All has been quiet in Sunnydale — Spike and Drusilla are missing and presumed dead, the Tarakan contract on Buffy has been called off, and Buffy's been able to spend more time taking care of the recuperating Angel than slaying vampires. But of course it can't last. Hearing a noise of distress from the kitchen, Buffy investigates, only to find her mother kissing a strange man her mother introduces as Ted. Buffy is not happy. Ted charms the socks off Willow (with the promise of free computer upgrades) and Xander (with his excellent cooking), but Buffy remains sullen and distant. She's even less happy the next day when they run into Ted at school and he invites her and her friends to go miniature golfing that Saturday. But even Buffy admits that it's just parental issues, that she doesn't like seeing her mother with a man other than her father, and she promises Angel she'll make an attempt to tolerate, if not like, Ted.
At the miniature golf course, Ted catches Buffy cheating and his charm disappears. He raises his voice, thumping his golf club repeatedly against his leg, telling her that he won't stand for that sort of "malarkey" in his house. When Buffy says that it's a good thing they're not in his house, Ted replies, "Do you want me to smack that smart-ass mouth of yours?" Then Willow and Xander and Joyce show up, and Ted becomes all charming again, but Buffy is officially creeped out. She tries to tell her mother the next day, but Joyce defends Ted.
Suspicious, Buffy pays a visit to the company where Ted sells computers. His coworkers call him "the Machine," and let slip that Ted plans to marry Joyce in two months. Buffy brings up the subject that night at dinner, and gets sent to her room for her troubles. After sneaking out in a futile attempt to find some vampires to take her frustrations out on, she climbs back in her window to find Ted sitting in her room, having gone through her things and read her diary. He calls her delusional for writing about being a Vampire Slayer, and threatens to show the diary to Buffy's mother if she doesn't be nice and stop trying to cause trouble. Buffy tries to take the diary back, and Ted punches her. "I was so hoping you'd do that," says Buffy and kicks and punches Ted Slayer-style until he falls down the stairs and lays motionless. "You killed him," her mother says.
The police don't charge Buffy because it looks like self-defense, but they continue investigating regardless. But neither that nor the looks and whispers at school the next day are anything compared to the guilt and remorse that Buffy feels for taking a human life. Giles goes off to try to slay vampires until Buffy is up to it again, and Willow and Xander (with Cordelia's help) start investigating in an attempt to find some information which will help Buffy deal with this trauma. Xander eats one of Ted's cookies and suddenly has an inappropriately cheerful disposition, and Willow looks into the cookies. She finds that they're laced with a tranquilizer. The three teens then go to Ted's apartment to see what they can find. What they find is four other wives in the closet.
Ms. Calendar shows up in the park to attempt to reconcile with Giles, but a vampire shows up and attacks them. In the melee, Ms. Calendar shoots Giles accidentally with a crossbow, but Giles then kills the vampire and Ms. Calendar helps him off to the hospital. Meanwhile, Buffy finds her window nailed shut, and then Ted appears in her room. He attacks Buffy, who stabs him with a nail file and reveals that his arm is full of wires — Ted is a robot! Now fighting an electronic stutter, Ted knocks Buffy unconscious, then goes downstairs to see her mother. He tells Joyce that he was dead for six minutes but then revived, and he tries to get her to leave with him, but his stutter makes her suspicious and he gets rough with her, eventually knocking her out. Then he hears Buffy and goes to take care of her once and for all, but Buffy hits him with an iron skillet, tearing the skin off his face to reveal his robotic skull and deactivating him for good. Willow, Xander and Cordelia found that the original Ted was a weak man whose wife left him, so he built a robotic version of himself who then kept trying to bring back his wife. Ted has been dismantled, and Giles has reconciled with Ms. Calendar, and all seems relatively well again in Sunnydale — for now.
