Life Serial

Buffy returns from her (off-screen; fanfic writers, start your engines!) meeting with Angel with a bucket of chicken, but her live-in family has already eaten. Everyone politely takes a piece, and less politely pries into how the Angel-thing went. Buffy tells them it was "intense" and she doesn't want to talk about it. Giles asks about her plans; Buffy responds with how she's figured out how to juggle her current bills. Giles, of course, meant more far-reaching, life kind of plans, which Buffy has been steadily not thinking about. She'd been planning on going back to school, but it's too late in the semester to register. Willow suggests auditing classes with her and Tara. "That sounds like a good plan," Buffy says uncertainly. "What do you think, Giles?"

Cut to Jonathan striding around his driveway. "The Slayer always knows what she's doing. Sharp. Decisive. Always with a plan. We're never gonna become the prime lords of Sunnydale with her always one step ahead of us!" Warren: "well, that's why we're throwing the tests at her? Maybe we can find a weakness." (Oh, that's not a good sign; Buffy's not known for testing well. And didn't another villain try this routine? Oh, yeah -- Spike. Wonder where these three will wind up with a chip stuck....) Andrew slides out from under a rather lethal looking black van and takes them on a tour -- it's essentially the Q-Mobile, set up for Slayer surveillance with all the latest toys. And a mural of the Death Star on the side. Warren and Jonathan force Andrew to paint over it, showing slightly more sense of appropriate surveillance techniques than their younger cohort. "This time tomorrow the games begin, and the Slayer will never even know what hit her."

Buffy gets started right away, following Willow into a small sociology class. Topic of the day: Social construction of reality. The professor starts talking, hands go up, and Buffy sits blankly as philosophical technobabble flies all around her. Willow tries to reassure her that she'll get back into the rhythm of things (in between raising her hand at every opportunity and giving a very psycho-babble answer on the difference between reality and perception), as Buffy begins feeling dumber and dumber (and the audience is right there with her). The reassurances continue as they leave class, but Buffy wants some more non-taxing classes, "like Introduction to Pies, or Advanced Walking." Tara jogs up to join them and Buffy tries to pass off her discomfort to the other girl. As they walk down the hall, a boy brushes rudely past Buffy, knocking her to the floor and leaving something small and silver on her shirt. "Hey, you can at least say you're sorry, Rude-O!" Willow shouts after him very nastily.

As the boy rounds the corner, we see it's Warren. He stops and look up at a security camera, then speaks into his collar. "Hanson 7, this is Logan 5, do you copy?" Yeah, the other two in the van are there, and linked into the school security system. Warren tells them, "The inhibitor is on. Initiate Omega pulse sequence." (How many X-Men comics have these fanboys read? And if it's more than I have, I'm going to get really scared.) A satellite thingies pops out of the top of the van as Buffy and Tara head for her art appreciation class, not due to start for another 20 minutes. Tara standing next to her, Buffy takes a look at the course book (which opens right to one of those pictures of ecstatic angels under heavenly light); then there's a strange noise, Tara is sitting and in the middle of a conversation Buffy doesn't remember having. She blinks, thinking she's zoned out. Blowing it off, she heads over to get a drink of water; the strange noise comes again, and suddenly Tara is calling for her from the other end of the hall. "What the f--?" Buffy starts, before being cut off by Standards & Practices.

Warren hops into the van with the rest of the LoD; "It's doing it," Jonathan says, and Andrew adds, "It's wicked cool." Buffy is trailing Tara down the halls, and catches up just in time to have the door to the classroom close in her face. She stares at in confusion then, as she hears the noise, the door opens again and the class begins leaving. "Where have you been?" Tara asks. "You missed art class." Buffy begins to try to explain, but is too confused to do much more than stammer. She looks up at the clock and sees the hands move way too fast, but when she points it out to Tara, the other girl is gone and the halls are empty. Buffy races outdoors and shouts after Tara, then everything begins speeding up. As people blow by at the speed of light, Buffy takes refuge under a nearby table, and finally connects the noise to the situation. "There's something on me," she concludes, and starts searching. It only takes her a moment to locate the device; the Legion of Dorkness panics and pushes the big red self-destruct button, and Buffy watches the device disappear in her palm as the world returns to normal. Buffy makes it back to her feet and stares in confusion. "Score me," Warren demands, and the other two make like the World Science Fiction Convention costume competition: "50 points for ingenuity, another 30 since it involved actual contact." They debate over the freakometer reading and settle on a 7 -- Warren's final score is 220. "Hah! Beat that!" It's Andrew's turn next, and he attempts to sound threatening as he says, "Oh, I will. I will." (If you're interested, he mostly comes off sounding like Cordelia assuring Angel that she'll go straight to the fight without stopping for the shoe sale. Except Cordy would be more believable.)

Buffy heads to her first day of work with Xander, both of them wearing matching yellow hard hats (although Buffy looks infinitely cuter in hers due to the twin ponytails). Buffy is trying to be enthusiastic; Xander is just hoping she won't do anything to get him in trouble, since he got her the job. It's mostly lifting and toting, he tells her. Buffy appreciates it anyway: "You saved me from having to accepts Giles' offer to work at the Magic Box. Yigh. I'd rather be dead. Again." Xander asks if Giles had any ideas about the trip-out at school. Buffy: "He implied that maybe it was stress-related," but Buffy is doubtful because of the thing on her sweater that disappeared. "Maybe it was lint. Maybe it was evil lint." Xander blinks, then asks her to leave that kind of thing out when she's talking to Tony the Foreman. Who turns out to be an enormous sexist pig. He's disgusted with what Xander brings him, but Buffy leaves him in the dust by picking up a rather huge steel girder all by her little Gidget self and hauling it inside. She turns out to be good enough at the whole business that one of her co-workers tells her to slow down, they get paid by the hour.

However, Buffy's burgeoning career in construction is being observed by the LoD (when they're not debating proper clock directions). Andrew lets loose with his test, blowing on pan pipes. Buffy hears the haunting and off-key sounds as she's getting a drink and jumps to her feet to find Tony the ForeMan standing over her. She tries to make nice to his chauvinist pigness, but has to shove him out of the way when a demon attacks. He hits his head on a wall, but Buffy's too busy fighting the demon and his friends to notice. And she's not getting any help from the rest of the crew; two guys (one of who had been nice earlier) huddle whimpering in a corner as she destroys property along with the demons. They dissolve into a pile of goo, then nothing, as the LoD watches from the van, and gets into a fight over the binoculars. Andrew wind up getting shoved into the horn -- which plays the first notes of the Star Wars theme. Buffy follows the sounds to the window and spots the van, as the LoD stares at Andrew in disgust, Xander races onto the scene, Tony (unconscious through it all) says she attacked him and is Not Happy, and Buffy tries to explain about the demons. "No, not here, not at my job," Xander tells Buffy, honestly mad. "That's your job!" The construction guys whose whimpering necks she saved lie their cowardly little butts off, and Xander finally takes Buffy off the site. To his credit, after his immediate freak-out, he believes every word of her story, believes that someone is messing with her, and believes she ought to begin investigating right away. Buffy: "You're firing me, aren't you?" Xander: "Big time."

Unfortuantely, getting fired from the construction business leaves Buffy only one other alternative and she dutifully reports for work at the Magic Box. "Is this all research, or just some kind of stress test for the table?" she asks Giles, deep into figuring out who is messing with Buffy and why. The attacks might not be related, but he's not taking any chances. Anya takes over, introducing Buffy to the concept of special orders and tracking inventory, as the LoD monitors the situation from outside. They lament Buffy's lack of life focus while searching for free cable porn, until Jonathan announces he's ready. He asks the other two to take hands to form a circle; Andrew balks and Warren teases him about homophobia. "Stop touching my magic bone!" Jonathan orders; the other two giggle helplessly (as does the audience), although Warren does put down the big ol' bone he'd picked up (and damn it, there's just no way to synopsize this without entendres, intentional or otherwise, so I'm moving on).

Jonathan starts his ritual, chanting in the worst Latin accent known to man as he waves his one (see above re: entendres) over a burning parchment. The smoke drifts up... and begins to fill the van; the LoD is forced to bail or choke as a female customer comes into the shop. Giles, cleaning his glasses, offers sales advice, and Anya perkily sends Buffy off to do the salesman routine. "That woman -- go sell her something." Buffy heads off to do just that, sidetracked momentarily by a guy who wants advice on seductive candles. Given the choice between 'Lemon Seduction' and 'Essense of Slug', Buffy wisely suggests the lemon, and resumes course. Thurns out the lady's looking for a mummy hand for a prosperity and Buffy heads downstairs to retrieve the hand. But she runs into a little problem -- the hand is animated and doesn't want to be got. The hand tries to strangle Buffy and she finally esorts to to skewering it with the dagger of Lex, laying nearby. The customer is, ah, not impressed by the condition of the merchandise; Buffy loses the sale...

Then she's turning around as the bell on the door rings, and the same customer comes in. Turns out Jonathan's spell "made it so she had to satisfy a customer with a task that resists solving." Okay, people, we've all seen Groundhog Day; I really don't feel the need to run through all the loops. Suffice it to say that there's some major deja vu for Buffy: going Xena on one or two iterations (Giles' glasses get Slayer-crunched at one point, as does the bell, as does the customer), getting sales advice from Anya, and breaking down in tears at one point as the mummy hand continues to strenuously resist being purchased (the audience had their own share of tears as the LoD critiques Buffy's performance compared to other shows' versions of this shtick). Finally, Buffy comes up with the lovely idea of special ordering a different mummy hand and delivering it. End of customer. End of loop. End of job, when Anya takes the delivery charge, which Buffy forgot to charge for, out of her pay. Jonathan, meanwhile, gets shafted on points by his fellow supervillains following a short debate on relativity and time. "It's not over," Warren pronounces.

Given an exceptionally bad day, and the utter failure of any of her friends to improve her life, Buffy heads for the last resort -- Spike's crypt and a full bottle of whiskey. Spike watches with a mix of concern and amusement as Buffy has the predictable reaction to a shot of whiskey (really horrible faces, mostly) and spills her woes into his sympathetic, or at least attentive, ear. "Someone's out there messing up my life, only it kind of comes pre-messed already." Spike shifts further towards concern: "You think someone is trying to play you? Figure out what kills you?" (Yeah, Spike; sound familiar?) Buffy responds that Giles is working on it, which doesn't exactly impress Spike. He recommends that Buffy try a different approach. "You're not a schoolgirl. You're not a shopgirl. You're a creature of the darkness, like me. Try on my world. See how good it feels." And Buffy's had enough to drink at this point that it sounds like a good idea. (In all fairness, if Spike was looking at me with that expression, pretty much anything would sound good, tipsy or sober.)

Enter a bar, like Willy's only with louder music and less class (if possible). Buffy's still got her whiskey as she follows Spike to the backroom, and a poker game with "lowlifes who know everything that goes on in this town." Spike, ah, frees up a seat at the poker game going on by beating the hell out of one of the demons; "You're gonna play cards?!" Buffy asks incredulously. Spike tries to convince her of the value of subtlety, but she's not buying. (She's also lost the ability to enunciate, which may have something to do with that) "You want to play, that's fine. I am sticking to the original plan. Which one do I kill for information?" Spike: "These guys talk while they play. You'll get more information out of their mouths than out of gaping holes in their corpses." Whatever. Buffy takes a seat, bottle clutched in hand, as Spike resumes his chair and the players ante up. With a basketful of live and utterly adorable kittens.

Meanwhile, the LoD heads out after Buffy for "Final Jeopardy"; is anyone surprised at this point that the car ride is disrupted by a debate over who was the best Bond? (My money goes to Connery, by the way, although I maintain that it's totally not Dalton's fault he got stuck with sucky scripts. But I digress.) Spike's poker game goes all Spike's way; he promptly gets accused of cheating, which pretty much everyone at the table was doing, and a fight breaks out. spike looks to Buffy for backup, but she's not having any of it -- she's in this for information, not to watch Spike's back. Plus, she's really wasted. She releases the kittens and stomps unsteadily out of the room. Spike chases after her, demanding to know what's wrong and she lets him have it. ""What's wrong? You were gonna _help_ me! You... you were gonna beat heads, and... and fix my life! You're completely lame! Life sucks! And look at me: StupidBuffy, too dumb for college, and FreakBuffy, too strong for construction work. And my job at The Magic Box? I was bored to tears even before The Hour That Wouldn't End! And the only person I can even stand to be around is a... a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker!" Spike: "Oh, you saw the cheating, did you?" Buffy: "Also, I think you're drunk!" She staggers out as Spike fights off the righteous urge to strangle him a Slayer.

Theoretically, the LoD is lying in wait for Buffy; in fact, the debate over Bond continues. Andrew continues to defend Dalton (you go, babe!), while Jonathan maintain Moore was the best (what's he smoking? Moore kept doing the role fifteen years after he so should have retired and... um, right. Synopsis). Warren finally tries to break up the fight, then is unable to restrain himself from an outburst in favor of Connery (and Moonraker is inexusable, he's right about that). In all of the sound and fury, none of them notice when Buffy comes out of the bar and spots the van. Spike almost runs over her when he comes out; when she points out the van, he says he's up for stealing it if she wants, bu they've got the motorcycle. She tells him she's seen it before, at the construction site. She advances on the van and the boys finally look up from their fight enough to realize that they're in trouble ad panic. "Jonathan! Grab your magic bone!" Warren yells (not panicked enough to not giggle). And as Buffy rounds thte front of the van, the cheesiest demon ever seen outside of Legend jumps out at her and starts posturing in a red and wingy and "You've discovered my evil plan" kind of macho way as the van drives away.

Buffy, still not quite focusing, attacks him; it takes two tries for her to connect, but a kick to the chest doubles the demon over. Not to mention knocking Buffy on her ass. Spike helps her up as the demon begins his wussy death scene ("I am well struck! I call on the misty portal to my demon dimension where I will lay my head and gently die!") and disappears in a cloud of smoke. "I love it," Buffy declares, swaying unsteadily. "It makes you feel all powerful. And strong. And kind of sick." The van stops a little ways away and picks up DemonBoy, who quickly reverts to Jonathan, bruised and not happy. Warren tries to tell him they won: "Think about this -- we took on the Slayer. I mean we've got all kinds of stuf fin the computer now -- speed, strength, reaction time... We tested her, faced her... and we survived. The Trio versus the Slayer. It's not over." (The Trio? That's their big Supervillain name? Get over it.) And besides, they found that free cable porn they were looking for...

Back at home, Buffy discovers the wonders of a hangover as Giles hovers in parental concern. He couldn't find the 'demon' she faced, but she's got bigger problems. "I'm really screwing up, Giles," she says quietly, sitting on the floor by her bed. Giles sinks onto the bed itself. "You're being tested sequentially by some unknown demon. I'd call that scary." Buffy berates herself for letting the demon set the rules, and Giles tries to reassure her, telling hers he's pushing herself to hard. "The nice people at the phone company seem to think it's not hard enough," Buffy points out sadly. "Well, maybe there's something I can do about that," Giles tells her, pulling a check out of his pocket and handing it to Buffy. Her eyes go very wide, and she gives a token "It's too much, I can't" protest, promptly withdrawn since she not only can, she has to. She thanks him profusely, telling him, "I don't really know to say this, but it's a little like having mom back." Giles is amused: "In this scenario I'm your mother." "Want to be my shiftless absentee father?" Buffy offers, but Giles would rather settle for "Some sort of, um, rakish uncle?" The money and the kindness is enough to restore a little of Buffy's spirit; as she gets up to leave the room, she tells Giles, "I just want to tell you that, um... This makes me feel safe. Knowing you're always going to be here." He watches her leave with an expression of incredible sadness that he's careful not to let her see.


	The Bronze \| home Bargaining 1 \| Bargaining 2 \| After Life \| Flooded \| Life Serial \| All the Way \| Once More, With Feeling \| Tabula Rasa \| Smashed \| Wrecked \| Unaired Pilot Life Serial Life Serial Written by David Fury & Jane Espenson Directed by Nick Marck Perri's Review Plot: Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joyce died, Buffy's broke, the Legion of Dorkness convened, Buffy's spending way too much time with Spike, and Buffy took off to see Angel. Buffy returns from her (off-screen; fanfic writers, start your engines!) meeting with Angel with a bucket of chicken, but her live-in family has already eaten. Everyone politely takes a piece, and less politely pries into how the Angel-thing went. Buffy tells them it was "intense" and she doesn't want to talk about it. Giles asks about her plans; Buffy responds with how she's figured out how to juggle her current bills. Giles, of course, meant more far-reaching, life kind of plans, which Buffy has been steadily not thinking about. She'd been planning on going back to school, but it's too late in the semester to register. Willow suggests auditing classes with her and Tara. "That sounds like a good plan," Buffy says uncertainly. "What do you think, Giles?" Cut to Jonathan striding around his driveway. "The Slayer always knows what she's doing. Sharp. Decisive. Always with a plan. We're never gonna become the prime lords of Sunnydale with her always one step ahead of us!" Warren: "well, that's why we're throwing the tests at her? Maybe we can find a weakness." (Oh, that's not a good sign; Buffy's not known for testing well. And didn't another villain try this routine? Oh, yeah -- Spike. Wonder where these three will wind up with a chip stuck....) Andrew slides out from under a rather lethal looking black van and takes them on a tour -- it's essentially the Q-Mobile, set up for Slayer surveillance with all the latest toys. And a mural of the Death Star on the side. Warren and Jonathan force Andrew to paint over it, showing slightly more sense of appropriate surveillance techniques than their younger cohort. "This time tomorrow the games begin, and the Slayer will never even know what hit her." Buffy gets started right away, following Willow into a small sociology class. Topic of the day: Social construction of reality. The professor starts talking, hands go up, and Buffy sits blankly as philosophical technobabble flies all around her. Willow tries to reassure her that she'll get back into the rhythm of things (in between raising her hand at every opportunity and giving a very psycho-babble answer on the difference between reality and perception), as Buffy begins feeling dumber and dumber (and the audience is right there with her). The reassurances continue as they leave class, but Buffy wants some more non-taxing classes, "like Introduction to Pies, or Advanced Walking." Tara jogs up to join them and Buffy tries to pass off her discomfort to the other girl. As they walk down the hall, a boy brushes rudely past Buffy, knocking her to the floor and leaving something small and silver on her shirt. "Hey, you can at least say you're sorry, Rude-O!" Willow shouts after him very nastily. As the boy rounds the corner, we see it's Warren. He stops and look up at a security camera, then speaks into his collar. "Hanson 7, this is Logan 5, do you copy?" Yeah, the other two in the van are there, and linked into the school security system. Warren tells them, "The inhibitor is on. Initiate Omega pulse sequence." (How many X-Men comics have these fanboys read? And if it's more than I have, I'm going to get really scared.) A satellite thingies pops out of the top of the van as Buffy and Tara head for her art appreciation class, not due to start for another 20 minutes. Tara standing next to her, Buffy takes a look at the course book (which opens right to one of those pictures of ecstatic angels under heavenly light); then there's a strange noise, Tara is sitting and in the middle of a conversation Buffy doesn't remember having. She blinks, thinking she's zoned out. Blowing it off, she heads over to get a drink of water; the strange noise comes again, and suddenly Tara is calling for her from the other end of the hall. "What the f--?" Buffy starts, before being cut off by Standards & Practices. Warren hops into the van with the rest of the LoD; "It's doing it," Jonathan says, and Andrew adds, "It's wicked cool." Buffy is trailing Tara down the halls, and catches up just in time to have the door to the classroom close in her face. She stares at in confusion then, as she hears the noise, the door opens again and the class begins leaving. "Where have you been?" Tara asks. "You missed art class." Buffy begins to try to explain, but is too confused to do much more than stammer. She looks up at the clock and sees the hands move way too fast, but when she points it out to Tara, the other girl is gone and the halls are empty. Buffy races outdoors and shouts after Tara, then everything begins speeding up. As people blow by at the speed of light, Buffy takes refuge under a nearby table, and finally connects the noise to the situation. "There's something on me," she concludes, and starts searching. It only takes her a moment to locate the device; the Legion of Dorkness panics and pushes the big red self-destruct button, and Buffy watches the device disappear in her palm as the world returns to normal. Buffy makes it back to her feet and stares in confusion. "Score me," Warren demands, and the other two make like the World Science Fiction Convention costume competition: "50 points for ingenuity, another 30 since it involved actual contact." They debate over the freakometer reading and settle on a 7 -- Warren's final score is 220. "Hah! Beat that!" It's Andrew's turn next, and he attempts to sound threatening as he says, "Oh, I will. I will." (If you're interested, he mostly comes off sounding like Cordelia assuring Angel that she'll go straight to the fight without stopping for the shoe sale. Except Cordy would be more believable.) [And ohmigod, doesn't the musical look cool?!?!? And isn't it gonna be a bitch-kitty to synopsize?] Buffy heads to her first day of work with Xander, both of them wearing matching yellow hard hats (although Buffy looks infinitely cuter in hers due to the twin ponytails). Buffy is trying to be enthusiastic; Xander is just hoping she won't do anything to get him in trouble, since he got her the job. It's mostly lifting and toting, he tells her. Buffy appreciates it anyway: "You saved me from having to accepts Giles' offer to work at the Magic Box. Yigh. I'd rather be dead. Again." Xander asks if Giles had any ideas about the trip-out at school. Buffy: "He implied that maybe it was stress-related," but Buffy is doubtful because of the thing on her sweater that disappeared. "Maybe it was lint. Maybe it was evil lint." Xander blinks, then asks her to leave that kind of thing out when she's talking to Tony the Foreman. Who turns out to be an enormous sexist pig. He's disgusted with what Xander brings him, but Buffy leaves him in the dust by picking up a rather huge steel girder all by her little Gidget self and hauling it inside. She turns out to be good enough at the whole business that one of her co-workers tells her to slow down, they get paid by the hour. However, Buffy's burgeoning career in construction is being observed by the LoD (when they're not debating proper clock directions). Andrew lets loose with his test, blowing on pan pipes. Buffy hears the haunting and off-key sounds as she's getting a drink and jumps to her feet to find Tony the ForeMan standing over her. She tries to make nice to his chauvinist pigness, but has to shove him out of the way when a demon attacks. He hits his head on a wall, but Buffy's too busy fighting the demon and his friends to notice. And she's not getting any help from the rest of the crew; two guys (one of who had been nice earlier) huddle whimpering in a corner as she destroys property along with the demons. They dissolve into a pile of goo, then nothing, as the LoD watches from the van, and gets into a fight over the binoculars. Andrew wind up getting shoved into the horn -- which plays the first notes of the Star Wars theme. Buffy follows the sounds to the window and spots the van, as the LoD stares at Andrew in disgust, Xander races onto the scene, Tony (unconscious through it all) says she attacked him and is Not Happy, and Buffy tries to explain about the demons. "No, not here, not at my job," Xander tells Buffy, honestly mad. "That's your job!" The construction guys whose whimpering necks she saved lie their cowardly little butts off, and Xander finally takes Buffy off the site. To his credit, after his immediate freak-out, he believes every word of her story, believes that someone is messing with her, and believes she ought to begin investigating right away. Buffy: "You're firing me, aren't you?" Xander: "Big time." Unfortuantely, getting fired from the construction business leaves Buffy only one other alternative and she dutifully reports for work at the Magic Box. "Is this all research, or just some kind of stress test for the table?" she asks Giles, deep into figuring out who is messing with Buffy and why. The attacks might not be related, but he's not taking any chances. Anya takes over, introducing Buffy to the concept of special orders and tracking inventory, as the LoD monitors the situation from outside. They lament Buffy's lack of life focus while searching for free cable porn, until Jonathan announces he's ready. He asks the other two to take hands to form a circle; Andrew balks and Warren teases him about homophobia. "Stop touching my magic bone!" Jonathan orders; the other two giggle helplessly (as does the audience), although Warren does put down the big ol' bone he'd picked up (and damn it, there's just no way to synopsize this without entendres, intentional or otherwise, so I'm moving on). Jonathan starts his ritual, chanting in the worst Latin accent known to man as he waves his one (see above re: entendres) over a burning parchment. The smoke drifts up... and begins to fill the van; the LoD is forced to bail or choke as a female customer comes into the shop. Giles, cleaning his glasses, offers sales advice, and Anya perkily sends Buffy off to do the salesman routine. "That woman -- go sell her something." Buffy heads off to do just that, sidetracked momentarily by a guy who wants advice on seductive candles. Given the choice between 'Lemon Seduction' and 'Essense of Slug', Buffy wisely suggests the lemon, and resumes course. Thurns out the lady's looking for a mummy hand for a prosperity and Buffy heads downstairs to retrieve the hand. But she runs into a little problem -- the hand is animated and doesn't want to be got. The hand tries to strangle Buffy and she finally esorts to to skewering it with the dagger of Lex, laying nearby. The customer is, ah, not impressed by the condition of the merchandise; Buffy loses the sale... Then she's turning around as the bell on the door rings, and the same customer comes in. Turns out Jonathan's spell "made it so she had to satisfy a customer with a task that resists solving." Okay, people, we've all seen Groundhog Day; I really don't feel the need to run through all the loops. Suffice it to say that there's some major deja vu for Buffy: going Xena on one or two iterations (Giles' glasses get Slayer-crunched at one point, as does the bell, as does the customer), getting sales advice from Anya, and breaking down in tears at one point as the mummy hand continues to strenuously resist being purchased (the audience had their own share of tears as the LoD critiques Buffy's performance compared to other shows' versions of this shtick). Finally, Buffy comes up with the lovely idea of special ordering a different mummy hand and delivering it. End of customer. End of loop. End of job, when Anya takes the delivery charge, which Buffy forgot to charge for, out of her pay. Jonathan, meanwhile, gets shafted on points by his fellow supervillains following a short debate on relativity and time. "It's not over," Warren pronounces. Given an exceptionally bad day, and the utter failure of any of her friends to improve her life, Buffy heads for the last resort -- Spike's crypt and a full bottle of whiskey. Spike watches with a mix of concern and amusement as Buffy has the predictable reaction to a shot of whiskey (really horrible faces, mostly) and spills her woes into his sympathetic, or at least attentive, ear. "Someone's out there messing up my life, only it kind of comes pre-messed already." Spike shifts further towards concern: "You think someone is trying to play you? Figure out what kills you?" (Yeah, Spike; sound familiar?) Buffy responds that Giles is working on it, which doesn't exactly impress Spike. He recommends that Buffy try a different approach. "You're not a schoolgirl. You're not a shopgirl. You're a creature of the darkness, like me. Try on my world. See how good it feels." And Buffy's had enough to drink at this point that it sounds like a good idea. (In all fairness, if Spike was looking at me with that expression, pretty much anything would sound good, tipsy or sober.) Enter a bar, like Willy's only with louder music and less class (if possible). Buffy's still got her whiskey as she follows Spike to the backroom, and a poker game with "lowlifes who know everything that goes on in this town." Spike, ah, frees up a seat at the poker game going on by beating the hell out of one of the demons; "You're gonna play cards?!" Buffy asks incredulously. Spike tries to convince her of the value of subtlety, but she's not buying. (She's also lost the ability to enunciate, which may have something to do with that) "You want to play, that's fine. I am sticking to the original plan. Which one do I kill for information?" Spike: "These guys talk while they play. You'll get more information out of their mouths than out of gaping holes in their corpses." Whatever. Buffy takes a seat, bottle clutched in hand, as Spike resumes his chair and the players ante up. With a basketful of live and utterly adorable kittens. Meanwhile, the LoD heads out after Buffy for "Final Jeopardy"; is anyone surprised at this point that the car ride is disrupted by a debate over who was the best Bond? (My money goes to Connery, by the way, although I maintain that it's totally not Dalton's fault he got stuck with sucky scripts. But I digress.) Spike's poker game goes all Spike's way; he promptly gets accused of cheating, which pretty much everyone at the table was doing, and a fight breaks out. spike looks to Buffy for backup, but she's not having any of it -- she's in this for information, not to watch Spike's back. Plus, she's really wasted. She releases the kittens and stomps unsteadily out of the room. Spike chases after her, demanding to know what's wrong and she lets him have it. ""What's wrong? You were gonna _help_ me! You... you were gonna beat heads, and... and fix my life! You're completely lame! Life sucks! And look at me: StupidBuffy, too dumb for college, and FreakBuffy, too strong for construction work. And my job at The Magic Box? I was bored to tears even before The Hour That Wouldn't End! And the only person I can even stand to be around is a... a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker!" Spike: "Oh, you saw the cheating, did you?" Buffy: "Also, I think you're drunk!" She staggers out as Spike fights off the righteous urge to strangle him a Slayer. Theoretically, the LoD is lying in wait for Buffy; in fact, the debate over Bond continues. Andrew continues to defend Dalton (you go, babe!), while Jonathan maintain Moore was the best (what's he smoking? Moore kept doing the role fifteen years after he so should have retired and... um, right. Synopsis). Warren finally tries to break up the fight, then is unable to restrain himself from an outburst in favor of Connery (and Moonraker is inexusable, he's right about that). In all of the sound and fury, none of them notice when Buffy comes out of the bar and spots the van. Spike almost runs over her when he comes out; when she points out the van, he says he's up for stealing it if she wants, bu they've got the motorcycle. She tells him she's seen it before, at the construction site. She advances on the van and the boys finally look up from their fight enough to realize that they're in trouble ad panic. "Jonathan! Grab your magic bone!" Warren yells (not panicked enough to not giggle). And as Buffy rounds thte front of the van, the cheesiest demon ever seen outside of Legend jumps out at her and starts posturing in a red and wingy and "You've discovered my evil plan" kind of macho way as the van drives away. Buffy, still not quite focusing, attacks him; it takes two tries for her to connect, but a kick to the chest doubles the demon over. Not to mention knocking Buffy on her ass. Spike helps her up as the demon begins his wussy death scene ("I am well struck! I call on the misty portal to my demon dimension where I will lay my head and gently die!") and disappears in a cloud of smoke. "I love it," Buffy declares, swaying unsteadily. "It makes you feel all powerful. And strong. And kind of sick." The van stops a little ways away and picks up DemonBoy, who quickly reverts to Jonathan, bruised and not happy. Warren tries to tell him they won: "Think about this -- we took on the Slayer. I mean we've got all kinds of stuf fin the computer now -- speed, strength, reaction time... We tested her, faced her... and we survived. The Trio versus the Slayer. It's not over." (The Trio? That's their big Supervillain name? Get over it.) And besides, they found that free cable porn they were looking for... Back at home, Buffy discovers the wonders of a hangover as Giles hovers in parental concern. He couldn't find the 'demon' she faced, but she's got bigger problems. "I'm really screwing up, Giles," she says quietly, sitting on the floor by her bed. Giles sinks onto the bed itself. "You're being tested sequentially by some unknown demon. I'd call that scary." Buffy berates herself for letting the demon set the rules, and Giles tries to reassure her, telling hers he's pushing herself to hard. "The nice people at the phone company seem to think it's not hard enough," Buffy points out sadly. "Well, maybe there's something I can do about that," Giles tells her, pulling a check out of his pocket and handing it to Buffy. Her eyes go very wide, and she gives a token "It's too much, I can't" protest, promptly withdrawn since she not only can, she has to. She thanks him profusely, telling him, "I don't really know to say this, but it's a little like having mom back." Giles is amused: "In this scenario I'm your mother." "Want to be my shiftless absentee father?" Buffy offers, but Giles would rather settle for "Some sort of, um, rakish uncle?" The money and the kindness is enough to restore a little of Buffy's spirit; as she gets up to leave the room, she tells Giles, "I just want to tell you that, um... This makes me feel safe. Knowing you're always going to be here." He watches her leave with an expression of incredible sadness that he's careful not to let her see.