We open at Buffy's house, "Buffy" and Joyce talk to a police officer in the front yard, as "Faith" is wheeled out on a gurney into an ambulance. She's still mostly unconscious. "Buffy" (who is really Faith, in case you didn't figure it out; I'll call her Fuffy for our purposes ;) ) goes back inside with Joyce. Joyce wonders what could drive a person to that behavior, and Fuffy says maybe she wasn't driven to it; she chose to be that way. She gloats that "Faith" is gonna go to jail, and when she gets crude Joyce is surprised. Fuffy plays it off and Joyce hugs her, much to Fuffy's consternation. Fuffy decides to go take a bath, where she investigates her new body in the tub. There's a little scene where she talks to Buffy's reflection in the mirror, practicing a snobby Buffy attitude by saying "It would be wrong" over and over. Cut to "Faith" (who's Buffy really, naturally. We'll call her "Baith") struggling with some orderlies in a hospital room. She screams that "she" 'took her body', and she has to get back to protect her mother, but no one listens and they inject her with a sedative. In Tara's dorm room, Willow worries for Buffy, now that Faith's back in the picture. Tara says that at least Willow will be safe, because nobody knows about her (Tara), so they don't know where Willow is. Willow tries to explain that it's not that she doesn't want her friends to know her, but the scooby gang is all really focused around the slaying thing, and she kinda likes having something that's just hers. Tara's kinda touched, and says that it's true, she is hers. At Buffy's house, Fuffy puts on Buffy's sluttiest outfit and admires her reflection. She goes through the drawers and finds Buffy's passport. She steals Joyce's credit card and makes travel arrangements for the next day. Joyce comes in to say that Giles called, and wants her to meet him at his place; he's got news. Fuffy grins, saying sure, she's got time to go see her "friends." Cut to Baith, waking up in the back of a police cruiser. Before she's even fully regained consciousness, the council team crashes into the cruiser with an armored car, and they pull Baith out and take her into custody. At Giles', Fuffy enters to find the gang all assembled. She tells them that she kicked "Faith's" ass, and she's being carted off to jail. Giles tells them that by now she's probably in the custody of the Council's team, and he tells them about their visit. Fuffy is amused that Buffy will be taken off to England. She then has a fantasy in which she kills Willow, when Willow is glad that "Faith" has been carted off. The gang still seems all glum, though, and Fuffy tells everyone to lighten up. The gang's like, "Yeah, but what about Adam?" Playing along, even though she has no idea who Adam is, Fuffy says she will patrol that night to keep a look out for him. Cut to Fuffy, dancing it up at the Bronze, making out with several guys on the dance floor. She runs into Spike, who thinks "Buffy" is keeping tabs on him to give him a hard time. Fuffy is clueless until he mentions his own name, and realizes he's Spike, and a vampire. She taunts him, and then comes on to him. Spike certainly looks attracted, and surprised that he's attracted, until Fuffy throws him aside and walks off, laughing. Spike, furious, stalks off. Cut to a lair, where several vampires are returning talking about the hunt. Adam is already there, and he kills one of them when the leader orders him to attack. Adam talks about fear, and what it is that they fear, saying that they have a lot to talk about. Cut to Baith, waking up in the armored car. She tells the council team that she's really Buffy; that Faith switched their bodies. The lead council guy is amused; no one's ever tried that story on him before. He informs her that they've got a job to do, to deliver her back to England. One of the council guys spits on her, saying she's defiled the purpose of the council, and they lock her back up. Back at the Bronze, Willow and Tara enter to find Fuffy chugging some beer with some random guys at the bar. Willow's surprised to see her there, and decides to go ahead and introduce Tara. Fuffy's pretty cavalier toward them. Willow wanders off to get a drink, and Fuffy watches Tara watch Willow walk off. She deduces that Tara's got a thing for Willow, and is pretty mean to Tara; makes fun of her stutter and stuff. Willow comes back and says there's a vampire taking a girl out of the club. Fuffy follows, realizing she's supposed to be doing Buffy's whole slaying thing, and stakes the vamp out in the alley before he can hurt the girl. She's surprised and a bit put off, however, when the girl sincerely thanks her for saving her life. She wanders back inside to find Willow about to walk Tara home, because Tara's "not feeling well". Willow asks Buffy if she's going to be going over to Riley's that night, and Fuffy smiles. Back at the armored car (which is currently parked in a warehouse), Baith continues to try and escape from the car. One of the council team prepares a sedative, but when he opens the doors to the armored car Baith captures him and threatens to kill him if the other members of the team don't release her. The lead guy basically says she can do what she wants; they're not going to let her go. Baith tosses the guy out of the car, her bluff called. Cut to Fuffy, entering Riley's room all languid and oozing sex-appeal. Back at Tara's dorm room, she tells Willow that she doesn't think Fuffy was really Buffy. She says a person's energy has a flow, but Fuffy's aura was jagged, like it was forced in where it didn't belong. She and Willow decide to do a spell to try and find out who or what is possessing Buffy. Back at Riley's room, Fuffy comes on to Riley in a major way. She lays the slut factor on pretty heavily, and gets angry when Riley doesn't play along with her little game. He tells her she's right, he doesn't want to "play", and he kisses her. In Tara's room, she and Willow perform the slightly dangerous and somewhat sensual - spell to try and find out who's inhabiting Buffy's body. The scene cuts to Riley and Fuffy in bed, clearly having just finished having sex. Riley tells her he loves her, and Fuffy freaks out. She climbs out from underneath him and stands next to the bed, disoriented, saying "What do you want from her?" and "this is meaningless". Concerned that she's shaking, Riley pulls her to him and puts a sheet around her. Down in the lair, Adam preaches to the vampires, telling them it's time to face their fear. The next morning, Fuffy puts on one of Riley's shirts over her outfit from the night before and takes off. She has a little confrontation with Forrest down in the lobby when he calls her a killer. Fuffy says she's not a killer, she's the slayer. Forrest asks if she really cares what he thinks, and Fuffy realizes that she'd gotten drawn into it, and that she really shouldn't care. She leaves. Back in the warehouse, the lead council guy says he's gotten his orders to kill Baith, and the council guy she refused to kill earlier feels kinda bad about it, because she could have killed him but didn't. The leader's like "we've got our orders, blah blah", but when he opens the doors to the armored car Baith kicks him, and takes his gun. She uses the gun to break her own shackles, and also the door into the cab of the truck. She knocks out another council guy who comes after by slamming the door into him, and then starts the armored car and blasts outta there. At the airport, Fuffy gets her ticket and waits for her flight to come in. Cut to the apartment, where Baith surprises Giles by entering and in a comic scene, tries to convince him that she's really Buffy. She tells him things that only Buffy could know, but before he even fully assimilates it, Willow and Tara come in, and Willow says she already knows Baith is really Buffy, due to the spell she and Tara did. They conjured a "Katra", which should switch her and Faith back into the right bodies. Xander calls and tells Giles to turn on the tv. On the news, the anchorwoman tells of three men who have taken an entire church hostage, and that witnesses described the men as having "horribly disfigured" faces. Baith realizes it must be vampires. At the airport, Fuffy also sees the news program and looks torn. Inside the church, the lead vampire talks about how he's feared God and the church for years, and now he can't imagine why. He threatens to kill everyone inside. Outside, Riley takes charge of the police forces amassed. He scouts the perimeter of the church and runs into Fuffy. He tells her there are three vamps inside, and Fuffy starts to go in after them. Riley tells her to wait, but with tears in her eyes she says "I'm Buffy! I have to do this." Riley wants to come with her, but she jabs him in his wound, and says he can't help her. Fuffy goes in alone, and takes on the vamps. Back outside, the armored car drives up, and the whole gang jumps out. Giles distracts one of the police officers as Baith sneaks toward the church. Back inside the church, Fuffy stakes one of the vamps, and another runs outside only to run right into Riley, who throws it into the sunlight, where it immediately bursts into flames. Baith sees him and runs up; hugging him. Riley reassures the young woman that he's never seen before that everything's gonna be okay. Back inside, the lead vampire's kinda getting the best of Fuffy until Baith shows up and stakes him. Fuffy and Baith get into it, then, and Fuffy goes psychotic, bashing Baith's head into the floor repeatedly, until Baith grabs her hand, holding the Katra thing. It glows, and switches their bodies back. Faith jumps up and runs out. In Riley's dorm room, Buffy gets off the phone with Giles, and tells Riley that the council's cleared out, and that there's been no sign of Faith. Riley does'nt understand how this could have happened, and Buffy says "Magic". He berates himself aloud, saying he should have "picked up on it", and Buffy realizes he slept with Faith when she was in Buffy's body. Buffy's stunned, and Riley wishes he could get his hands on Faith for doing this to them, but Buffy doesn't think that she's coming back. Riley says "Yeah, now that she's had her fun." Buffy replies "Yeah, fun." But she looks like she wonders exactly what Faith did take away from the experience. Cut to Faith, expressionless, in a cargo car on a train, riding out of town. FLAWS: When Fuffy is reserving a flight on the phone with Joyce's credit card, Joyce comes in and says "That was Giles on the other line", etc. Now, either they've got call waiting, in which case FUFFY is the one who would have heard that call beep in, or they've actually got two phone lines, in which case we would have heard the phone ring. Neither happened. THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE: I remember the original airing of this episode; I had just begun to halfway, kinda, maybe like Riley, what with him thinking of Buffy the whole time he was in the Infirmary, and all, and then he went and slept with Faith. I know, I know all the arguments. Faith was in Buffy's body; there was no way Riley could have suspected. But you know, all I could keep thinking was that Angel would never have done that. Angel would have known that it wasn't Buffy in there. At the very least, Angel would have figured out that Buffy was acting atypical, and wouldn't have played Faith's little game. But Riley just goes right on in, suspecting nothing. What really bugs me is that he tells her he loves her for the first time, yet obviously he can't really love her that much. He doesn't even know her well enough to know when it's her or not. Pretty sad. I mean, hey, even Scully, who doesn't believe in all that weirdo alien body switching shit, knew when wasn't Mulder. And she and Mulder had never even been lovers. It's sad. Anyways, this episode was mostly annoying to me because of that, but it's also annoying because they never went anywhere with this. Riley and Buffy are kinda weird around each other for like, half of the next episode, and then everything's fine. It did give us a little set up for the Angel episode that night, in which Faith goes to L.A. and tries to kill Angel, but then ends up eliciting help from him when Buffy follows to pay her back for her behavior in Sunnydale. Since I had stopped watching Ats by that point ( * sob * it just wasn't the same after Doyle died), I can't really tell ya much else ;) Elsewhere, all that really happened was that we see Willow growing closer to Tara, and any of us who didn't already get the gay vibe from Tara pretty much figured it out by this point. Tara is obviously smitten with Willow, and Willow has begun to show signs of reciprocating. Also, high marks for that cool spell they did. It was interesting, and layered, and also pretty visually pleasing. I do think it kinda sucks that Willow told Tara all about Buffy being the slayer and whatnot, considering that at that point Buffy didn't even know who the hell Tara was. What ever happened to keeping the slayer thing a secret? BEST LINE: Baith: "Ooh, when I had psychic powers I heard my mom think that you were like a Stevedore during sex, do you want me to go on?" Giles: "No actually, I beg you to stop." Baith: "What's a Stevedore?" |
"Who Are You?" |
