Previously: Xander met a girl who obviously turned out to be a demon who wanted to kill him, and Buffy went on a date with Principal Wood, who turned out to be the son of the Slayer that Spike killed in the 1970s.
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Get It Done
Kirsti: One of these days, I’ll stop making KFC references in the title. BUT NOT TODAY. Chez Summers. Buffy wanders around in the dark, turning off lights, picking up books and generally checking on sleeping Potentials. Upstairs, she sees one girl, Chloe, crying in the corner of the hallway and heads towards her. But something jumps out at her and knocks her down the stairs. She lands at the bottom, the First Slayer above her. “It’s not enough,” the First Slayer hisses, and Buffy wakes with a start. Cue wolf howl.
Lorraine: I’m going to admit that I’d previously been confusing the First and the First Slayer in my head. #Snowproblems.
K: Awkward… After the credits, Anya and Spike are wandering down a darkened alley. She bitches about how much it sucks to be human, and how intolerable Chez Summers is now that it’s overflowing with Potentials. She jokes about calling the health inspector, but Spike prefers his plan of getting out and getting drunk as required. She awkwardly drops into the conversation the possibility that they’re currently on a date, and he’s all “Uh, no. DRINKING.” She hastily agrees with him, then not-so-subtly mentions that time they bumped uglies. He tells her to drop it, but she won’t. He’s relieved when a demon shows up and knocks Anya down before informing her that D’Hoffryn wants her dead. Spike kicks it in the junk and knocks it out before helping Anya up. They run down the alley before the demon comes to.
Sweeney: Woo for character regression in which Anya’s sex jokes are taken to a stupid and borderline sexual harassment place! Yaaaay! -_-
Lor: It truly is a shame and another example of this season almost setting itself up too well. Anya had such a great moment in Selfless and to have her big, “I need to find myself,” moment now translate to, “I need to get laid?” Worst. Fail.
K: YES. So much yes. Cut to Sunnydale High 2.0. Buffy and Principal Wood have their serious faces on over two beat up looking teenage boys who apparently thought fighting in the cafeteria would impress people. Suitably scolded, the boys head out and Principal Wood info-dumps to Buffy that things are only getting worse – fights, missing kids and increased vandalism. “It’s started, hasn’t it?” he asks. She agrees that the Hellmouth is up to its old tricks and informs him that shit usually gets serious around May. Which is presumably when the show regularly went on summer hiatus. (S: Well done with this self-referential comment, show. 1430 to whoever wrote this line.)
Anyway, he decides that the time has come to give her something, and pulls out a beaten up black leather duffel bag. He informs her that it’s a Slayer emergency kit and that it was his mother’s. Buffy’s touched by the gesture before he admits that it should have been hers all along – passed down through the Slayer line – except that he couldn’t bear to part with it. He doesn’t know what’s in it, but says it’s something to do with her power. She thanks him, then gets confused when he says that he wants to see where she works because they’re literally having this conversation at her desk. He points out that he was talking about her OTHER job.
Cut to Chez Summers. Buffy ushers Principal Wood in the front door while filling him in on the fact that the house is overrun with Potentials. “There’s nothing like the end of the world to bring people together,” he quips. Just then, Andrew storms in wearing an apron and oven mitts (and regular clothes, otherwise EW) and sulks about how his funnel cake making is not going well. Buffy does introductions, and says that Andrew is their hostage. “I prefer ‘guest-age’,” Andrew replies. Wood is all “Uh, whut?” because taking hostages is a little weird, but Buffy explains that Andrew used to be evil and now he bakes.
Lor: I thought the Big Board was a pretty good idea. Also, I love funnel cake. Keep it up, Andrew!
K: Right?? As they head out the back door, Buffy informs Wood that they have a lot more going on than just Andrew’s map. “So I see,” he replies as the camera pans out to show Kennedy running martial arts drills with the Potentials in the backyard. She’s in full drill sergeant mode, so when Chloe does a move to the right instead of the left, Kennedy calls her a maggot and demands that she do twenty push ups. Chloe starts doing push ups as Kennedy turns to Buffy and fangirls about her power before asking Wood what he thinks. He tells her that they look strong but that the whole incorporeal thing kind of defies the point in the martial arts thing. From the ranks, Amanda greets him with a wave and a comment about how it’s weird to see him outside of school. Kennedy drill sergeants at her and starts running through exercises again. Wood tells Buffy that she has an impressive group of recruits. She says sadly that it’s not enough because some of them will die and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Willow comes out the back door with an armload of weapons. She awkwardly tries to cover when she sees Wood there, claiming that they’re training for a school pep-dance-cheer-drill competition. Buffy mentions that Wood knows everything, and Willow heaves a sigh of relief. Wood asks Willow about magicks and she laughs nervously before saying that she only does light, safe magic. She dumps the weapons on a table and rushes back inside with a “So much cooler than Snyder!” (S: NOSTALGIA! I haz it.) Wood can’t believe that’s the girl who nearly ended the world, and says that he shouldn’t piss her off. Buffy thinks it might be better if he did – “It’s just—the First is coming, and then look at us: the army. We’ve got a bunch of fighters with nothing to hit, a Wicca who won’t-a, and the brains of our operation wears oven mitts.” Wood points out that the Potentials aren’t her only fighters, and asks to see “the vampire.”
Lor: He stares off into middle distance as he says it. Red flag.
K: So much. Segue Magic to the basement where Anya and Spike are squabbling over the fact that he didn’t kill the demon. Buffy and Wood come downstairs as Spike replies that if he’d fought the demon and been knocked out, Anya would be dead right now and that the safest place for her is with him. She rolls her eyes and stomps up the stairs. (S: This roughly summarizes how I feel about the writing of Anya’s two scenes. 1430 retracted.) Wood walks across the room, not looking at Spike. Buffy informs Spike that she’s showing Wood their operation, and he says that the more good guys they have, the better. Wood coldly asks if he’s a good guy and that throws us into a conversation about Spike having a soul now. Eventually, Wood asks how long Spike’s been in town and where he was pre-Sunnydale, digging for information. Spike doesn’t rise to the bait, instead getting cocky as Buffy decides that it’s time to keep the tour going before someone gets punched in the face.
Upstairs, Dawn – in her role as Junior Watcher – tells Buffy that she looked through the emergency kit and it smelled like their grandma’s cupboard but worse. Buffy asks if there was anything useful, and Dawn tells her that there were some trinkets, a few weapons, a big fat book written in Sumerian, and a box that can’t be opened. Her bet is on the box being the most useful. Buffy tells her to go do her actual homework. Dawn jokes that she’s flunking out then gasps in horror as they walk into…IDK, the bathroom??…to find Chloe has hanged herself with a bedsheet. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Kennedy, Amanda and Rona rush out of Willow’s room in response to Dawn’s gasp. Buffy tells Dawn to get a knife so they can cut Chloe down, but First!Chloe appears and says there’s no rush because dead is dead. (L: The sentiment here, over a person being just a body when they are dead, calls back nicely to The Body.) (K: TRUE.) Kennedy demands to know what the First did, and First!Chloe replies that she and Chloe just stayed up all night talking, and that Chloe was a really good listener until she killed herself. First!Chloe says that it went down really well when Kennedy called her “maggot” and Kennedy looks guilty. Buffy tells the girls not to listen, but First!Chloe replies that Chloe was the smart one because she knew what the others don’t and what Buffy won’t admit – that they’re not all going to make it. The last bit is said in Buffy’s voice, quoting directly from what she told Wood earlier. Then she poofs out with a sassy “TTFN” as she goes. The girls get teary and Buffy asks Dawn again to fetch a knife.
Cut to a field somewhere. Buffy’s alone, digging a grave for Chloe. Back at Chez Summers, everyone’s gathered in the living room in their PJs. Buffy walks in carrying the shovel and delivers a cold hard speech about how Chloe was stupid and weak, and that if anyone wants to follow in her footsteps, there’s plenty of room next to her and Annabelle. The girls look horrified. (S: You know, because that’s a major league asshole thing to say.) (K: YUP) It’s time, she says, for her to stop carrying them. Kennedy yells that she’s out of line, but Willow quietly replies that she’s not. Kennedy turns to Willow, angrily saying that Buffy’s not even the most powerful person in the room, not with Willow around. Buffy replies that Kennedy’s wrong. She uses the power she has. The others just sit around and wait. Xander points out that’s how things work when you’re the leader and tell people to stay put, and Buffy replies that it’s time to start following her actions.
Xander snaps a little and says that they’re her friends as well as her army. “I’m not!” Anya replies. Buffy wants to know why she’s there if that’s the case. “I provide much needed…sarcasm,” she replies.
Xander sasses that she’s trying to take his job. Buffy says that Anya’s there because she’s scared and that it’s time to be useful and scared at the same time. The First, she says, is laughing at them, picking the scared little girls off one at a time. Spike turns to leave, and Buffy asks where he’s going. He points out that’s he’s not a girl or waiting around like the others. She tells him to take a cell phone in case she needs to call someone to get weepy or beaten up. Um, BURN.
Spike turns, angry. Buffy gets all “Yeah, you heard me” and accuses him of holding back since he got that pesky soul back. She tells him that he was a better fighter without it, and he yells that he did this for her, that him changing is what she wanted. She coldly says that she needs the old Spike, the murdery Spike. He angrily tells her that she’s on the verge of bringing him out. She “bitch, please”s him and tells Dawn to take the Potentials upstairs and break out the emergency kit, because she’s declaring an emergency.
Sweeney: Epic bullshit speech on a How You Should Treat People scale, but we talked a little bit last time about people wanting Buffy to save the world their way. The fact that she snapped and gave this awful, bitchy speech isn’t entirely surprising. Plus, for all the death Buffy’s had to deal with, this latest death of someone under her own roof strikes an entirely different chord. Of course, the general, “Fuck you,” sentiment is entirely warranted because that was awful.
Lor: See, I think it was totally out of line, but she wasn’t necessarily wrong…? Or rather, it feels so much in line with ways we’ve seen Buffy snap before that I just felt bad for everyone involved, including Buffy. I hate to bring it up again (but I will) but it fit with the sentiments of “how big is this evil?” we’ve been expressing, mostly around last episode and dating. This shit is serious, but the season can’t really decide how serious it is, and keeps peppering in these more light-hearted, silly moments. Not that I blame the writers– you need to fill scenes with something, and life moves on. My problem is that at moments like this, it makes Buffy seem more like a bitch and less like a commander of an army. Either there is no time to coddle feelings and second guess because the world is going to fucking end, or we have time for a date or two. By mixing these things (in largely unsuccessful ways) you lose the immediacy of the situation at hand.
Xander, I think, best captures the duality of Buffy’s postion. He tries to pawn off all responsibility on Buffy (we’re waiting for your orders!) and when she accepts that (do as I say!) he balks (but we’re your friends too!) It’s a nearly impossible situation for Buffy, who wants to protect and lead. She has an army and friends. She has weapons, but ones that are either ineffectual or unwilling to work. And this latest casualty, to her, was absolutely preventable.
Again, I want to emphasize that I think Buffy was too harsh and out of line, but it was stuff that needed to be aired, one way or another.
K: All excellent points which just make me think about how everyone’s all “Whoa, a Slayer with friends??” when they meet Buffy. Maybe this is why the Slayers not meant to have friends.
Cut to sometime later. Principal Wood is there, and Buffy says she figured he’d want to be around when they broke out his mother’s stuff. Kennedy’s there for unknown reasons, because all the other Potentials are elsewhere. They go through the bag, and Xander says that the stuff in it is cool but all stuff they’ve seen before. Except for the box. Buffy easily breaks the padlock, and Xander pulls out a metal figure. He makes a lame joke about puppets, and Dawn informs him that they’re shadow-casters – you put them in motion and they tell a story. The book, she says, states that “You can’t just watch, you have to see.” The gang are all “Dafuq?” because CRYPTIC, and Dawn says that she thinks it’s an origin myth – the story of the First Slayer. Buffy realises that seeing the First Slayer in her dream the other night might have been a sign.
Sweeney: This whole scene gets very Jumanji and, as such, reaches srsbsns intensity levels.
Lor: A+
K: Agreed. In the darkened living room, Xander lights a match in the centre of the shadow-caster display. Dawn tells them that you put the puppets on one at a time, and the shadows tells the story. “First, there is the earth,” she says. Xander places the first puppet and spins the display so the shadow hits the wall. A drumbeat starts up, and they’re all “Well that’s creepy as fuck.” They continue, Dawn reading, Xander placing the puppet, and the puppet adding creepy sound effects. The second puppet is demons, which causes a growling sound. The third is men, which brings chanting, the four is a girl, which adds a scream, and then a chain, which represents the men chaining the girl to the earth to fight the demons. Dawn says that there’s something about darkness that she can’t translate as the display starts to spin by itself. The display spins faster and faster, and the figures start to move of their own accord, acting out the story.
Dawn reads faster, saying that you can’t just watch, you have to see but only if you’re willing to make the exchange. The shadows spread up the walls and the gang look spooked. Suddenly, there’s a bright blue light, and a portal opens from the centre of the display. Buffy says that it means she has to go through the portal. The gang are all “Dude, no!” because she doesn’t know what’s on the other side and they don’t know how to get her back or what will turn up in exchange. Buffy has no fucks to give and jumps through. The portal closes behind her. Suddenly, there’s a flash of light and a giant demon appears. “Aah. This must be the exchange student,” Xander sasses shortly before it throws him across the room. Fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Kennedy yells at Willow to use her magic, but Willow flounders and gets knocked across the room. Wood springs into action, hurling throwing stars at the demon. He tries to fight it, but the demon knocks him down too. Kennedy and Dawn grab weapons and attack, but it quickly overpowers them. Spike – who’s appeared out of nowhere – jumps on the demon’s back and starts choking it. He tells them all to run. He slams its head into a wall, but it grabs him and hurls him through the ceiling and into the room above. Because we’re only 25 minutes into the episode, the demon smashes through the doors and leaves.
The Scoobies pick themselves up and discuss what to do. Dawn heads upstairs to check on Spike. Willow states the obvious, saying they need to get Buffy back. Xander tells her it’s spell o’clock, but Anya wants to know which spell and how they’ll possibly send the demon back without Willow going evil again. Willow frowns over the lack of support and says that they need to get Buffy back. “We don’t even know where she went,” Kennedy replies. Segue Magic to the desert. Buffy appears through the portal. “Well. I guess that worked…” she says before heading off to investigate some chanting nearby.
Back at Chez Summers, Xander asks what the book says. Dawn turns it around to show that the pages are now blank. Kennedy again tells Willow to use her magic because the writers really want me to punch her in the face, and Willow says that she doesn’t know where to start. Kennedy proves how ignorant she is by recommending that she try All The Things because what’s the worst that could happen. (L: You’ll go brunette! she says.The first time she made this comment, it was ignorance. Now, seriously, FACE PUNCH.) Dawn, bless her heart, asks Willow where another witch would start trying to get Buffy back, which gets Willow thinking about the spell that created the portal, and says that magic works off physics so she’d start with transferring energies. (S: While Buffy is failing How To Play With Others 101, Dawn is over here teaching the class.) Anya scoffs and says that transferring energies requires a catalyst. They start listing possible catalysts. Kennedy and Wood hypothesise that they need to get the demon back to make the proper exchange. Spike appears and says that he’ll take care of it. Kennedy scoffs because he just got thrown through a ceiling, and that the Potentials are trained for this kind of thing. Spike sasses at her and says that he needs to go get something.
Vision Desert. Buffy walks up to a group of three men in tribal dress, all carrying staffs. She introduces herself, and they reply in Swahili. The subtitles tell us that they know who she is and why she’s there. She wonders how she understood what they just said, and my money’s on a TARDIS nearby. The Shadow Men stand and start to circle around her. She’s the Hellmouth’s last guardian, they say, and that they can’t give her knowledge, only power. Which is decidedly unhelpful. Buffy decides that she’s not really there and that this is all a hallucination. One of the Shadow Men hits her with his stick, knocking her out.
Chez Summers. Willow pours a circle on the floor in green sand, a barrier to contain the portal. Xander suggests that maybe they wait to see if Spike can kill the demon, but Willow disagrees – opening a portal that size could take days. She nervously steps into the sand circle and sits crosslegged. She chants in Latin, but when she gets to the end, nothing happens. She turns to Dawn and starts to suggest making coffee when there’s a bright flash of light which knocks the Scoobies back. Willow’s eyes turn black and she screams.
Sweeney: This little dramatic moment was well done and by far the spookiest shot of all.
K: Vision Desert. Buffy wakes to find herself chained to the ground in a creepy cave. The Shadow Men inform her that they’ve brought her to the beginning, the well of the Slayer’s power. She tells them that she doesn’t need any more power, and one replies that the First Slayer didn’t talk so much. Buffy yanks on her shackles as a Shadow Man brings a box forward. They tell her that it contains the Slayer’s truest strength: the spirit and heart of a demon. This, they say, is how they created the Slayer. Buffy looks disgusted. A thick black smoke pours out of the box and snakes its way through the air towards her. Buffy struggles in panic as they tell her that this will make her ready for the fight. She tells them that making her less human isn’t the way, but they reply that this is how it’s always been. The black smoke pours into Buffy’s nose and ears as we fade to black.
After the Not Commercial Break, Buffy screams, forcing the smoke out of her. It swirls around the cave before curling around her hips. She demands that the Shadow Men make it stop, but they reply that this is what she came for and to stop fighting. She braces herself as the smoke heads towards her again. Basement of Don’t Go In There 2.0. Spike rummages through a box, eventually coming up with his leather coat, which he left behind in Sunnydale when he Motorcycled To Africa. He puts it on and swaggers down the corridor and up the stairs.
Lor: LOL. Sorry. This is a significant moment. Spike has not been himself since he got back from Africa. He’s recovering some piece of himself. But yeah, I laughed when he flipped the leather jacket on and power walked away. Ha.
K: I was torn between laughing and “How the hell did all his stuff end up in the school basement??”. Like, did the Crazy!Spike that we saw in the first couple of episodes stop by the TARDIS Crypt to claim his stuff from Clem and then crazy off to the basement with his boxes?? I just…IDEK. In the hallway, Wood asks where he’s going. “Got a job,” he replies. Wood compliments the coat and asks where Spike got it. “New York,” he says as he walks past, not even breaking stride. Wood watches coldly, having confirmed what the First said about Spike killing his mother.
Chez Summers. Willow, her eyes still black, chants in Latin some more before giving up and yelling at the mighty forces in English to open the portal. Xander begs her to stop, but she thrusts her hands backwards, sucking power from Anya and Kennedy, who fall to the ground. The portal opens in front of Willow and her hair turns black. Xander drags Willow out of the circle, her hair turning red again as he does. On the floor, Kennedy tries to catch her breath as she realises what’s happened to her.
Cut to an alley where a vamped out Spike is fighting the demon. He laughs and sasses at it as it pummels him, but eventually he manages to knock it down. He laughs insanely and yells with pleasure as he throws himself into the fight. Creepy Cave. Buffy says that she didn’t come there to drink essence of demon, and that she knows she can’t fight it. But, she says, she can fight them because they’re just men who destroyed a girl to create a weapon. They tell her that she doesn’t understand, and she yells “No, you don’t understand! You violated that girl, made her kill for you because you’re weak, you’re pathetic, and you obviously have nothing to show me.” She rips her shackles from the ground and swings the chains around her, using them as weapons to knock down the Shadow Men.
Sweeney: This bit is interesting within the larger context of S7’s story and the way in which it is very much about the show and its concept itself. This reads as a bit of commentary on the act of writing this teenage girl and making her suffer and so on and so forth. That is, that the writers are the Shadow Men, in a way.
Lor: Brilliant point. I also think this probably didn’t do very much for Buffy’s mindset at the moment, that she has very little to count on. Here general stance in this episode is, “either help, or get out the way,” and she shows us that here as well.
K: YES. To all the things. Alley. The demon grabs Spike by the throat, but he grabs it right back and somehow manages to snap its neck. He throws it to the ground, then monologues to its corpse about a fight being good for the soul as he lights a cigarette. Creepy Cave. Buffy’s defeated two of the Shadow Men. She walks up to the third, and breaks a staff in two. The demon smoke vanishes, and she smugly says that it’s always the staff. He says that they offered her power, and she sasses “Tell me something I don’t know!” “As you wish,” the Dread Pirate Westley replies, placing his hand on her cheek. The light gets brighter.
Chez Summers. Spike heaves the demon’s body into the portal as the Scoobies watch. Creepy Cave. Buffy stares at the Dread Pirate Westley in horror before there’s a flash of white light and she’s back in her living room, the Scoobies all limping towards her. They stand there in silence. Cut to upstairs. Kennedy walks along the hall, looking troubled. Willow runs up the stairs behind her and grabs her arm. She asks if Kennedy’s okay, and not so much because Willow sucked the life out of her. Willow says that it’s important for Kennedy to know what she’s like when she uses magic, and Kennedy says quietly that she thought it would be cool. But it was just painful. Um, fucking DUH, you muppet. Willow apologises, saying that she needed power and Kennedy was the most powerful person nearby. Kennedy walks away, shutting herself in her room.
Sweeney: People have been lodging preemptive complaints about this. In Kennedy’s defense, it was a violation — she’s not wrong to feel violated right now. It’s grating because of how cavalier she’s been about magic, but I can’t hold this reaction, right here, against her.
K: Absolutely.
Willow turns sadly and heads into Buffy’s room. Buffy’s tucked up in bed, and thanks Willow for bringing her back. Again. Willow jokes that it’s what she does, then asks if Buffy’s okay. “I think I made a mistake,” she replies. Willow says that it was okay not to take the power the Shadow Men offered her, and that they’ll get by. Buffy replies that the First Slayer was right, it’s not enough. Because the Dread Pirate Westley showed her what’s to come. Willow worriedly asks what she saw, and we cut to an enormous cavern filled with thousands and thousands of Turok-han. Fade to black.
In a lot of ways, this episode marks the beginning of the end. There are concepts at work here that snowball on until the series finale. But at the same time, there are throwbacks to seasons past. The Slayer Emergency Kit, for instance, first turned up in Restless – Buffy pulls mud from it and smears it all over her face. Spike’s coat returns, as does Willow’s magic. In a lot of ways, the Buffy we see here is more like the battle-hardened Buffy of the alternate universe in The Wish. We finally, at the eleventh hour, get the Slayer origin story. And yet, this episode leaves me cold. There’s too much going on for it to flow effectively to the point where by the end of the episode I’d completely forgotten that Andrew was in it at all. So yeah. Great concepts, but far too many of them, levelling out to #meh.
Sweeney: The frequency with which we’ve had to bust out #meh in our end-of-episode summaries should make the rankings interesting. If nothing else, it might mix up our rankings a little, as we try to weigh the different kinds of #meh against each other.
Lor: I can’t level a #meh at this episode because (1) – it left me with a ton of thinky thoughts and (2) – the Slayer origin story is such a valuable piece of information for someone like me, who is hearing it for the first time. I can’t even with knowing that Slayers are these girls infused with a bit of essence o’ demon. It just focuses so many different thing into place, from her powers and abilities, to the multiple times she’s felt an attraction to dark things.
The whole Shadow Men thing is a rabbit hole. In Buffy’s words and in the visual, they definitely take it to a very rape-y place. When Buffy makes a comment about how it’s “always the staff,” I wondered how intentional that was. Connor asked Faith in Salvage why the Slayers are always girls and it just infuses all kinds of meaning into that to know that the First Slayer was forced. Yep. Rabbit hole.
Buffy (meanly) challenged her people into action and then, by jumping into the portal, quickly gave them something to do. We see Anya challenging them with reality (her usual, “it’s the truth!) and coming up with the answer about the exchange. We see Dawn at her Junior Watcher best. Spike does kill the demon and then there is Willow. I can’t see this as a win for Willow. She doesn’t use her power as much as she steals her power from others.
It’s interesting, because Buffy comes down hard on both Willow and Spike for not acting on their power. It’s harsh because it’s power that has evil ties for both of them. And then, we see Buffy, faced with the Shadow Men, refusing more power. In the end, Buffy isn’t asking the Potentials, Willow, Spike or anyone to get more power, to abuse power, or to be anything they aren’t; she wants them all to use what they have, herself included.
Did Buffy make the right choice? I don’t know yet, but I can’t see that having a stronger Slayer Punch will help her defeat the First. And she told us last episode that you can’t fight evil by doing more evil. That’s what the Shadow Men did, and she doesn’t want a part of it.
The episode did have pitfalls, but I think they were mainly leftovers from the episodes leading up to this. It wasn’t great, but it felt pivotal.
Next time: Andrew goes all Vlogbrothers to record Buffy’s exploits for future generations. Find out more in Buffy the Vampire Slayer S07 E16 – Storyteller.
SCHEDULING NOTE: In order to adjust our viewing for crossover magic, we will be posting a second Buffy post in lieu of the usual Angel later today. That is, you will see the recap for Storyteller go up today as well.
We resume the Buffy/Angel pairing next Monday (Feb 2) with BtVS 7×17 & AtS 4×15.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
