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The episode begins with a man in a suit, carrying a suitcase, wandering the school grounds.  He's stopped by a janitor, who tells him where he can find Rupert Giles.  The man takes off to find him, but seems distracted, in a hurryeven frightened.  Suddenly, he turns around to find he's being followed by a woman with glowing eyes.  She's a bit decomposed looking, but he recognizes her and calls out "Deirdre?" He turns and pounds on the library door from the outside, but Buffy and Giles (who are in the library) don't hear him because Buffy is aerobicizing, and has some techno music turned up really loud.  The woman kills the man, and then falls to the ground next to him.  A big puddle of goo forms around her, and spreads to the man.  The next morning, Giles wakes up from a nightmare in which a group of people were sitting around a fireit also shows him a demon.  At school, the gang wonders if Giles ever had any kind of life before he was a stuffy, tweed-wearing Watcher.  He tells Buffy that that night there will be a blood delivery at the hospital, and she should meet him there to fend off any vampires that may be skulking around looking for a free meal.  Jenny shows up to make sure Willow will be in the library on Saturday.....they're going to be giving some extra credit work to Xander and Cordelia, since they're falling behind.  Giles then walks Jenny to her class, and they flirt a little before class starts.  She comes onto him pretty heavily, and he's befuddled but pleased at her attentions.  She wants to "stay in" that Saturday night, so they agree to meet, and kiss goodbye just as the bell rings.   Giles walks to the library on a cloud, and is brought down hard when the police are waiting for him.  They inform him of the homicide the night before, and tell him they found a piece of paper w/ Giles's name and address on the body.  They take him to the morgue to identify the body, and Giles tells the police that this was an old friend of his from England, but he hasn't spoken to him in twenty years.  He also notices a black tattoo on the man's right arm.  At the hospital that night, Giles has not shown up.  Buffy watches as the blood arrives, and as the "doctors" who took the delivery start to make off with the blood.  She rushes out and engages them in battle.  Angel shows up halfway through and helps her fight the vamps off.  She leaves the blood in his care to make sure the hospital gets it, and Buffy leaves to make sure Giles is okay.  Upon arrival at his apartment, she finds Giles looking very disheveled, and a bit drunk.  She leaves, and Giles makes a phone call to Deirdre Page.  He finds out that she's dead, and crosses her name off of a list of names, several of which are already crossed off.  The last two names on the list are Ethan Rayne and Rupert Giles.  He then rolls up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo that matches the one of the corpse wore.  At the morguethe corpse has risen.  At school Saturday morning, Buffy shows up to ask Jenny if she knows what's wrong with Giles.  She tells them how he was acting the night beforeand Cordelia tells them about the police coming to see him the day before.  Buffy goes to the library to call Giles, but notices someone walking around in the stacks.  The person pushes one of the stacks over on her, but she frees herself and catches the perpetratorEthan Rayne.  She recognizes him as the guy who sold her the dress on Halloween.  He mouths off to her, and she punches him.  At her "questioning", he tells her he's a friend of Rupert's, and is looking for him.  Giles at that moment is having another nightmare, but is awakened by Buffy's phone call.  He tries to give her the brush-off, but she asks him what the Mark of Eyghon is.  (Ethan had told her to ask)  Giles is silent for a moment, and Buffy tells him she's there at the library with Ethan.  Giles looks alarmed and tells her she's in great danger while Ethan is there, and warns her to get out.  Just then, the corpse from the morgue bursts in through a window and Ethan jumps behind Buffy.  Buffy fights the corpse and Ethan tries to make a run for it.  Cordelia trips him as she's coming in, and Buffy locks the corpse in the cage (the second time someone's locked in here...see "The Pack", from season 1).  Giles rushes in soon after. Giles and Ethan have a confrontation, Giles tells Ethan he should have left when he told him to, and that he was putting these people in danger, people he cares about.  Ethan asks why Giles didn't leave town, if he cared so much.  Buffy bursts in, wanting answers, but just then the corpse erupts from the cage.  She beats it up, and it stares at her, looking almost frightened.  Suddenly it falls to the floor and turns into a pile of blue goowhich stretches out along the floor and comes in contact with Jenny's body, (she had been knocked out when the door from the cage flew open and hit her).  Buffy notices that Ethan is missing and runs after him.   Giles helps Jenny to her feet, but doesn't see when her eyes glow.  Buffy comes back without Ethan, and demands answers from Giles.  Giles flares on her, and orders her to stay out of it.  He leaves to take Jenny home, and Buffy starts handing out assignments.  They all hit the books looking for "The Mark of Eyghon".   Willow finds the ritual where Eyghon can posses an unconscious person, and temporary possessions leave the host with a euphoric feeling of power.  It uses the body up quickly, however, and must soon jump to the nearest dead or unconscious body in order to continue living.  They figure out that Jenny was unconscious when the corpse went all puddly, and Buffy goes over to warn Giles. Jenny, meanwhile, is trying to seduce Giles.  When he turns her down, because he feels he'd be taking advantage of her, she turns on him and starts addressing him as Ripper.  Then she attacks him.  Buffy shows up and gets her off of Gilesafter which Jenny/Eyghon leaps out of the window.    Buffy finally gets Giles to tell her what's going on.  He explains that when he was twenty one he had had enough of the tedious grind of study, and the pressure of his destiny, and dropped out of school.  Moved to London and fell in with a bad crowd.  He said that he and Ethan had discovered Eyghon.one of them would go into a deep sleep, and the others would summon Eyghon to posses the sleeping person.  It was an "incredible high".  One of the members of their group was killed when Eyghon would not release the body, and now Eyghon was back to finish killing them all.    Buffy figures out that Eyghon would now be after Ethan, and she goes to the costume shop to help him.  He tells her that the tattoo he wears is like a homing beacon, and Eyghon will find him no matter where he goes.  He then knocks Buffy out while her back is turned, and when she wakes up she's tied face down to a bench.  Ethan then tattoos the mark of Eyghon on the back of her neck, and removes his own with acid. Back in the library, Cordelia and Xander have had enough of each other, and come to a head.  Willow yells at them (her second outburst since Reptile Boy), and comes up with a plan.  She rushes out.  Giles, in the meantime, has a vision of what Ethan is doing to Buffy, and leaves his apartment.  Back at the costume shop, Ethan is just about to leave when Jenny/Eyghon shows up.  Buffy is still tied to the bench, but is rubbing the rope on a protruding nail underneath it.  She breaks free, and fights Eyghon as he comes after her, instead of Ethan.  Giles shows up and diverts Eyghonbut is soon on the ground about to die.  Just before the killing blow, Angel bursts in and lifts Jenny/Eyghon off of him.  He struggles with it, and Eyghon leaves Jenny's body when it's threatened.  It jumps into the nearest dead body.Angel's.  Jenny is thrown to the floor, back to normal, and a fight rages inside of Angel.  The demon in him struggles with Eyghon, and ultimately Eyghon is expelled and destroyed.  Ethan escapes yet again.  The next day at school, Giles asks Jenny how she is he couldn't reach her Sunday night.  She responds that she had left the phone off the hook.  She says she's okay, but flinches from him when he reaches for her.  He gets that she's scared from what happened to her, and berates himself, inwardly.  Buffy catches up with him in all his disappointment, and tells him to try to forgive himself.  Giles says he never wanted Buffy to see that side of him..but Buffy tells him that it just makes him a person, like everyone else.   They go off to train.   Flaws:  None Found, though I wanna say something about Giles' new tattoo, that we've never seen before.  I can't pinpiont when, but I feel like we should've seen that before, but I could be wrong. Thoughts on the Episode: As I mentioned in "Halloween", I was a little disappointed that this was the big dark secret from Giles's past.  We were led to believe that there was a hidden violence, and a dark history behind his tweed facade, but it was just the case of a bunch of kids making a mistake that came back to haunt them later...and this was pretty much the end of it until "Band Candy" in Season 3.  Best Line: Xander, at the prospect of spending Saturday in school:  "Ooh gang, did you hear that? A bonus day of school plus Cordelia.  Mix in a little rectal surgery and it's my best-day-ever!"

"The Dark Age"

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