Hey, That's Better!

After a couple of so-so episodes of Buffy, tonight's was a really enjoyable comeback, even if -- oh, wait, I guess I'd better throw in a spoiler warning for this post, so here it is -- as I was saying, even if the Big Bad is still mysteriously and disappointingly absent. And even if I was rolling my eyes at that whole "wait, has anybody seen Giles touch anything?" scene. Sorry, Joss, but we were all there several episodes ago, which was probably the intent, and we'd all figured out by now that the whole thing was a red herring, which probably wasn't. That's the problem with being too good at playing mindgames with your audience. After a while, they start to expect it from you, and they get harder and harder to fool. I did very much like the way they resolved it, though. "Wait, you think I'm evil because I take a group of girls on a camping trip and don't touch them?" Heh.

Other than that, though, it was just a cool episode all around, and one that finally gets some of the last couple of eps' lost momentum back, even if that momentum seems to be going in different directions now. Good things: weird, totally unexpected plot twists, some excellent character stuff for Willow (poor Willow!), quite a bit of genuine suspense, and good use of series continuity. Also, disturbingly enough, I find that I'm actually starting to rather like Andrew. Not sure just when that happened. But, hey, when did Amy get to be so psycho? Was this set up at all during the part of the sixth season that I missed (i.e. most of it), or did it just come from out of nowhere the way it kind of seemed to?

By the way, I could have told Spike that his chip was going to start malfunctioning sooner or later. After all, Gan's did. Here's hoping Spike's doctor doesn't try to sell them out to the First, because that would be far too Blake's 7 for coincidence.