My review for the episode:
Okay, this isn't a complete waste of time episode even though it was the start of the four episodes of boredom piece of the sixth season. There are a lot of things happening, but the biggest problem is the slowness in between, and that every time something good or funny is happening someone (mostly Spike) ruins it by saying/doing something idiotic. Actually this wasn't nearly as bad episode as I expected, it has been several years since I last saw this ep and I remembered very little of this, so it was a pleasant surprise that there actually were some good lines and moments between the boredom.
I still have not warmed up to the nerds, they are boring, have no charisma, they are not convincing as the villains (at least not yet) and they are rarely funny. I don't care about Andrew's Mission Impossible fantasy and I don't see how the frozen security guard could survive hypothermia long enough for the police/hospital/whoever to use hairdryers to melt the ice around him. I'm already bored with them and Anya sums it up pretty well, they are 'lame'. There isn't much of Xander or Anya in this, it seems that he has a smaller and smaller role as the season goes. But since Xander acknowledges Willow's problem, why isn't he organizing a big intervention since the scoobies love to do those to Buffy?
The mugger scene was actually somewhat funny, this show rarely has human bad guys these days, at least in the none demon related capacity. Also liked the strange metaphors Spike was giving Buffy, but what I don't care about is his “I'm all you've got” bullshit with what he's trying to get her deeper into depression so she's easier pickings for him. Like Buffy said in Crush, the only chance he had with her was when she was unconscious, but it looks like it took her being dead and clinically depressed to get a kiss.
Buffy tries to open up to Willow about her feelings and what is happening with Spike, but then Amy interrupts them and it turns into another Willow patting herself in the back session. Of course if Buffy could open up to her friends she wouldn't feel so detached, so certainly someone had to interrupt her from sharing her feelings so she could get some support from someone. Then again it doesn't mean that Willow would have taken time out from her yeay-me trip to care about other people since at the moment she's all about how all-powerful she is.
Willow is really starting to get on my nerves, she's continuing her destructive behavior despite the fact that it made her lose Tara, but she doesn't even acknowledge the fact why Tara left her and is acting like she did it suddenly without a reason. I have no sympathy for her. And for three years she hasn't had any luck in turning Amy back into human and now she suddenly just know how. Far too easy. But Amy's reaction was good. But it looks like Drew Z. Greenberg (who wrote this) hasn't watched any Amy-episodes or the third season because Amy turned into a rat in 'Gingerbread' which was before Buffy's 18th birthday that is in January 19th, so why is Amy thinking that the prom will be soon since it's several months away? And why was she thinking about asking Larry? There was no signs of that and wasn't he out by that time, at least in Earshot he told Xander that he was and that even his grandmother was fixing him dates.
Continuity errors are nothing new, especially with the new writers, but my opinion on the writer not having seen the early seasons only gets stronger with Amy's changed personality, she has very little resemblance to the girl she was pre-rat. Just like Willow, she has no problem with messing peoples minds and freewill which is seen at the Bronze when she makes the woman just dumb her girlfriend and come to Willow and later magicking up the whole Bronze, playing with the people in there like they're there just for her and Willow's amusement. I found Amy and Willow using magic on the jerk guys and then on everyone in the Bronze very immature, juvenile and irresponsible, also annoying as well as boring. Since everyone just returns to normal not showing any signs of remembering what had happened during the time the two witches were playing with them it looks like another forgetting spell was done. And again I have to ask why didn't anyone notice anything weird when Willow and Amy were playing pool without any cue sticks and the balls were moving by themselves. Argh!
Why would Dawn think that Tara and Willow breaking up had anything to do with her, her shoplifting hasn't come out yet and they are not her parents, so the parents divorcing (not so subtle) metaphor does not work for me and Tara's speech comes out lame. And even if Dawn is a complete idiot she should be old/smart enough to have noticed the things that were causing trouble between Tara and Willow and that the reason why Tara left Willow is her overuse of magic and using it to make her forget in Tabula Rasa. And she outright lies to Tara when she says that Willow is really doing a lot better, cutting down magic. It also looks like Dawn really is Joyce's daughter since the laying of the guilt is inherited straight from the master herself, but the funny thing is that I wasn't all that annoyed with her since Willow and Spike were far more obnoxious than her.
Probably the best part of the whole episode is when Buffy tells Spike that she was thinking about Giles when she kissed him and Spike's response to it: “You know, I always wondered about you two”, simply hilarious. But then Spike ruins the funny moment by continuing to harass Buffy. Same happens with his phone call to the Magic Box, first it's funny as Spike tries to be ominous but Buffy isn't playing along and since once again it looks funny and promising Spike has to go back to pushing his own agenda and ruin it.
But back to where Spike realizes his chip “isn't working”, I don't think he is convincing himself to kill the girl because he now suddenly has goodness in him, his first instinct after finding out that he can hurt Buffy was to go to kill a innocent girl, he's talking to himself to give himself a pep-talk because he's been neutered for so long, not because of a conscience. Also it's not the first time he's distracted from maiming, like in Lovers walk he was shifting between threatening Willow and crying about Drusilla. And even though Spike threatening the life of a action figure was funny, I'm annoyed that now just anybody can work with the chip.
You can really just feel the love when Spike hits Buffy and taunts her how she returned wrong, that she's not human anymore.  That was sarcasm. This would be a good time to bring back Mister Pointy and stake Spike, he should have been dusted in Primeval when it was shown that he still could be a threat, but now he really is dangerous. But gotta say that Sarah Michelle Gellar does excellent job with the drama, like she often does, you really can see Buffy's conflict, fear and every other emotion when she finds out Spike can hit her.
Okay, I'm a B/Aer, always have been and always will be, so please don't lynch me when I say that the ending scene was well done. I didn't think it was hot or anything because there is nothing hot about violence, Buffy and Angel were more steaming with simple tai chi in Revelations than this, but I do like the way the scene was filmed with the music playing over the sounds as the house kept cracking and falling down. Not as bad episode as I was expecting, but not anything great either.
6
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