There Can't Be Only Two Weeks Left! They've Still Got Too Much to Resolve! (WARNING: Spoilers for Tonight's Episode of Buffy)

Doin' the "random thoughts" thing here:

You know, I really do think Faith is making a much better leader than Buffy. She's listening to the others and not alienating them, but is still willing to put her foot down and make the decisions. She also gets points for actually picking as a starting point a mission they could actually handle and which had at least some reasonable possibility of paying off. Hey, at least they had better morale when they finally walked into the trap...

So Dawn's reading Turkish spellbooks -- in Turkish! -- as well as studying ancient Sumerian? Hmm. She may have not turned out to be a Buffy-in-waiting, but she seems to be making serious progress along the path to becoming a Junior Giles. It's kind of an odd thought, but she might have quite a career ahead of her as a Watcher some day. Assuming they still exist when all this is over, of course.

Does Wood just have a fixation with Slayers? Is this some kind of weird Oedipal thing I really don't want to know about?

So, Willow can have sex without turning evil. I wasn't aware that this was a concern, but I guess after the whole "Warren incident," I can understand why she was worried. Well, it's good to know we don't have another Angel on our hands, anyway, I suppose.

We don't get to see much of Caleb in this episode, but what we do see is extremely effective. I don't know that I thought too much of him as a bad guy at first, but there's something about that really creepy smile he gets to flash a couple of times here that just works. And, you know, of all the various relationships that are being -- ahem! -- explored in this episode, I'm actually finding the one between Caleb and the First the most interesting. Looking at the way they interact, I can see how all the threads of Caleb's abnormal psychology tie together in a very consistent (if extremely disturbing) way. I mean, here's a creature who appears to him as a woman, but is "uncorrupted" by flesh. That's got to have some special resonances for him, twisted misogynist that he is.

The First does a great Mayor Wilkins impression! It was really cool to see him again, even if it wasn't exactly him. And, you know, I have always believed that the creepiest, scariest thing about the First is its ability to manipulate people and push their psychological buttons. It picked a very effective way to get to Faith, and I think that just one of this kind of mind-games scenes is worth a dozen fights with Ubervamps and Bringers to really bring home just how evil and dangerous the First actually is.

Well, we're now getting very, very close to the end of the season and the end of the show. And it still feels to me like we're building up to the climax at far too leisurely of a pace. I imagine they'll wrap the plot up in a suitablely dramatic fashion, but I'm a bit worried about how much of a resolution we're going to get on some of the character stuff. Yes, I'm sure Buffy will get a great big, life-validating climax, but I want everybody else to have their stories wrapped up on a satisfying note, too. In particular, I really want to see a reconciliation between Buffy and Giles. It's very sad to me to see how estranged they've been lately, and I would hate for things to end on that kind of a note.

So, anybody want to place any bets on who lives through next week and who doesn't?