel. That's in the past, he's on a new show and a different network now, so those die-hard Angel/Buffy fans should really just get over it.)

Spike gets mad that Buffy is happy no one can see her and now she can ummmm ... hang out with him. He wants her to be with him full-time or something and not hide their relationship. (For a vampire, he can get pretty uppity.) He kicks her out, but not before one more short, little, explicit thing that's also funny.

Back at Buffy's house, Willow is whining and freaking out about Buffy being invisible. Then Buffy listens to her answering machine and finds out that if she doesn't get turned back quick, she's toast!

But here's the question: Does she care? Is she still miserable with life in general?

Who knows ... we will have to wait to find out.

So the geeks have taken Willow hostage (she found their pad by using the magic of the Internet instead of the hocus-pocus, and got herself caught). The geeks call Buffy and tell her they've got her friend, and when she says she recognizes the voice, he says he's "Nobody you know" in a fake, deep voice (again, okay grade-eight boy).

Buffy meets them at an arcade, and they're invisible too. There's some invisible fighting, the mean geek tries to kill Buffy, but Willow manages to grab the ray and turn everybody visible again. The geeks escape, but Buffy doesn't look too worried about it.

Willow makes some sort of an exclamation, and Buffy assumes it's because the bad guys got away.

"No your hair, it is adorable," says Willow. (Ha ha ha, that's funny. It does look good, though.)

Buffy and Willow chat about how they both progressed that day. Willow didn't use magic, and Buffy realized she was scared when she heard the message that the ray could kill her.

"I don't wanna die, that's something, right?" she says.

"Yay for us," Willow says, unenthusiastically.

The end.

Overall: I really missed Giles, I think he added a little je ne sais quoi to the entire show. Also, annoying characters should stop be annoying immediately. Other than that, Buffy's hair is cool, and I really like the whole Spike/Buffy interaction. I'm also a fan of the return of smarty-pants Willow and the au revoir to magic-pants Willow. Three stakes out of five.