Lover's Walk opens with the gang talking about their SAT scores.  Willow is depressed because she only got a 740 on the verbal section, and Xander's depressed because Willow's verbal closely resembles his combined score.  Cordelia did well, and so did Buffy, surprisingly, with a combined score of 1430.  Cordelia reflects that this means Buffy can go away and never come back....after all, what kind of moron would ever want to come back to Sunnydale?  Cut to the Welcome to Sunnydale sign which, in a very nice tribute to "School Hard", gets run over by Spike's car.   Spike himself falls out of the car (along with a lot of beer bottles) onto the pavement after crashing to a stop in his drunken stupor.  He looks around and says "Home sweet home", and passes out.  At the factory, Spike wanders amid the destruction from the fire, and looks at all of Drusilla's dolls....burned now.  He goes from being mournful and sad in one moment, then starts trashing the dolls.  At school, Xander tries to convince Cordelia to go bowling with him, Willow and Oz that night, and sees pictures of him inside her locker door.  He's pleasantly surprised that he's "locker material".  Cordelia agrees to to on the double-bowling-date.  They leave, and Willow and Oz show up at HER locker.  Oz gives her a little Pez witch, and Willow gets all excited over it, saying how thoughtful it is.  Oz responds with "Well, I think of you."  This is a very cute moment, and we all LOVE OZ! In the library, Buffy shows Giles her SAT scores, and he surprises her by agreeing with Joyce that Buffy maybe should go to a college elsewhere...get the education those kind of scores say she should have.  He then departs to go on some kind of druidian retreat, after finding out that Buffy is planning to see Angel soon.  In the school halls, Willow and Xander worry that Oz and Cordelia will figure something out about the two of them when they're all bowling.  Xander says he just wishes he wasn't so attracted to Willow.  At home, Joyce is off the freak-scale about what colleges Buffy can go to.  She says that Buffy's always wanted a normal life, and this could be her opportunity to have one.  She finishes with "Honestly Buffy, is there anything keeping you here?"  The scene cuts to Angel reading a book by firelight, and we see Spike watching him from the interior garden (where Angel and Buffy fought during Becoming pt2).  He talks to Angel, even though Angel has by this point gone to bed, and says "We were fine, until you brainwashed her.  I'll show you...you're going down."  He then trips over something and falls down drunk and unconscious.  At sunrise, the light streams through the windows, landing on Spike's hand and making it go up in flames.  Spike wakes up screaming and yelling, and puts his hand out in the fountain...then runs out to his car under the cover of his duster.  The blackened windows keep the sun out, and Spike realizes that this has got to stop.  He goes to the magic shop, where he's looking for a curse for Angel, to make him suffer for driving him and Drusilla apart.  While he's in the back room, Willow comes in and asks for some ingredients for a spell.  The shopkeeper thinks it's for a love spell.  Spike overheard Willow say that even though she knows how to DO a love spell, what she actually wants to do is a "de-lusting" spell.  She pays for her stuff and leaves, and Spike kills the shopkeeper...not needing her help anymore because now he's got a better idea. In the Mayor's office, the attendant Alan tells Mayor Wilkins that Spike is back in town, and Wilkins says that even though he really enjoyed guessing what he was gonna do last year, he couldn't afford to have a loose cannon like that around this time, and has Mr. Trick send a 'committee' after Spike.  At the mansion, Buffy tells Angel about the possibility of her now going to college, and asks his advice as her friend.  Having had their relationship defined, Angel tells her that as her friend he recommends her leaving.  It's a good opportunity for her.  Buffy acts a little put out, like she wanted him to say she should stay, and then she leaves, even though she'd only just got there.  In the school lab, Willow tries to cast the de-lusting spell without Xander's knowledge, but he figures out what she's doing.  They decide to stop the spell and just deal with it on their own, but Spike comes in, knocks Xander out and kidnaps them both.  He takes them to the factory where, after threatening Willow if she doesn't do the love spell on Drusilla, unburdens his problems on Willow.  (this is a very funny scene.  This episode rocks!).  She tells him she needs more ingredients, and her spellbook, and he leaves to go get them.  At school, Cordelia and Oz have shown up to pick up Willow and Xander for their bowling date, and found the lab a mess.  They get Buffy, who was exercising in the library, and she sends them off to that druidian retreat to find Giles.  Buffy answers the phone after they leave, to hear her mom talking about how they should schedule a college talk for that night, and Buffy hears Spike in the background saying "hello, Joyce". At Buffy's house, Spike is telling Joyce all about his breakup with Dru over hot chocolate.  She's counseling on the heartaches of breaking up, and Spike asks "have you got any of those little marshmallows?" As she gets up to look, Angel approaches the back door and sees Spike in the kitchen.  He rushes at the door with a snarl, but is still not able to cross the threshold, after Buffy's spell when he was evil.  Joyce faces the door, and Spike stands up behind her.  While she threatens to stake Angel herself if he doesn't leave, Spike laughs and makes threatening motions to her behind her back just to egg Angel on.  Suddenly Buffy shows up, throws Spike down on the table (Rowr!), and invites Angel in.  Amidst Joyce's confusion, they find out that Spike took Willow and Xander, and he tells them they can tag along, but if they get in his way, Will and Xander are dead.  In Oz's van, Oz stops and sniffs the air.  He says that Willow's nearby and that she's afraid.  He turns the van around, and follows the scent.  Elsewhere, Spike, Angel and Buffy head off to get the supplies that Willow needs, and Angel has to stop Buffy a couple times from killing him.  Along the way Spike reminisces about places he and Dru killed people.  They get to the magic shop and start gathering supplies, and Angel says that Spike's going to an awful lot of trouble for someone who doesn't even care about him.  Spike attacks him, but Angel and Buffy both beat him off.  Spike tells them that while they may think he's a loser, THEY are still in love, and are not friends no matter what they're trying to convince themselves of now.  (see best line below).  At the factory, Xander wakes up and he and Willow share a kiss just as Oz and Cordelia find them.  Oz manages to circumvent his pain for the moment, and says that they have to get out of there.  Cordelia, hurt, runs up the stairs and falls through one of them.  The gang looks down at where she lays, impaled by a steel rod sticking up from the ground.  Outside, Spike, Buffy and Angel are heading to the factory with the supplies, when they're attacked by Spike's old gang of vamps.  They all fight together in a very nicely choreographed scene, and defeat the vamps.  The fighting seems to re-invigorate Spike, and he decides that he doesn't need to do a spell on Dru.  He's just gonna go find her, and torture her until she likes him again.  He tells them that the guys are at the factory, and leaves.  The next day, Willow tells Buffy that Xander will be going that day to see Cordelia in the hospital for the first time, and that she feels really bad about hurting Oz, who won't even talk to her right now.  At the hospital, Xander comes in with some flowers for Cordelia, but she won't even look at him until she turns to tell him to stay away from her.  After he leaves, she cries.  At the mansion, Buffy comes in and tells Angel that she won't be coming to see him anymore.  That they're NOT friends, and never were.  That she can fool Giles, and her friends, but not herself, and not Spike, apparently.  What she wants from him, she can never have.  And he doesn't need her to take care of him any more.  Angel says he doesn't accept it, that there has to be some way they can still see each other.  Buffy tells him that there is....if he'll tell her that he doesn't love her.  Unable to lie to her, Angel says nothing, and Buffy leaves.  We see images of Willow looking at her Pez witch, Oz sitting and unable to play his guitar, Xander off by himself in the library, Buffy thinking out by the fountain at school, and Cordelia languishing in her hospital bed.  Then we see Spike smoking in his car, singing enthusiastically to the radio and speeding off toward a happy future. FLAWS:        None found THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE:        Hey, it's got Spike in it, so it's automatically a winner.  I love him, he's absolutely the funniest and best bad guy that's ever been on the show.  I also liked the interaction between Buffy and Angel.  In fact, the only thing I didn't like was this whole stupid Xander and Willow thing.  I mean, I understand they wanted to do this to break Xander and Cordelia up, and to give a little hardship to Willow and Oz's relationship, and not just have them be all cute and everything all the time, but dammit, I LIKED them being all cute.  Oz is awesome, and I can't believe that Willow would hurt him like this! And with Xander, who I don't even like anymore.  It made me sad.  BEST LINE:        All Spike's.  When he's telling Willow about how Druscilla left him, he says   "She wouldn't even kill me.  She just left! She didn't even care enough to cut off my head, or set me on fire! Is that too much to ask? Some.little sign that she cared?" When Willow tells him that she doesn't know if the spell will work right away, Spike says "Well, if at first you don't succeed, " (here he looks at Xander), "I'll kill him, and you'll try again." When Buffy wants to kill Spike and Angel reminds her they need him to find Willow and Xander, Buffy says "Need him? He's probably just got 'em locked up in the factory."  Spike starts visibly and sputters "Well, hey,..how thick do you think I am?"  (for indeed, that's where they were)    ;) When Spike's telling Angel and Buffy in the magic shop how they'll never be just 'friends', he says "Love isn't  brains, children.  It's blood.  Blood screaming inside you to work it's will.  I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

"Lover's Walk"