If you missed your favorite shows the first time
around, summer is a great time to catch up
on what you missed. That’s what I did Tuesday
night with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
(Don’t laugh -- it’s one of Eric Alterman’s favorites,
too.)
Granted it’s not as good as its heyday in the
first three season when they hit on a stellar
combination of teenage angst meets things that
go bump in the night. These days it’s like
a soap opera, only with vampires. But once you
love the characters, you just gotta see it
through to the end.
Tuesday’s episode had Giles and Willow using magic
to implant a magic stone into Spike’s
head to find out how the First (the ultimate
evil currently trying to annihilate Buffy and the
Slayerettes) brainwashed Spike into killing every
time he hears an old English song. And since
Buffy recklessly allowed the soldier boys (the
secret military operation of which her ex-honey
Riley was a member) to remove the chip from Spike’s
brain that gave him intense pain
whenever he tried to hurt a human, the stakes
are high. When Spike hears the song, he goes
into a killing rampage that not even his newly
restored soul can stop.
When it’s clear they haven’t gotten to the bottom
of the problem and the song “trigger” is
still in effect, Giles and Robin (the school
principal turned Slayerette who has a secret revenge
fantasy going against Spike since Spike killed
Robin’s mother -- a former Slayer -- in New
York City when Robin was only four years old)
hatch a secret plan to eliminate Spike.
Giles keeps Buffy distracted in a graveyard (this
is how they spend their free time on Buffy
the Vampire Slayer) while Robin takes Spike to
his cross-bedecked garage and coaxes evil
Spike out by playing the song on his computer.
Once the demon emerges, Robin proceeds
to beat the snot out of him. But meantime Spike
is experiencing flashbacks of his pre-vampire
days with his mother in England, and slowly as
the beating proceeds, he gets to the bottom
of the song’s power over him.
Once that happens, the song loses its control
and Spike returns to normal. But now he’s just
plain pissed off at Robin for trying to kill
him. He spares him, though, since he killed his mother
and all, but he tells Buffy, who has figured
out that Giles has been trying to stall him and why
and rushes to the scene, that if Robin so much
as looks at him crossways again, he’ll kill him.
And to top it all off, Buffy is furious with Giles for his treachery in trying to kill Spike.
Next week’s episode should be a gas. Faith the
Slayer-gone-bad is back, and even though
she’s seen the error of her ways, she and Buffy
are still set to clash, especially since it looks
like Faith is going to put the moves on Spike.
Like sand through an hourglass, these are the days of Buffy’s and the Slayerettes’ lives.