Overall Rating: 8.1 Matt: 8.4 Eric: 7.8 Writer: Marti Noxon Director: David Solomon Cast : Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris, Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg, Marc Blucas as Riley Finn, Emma Caulfield as Anya, James Marsters as Spike, Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles. Main guest stars : Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers, Amber Benson as Tara, Rudolph Martin as Dracula, Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers. Original broadcast date : September 26, 2000 Buffy is tossing and turning in bed beside a soundly sleeping Riley. Deciding she’s not going to sleep, she gets up… and ends up chasing a vampire in the graveyard. Without a word, she savagely dusts the fiend, and goes back home. In her room, a content Buffy goes back to bed and quickly falls asleep. The next day, Buffy and Riley are playing with a football on a sunny beach. Riley comments that Buffy throws like a girl – and almost gets impaled with the football as a result. Watching all this from their beach towels, Xander, Anya, Willow and Tara agree that relaxing shouldn’t involve so much exertion. Soon, Buffy and Riley join them, and Willow magically helps Xander start the charcoal. All seems perfect…. Until it starts pouring and they have to vacate the beach. That night, a truck pulls up to a medieval-looking castle (in Sunnydale?!), and two workers start unloading a big wooden crate. They drop it, and it opens, revealing only dirt – until the real occupant bursts from the crate and kills them both. The next day, Willow helps Giles hook up his new scanner. He explains that he plans on archiving his entire library, and after swearing the redhead to secrecy, he reveals that he’s doing it so the Scoobies can easily access all the information to fight evil… he’s going back to England. He goes on to say to a shocked Willow that Buffy no longer needs him, something he’s proud of even though it saddens him; he plans on telling Buffy soon, and he’s confident she’ll understand. Buffy and Joyce have just finished having dinner together; as the Slayer prepares to go out on patrol, Joyce comments that now that summer is over, she’ll have to get used to living in the house alone again. Buffy suggests they make it a regular dinner date, and leaves for what she describes as being a "total drag" (patrol). The next scene shows Buffy savagely beating on a vampire in the graveyard. "Very impressive hunt", comments a pale, thin man in a cape, stepping out of the shadows. Buffy declares that it’s not hunting, just a day on the job, and asks him if he’s game for some overtime. He declines, and she asks if he knows what a Slayer is. "Do you?" he answers. Confused, she asks who he is, and he apologizes – he thought she knew; he’s Dracula. "Get out!" she says, awestruck. Buffy is questioning Dracula’s claim, but he assures her that she knows who he is – just as he knows she is Buffy, the renowned killer. She takes offence at that term, but he tells her that her power is rooted in darkness. Having heard enough, she tries to stake him, but he evaporates in a cloud of mist. Xander and Willow show up, just as Dracula rematerializes behind them. Xander takes it lightly, making fun of the vampire’s clothes and comparing the accent to that of the Count on Sesame Street. Dracula promises Buffy they’ll meet again soon, turns into a bat and flies at them, forcing them to duck. At Giles’ place, the Scoobies discuss Dracula – Buffy is flattered that he’d heard of her, Riley is jealous and tries to downplay the Count’s fame, Willow thinks he’s sexy, and Anya agrees – she hung out with Dracula in her demon days. Giles wishes he could have been there, and comments that the key to defeating Dracula will be to separate fact from fiction. As he and Anya walk home that night, Xander gets tired of all her Dracula stories, and finally suggests she hang out at the cemetery showing her neck cleavage until the Count shows up. They go their separate ways, and suddenly Dracula appears in front of Xander. Xander prepares to fight him, but Dracula waves him silent, and makes him his emissary. He promises to make Xander an immortal if he serves him well, and then vanishes. Xander walks away, giggling happily. Riley goes to Spike’s crypt to get information on Dracula. Spike says that he and Drac were old rivals before the Count got famous; he complains that after Drac’s story had become known, everybody knew how to kill vampires. Riley asks where he can find the Count, but Spike warns that the soldier is out of his depth for this one. Riley threatens to kill him, then leaves, as Spike declares that he’ll never find Dracula… not before he finds Buffy. A strong wind blows into Buffy’s bedroom, delivering Dracula in front of her bed. He comments that she’s magnificent, prompting her to say that she bets he says that to all the girls… before he bites them. But he assures her he’s searched the world for someone like her, whose darkness equals his own. Noticing Angel’s bite mark on Buffy’s neck, he realizes she’s been tasted, but dismisses Angel as unworthy of her. He leans in toward her, telling her not to resist and claiming to feel her hunger… and Buffy doesn’t resist. The next morning, Buffy dismisses the whole thing as a dream – until she looks in the mirror and sees the bite marks. She ties a scarf around her neck before going to meet the gang at Giles’ place. There, they compare known facts about Dracula, as a jittery Xander fidgets in the background. Riley tells Buffy that according to what he’s learned from Spike, Dracula likes the high life and won’t be found in a dump. Xander tries to convince them the Count is probably lying low, but they don’t believe him. While no one is looking, Xander sees a spider crawling along; he picks it up and eats it… Buffy decides to go find Dracula herself, and walks out. A concerned Riley follows her and stops her outside. He asks her to take off the scarf, but she refuses, and he accuses her of being under the thrall of the Dark Prince. They argue, and he finally takes the scarf off her, revealing the bite marks for all the Scoobies to see. Buffy confesses that there was this voice telling her to hide the marks, and Riley concludes that she is indeed under the thrall. Giles tells her that it might be a good idea for her to stay out of sight while they go look for Dracula, and Xander volunteers to watch her. Willow and Tara plan on doing a protection spell at Buffy’s house to keep the Count from returning. The two witches wonder how Dracula got into the Summers home, but they get their answer pretty fast – Joyce invited him in for coffee. She argues he seemed nice, just a little pale; then she tells the girls that she did it because it’s hard to date when you get older, and you just feel like give up on men altogether. Giles and Riley are out identifying mansions where Dracula could be, while Xander babysits Buffy in his basement. Anya complains about being stuck with that duty, but Xander just locks her up in a closet and informs Buffy it’s time he took her to his Master. She agrees, and they leave. At Dracula’s castle, the Count orders Xander to leave him and Buffy alone and to make sure they’re not disturbed. After he’s left, Dracula informs Buffy he knew she’d come. Producing a stake, she tells him that if he thinks she’s under his thrall, he should think again. However, he tells her to put down the stake… and she obeys him. A bit worried, she backs away from him. Riley and Giles find Dracula’s castle – which Riley claims never to have noticed in the two years he’s lived in Sunnydale – and enter to investigate. Meanwhile, Dracula tells Buffy that she can’t resist him, because she doesn’t want to. He wants to teach her about her history, her power, and all that her body is capable of. "But first", he says, "a little taste." She warns him off, but Dracula didn’t have a taste for himself in mind… Riley is searching the castle when Xander steps in front of him, challenging the soldier to go through him if he wants to harm his Master. Riley just punches him unconscious. Meanwhile, Giles finds a dark room and enters – to tumble a full level below. As he congratulates himself on not being knocked unconscious, he’s surrounded by three beautiful female vampires, who start doing naughty things… Dracula rolls up his sleeve and cuts a slit in his arm, inviting Buffy to drink. She’s afraid she’ll become a vampire, but he assures her he hasn’t drunk enough from her, and that anyway it would only happen if she was near death. She answers that she’s not hungry, but he repeats to her the words from her dream the previous season: "You think you know… what you are… what’s to come… You haven’t even begun." Impressed, Buffy takes his arm and drinks from it; suddenly, she’s assaulted by visions of herself in battle, and of the First Slayer. "Wow", she exclaims as she stops drinking…. Then she hits Dracula hard, sending him flying across the room. He comments that she’s resisting, and orders her to come to him, but the thrall is gone. They start fighting. Riley finds the room where Giles fell in; he sees the Three Sisters at, um, work on Giles, and chases them away with a crucifix. He then hauls Giles out of the room, but Giles doesn’t exactly want to go… Still fighting Dracula, Buffy grabs a flaming torch and threatens him, prompting him to poof himself. A cloud of mist floats to the upper level, and Buffy runs there to be just beside him when he rematerializes. She stakes him, asking how he likes her darkness now; he tumbles down the stairs, exploding into dust. Riley and Giles burst into the room, and she reports that she’s Eurothrashed Giles. An angry Xander runs into the room, pissed that Dracula turned him into a "spider-eating manbitch". Riley tries to comfort him, commenting that at least he wasn’t making time with the Dracubabes like Giles. As they leave, Giles tries to defend his honor, saying that he had everything under control. In the empty room, a cloud of mist starts to coalesce once more into Dracula… who is staked once again by Buffy. "You think I don't watch your movies? You always come back," she says. He turns to dust, and she waits a bit. The cloud starts to coalesce again; "I’m standing right here!" she warns. The cloud obediently disperses. Giles has summoned Buffy to his place to tell her something. Actually, she says, she has something to tell him, and he invites her to go first. She starts by pointing out that he hasn’t been her Watcher in a while, and that she hasn’t been training; then she confesses that she’s been going out every night since the enjoining spell… hunting. Saying that Dracula was right in seeing darkness in her powers, she asks Giles to be her Watcher again – she needs to know more about the other Slayers, about where she came from, so she can better control it. She asks Giles what he wanted to tell her… but he has nothing to say. At the Summers house, Buffy announces to Joyce that she’s going out to the movies with Riley. Going up to her room, she sees a young girl there, obviously unpacking. Just as Buffy asks what she’s doing there, Joyce’s voice comes from downstairs: "Buffy? If you're going out, why don't you take your sister?" "Mom!!!" both girls unhappily exclaim at the same time. Summary by OttsFiveByFive.