So yeah, the ep opens with everyone looking worried and stuff at the hospital.  After much worry, the doctor comes out and says Joyce is out of the woods.  Buffy is very relieved, and gives the doc a bone crushing hug.  Afterward, Xander and Anya take Dawn back to Xander's place to give Buffy and Riley some 'alone time'.  Dawn says she's only there so Riley and Buffy can boink in the house alone. Cut to Buffy and Riley slow dancing in the living room.  Buffy feels much better now that her mom's in the clear.  Riley says she deserves to, after everything she's been through, and reflects his admiration that she stayed so strong throughout, saying she didn't even cry or anything.  Buffy admits that she did cry, so hard she thought she'd never start.  Riley looks upset that she didn't even need him around for that.  Then we're treated to a really yucky scene of Riley and Buffy having sex up in her room. The camera pans down from her window to show Spike outside, smoking a cigarette and watching the window.  He looks annoyed with himself at being there. Later, Buffy sleeps and Riley looks kinda agitated.  He quietly gets out of bed and gets dressed.  Outside, Spike stubs out his cigarette and looks like he's about to go, when he spies Riley leaving the house. Intrigued, Spike follows him.  Riley goes to the warehouse he always gets his blood sucked at, and Spike watches from the shadows as he goes in.  The next morning Buffy shows some wigs off to her mom at the hospital, but Joyce says she thinks she'll just stick with a scarf.  Joyce says she shouldn't be spending so much time there anyway, she should go out and have some fun with Riley, or something.  Buffy says she can see him any time, and she "gave him the day off." Cut to what looks like a hotel room.  It's the temporary HQ for the ex-Initiative guys.  The CO identifies a hot-spot in Belize, and orders his men to get ready to go there.  Graham suggests that they bring Riley on board, but that he might take a little convincing.  The CO wonders what he could possibly have in Sunnydale that would be that special.  Cut to Buffy sleeping in her bed, clearly with no clothes on.  She bolts upright when she hears noise in her room, and it turns out to be Spike.  After getting distracted for a minute over the fact that she's naked under the covers, he tells her he's got something to show her, and she reluctantly gets dressed.  Outside, Spike leads her to the warehouse, and up the steps to the door.  He opens the door, and follows her in.  Inside, Buffy sees several humans getting sucked on by a bunch of vampires.  Spike tells her not to start slaying; this isn't what they're there for.  He indicates that she should go upstairs, and she does, with him following.  A vampire tries to stop them from going upstairs, but Spike throws him to the floor and tells him to shut up, and then follows Buffy upstairs.  On the upper level, Spike nods toward a room, and Buffy goes in to find Riley sitting in there, his shirt off, telling a vampire chick to suck harder on his arm.  Buffy gasps, and Riley looks up to see her standing, stunned, in the doorway.  She turns and runs, and Spike grins heads after Buffy as Riley throws the vampire chick against the wall and hurries to put his shirt on.  Buffy runs downstairs and bulldozes past a vampire that tries to accost her, and Spike breezes by a moment later, following Buffy outside.  He tells her he just thought she should know.  Buffy stares at him, and then takes off running.  Spike looks after her, almost as if it just hit him that she might not appreciate his intervention.  Inside, Riley runs down the stairs and gets stopped by the same vampire.  He punches him out and keeps going.  Back home, Buffy enters her room, stunned and hurt at what she's seen.  Riley returns to his own place to find Graham and the CO waiting for him.  They offer him a spot on their team, and Riley looks tempted, but says he quit the government a while back.  The CO says they're not the government.  They're not like the Initiative, they just kill demons, they don't experiment on them.  He tells him they'll be shipping out midnight tomorrow night; the choice is his. At the Magic Box the next morning, Anya and Willow are kind of getting into it, and everyone basically takes Willow's side.  Buffy comes in and tells the gang about the nest she saw the night before, and how it looked like the people there had been paying to be bitten.  Giles and Anya are familiar with such nests, saying that the thrill of danger is like an addiction to some people.  Buffy can't believe Giles never told her about this, but Giles says he didn't know there was such a place in Sunnydale.  Buffy says she's going to go put a stop to it, but Giles says the people in that nest are willing victims, there are people out there more deserving of her help who aren't.  Buffy says basically that they're vampires, and she's going.  They can back her up or not. At the warehouse, Buffy and the gang find that all the vamps have cleared out.  In anger and frustration, Buffy knocks over a grill-looking thing and sets the place on fire.  The others are surprised at her ferocity, and follow her out as the place burns.  Later, in his crypt, Spike is drinking from a bottle of whine when Riley bursts in.  He grabs Spike and throws him up against the wall. Spike shouts that he's not the one who got him into this, and he shouldn't kill the messenger. "Why the hell not?" Riley asks, and stakes Spike. Naturally, we'd all read the spoilers before this episode aired, so we knew that Spike wasn't gonna die  ;)   Spike screams and yells for a minute, before realizing that he's not dead.  Riley pulls the stake out, telling Spike that it's plastic.  He tells him he knows what he's up to, and tells him to stay away from Buffy.  Spike laughs, saying that Riley's afraid Spike's got a thing for her, and Riley says that's because he does.  Spike admits it, but says even if he weren't in the picture Riley wouldn't keep her anyway.  Riley's angered by this, but Spike says he knows it's true, otherwise he wouldn't be getting "suck jobs from two bit vampire trolls".  Spike says Buffy needs some monster in her man, and it's just not in Riley's nature, no matter how low he sinks.  Riley asks if Spike thinks he's got a shot with her, and he says no, but he's got to try anyway.  Spike tells Riley he envies him sometimes, but other times he thinks he's got the better deal.  He thinks about how difficult it must be for Riley to have Buffy, but not really have her completely.  But then he gets caught up in the "having her" part, and says Riley's got the better deal.  Riley takes a swig of the whine Spike offers him and says "Yeah, I'm the lucky one."  Later, at the Magic Box, Buffy beats the crap out of her punching bag.  Out front, Anya and Xander note that she's been at it for awhile.  Xander thinks something is seriously wrong.  Just then Riley comes in and asks them to clear out so he can talk to Buffy alone.  He goes to the back room as Anya and Xander leave.  In the training room, Riley says he needs to talk to Buffy, but she says she's not ready to talk to him yet, unless he wants to fight.  Riley's all, okay, let's fight.  Buffy says nothing he says is going to make it better right now, and he says he knows, but he needs her to hear him out.  He tells her that in the beginning it started as an immature vendetta after she let Dracula bite her.  He wanted to know why Dracula and Angel have such power over her, he wanted to know what she felt.  Buffy says his reasoning is stupid, and he agrees, and then apologizes for everything he's putting her through. But he says that the vampire women made him feel wanted, needed. On some basic level it was all about him.  His blood; his body.  He says they wanted to devour him, and they had such a hunger for him, and he needed that so he kept going back.  Buffy realizes this means she never made him feel that way.  He accuses her of keeping him at a distance, and never letting him in.  She didn't even call him when her mom was in the hospital.  She gets sarcastic, saying she's sorry she couldn't take care of him while she was worried that her mother was going to die.  Riley says it's about him taking care of HER, and she won't let him.  She says that's what she does, it's part of being the slayer.  She has to keep on top of everything. Anyway, they argue for a little while, and the bottom line is that Riley doesn't believe that Buffy really loves him, or if she does, she doesn't show it.  He's not feeling it, he says.  Buffy says then they have a serious problem, because this is all she is; this is the package.  Riley tells her that the military people want him back, and that the transport leaves that night.  Buffy sees it as an ultimatum, and he says it's not.  She says it is, he's basically telling her to get over it now, or he'll go.  Riley then makes it an ultimatum, saying that he's leaving, unless she gives him a reason to stay.  Buffy leaves Out in the alley, she's accosted by the entire group of vampires from the warehouse.  She gives them a chance to walk away, but they close in on her.  She fights the whole gang, and stakes them all with this wooden pole one of them stupidly brought into the fight.  All of them get staked except for the last, who's the same chick Buffy saw the night before sucking on Riley.  She lets her run away for a bit, but then throws the pole javelin-style and stakes her in the back.  After the fight, Xander comes out of the shadows and asks her what's going on.  Buffy tells him to go away and stalks off.   Xander follows, instead, and confronts her when she goes into a building to get away from him.  He guesses that she and Riley are imploding, and wonders how she never saw it coming.  He says Riley would do anything for her, and Buffy flares, telling him just what Riley has done, and that he's planning on leaving at midnight that night unless she gives him a reason to stay.  He asks if she's gonna let him go, and she says it's not her choice.  Xander says it is.  He accuses her of shutting down after Angel left, and not letting herself really love anyone again.  He says she's been treating Riley like rebound guy, even though he gave her his everything, and gave up everything he knew for her.  He says that if Riley's just not the guy for her, to let him go; break his heart and let it be a clean break.  But if she thinks she can really love him, no holds barred, then unless she goes after him he's going to walk out of her life forever.  Buffy has tears in her eyes and looks up at Xander as if she realizes that what he's said is right, and he tells her to "Run." Running, running, Buffy is running.  Riley stands on a helicopter pad, waiting until the last possible moment, watching for Buffy.  Buffy's still running.  The chopper starts up, and still Riley waits.  He thinks he sees her, but it's just his imagination.  Buffy's still running.  Riley looks heartbroken, and finally gets in the helicopter.  Buffy's still running.  The helicopter takes off just as Buffy gets there, and she shouts Riley's name but the wind takes it away.  We can see her on the ground shouting for him as Riley leaves in the chopper, but he can't hear her.  Buffy watches as the helicopter flies away.  At Anya's, Xander tells Anya how much he's in love with her, just so she knows.  Anya's touched, and they embrace.  Buffy walks home, all melancholy, and sits on her steps, realizing she was too late.  In the helicopter, Riley is buffeted by the wind and looks lost. FLAWS:                  Riley tells Buffy in the training room that the military guys are going to be leaving "tonight".  He never mentions the time.  But later on, Buffy tells Xander that they're gonna be leaving "tonight at midnight".  THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE:                 Considering that this whole episode was about Buffy and Riley, a subject I pretty much hate, it wasn't all that bad.  I mean first of all, we've got some good Spike moments, so that kinda makes up for it  ;)  The whole Riley departure was actually kind of sad, but of course it was written by Marti Noxon, the queen of angst  : )   I do kinda feel like Marti was shoving this "Riley is the one great love of your life, quickly, run after him" thing down our throats, though.  I think since he was pretty much her baby from the beginning, she was feeling a bit petulant that we the viewers never really accepted him as wholeheartedly as most of us did Angel, so her final episode with him was pretty heavy with the retroactive "I've been so blind, I love Riley" vibe.  Ah well, it was still a pretty decent ep.  Even I felt kinda sorry for Riley, and I never thought that would happen.  Xander managed to come across as a friend, instead of his usual self-righteousness in situations like this, and we got Riley gone for good.  So basically, I'm happy  ;) BEST LINE:   Spike's, upon entering Buffy's bedroom:  "You naked under there?"

"Into the Woods"