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The episode opens with Xander, Willow and Buffy walking toward Buffy's house, commiserating about how quiet it's been lately, what with Spike and Drusilla "dead".  Buffy enters her house disturbed, after noticing that the front door was partially open.  She hears the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen, and her mother's voice crying out in dismay.  Buffy runs into the kitchen, pulling a stake, only to discover her mother and a stranger (John Ritter, guest star) making out by the counter.  The sound Buffy had heard was a wineglass knocked to the floor in "the heat of the moment".  Joyce Summers draws back, startled, and in an embarrassed tone introduces Buffy as her daughter, and the stranger as "Ted". Joyce says that she has been 'waiting for the right moment' to introduce the two.  While she tells Buffy all, Xander and Willow are making friends with Ted in the kitchen, who seems to know how to schmooze everyone, except Buffy.  She tells Ted and her mother that she's okay with it, but then the scene flashes to the Buffster wailing on a vamp in the park.  Giles stands nearby, waiting for the kill...and waiting, and waiting.  Finally he sits on a park bench in exasperation, as Buffy continues to kick the crap out of the vampire, taking out her frustrations.  Finally, she stakes the vamp, and Giles asks if she's okay, but she chooses not to say anything. At school the next day, Buffy is tired of hearing Xander and Willow sing Ted's praises.  Lo and Behold, Ted appears.  He's doing computer upgrades at the school, and he proposes a miniature golf outing for everyone.  Buffy tries to get out of it, but Xander,  all agog at the thought of some of Ted's special, tasty cookies,  agrees for them all.  Cut to Jenny Calendar's classroom, where Giles is trying to make up an excuse to talk to her.  He asks how she's doing, and she sarcastically remarks that she's managed to stay out of mortal danger for the past three weeks.  She's still kind of wigging out about the whole "possession" thing from "The Dark Age".  She asks Giles for space, and he leaves, hurt. At miniature golf the next day, Ted is being ingratiatingly annoying, beginning to over step his bounds in his role as father-figure, talking about Buffy needing to get her grades up, and so forth.  When he catches Buffy cheating at the game, he flips out.  While they two are hidden behind a large windmill obstacle, he becomes agitated and confronts Buffy, ultimately asking her if she'd like him to "slap that smart-ass grin off her face".  Just then, Joyce and the others come from around the windmill and Ted does an about-face, becoming super-nice guy again.  Buffy is alarmed and suspicious. The next morning Buffy and Joyce argue about Ted's intrusion into their lives and home.  Buffy tells her mom that Ted threatened her, but Joyce doesn't believe her.  Buffy leaves, and Joyce eats some more of the sticky-buns that Ted made.  At school, Buffy is complaining to Xander and Willow about it, but Xander takes off to talk to Cordelia, who expresses concern that someone's going to find out about their kiss (in What's my line?).  Xander says no one's ever gonna know, and then asks her if she wants to go "make out in the utility closet"...to which she agrees!  Buffy asks Willow to help her dig up some dirt on Ted, and finds out where he works.  She shows up at the computer call center where he works, just as he's going to lunch.  Buffy strikes up a conversation with the guy who works in the cubicle next to Ted's, and finds out that he's called "The Machine" because he's so good at his job, knows everything about computers, and is such a perfectionist.  Buffy is shocked to learn that Ted is "getting married" within two months time, and discovers a picture of her mother on his desk.  At dinner that night, Ted sits at the head of the table.  Buffy asks them point blank if they're engaged, and Ted says that he was hoping to propose soon.  Buffy expresses dissatisfaction with this (her exact words are "I feel like killing myself"), and is sent to her room.  She goes instead to the park to look for some vampires to kill, and work off some rage, but it's no joy.  Climbing back in her window, she finds Ted sitting in her room waiting for her.  He had gone through her things, and read her diary.  He threatens to show it to her mom, and Buffy tries to keep him from leaving the room with it.  He hauls off and hits her, and Buffy smiles and hits back.  Surprisingly, Ted seems able to hold his own, but then Joyce shows up in the doorway and witnesses Buffy kicking the crap out of him. She gets a little overzealous, and knocks Ted down the stairs.  He lands at the bottom, and Joyce examines him, pronouncing that he's dead.  Cut to the interior of the police station, where Buffy is being questioned.  The detective interrogating her seems to be skeptical that Ted instigated the fight, and doesn't believe her when she says Ted hit her, as she shows no marks on her face (see FLAWS).  They don't charge Buffy with anything, and Joyce takes her home, not saying a word to her.  At school the next day, everyone has heard that Buffy killed her mom's boyfriend.  Xander and Willow want to talk about it...and Xander wants to know "What he was".  They thought that she killed him because he was a demon or something...but Buffy's expression tells them that Ted had been human.  Grappling with the complex emotions involved with the prospect of a Slayer killing a human, Buffy leaves, only to encounter Giles in the hallway.  It turns out that the police are investigating her, and have gotten her file from the school officials.  In the library, Willow's still looking for info on Ted, they're hoping now that they kind find something implicating him, and get Buffy off the hook.  Xander's pacing all over, freaking out about the situation, but then eats some of Ted's cookies that he still had in his backpack, and mellows out.  Willow makes the connection, and grabs the cookie.  At the Summers home, Buffy tries to talk to her mom, but Joyce sends her to her room.  Meanwhile, Giles has gone on patrol, and is startled when Jenny Calendar shows up.  She tries to apologize for her harsh behavior, but a vamp shows up and attacks them.  Back at Buffy's, the slayer decides that she's had enough of house arrest, and tries to sneak out the window  only to discover that it's been nailed shut.  She turns around to find Ted standing in her room.  They duke it out, and Buffy stabs Ted's arm, revealing machinery underneath the skin.  Ted starts flipping out, they hear a sound downstairs, and he kicks Buffy, knocking her out.  In the park, Giles wrestles with the vampire, and Jenny accidentally shoots him in the back with a crossbow, missing the vampire entirely.  Giles, in an extremely cool move, pulls the arrow out of his own back and stakes the vamp with it.  (way to go, Giles!)  Willow has by this time discovered downers in the cookies Ted made, and has finally found some info on Ted, including an address, and four marriage certificates.  They arrive at Ted's place, and begin snooping around. Down in the kitchen, Joyce almost has a heart attack when Ted shows up behind her.  Ted proclaims that he was unconscious for a day, and an intern found him, and now he's back.  Joyce is relieved, but becomes suspicious when Ted's more mechanical mannerisms start showing through.  At Ted's place, Xander and Willow and Cordelia find a miasma of 50's stuff, and Ted's first four wives in the closet.  They rush out to get help.   Buffy, finally, has regained consciousness, and gets downstairs just as Ted's getting violent with her mom.  She wacks him with a frying pan, exposing the metal underneath his fleshy facial façade, and felling him in one swoop.   Jenny and Giles head off to the hospital. At school the next day, they TRY to explain what this episode was about...apparently there WAS a Ted Buchanon in the fifties, whose wife left him.  So Ted built a mechanical Ted, who brought her back and kept her in the house until she died.  At which point he kept going out and bringing home new "wives".  As they talk, they almost walk into the library, but stop when they see Jenny and Giles kissing. FLAWS:    Only one I noticed...When Ted and Buffy first interact up in her room over the diary, Ted's first hit to Buffy is a right hander...meaning the left side of her face gets struck.  Later though, at the police station, when Buffy tells the detective how Ted hit her, she touches the right side of her face.  THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE: I didn't really think too much of this one.  I've never really been a John Ritter fan, and their feeble attempt at the end to have a story behind Ted's insanity was just that.....feeble.  BEST LINE:  When Willow discovers the drugs in the cookies Xander (feeling the effects, still) says "Willow, you are the best human EVER, I adore you!"  he pauses, then adds "well that's the cookies talking, but YOU ROCK!"  (there's your line, Kath!)

"Ted"

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