Writer:

David Fury

Director:

Daniel Attias

Regulars:

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris

Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg

Emma Caulfield as Anya

Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn

James Marsters as Spike

Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

Guest Stars:

Mercedes McNab as Harmony

Charlie Weber as Ben

Juliet Landau as Drusilla

Amber Benson as Tara

Kristine Sutherland as Joyce

Cast:

Frederick Dawson as Porter

Greg Wayne as Student

Joseph DiGiandomenico as Matt

Walter Borchert as Jeff

Asher Glaser as Boy in Bronze

Jennifer Bergman as Girl in Bronze

Nell Shanahan as Waitress

Credits submitted by Paul Clement.

Train porter and five passengers

Presumably drained or killed by Drusilla on the train.

Couple making out in the Bronze

Killed by Drusilla, drained by Spike and Drusilla on the balcony.

Total: Eight

Body count submitted by mellie.

Xander: "The point is, I work hard for that money."
Spike: "And you're saying I didn't?"
Xander: "You stole it!"
Spike: "And you're making it into very hard work!"

Buffy (about Dawn and Spike): "I think she has a crush on him."
Xander: "What?"
Buffy: "I mean, I always knew he had this weird fixation with me..."
Xander: "I'm the one she had a crush on. Me!"
Buffy: "There's nothing here. Let's go."
Xander: "It's always been me! Big, funny Xander! Oh what, she suddenly decides I'm not the cool one anymore? Why's that okay?"

Harmony: "Well, you'd better not be thinking what I think you're thinking, because my answer is the same as always — no threesomes unless it's boy-boy-girl. Or Charlize Theron."

Spike (shouting): "Aaaarrrggghh! Gaaagggghhhhhh! What the bleeding hell is wrong with you bloody women? What the hell does it take? Why do you bitches torture me?"
Buffy: "Which question do you want me to answer first?"

More quotes from this episode...

Most of Drusilla's babblings in her first scene. I find it tiring.

• Spike (complaining about the new, remodeled Bronze): "Especially since the flowering onion got remodeled right off the sodding menu."

Spike is referring to an American appetizer, which is basically a big fried onion. Many restaurants sell it, each with a different name (Bloomin' Onion, Wild Wild West Onion, Texas Tumbleweed, etc.). In my neck of the woods, Chili's is most known for it (they call it the Awesome Blossom).


• Xander (to Spike): "Hey, evil dead, you're in my seat."

Directed by Sam Raimi in 1982, The Evil Dead is considered to be one of the great modern horror movies. Five young people go to an old cabin in the woods and mistakenly summon the most evil, vicious (not to mention sniggering) demons you could imagine. The total budget for the film was a mere $50,000.

• Willow (to Tara and Buffy after class): "I just don't see why he couldn't have ended up with Esmeralda."

Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame set in 15th century Paris, tells the moving story of the lonely, physically deformed bell ringer, Quasimodo, who falls in love with the wild Esmeralda, a gypsy also lusted after by the arch-conservative Judge Claude Frollo. As far as movie versions go, Tara was obviously referring to the 1939 version, starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara. Buffy's singing gargoyles comment was in reference to the 1996 Disney version.

• Buffy: "Unconfirmed reports of severe trauma to the throats of one or more of the victims. Survey says... vampire."

This is probably a reference to the quiz show Family Feud. 100 people are asked the same question, and the players try to guess what the number one answer was. When the correct answer is revealed, the host announces it by saying, "Survey says..."


• Spike (to Buffy during their stakeout): "Do you like the Ramones?"

In the mid-'70s, The Ramones shaped the sound of punk rock in New York. Spike sings a bit of "I Wanna Be Sedated," which was originally released on their 1978 album Road to Ruin. — Listen (MP3, 120K)

• Drusilla (to Spike about the chip in his head): "No little Tinkertoy ever could stop you from flowing."

Tinkertoy construction sets celebrated their 80th birthday in 1993. The sets were the invention of Charles Pajeau, a stonemason from Evanston, Illinois who established The Toy Tinkers company. Inspired by watching children play with pencils, sticks and empty spools of thread, Pajeau developed several basic wooden parts which children could assemble in a variety of three dimensional abstract ways. The toys were redesigned by Playskool in 1992.


• Harmony (to Spike): "No threesomes unless it's boy-boy-girl. Or Charlize Theron."

The actress Charlize Theron was born in South Africa. At the age of 18 her mother made her go to Los Angeles to try a career in the movie industry. Her first major role was in the 1996 film 2 Days in the Valley, since then she's starred in over 20 films. Harmony's got good taste.

• Harmony (to Drusilla): "'Cause Spikey don't play that anymore, Morticia."

Morticia Addams is the mother of the Addams Family, created by Charles Addams as a cartoon strip in The New Yorker Magazine in 1932. Since then the Addams have been stars of both live and animation TV shows and three movies: The Addams Family (1991), Addams Family Values (1993), and Addams Family Reunion (1998). Interestingly, a young Mercedes McNab (Harmony) appeared in the first two movies.

Harmony's "Spikey don't play that" comment may be considered a reference to In Living Color, the sketch comedy that ran from 1990-1994 and gave rise to Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, the Wayans family, and others. One of the characters played by Damon Wayans was Homey the Clown, who coined the catch phrase, "Homey don't play that."

• Buffy: "Well, I do beat him up a lot. For Spike that's like third base."

Buffy is using the old-fashioned baseball-as-sex metaphor. Third base would be the last stop before sex.

• Drusilla: "It's not nice to change the game in mid-play, Spike... you've taken my chair and the music hasn't stopped."

Drusilla is referring to the kids' game "musical chairs," in which the players run around a group of chairs while music plays. When the music stops, the players have to sit down in a chair. Since there is one less chair than there are players, the slowest person won't get to sit down, and will be out of the game. The music then starts up again, another chair is removed, and play proceeds like this until only one player is left.

Some references submitted by JivinJane and mellie.

• Blood Ties

Spike refers to helping Buffy take on "that Glory chippy," which took place in the previous episode. (Glory knocked him out rather quickly, hence Buffy's comment.) Also, Willow is still getting headaches as a consequence of the teleportation spell she did on Glory. Also in "Blood Ties," Dawn found out that she's the Key (Buffy found out in "No Place Like Home").

• School Hard

  Spike and Drusilla were introduced in "School Hard," at which point we (and Buffy) learned that Spike had killed two Slayers. Drusilla, the love of Spike's un-life, was last seen on BtVS in "Becoming Part Two.

• Angel: To Shansu in LA

This is the episode in which Darla is "mojo-ed back from the beyond" by the Wolfram and Hart lawyers.

• Angel: The Trial

In final moments of this episode, Drusilla sired the dying human Darla.

• Angel: Redefinition

Drusilla mentions that she "didn't care for Angelus setting us on fire," which he did in "Redefinition".

• Angel: In the Dark

Spike says that he's done the whole Los Angeles thing — one assumes that he'd been there before, but we know that he went there in "In the Dark," to steal the Gem of Amara from Angel.

• Fool For Love

Spike describes his connection to Drusilla, beginning with when she sired him (when she "delivered him from mediocrity") — events seen in "Fool For Love."

• Lovers Walk

  Spike mentions Drusilla having left him for a chaos demon, which we learned about in "Lovers Walk." (The demon, and the breakup scene, was shown in a flashback in "Fool For Love.")

Some continuity submitted by Dani Kin.

• After Drusilla snaps the neck of the boy in the Bronze, presumably killing him, you can see him swallow as Drusilla begins to feed on him. (It is conceivable, however, that he was still alive.)
        Spotted by C.J.

• Some people believe it a goof that Spike was able to feed from the girl in the Bronze without pain. However, Drusilla breaks the girl's neck before handing her to Spike, thus killing her and providing him with a painless meal. His hesitation is probably due mostly to the fact that he told Buffy he was going to give up being evil.

• Why didn't Buffy kill Drusilla at the end of this episode? This is only 4 episodes after Buffy's big "my job description's pretty clear" speech and yet she lets a vampire, who she knows has killed at least 6 people and just attacked her, go free. (Not exactly a goof, but a tsk tsk for Buffy.)
        Submitted by B.D. and C.J.

• Sunnydale has a train station (Sunnydale Station), which is the last stop on at least one train line.

Note: To cut down on bandwidth theft, sound files are password protected. After you click "Listen," just enter the username bg and the password 8rt at the prompt. If the password doesn't work, that probably means it's been changed; refresh/reload this page to get the new one.

• Summercamp - "Play It By Ear" (From Pure Juice, Wea/Warner Bros., 1997)
  This song plays in the opening scene in the Bronze as Buffy looks on while the gang dances.
  Listen (MP3, 153K) — Lyrics — Official Site
  
  
• Summercamp - "Happy" (Unreleased)
  This song plays in the Bronze as Buffy and Ben chat.
  Official Site
  
  
• Devics - "Key" (From If You Forget Me, Splinter Records, 1998)
  Spike and Dru dance at the Bronze and then Dru kills for him.
  Listen (MP3, 146K) — Lyrics — Official Site
  
  

Music info submitted by Boo.

Soupytwist:

The return of Drusilla. Hooray? It was shaping up to be good, but why would Dru come back? I still don't see the motivation. This episode was good until the last half. I am choosing to ignore it. David Fury, while I usually like what he does, has done nothing but make me angry. Spike is not just some whacked out black hat! He is not just a one-dimensional villain, the last two seasons and especially "Fool for Love" have shown the depth that the character has, and I will grasp onto one scene in this episode forever as further proof: Drusilla feeding a girl to Spike at the Bronze and Spike hesitating to feed — from that scene alone I will carry a torch for Spike remaining in the cast for at least another season. (6/10)

Elliot:

This was basically Spike's episode, and James was excellent. It was a rare chance for him to act a wide range of emotions, and he pretty much ran the whole gamut here, from the usual Spike anger, through love, to hurt. You almost felt sorry for the brutal killer. I particularly liked his rant at the end of the episode after being driven to the end of his tether by these "bloody women" (can't help but sympathise with him a tiny bit there ). I wasn't too sure of his rendition of the Ramones mind you. Once again he was good in his scenes with Dawn (I liked the changed ending of his scary story after Buffy showed up) and Joyce — there's always been a strange chemistry between those two. Probably because when he was just plain William he was exactly the kind of non-threatening wimp that many mothers would love to see their daughters go out with. We also got the first hints that Spike may be going down an Angel-esque path of redemption — he seemed quite hesitant about feeding off that girl Drusilla killed (so much so that on my initial viewing I got confused and thought she was still alive and he was hesitating from fear of the chip kicking in), and he told Buffy that he was changing, ready to leave evil behind. The rest of the cast was also good, except for Drusilla. Juliet, I'm sorry to say, was terrible. Ignoring her abysmal accent, which isn't an easy thing to do, her "insanity" (read: rubbish head jerking and the occasional giggle) was particularly grating this time round, and I found it annoying enough in Season 2. I wish Spike had killed her. Buffy was great in her total revulsion to Spike's declaration of love. Harmony was funny in her Buffy-sex-game scene with Spike, and Xander deserves a mention purely for his reaction when Buffy told him about Spike's feelings. All in all a funny, but not too fluffy, episode. If it was a bit slow moving in parts, it was more than redeemed by the end set piece. (8.5/10)

Jamie Marie:

I'd forgotten how frigging annoying Drusilla is. All goofy expressions and inane ramblings — I know some people love it, but it drives me batty. Maybe that's how Angel really drove her insane — by babbling incomprehensible rubbish at her all the time. Luckily for me, this episode was carried by James Marsters. Have I mentioned that Spike kicks ass? Really, he does. And James Marsters just keeps getting better. I especially loved the stakeout, and of course, him trying to tell Buffy he loves her. Oh, and when he walks into the barrier at Buffy's front door and realizes he's been locked out — the look on his face almost made me cry. SMG's performance was great as well, but my loyalty lies with Spike, so it's hard not to think of Buffy as a bitch. Oh sure, I get why she reacted the way she did, but that doesn't make me feel any less sorry for poor Spikey. And then there's Harmony, who's always good for a laugh — plus she has good taste in women. I'd rather look like Charlize Theron than have a threesome with her, but what the hell. Throw in Xander's hysterical (and adorable) reaction to the news of Spike's infatuation, and another great Spike/Dawn scene, and you've got solid episode good for repeat viewing. (8.75/10)