atheneum

Buffy fights Slash from Guns 'N Roses in the cemetery. Oh wait, it's not Slash, he's just got his hair. Anyways, they fight, Buffy puns a lot. She's about to stake him, but he twists around, grabs her hand, and makes her stake herself in the abdomen (Heh, so much more fun than making your little brother hit himself). She punches the vamp and he falls down, and then she pulls the stake out and starts running, in pain. The vamp catches up with her and whacks her a good one. He approaches her with her own stake, ready to kill her, when Riley jumps out of nowhere and tackles him. He tries to use his taser on him, but the vamp manages to elude him and run away. Riley goes to Buffy, who passes out.

Back at the house, Riley bandages her up and asks how many vamps did this to her. Buffy tells him it was only one, and Riley assumes it must have been a super vampire, or something. Buffy looks embarrassed / ashamed, and says it was just a regular vampire. She says she's in the best physical shape of her life, and doesn't know why this vamp managed to beat her. Just then Dawn bursts through the door. Buffy starts to yell at her, but Dawn says she just wanted to warn her that Joyce was coming. True to her word, Joyce shows up in the door way as Riley tries to hide the bandage stuff. Joyce notices the hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol and wonders what's going on, but Dawn covers, saying she was doing a nail polish experiment. Joyce says she needs to talk with Buffy about next week's shopping list and wanders off. Dawn's jazzed because she just bailed Buffy out of some slayer-related trouble, and Buffy shows her the bandage, and asks her to help her out with the household stuff until she's back up to speed. Riley says with Dawn on household patrol, he'll take slaying patrol that night. Buffy's not keen on him going alone, and makes him promise to take the gang with him.

That night, Riley covertly stalks through the cemetery, keeping to the shadows, both eyes peeled for vampires. Behind him trail Xander, Anya and Willow, who are munching on some chips and talking. Riley does a motion with his hand, and Xander asks really loudly what it's code for. Riley tries to get them to go patrol somewhere away from him, but they apologize for not being stealthy enough and lose the chips, following him once more. At the Magic Box, Buffy and Giles are going through the Watcher's Chronicles, trying to find out information on last battles of the previous slayers. Buffy hopes to analyze the mistakes they made, and avoid falling into the same trap. Giles says it's hard to have accurate accounts after the slayer's death, because she's kind of too dead to tell anyone about it. Buffy wonders why the Watchers didn't keep better accounts then; she says they're very detailed until the slayer dies, and then the diary just stops. In a touching moment, Giles says if they were anything like him, it would just be too painful for them. He admits, however, that accounts of the final battles would be very helpful, but says there's no one left to tell the tales. Buffy suddenly looks thoughtful.

At the crypt, Buffys slams Spike up against the wall. She tells him he's going to tell her how he killed the two slayers he offed.

Cut to the Bronze. Buffy and Spike sit at a table as Spike talks about beer. Buffy gets him back on track, saying that they're there to talk about the two slayers he killed, and how he did it. She holds up some money and says that he doesn't get paid until he tells her what she wants to know. Spike settles in for the long haul, and tells Buffy to order him up a plate of buffalo wings, because he's "feeling peckish". Buffy, annoyed, turns to order, and grimaces from the pain of her stab wound. Not a guy who ever misses anything, Spike notices and realizes that Buffy wants to know how the other slayers died so she can avoid the same mistakes. He taunts her a little, and Buffy asks if he was born this big a pain in the ass. "What can I tell you, baby?" he says, "I've always been bad."

The scene changes to London, 1880, at a social engagement. 'William', the human Spike was before he was turned, sits on a chair and composes poetry. He talks to a butler, and we can see he's much more mild-mannered than Spike ever was, and he's also very different physically, with longer brown locks, instead of his short bleached hair, and he also wears glasses and a suit. He looks up when a woman in white comes down the stairs, and says "Cecily," He stands up and goes to join the group Cecily just has, and they're talking about a rash of disappearances in the area, recently. William says he prefers not to think of such things at all; instead wishes to create things of beauty. He says this as he's holding his poetry, and one of the men strides forward and takes it from him, preparing to read it aloud. William asks him not to, but the man does anyway. It's clearly a poem about Cecily, and everyone laughs at it, and him. Hurt, William turns away, but not before overhearing that they call him William the Bloody because of his bloody awful poetry, and that one man would rather have a railroad spike driven through his head than listen to it. Ha HA!

William goes over to Cecily, who has taken a seat on a sofa. She tries to get him to go away, but he sits down anyway, blind to the thought that she might be angry with him. She asks him if his poetry is about her, and he admits it, and then he's stunned and heartbroken when she tells him that he's nothing to her; he's beneath her. He goes outside, crying, and ripping up his poems, and doesn't look where he's going as he runs into a man and two women walking on the street. We don't really know it from this scene, but if you watched the 2nd part of the two hour Buffy event this night, you'd have seen this same scene in the Ats episode, from Angelus, Darla and Drusilla's viewpoint. This was when Drusilla saw William / Spike for the first time.

William picks himself up and continues to run away. He goes and sits in a stable and rips the rest of his poems up. He looks up to see Drusilla standing there, and she tells him that she sees him for who he truly is; that he's surrounded by fools who don't see his strength. She seduces him with her words, and William, yearning to be what she says he is, falls under her spell and lets her bite him.

Back in the present, in the cemetery, Riley spies the vampire that staked Buffy entering a crypt. Riley and the gang sneak closer, and Riley goes up to the door to find a whole nest inside. He comes back to the gang and tells them there are too many, but that they'll come back in the morning and kill them when they can't get out.

Back at the Bronze, Buffy and Spike are playing pool, now, as Spike continues to recount his story. He tells her that becoming a vampire was the most profound moment of his life. Getting killed made him feel alive for the first time. We go into another flashback, to Yorkshire, 1880. Angelus and Darla are pissed at Spike (as he goes by now) because his brawling and rampant killing have drawn attention to the rest of the group too many times now, and they barely got out of London alive. Spike says that Angelus is too old and set in his ways to appreciate a decent brawl anymore. To appreciate really being tested. He asks Angelus if he doesn't ever get tired of fights he knows he can win, and Angelus says no. A good kill is art, otherwise they're just animals. They quickly come to blows over it, and Angelus has the advantage as the bigger, older and stronger vampire. He's about to stake Spike when Spike laughs and says this is what he means. Angelus snarls and tells him that he can't keep this up forever. That one day an angry mob will teach him better, either that, or the slayer. "What's a slayer?" Spike asks.

Back in the present, still at the pool table, Spike tells Buffy that from that moment on he was obsessed. That to most vampires, the slayer was the object of fear, but Spike sought her out. Buffy wants to know how he killed her, and Spike grabs Buffy and morphs into his game face, saying that the first lesson is that a slayer must always reach for her weapon; he's already got his.

Another flashback, to China, 1900. Spike fights the slayer in a temple of some sort, as the Boxer Rebellion is going on outside. The slayer is good, fast, and lethal. Spike, however, is obviously having fun, and manages to disarm her, and finally sink his teeth into her. She turns to him and says in chinese "Tell my mother I'm sorry," but he says he doesn't speak chinese and throws her body down to the floor. Drusilla comes in, entranced at what he's done. Spike is more forceful now, and he and Dru start going at each other. We realize that this was pretty much the very beginning of the Spike / Dru relationship we first saw in "School Hard". Out on the street, Spike and Dru meet up with Angelus and Darla, and they tell them that Spike just killed the slayer. Angelus has an undefineable expression on his face, and congratulates him. (again, we see this scene from Angel and Darla's viewpoint in the ATS episode the same night, and we find out that Angelus was actually the souled Angel by this point, trying to continue to live with his vampire family, but finding that his heart just wasn't in it anymore. When we watch this scene from the FFL standpoint, we think Angelus is just barely being tolerant of Spike because he doesn't like him. From watching the same scene in the Angel episode, we realize that Angel was disturbed at Spike having killed a slayer, because Angel was not evil at this point) We then get a very cool shot of Spike and the others walking toward the camera in slow motion as China burns behind them.

Back at the Bronze, Spike tells Buffy that that was the best night of his life. Buffy is disgusted that he "got off on it", and Spike doesn't believe Buffy when she says she doesn't. Spike says the trouble with Buffy is she's gotten so good she's begun to think she's immortal. Buffy says no, but she can take care of herself. Spike's like, oh yeah?, and hits her stab wound. They both recoil in pain, drawing everyone's attention. Spike grabs a cue stick and tells Buffy to follow him.

Cut to the cemetery, where Riley walks up to the crypt, determination written all over his face. He goes straight into the nest and starts fighting. He takes the stake away from the Slash vampire, and uses it on him. He then releases a grenade and runs out of the crypt, which blows up behind him.

In the alley outside the Bronze, Buffy and Spike spar, and Spike tells her the question isn't how did he beat the slayers, the question is, how did they lose? Buffy asks how he killed the second slayer, and he tells her she's not ready to know. She says she is, and they continue to spar as he tells her another flashback. We're in New York, 1977, on a subway train. Spike (looking a lot like Billy Idol, with his punk hair and blue jeans and black vest) fights the slayer (who looks like an extra from "Shaft", the series) in one of the cars. As they fight, the scene switches back and forth between NYC, and the alley outside the Bronze, where Buffy and Spike act out the same moves Billy Idol Spike and the 1977 slayer are using. Spike tells Buffy that the first slayer was all business, but the second one had a touch of Buffy's style. In the subway, the slayer pummels Spike a bit and smashes his head through a window. Spike yells into the tunnel in sheer enjoyment of the fight. Back inside, he breaks one of the vertical poles and starts twirling it, advancing upon the slayer. Back in the present, Spike twirls the cue stick the same way, as he walks toward Buffy. He tells her that he could have "danced all night" with that slayer. The thing about the dance, though, he says, is that a slayer never gets to stop. That every day she wakes up to the same question, is today the day she dies. "Death is on your heels, baby, and sooner or later it's gonna catch you. And part of you wants it. Not only to stop the fear and uncertainty, but because you're just a little bit in love with it."

Buffy watches him as he continues to act out the moves, and in the past Spike has gotten the upper hand with that slayer. He straddles her on the floor of the subway car and looks up, as if he's looking at Buffy. In the present, Spike kneels on the ground looking up at Buffy. "Death is your art," he says. "You make it with your hands, day after day. That final gasp, that look of peace. And part of you is desperate to know, what's it like? Where does it lead you? And now you see, that's the secret. Not the punch she didn't throw, or the kick she didn't land. She merely wanted it. Every slayer has a death wish. Even you." With that last, 1977 Spike breaks the neck of the slayer.

As Spike gets up in the alley, 1977 Spike pulls the emergency break and takes off the slayer's dusterit's the one he's been wearing ever since. He tells Buffy that the only reason she's lasted this long is because she's got ties to the world. Her mom, her friends, her sister. He says though "Sooner or later you're gonna want it. And the secondthe second that happens, you know I'll be there. I'll slip in. Have myself a real good day."

Buffy tells him to get away from her, and Spike antagonizes her, knowing that he's hit a nerve. He taunts her to hit him, and then, caught up in all the violence, and the nearness of her, and his own new feelings, he tries to kiss her. Buffy pulls away and asks him what the hell he's doing. He tries to kiss her again, but again she pulls away. "Come on Slayer, I can feel it. You know you wanna dance," he says. Buffy admits that it might be true, maybe. But it wouldn't be him; it would never be him. She knocks him down and throws the was of money at him. "You're beneath me," she says, echoing the very same words Cecily told William in 1880, and walks away. Spike, on the ground, starts to gather up the money before he starts crying, hurt. Quickly his hurt turns into rage, however, and he glares in the direction Buffy walked off in.

Cut to his crypt. Spike hunts through a chest for a shotgun. Harmony tells him he can't kill Buffy, that she'll kick his ass. She points out that his chip will kick in when he tries to kill her, but Spike says sure, his head will hurt for a couple hours, but she'll be dead a lot longer than that. As Spike storms out of the crypt with the shotgun, Harmony shouts that he won't be able to kill her; he couldn't even do it before he got the chip put in, though he had plenty of chances. Spike stops a few feet outside the crypt and remembers.

Another flashback, Spike and Dru are in South America, 1998, after they fled Sunnydale at the end of "Becoming, pt.2" They're having an argument over Buffy, and Spike says that Dru's the one who keeps bringing her up. That he only made the deal with the slayer to save Dru. He says he did it for her, but she keeps punishing him. The camera pans back and we see there's a Chaos demon there, holding a beer. Apparently, Dru had been off with this demon. She tells Spike she has to find her pleasure; Spike tastes like ashes now. Spike looks vaguely guilty, like he knows what Drusilla is talking about subliminally, but hasn't even admitted it to himself yet. Dru says when she looks at Spike, all she sees is the slayer.

Back in the present, Buffy enters Joyce's room to find her mom packing. Joyce tells her "the nothing" that she's been dealing with the past couple weeks might not be nothing. She's supposed to stay overnight at the hospital for observation; she's getting a Cat scan in the morning. Joyce tries to reassure Buffy, but Buffy's obviously worried. She goes out onto the back porch and starts crying, suddenly worried that something's seriously wrong with her mom. Across the yard, Spike walks through the bushes and approaches Buffy with the shotgun, an enraged look on his face. Buffy hears him cock the gun and looks up when he comes to stand in front of her. Spike sees the tears on her face, and her distraught expression, and his anger seems to melt away. He asks her what's wrong, and she says she doesn't want to talk about it. His anger completely gone, now, Spike looks concerned and asks if there's anything he can do. Buffy looks stunned, but says nothing. Spike slowly sits down on the steps next to her, and awkwardly pats her shoulder. Then they just sit there together.

FLAWS: Two of 'em. In "School Hard", Spike told Buffy that "The last slayer I killed, she begged for her life." But we saw in this episode that she did no such thing. Some people have said that maybe he actually meant the chinese slayer, not knowing what she was really saying, he maybe interpreted it to mean she was begging for her life, but that's pretty farfetched, especially since he said the last slayer he killed. Also, he had no idea what she said. Others have said maybe he was just bragging to Buffy, but I find that just as farfetched. It seems far more likely to me that Joss & Co. built up a tentative background for Spike for "School Hard", but when it came time to fill in the blanks, having the slayer beg for her life just didn't fit in with the story the way they wanted it, so they omitted it. Either that or they forgot, or something. In any case, I consider it a flaw.

Secondly, Billy Idol Spike has a farmer's tan, which he shouldn't, having not seen the sun on his arms for almost a hundred years by that point.

THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE: This episode is one of my all-time favourites. Partly because I love Spike, partly because James Marsters is such an amazing actor when given the opportunity, and partly just because it was a great story, and I was glad to finally have some gaps filled in. The overall presentation the night this episode aired was magnificent, tying in with the cast of Ats in the second half. Great work, all around.

As far as set up goes, we have more of Riley feeling useless, but now he's stepped up his response to acting out in a dangerous way, taking on the whole nest by himself. We have more evidence of Spike's feelings for Buffy: first when he tries to kiss her, and then in the end, when he ends up wanting to make Buffy feel better, instead of killing her as he'd planned. We also get a little bit of background on some of the other slayers, and are introduced to the intriguing idea that slayers ultimately have a death wish. It implies that Buffy will at one point, grow weary of her existence and long for an end. This is something that does come up later, so yay for foreshadowing!

Bottom line is, I definitely recommend this episode.

BEST LINE:

Oh man, there are too many to type out. Basically almost every Spike line I put up there in the recap, is excellent.

"Fool For Love"