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Wednesday, October 10, 2001

Poor Buffy is in hell

By STEPHANIE McGRATH -- AllPop

Warning, spoilers! A ghoul, a little romance, some witch action, a few solid quips -- what more could a "Buffy" fan ask for?

So Buffy is back, but she's not quite the happy, care-free vampire-hunter she once was. She's a tad pouty, and her hands are still scraped up from that unfortunate coffin incident.

The second episode in the new season finds our gal led home by her sister Dawn, just in time for a romantic moment.

Sarah Michelle Gellar is Buffy

Spike bursts into the Summers home and, upon finding Buffy alive, starts to cry. Ahhh, vampires with faux British accents can be so dreamy.

"How long was I gone?," Buffy asks Spike.

"127 days yesterday, 128 today, but today doesn't count, does it?," responds Spike.

The rest of the Scoobies eventually arrive and pound Buffy with "Are you all ?" questions. (Note: Willow is 100% annoying in Tuesday night's episode. Too many geeky comments circa the first season.)

Following some more scenes of the Scoobies discussing Buffy after she's gone to bed, a scuffle breaks out between Spike and Xander. Spike's a bit peeved that they didn't tell him they were working on getting Buffy back, and guesses that it was because Willow suspected she might come back "wrong" and she'd be forced to get rid of the bad Buffy -- something Spike would never let her do. That Willow is definitely in for some trouble this season.

Okay, bed time. Willow and Tara are in bed. Willow's upset that Buffy didn't thank her for returning her to the land of the living. Talk, talk, talk, sensitive sharing, blah, blah, blah. (Dear Joss: Please give Tara something to do besides saying tender and sensitive things to Willow. Thanks.)

Meanwhile, Buffy is in the next room and hears some of their chatter. She goes over to her mirror to look at photos of her gang but, uh-oh, for a split second, their faces turn into death masks.

Later that night, Willow and Tara are woken up by the sound of their bedroom window breaking. Buffy is standing beside their bed calling Tara and Willow "bitches" and talking about the blood on Willow's hands (from that deer-slaughtering scene in the season premiere.)

Then Buffy is gone and Tara and Willow rush to her room. But mysteriously, Buffy is sound asleep and their window isn't broken anymore. Something is afoot.

Willow decides to call Xander and Anya. (Note #2: Anya is tres funny in this episode. Usually she can be completely written off as a waste of space, but with the rest of the show being so serious now, she's our link to the funny Buffy days of yore.)

While Willow is on the phone filling Xander in on the strange happenings at the Summers' residence, Anya's eyes get all possess-y looking, and she starts cutting up her face and then -- oops -- not possessed anymore.

The episode pretty much continues along this path for several long minutes, as Dawn gets possessed (soooo funny because she spews fire, and after her possession Anya tells her she'll probably experience "dry mouth". Ahhh hilarity), Buffy pouts some more, and the gang starts to research ghosts and eventually realizes that Willow's spell that brought Buffy to life also created a demon.

Willow mentions that one way to get rid of the demon is to reverse the spell, which would mean sending Buffy back to the grave. This sends Dawn into a mini-freak-out, so Willow promises she won't go that route.

Willow mentions that the demon is only temporary and the only way it can survive is by killing Buffy. At that moment, Xander's eyes go all wacky and he says "Thanks for the tip". (He's possessed, you see.) Now the demon is after Buffy.

Willow and Tara go into a witchy mode, which doesn't require a description since it's pretty much exactly the same as every other witchy moment they've shared together (chanting, hand-holding). The little witches are trying to turn the wispy demon into solid form so Buffy can kill it.

More proof of Willow turning evil: During the spell, Tara eventually stops chanting and simply stares at her girlfriend as Willow is surrounded by orange-y light and finishes the spell herself by saying: "solid". (If one witch is freaked out by the power of another witch, that might be a bad sign. Orange-y, glow-y light is also bad news.)

So the demon turns solid and Buffy chops its head off. Now that should be the end, shouldn't it? But wait! There's more.

The final scene starts with a shot of Buffy rushing after Dawn to hand her a bagged lunch. Dawn is touched. Buffy still looks pouty. Then our brave slayer makes her way to the Magic Box to chat with her Scoobies. She thanks them for returning her to Sunnydale and tells them she was in hell. (She is sooooo lying right now). The gang tells Buffy it was Willow's spell that brought her back.

"So you did this," Buffy says.

Willow sees that as a thank you, but the viewer guesses that our slayer is more than a bit pissed off at her friends. There's a group hug.

Buffy wanders outside and finds Spike sitting in the shade. He wants her to tell him all about the badness of hell -- but she says she was in heaven, was happy, and was ripped out of heaven by her friends. Then she says, "This is hell". Spike looks shocked and, as she walks away, she tells him never to let the others know that they pulled her from heaven and not from hell.

Poor Buffy, soooo sad.

So here's what Joss and company set us up for this week: more hints at Willow's voyage to bad-witch town, Anya will be the comic relief, Dawn can stand up to Willow, Spike is still madly in love with the slayer, and Buffy is one sad vampire-staker and is probably angry with her friends. What will she do? Will she and Willow come to blows? Will she try to return to heaven?

This episode deserves four out of five stakes for funny Anya moments, cute Spike close-ups, and the absence of Shatner-esque over-acting from Sarah Michelle. It deserves to lose a point for the annoyingness that was Willow.