Tuesday is Buffy Day! (WARNING: Spoilers for Tonight's Episode (And Why Don't They Give Us Episode Titles on the Screen, Anyway?))

Well, I didn't find this episode quite as entertaining as the last couple, but it's still moving the story along, and for the first time in a long while, the First Evil really does feel genuinely creepy and evil. Random thoughts follow, since I do seem to have slipped into the tradition of doing them for Buffy now...

I admit it, I don't quite get the whole thing with the box and the ancient guys and the swirly darkness... You wanna know something? I really missed Giles this ep. Because I'm sure he would have had interesting and informative things to say about the whole thing. Plus, he's much better at ancient Sumerian than Dawn. (By the way, how does Dawn know ancient Sumerian?)

Speaking of characters who aren't there, where'd Andrew get to? He shows up for one scene toward the beginning, and then he just vanishes into thin air before the big meeting. Doggone it, if you're gonna go to all the trouble of actually getting me to like the guy, for pity's sake, at least keep him on the screen! His only function in this ep. was to make funnel cake. And, come to that, we didn't even get to see the funnel cake.

While Andrew's stock is rising, I'm sad to say, Kennedy's is falling rapidly. I started out being something of a defender of Kennedy, who seems to be fairly unpopular with the fans in general, but she's really beginning to annoy me now. There's no doubt whatsoever that the only reason she's allowed to be hanging out with the core Scooby gang instead of being sent to her room with the other Potentials is because she happens to be Willow's nookie-partner. And yet here she is, acting like she's somehow In-Charge Gal. Sorry kid, you have not earned the right! At least she appears to have learned a valuable lesson by the end of the episode. That's right, Kennedy, dear, Scary Dark Willow is not cool. Scary Dark Willow is dark and scary. You do not want to invite Scary Dark Willow out to play.

Buffy's tough-love, everybody-has-to-do-better speech was pretty impressive, in its own bitchy sort of way, but I can't help but feel that it would have been a lot more effective if there was anything specific for any of them to actually do at that point. I mean, Wood had a point: the First doesn't exactly have an ass you can kick. It seems to me that the big problem is not that they're not ready to fight, but that they have no means of fighting. Of course all the sitting around doing nothing in the face of incipient apocalypse is demoralizing, and calisthenics sessions in the back yard don't really help alleviate that much. If you ask me, if Buffy really wants to motivate them she needs to stop making speeches and figure out something for them to do. Something that's actually, you know, useful.

On a completely frivolous note... It's amazing what a difference just putting on that leather coat makes to Spike. It's like, instant badass. I think Buffy should just carry that coat around with her. She can hand it to Spike when she wants him to kick ass, and then make him take it off when she's ready for him to be Mr. Sensitive again. It's like Superman's costume or something, only he doesn't have to go into a phone booth to change.