Buffy the Vampire Slayer S03 E16 – Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff

Previously: Faith killed the deputy mayor and tried to pin it on Buffy, but then she saved her life. BUT THEN she went to become the mayor’s new go-to gal.
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Doppelgangland

Sweeney: THIS EPISODE! DOPPELGANGLAND! DOPPELGANGLAND! ANYA ANYA ANYA!

Kirsti: AKSJKJGLKJDGLKJDLJFJGKLJJSLF!!!!! <– I kinda sorta love this episode beyond all logic. Also? YAY FIFTY EPISODES. FIFTY. FREAKING. EPISODES. That’s a lot of Buffy, you guys. I’m impressed that a) we’re still doing this, and b) y’all are still reading. 

Lorraine: I’m mostly excited because we already have a “DOPPELGANGER” tag! (Thank you Sweet Valley High.) But, you know, I haven’t seen the episode so I have a lot less caps lock to offer.

Sweeney: Sorry, the intelligible version of what I just said was: “The episode begins with Anya.” She’s pleading to an ugly dude with horns to give her back her power center. She was a terrifying demon for centuries and now she’s stuck being a mortal high school girl and it’s awful. “Do you have any idea how boring 12th graders are?” Ahahaha. Yes. Indeed.

Lor: I love how she mentions how she’s mortal, a child AND flunking math. For anyone who has ever flunked math, at least know that you can have a future as a wish granting demon! Suck on that, math class.

Sweeney: She apologizes to the ugly horned guy for failing (at being a demon, not math), but he refuses to help her. She vows to find a way to do it without him.

SEGUE MAGIC to Willow levitating a pencil. It’s true to the awful special effects that we’ve come to know and love from this show, which makes the fact that Alyson Hannigan had to stare intently at the grass for who knows how long all the more hilarious.

Buffy is telling Willow about a test she has to take for her general Slayer-ness, and Faith is taking it too. When Buffy comments on training for the physical portion, Willow has the cutest laugh to her self at her own joke: “Aren’t you naturally buff, Buff? *giggle* Buff Buff!”

K: Willow is seriously the cutest in this scene. Even though she’s once again wearing overalls…

Sweeney: When B confesses that she wants to do better on the test than Faith, Willow adds that she’ll rock the psych portion as long as she doesn’t check the box that says, “Do you sometimes like to kill people?” Buffy doesn’t really appreciate the joke, as it makes her brood about how rough Faith had it.

Lor: This little conversation does a great job of foreshadowing a lot of what comes up in the episode, namely what sort of badness people have in them. Buffy feels for Faith and her upbringing, and says that under different circumstance, she could be Faith. Though Willow brushes this off, we saw a piece of that first hand in The Wish. Which, brilliant, because The Wish is important in this episode.

Sweeney: ALL THE LAYERS.

Buffy apologizes to Willow for talking about Faith, who tries to insist that it really doesn’t bother her, as her pencil goes flying into a tree. Roll credits.

Principal Snyder is back! He’s in his office talking about a marriage made in heaven. Willow is the pinnacle of academic achievement and Percy is a totes awesome athlete. Willow is super uncomfortable and not understanding the “marriage” part.

Presh, Willow. Except obviously what Snyder wants is for her to tutor the dumb jock. Unlike the last time that Snyder made Willow help a stupid athlete, he openly cuts this kid down for sucking as a person, but that’s way less important than winning. (L: Snyder brings up Go Fish. Stop it Snyder.) Willow doesn’t want to, but he just gets really menacing.

K: Which I find kind of hilarious, because Snyder’s like three feet tall. Also, Willow, honey? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WEARING?

Lor: On the flip side, her hair has been just fantastic lately. I’m a fan.

Sweeney: Buffy and Willow enter the Wiggins Library as Willow explains how the threat wasn’t in Snyder’s words but mostly in his eyes (“there was some nostril work as well, but mostly eyes“). As she is complaining about him bullying people and assuming that everyone’s time is his, Giles emerges and tells Willow to get on the computer, which she does happily because she likes Giles and what she meant to say before is that the laboriousness of favors is directly related to your feelings about the people doing the asking.

Faith and Wesley enter the library, done with her testing, which apparently went well and also, um, how have we just not dealt with the fact that she was supposed to be sent off to the Watcher’s Council? And how she only wasn’t because she threatened someone’s life and also assaulted Wesley? Are we just pretending the last episode never happened? Oh, we are, it seems. All right. Great, thanks for letting me know.

Lor: At the end of last episode, I kind of assumed that she would be OPENLY working for the Mayor, not two timing. NOT TWO TIMING.

I AM DISTRESSED.

Sweeney: Anycontrivanceway, Faith did well but Wesley is exhausted and out of breath from keeping up with her. Giles offers to do B’s evaluation for him, but Wesley swears he’ll be fine. Buffy has to change first, but then she’s good to go. Faith wishes her luck. SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO  BUY THAT WE GOT FROM A (the end of the last episode) TO B (now). It just feels ridiculous that nobody would suspect that anything was up here.

K: I’m going to interrupt your rant to point out two things that make me LOL FOREVER: 1. Faith refers to Wesley as Princess Margaret. This is funny for two reasons: a) It implies that he runs like a girl, and b) it implies that she still sees Giles as her Watcher, and that Wesley’s just the annoying little sibling. And 2. Giles is eating a lollipop. Carry on. 

Sweeney: Speaking of the Something Is Clearly Up situation: Faith asks Willow about what she’s doing on the computer. Trying to hack the mayor’s personal files! She can’t get in yet, she tells Faith, but she will eventually.

Segue magic to a shmancy apartment where she’s telling this to this mayor. Said shmancy apartment is hers, where she’s going to be a kept slayer, though the motel room will have to be retained for cover purposes. Faith calls him Sugar Daddy, which he does not appreciate because he’s a family man, thus introducing the weird father/daughter dynamic to their relationship, wherein he exploits her serious case of abandonment issues to adopt him as a surrogate father for his own evil ends. He’s really good at this evil thing.

K: SO MUCH. Also, I love that he tells her off for jumping on the bed with her shoes on. 

Sweeney: He then goes on to say that it’s time to kill her friend, but that he won’t ask her to do it because it’s too soon for that and a vampire attack would be less suspicious. Only for slayers and their friends is that the “less suspicious” way to go. Faith looks like she’s starting to have feels about this idea, but then he mentions a Playstation and she’s over it. Really, Faith?

Back at school, Willow and Oz have a scene together, so my mood instantly lifts. She’s bummed, though, because he’s been MIA doing band stuff and not really including her. She’s been feeling left out a lot lately, it seems. She fears that he thinks she’s boring because she doesn’t like to miss school, which Oz rightly points out is a big leap. Oz invites her to their show at The Bronze, but she can’t make that due to all the homework.

K: Willow. Honey. OZ >>> HOMEWORK. 

Sweeney: Then she runs to try to get Percy to meet with her at lunch to discuss his paper, but he’s having none of that because he’ll be too busy hanging out and is pretty sure Snyder told her to just do all his shit for him. He also cautions her not to “type too good” because that’ll be a dead giveaway. He then goes off and leaves Willow to mope.

Buffy and Xander appear and Xander asks if she taped something, which she did, and Buffy calls her “old reliable,” which she does not appreciate, due to her current feels. Buffy didn’t mean to offend her. Xander tries to help by calling her a “geyser of fun that goes off at regular intervals.” Willow says that she might not want to be reliable all the time or be some doormat, which seems like a good time to call back to our dear old friend, the original doormat of Traumaland, Elizabeth Wakefield, because I miss that bitch.

K: +1.

Sweeney: Willow says that she might change her look or cut class and she’s eating her banana, lunch time be damned.

Buffy tries to make it better, but Willow tells her that storming off doesn’t really work if Buffy comes with her.

Lor: That is an Oz line if I ever heard one. How cute.

Sweeney: She is stopped in the halls by Anya. Willow doesn’t really know Anya, but Anya heard that Willow is the person to ask for the favor she wants. Willow resigns to help, but lights up when Anya reveals that the project is a spell. She gets downright giddy when Anya adds that she heard that Willow was “quite the powerful wicca.”

I should add that she says something about a time fold and in her earlier request she asked the ugly demon to screw with time. So, yeah. That’s what’s happening here.

K: Basically, this:

Lor: A+

Sweeney: Yes. That.

Anya tells Willow that they’re trying to retrieve a necklace that was a family heirloom stolen from her mom’s apartment. The spell they are doing will call the necklace forth from the time and place it was lost. In theory. They do their magic and we get a lot of quick cuts from The Wish, mostly featuring vamp!Willow. Real Willow freaks the fuck out as all of this is happening, because she sees it too.

K: As a result of Real Willow freaking out, the magic purple sand they’re meant to pour on the necklace representation thing gets poured on her hand. WHOOPS. 

Sweeney: Vamp!Willow disappears from The Wish as we cut back to the classroom where this spell is being performed. (Doesn’t anyone ever lock this school at night?) Anya’s freaking out because the necklace isn’t there and Willow is freaking because she knows Anya didn’t tell her everything. “I swear, I am just trying to find my necklace.” Willow suggests she checks the sofa in hell.

She goes to storm off, but not before hilarious grabbing her chicken feet and giving Anya a speech about not toying with magic because it’s dangerous. Cut to vamp!Willow waking up and saying, “This is weird.” I LOVE VAMP!WILLOW.

Vamp!Willow is walking Sunnydale’s main street, looking utterly perplexed by all the happy humans running around, in lieu of the vamp-dominated world she left behind. She makes her way to The Bronze and her look eventually shifts from confused to sad.

Lor: Probably because of the weird looking lady on stage singing about a chair in her head.

Sweeney: She bumps into Percy, who babbles about how she must be trick-or-treating, and that she should be at home writing his paper, unless she wants trouble with Snyder. “Until we graduate, I own your ass.” Douche. Vamp!Willow is having none of his shit.

 

K: Not gonna lie, I used “BORED NOW” far more than was warranted as Lor and I were standing in queues at Universal and Disney World last month. 

Lor: YEP.

Sweeney: THANKS FOR REMINDING ME OF ALL THE FUN I MISSED. -_-

She says she’s having a terrible night and asks him to help her make it better, as she picks him up and starts choking him. Xander sees this and pulls Percy off, thinking  that he is attacking Willow, because of temporary blindness? Willow gets really excited to see Xander. “You’re alive!” she says, and grabs him and gets all gropey (Ew.) which freaks Xander out. Eventually she steps back, realizing he’s not a vampire and repeats, with more disgust than enthusiasm, “You’re alive.”

K: Don’t worry, Vamp!Willow. I’m disappointed too. 

Sweeney: Xander, for his part, thinks that Willow was just super serious about her new clothes threat. He asks if she’s OK and she says, “No. Everything’s different,” very sadly. Buffy appears, and starts to ask Xander to introduce her to this person and freaks when she realizes it’s Willow. Vamp!Willow recognizes Buffy, just as she’s trying very hard to pretend to be complimentary. Vamp!Willow storms off and as Buffy tries to stop her, she vamps out for a second, leaving Buffy and Xander super distressed.

Outside, Willow is approached by two vampires who try to fight her, as per the attacked-by-vampires game plan. She takes out the one and the other tells her that there was a mistake because they were sent for a human. Vamp!Willow makes with the torturing to get him to round up friends to be her new bitches. She vows to make the world fun again, starting with The Bronze.

Xander and Buffy go to the Wiggins library to see Giles. “What is it?” he asks, and then we cut to them sitting on the steps mourning. I forgot about them not knowing what we know. SO SAD! AND BUFFY! BUFFY WOULD HAVE TO SLAY WILLOW!

For a break from these feels, this happens:

Giles: She was truly the finest of all of us.
Xander: Way better than me.
Giles: Much, much better.

I died.

K: I laughed so hard I had a coughing fit.

Lor: Brilliant. I love the line because he could be saying that Willow is better than him (Giles) but the way it comes off is that Willow is much, much better than Xander. Seriously, awesome.

Sweeney: Buffy is in the middle of a speech blaming herself for causing this by calling her reliable when Willow appears and asks who died. They are all stunned and Xander, to his credit, is the first to go on the defensive, running up to her with the cross he had been holding, shouting, “BACK! GET BACK DEMON!”

Guys, I just love this episode so much.

K: RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. 

Lor: I love that when Willow doesn’t react to the cross, he shakes it a little and holds it up to her again. I TRY TO FIX EVERYTHING BY SHAKING IT.

Sweeney: ME TOO!

Going back to the love: Buffy and Xander run up and hug her. When they release her she starts to ask Giles what’s wrong with them as he goes in for his own tackle hug.

Xander explains the situation and she gets hilariously defensive. “I’m not a vampire!” I LOVE THIS EPISODE.

Buffy tries to insist that she was and turns to Giles for an explanation and all he’s got is that something very strange is going on and this episode is so amazing that even Xander is awesome because he gets one of his wonderful one-liners: “Can you believe The Watchers Council let this guy go?”

Back at The Bronze, Anya is moping about her shitty day and asks for a beer, but she gets carded. “I’m eleven-hundred-and-twenty years old; just give me a frickin’ beer!” But that shockingly doesn’t work. Poor Anya.

K: Life is hard, yo.

Sweeney: Oz and his bandmate whose name I always forget (K: Devon) are chatting when Angel appears looking for Buffy. Vamp!Willow’s new army of vamp bitches burst through the door, shouting orders. Oz asks if Angel can get out to go get Buffy, but he thinks he’s needed there. Then vamp!Willow strolls in. Anya takes notice and Oz steps forward before saying, “Get Buffy. Do it now.”

Vamp!Willow grabs a girl and promises everyone that if they’re all good boys and girls, she’ll make them young and strong forever and ever.  She licks the girl’s neck, vamps out and bites the aforementioned girl.

Oz tries to plead with vamp!Willow that she doesn’t want to do this. (L: Lick girls?) She recognizes him as a White Hat and doesn’t understand why he’s talking to her like they’re friends. This is Anya’s clue to to step in and explain that she’s in the wrong world. Vamp!Willow is instantly on board with this idea and adds, “This is a dumb world. In my world there are people on chains and we can ride them like ponies.“

K: Does anyone else want to send vamp!Willow after Christian Grey?

Sweeney: YES PLEASE.

Anya tells her that they both want to get back there.

Lor: Anya wants to ride people like ponies too! Or- wait. Her necklace.

Sweeney: Back at the Wiggins Library, Willow’s getting all caught up to speed and they awkwardly joke about Willow being a dominatrix. Angel walks in to tell Buffy that Willow’s dead. Then he sees Willow and it’s his turn to play, “Wait, what?” So he adds that vamp!Willow and her new dream team are at The Bronze raising hell.

As the team goes off to work, Willow wants to know what they’ll do with vamp!her, and Buffy says that she just needs to be stopped. Willow sends them on their way as she runs back into the library for something and I can’t believe they’d let Willow out of their sight after spending an hour believing she was dead. Unsurprisingly, vamp!Willow seizes actual Willow.

K: LOVE IT. Especially the part where vamp!Willow is all “DUDE. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WEARING?!” It’s perfect.

Sweeney: Vamp!Willow was told by Anya that actual Willow brought her to this world and is the one who can send her back, although vamp!Willow is into having a double. She licks actual Willow’s neck because vamp!Willow is really big on neck licking. “This just can’t get more disturbing,” says actual Willow.

Actual Willow tries to fight her off and there’s a brief scuffle, in which actual Willow has enough time to grab the tranquilizer gun they keep on hand for Oz and shoot vamp!Willow with it. Vamp!Willow calls her a bitch as she passes out.

K: I have a small problem with this in that if your blood doesn’t flow, how can a tranq dart work? But pff, CONTRIVANCE.

Lor: I do love, though, that Willow probably went back into the library for the tranq gun in the first place. She was worried about having to kill Vamp!Willow and she was looking in the general direction where she later pulled the gun from.

Sweeney: The gang comes back and drags vamp!Willow into Oz’s cage area. And this episode is so hard for me to recap because WE SHOULD ALL JUST WATCH THE EPISODE OVER AND OVER. Fortunately, we have Tumblr, because this happens:

K: FAVOURITE THING EVER. Even Angel’s involvement is perfect.

Lor: I’m so happy this is one of the few things I’m spoiled on, because this  moment, this set-up? Best.

Sweeney: That was on my short list of known spoilers too! This moment is just too fantastic.

They try to figure out their next move and Buffy raises her hand to say that she has a really bad idea. Back at The Bronze, Angel looks in a window and sees that the dream team is still waiting for her, because they’re legit afraid of her, which is Willow’s cue to walk into the frame in the leather get-up. She notices that her boobs look awesome and makes herself and everyone else uncomfortable. Except the audience, who just laughs because she’s awesome.

Giles sends her in to try to diffuse the situation, and send a few of them out to at least even the numbers a bit. The signal for the gang to come in and rescue her will be her screaming. She promises not to do anything that could be interpreted as brave.

Willow struggles a lot with being in-character. She’s naturally such a polite, people-pleaser that she has no concept of how to be domineering. Anya asks where Willow is and Willow tells Anya that she killed…herself. Oof, this is about to get confusing.

She then tells one of her minions to go check on a noise outside, but way too politely. Anyway, Anya asks how she could kill her when she was their best shot. Fake-vamp!Willow doesn’t like Anya questioning her and threatens her. She sneaks an adorable wave at Oz, who instantly realizes that she’s not a vampire and gets excited.

K: The expression on his face – equal parts pride and “OH THANK GOD” – is awesome. See?

Sweeney: Fake-vamp!Willow continues with a tangent about how annoying actual Willow is, for being a a whiny doormat and YOU SEE, she’s expressing all her actual feels/concerns. Dear The Zeppo: You tried to do a thing and we’re pretty sure you did it wrong. This is how it’s done. xo, The Snark Squad.

K: A+ and 1430. 

Lor: Ye…yeah… Still not over it.

Sweeney: She sends another minion to check on the situation outside. The only minion with lines then points out that now that the go-back-to-the-other-world plan is out, they should make with the killing.

To go with this building tension, we go back to vamp!Willow waking up in actual Willow’s fuzzy pink sweater. “This is a nightmare.” Cordelia walks in wearing a tight black outfit covered in silver glitter, with a contrived excuse about for why she happened to drop by the library late at night in a shmancy outfit, because she wanted to see Wesley. (K: EW)

Vamp!Willow is also bad at pretending to be actual Willow, but slightly less bad and only trying to fool Cordelia who hasn’t had a sustained conversation with her since the you-kissed-my-boyfriend incident and, as such, just wants out of this situation. She finds the spare key, but just before she unlocks it, she realizes the thing I just pointed out. Cordelia decides that this is a good time to discuss “The Ethics of Boyfriend Stealing.” Cordelia has long overstepped her right to be awful to Xander about this, but this is fair and, more importantly, helpful!

Back at The Bronze, fake-vamp!Willow is stalling. Anya connects the dots. Willow tries to make them start with eating Anya, who is all LOL, bitch ain’t a vampire.

Vamp!Willow is dying a slow death at the hands of Cordelia’s ranting. She’s apparently had time to make tea and pull up a chair. It’s hilarious. Eventually vamp!Willow apologizes and promises to never steal her boyfriend again. Cordelia unlocks the cage and she vamps out. Cordelia runs and there’s a chase, even though Cordelia is not dressed for running. Fortunately, thanks to contrivance, Wesley appears just in time to save the day! He scares her off with a cross and holy water. Then Cordelia thanks Wesley and asks him out, because she’s her.

Back at The Bronze, Willow’s gig is officially up. She’s all, “Well, could a human do this?” and she screams.

K: I love that the vampires are like “…Oh, yeah. Totally. A human could do that.” BEST SIGNAL EVER.

Sweeney: The gang bursts in from outside, and eight vampires is well within their established vamp-fighting trajectory. So was 10, really, but getting rid of two and getting that scene was great so whatever. Sure.

Lor: I just really love the fight sequences this season. Buffy is using a pool cue for most of hers, and Angel gets a couple of cool pool-table-backed moves in, including throwing a pool ball at a vampire. It is so much fun to watch.

Sweeney: Willow decks Anya (L: I love her “ow! but yay!”) and tries to flee with Oz, when vamp!Willow shows up with her game face on. “No more snuggles?” asks Willow. Guess not, as vamp!Willow begins choking her, which seems silly. Why fuck with bloodflow? Isn’t that not a thing vampires would want.

Anyway, the fight basically ends and Buffy was about to stake vamp!Willow when actual Willow tells her not to.

They cut to one of Sunnydale’s many baddy factories, where vamp!Willow made her switcheroo, and they’re performing a ceremony to send her back. Buffy is not a huge fan of this idea, what with letting vampires go being against the slayer gig, but she’s also working up a track record on that too, so she doesn’t put up much of a fight.

Willow says that she just wants her to have a fair chance in her actual world, as that seems fair. Willow hugs vamp!Willow goodbye, and vamp!Willow gets handsy. It’s more hilarious than ew. Unfortunately for vamp!Willow, she returns to her world just in time to get staked. OOPS.

K: Poor vamp!Willow. She’s so awesome. 

Sweeney: At school the next day, Willow is telling Buffy that she doesn’t feel like going out because she now has double guilt coupons and wants to stay in for the rest of forever. BUT THEN, her douchey jock pal shows up, having worked real hard on his homework. He even brought her an apple.

With that, Willow’s over those guilt coupons and willing to go out after all.

Lor: Alyson Hannigan was fantastic in this episode. She played vamp!Willow and actual Willow to perfection, but then also did them impersonating each other so nicely too. Great lines and moments from all the supporting cast and baddies that were entertaining. Not very much snark here, but it was just a good episode! SQUEE.

Sweeney: SQUEE FOREVER. Snaps for Hannigan for acting this episode and snaps to Whedon for writing such a gem.

 

Next time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith’s on a mission to relieve Angel of his soul and we get ready for the broods in S03 E17 – Enemies.