Gone

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

And may I say... Yippeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

David Fury has, at least partially, redeemed himself in my eyes for his writing of this episode. I loved it! Yes, it was a bit slow in parts... but it was *fun* to watch - something we haven't had a lot of this year in Buffy-land.

Loved Buffy's comments about whether she was in some kind of freak world (sorry - can't remember the exact words)... lots of little things were thrown in here and there that I'll be picking up on tomorrow, I'm sure. Things like Warren calling Andrew (or was it Jonathan?) Frodo - for a LoTR fan like me, that was just too funny.

And yes... the RocksBack!Spike! was ***wonderful*** to see. JM's facial expressions made all too clear how much Spike was holding his naturally snarky impulses in check when he stormed over to get the lighter from Buffy... and how the man can make that coat snap back and forth the way he does is still a mystery to me. And I was howling over it being *dark* outside when Xander got to the crypt... and it was most obviously daylight when Buffy first arrived...

And, of course, the gratuitous shots of Nekkid!Spike were, ah... easy on the eyes.

Anyway... loved that Buffy may finally have figured out, thanks in large part to Dawn and Spike's both having to clobber her over the head with how much she's hurting them, that maybe it isn't All-About-Buffy anymore, and that she needs to start taking other people's feelings into account.

I'm too giddy over this ep to get in too deep (and I want to go see what everyone else thought, too!). But I really do think that Spike may have come into his own even more... and the fact that he stood up to Buffy and told her where to get off when she deserved it was even better. Buffy sounded just like so many of us when we've gotten into fights with our significant others, didn't she? I just wish I could have caught what she was saying when she was doing her impersonation of Spike... I'll have to listen carefully tomorrow.

I am, however, wondering what her "damage control" with Spike will be.... :-)

Part 2

Good evening, all!

I honestly haven't gotten to read everyone's posts yet... but after getting to watch this episode for the second time over my lunch hour today, I had a couple more thoughts to post...

1) Control. That sure seemed to be a big theme in this episode, didn't it? Self-control, to be more precise. We had Willow, who was using all of the self-control she had to keep herself from using magic just when it was *so* tempting to give in... we had Spike, exerting some of his newfound self-control (and confidence) to tell Buffy just where she could take herself and her "it's all about me" attitude... and we had Buffy, losing her self-control for a good chunk of the episode.

What struck me as being particularly ironic about Buffy's loss of control was that it happened right *after* she tried to exert control over just ***one*** part of her life immediately after she felt like she was going into a tailspin again (the visit from the social worker) -- she chopped off her hair, and announced that she wanted to be "Different." I know that there were a million different theories out there before this ep as to why she would have done this... but I honestly believe that it comes back to a control issue - when everything around you feels like it's out of your control, it's only human to want to exert your will on what you can. In this case, Buffy's hair was a victim.

And, for those of us who are eagerly following Spike's progress on his redemptiony journey... it was pretty nice to know that he and Dawn were both the ones getting in Buffy's face and telling her to get over herself already. Yes, Xander played a part as well... but only Spike and Dawn had the guts to say it to Buffy's face. Whoo hoo!

2) Okay, enough on the Control bit. Let's talk "The Shining," shall we? I have it on good authority from one of the Buffy Lunch Bunch that both the Mug Dance and the "All Work..." bits were both from the Shining. Your Comfy Couch hostess, however, is a total wimp when it comes to horror movies, and so she can't verify for you one way or the other (although I did see other people making references to this today)... very interesting. And I have absolutely no idea of what this means.

3) Loved all of the geek pop culture references the Troika make! "More ILM - less Ed Wood." Bwahahaha! For anyone who's Significant Other *had* to be one of the first people to buy "Phantom Menace" the very first day it came out on DVD... well, you get the idea. Needless to say, I was giggling.

4) Spike... According to Buffy, he "... has issues." I just about fell out of my Comfy Chair when she said that - my husband's line for going on two years now has been that "Spike... has issues."

5) Let's talk Spike. Let's talk Spike getting hacked off (justifiably so) in the House of Summers, and still managing to keep his snarky instincts in check (that self-control thing again). Yay, Spike! And did anyone else notice that his vampiric speed seemed to have made a reappearance when he shot from the doorway below the stairs to the main entrance doorframe just like *that*?

6) And speaking of Spike... just *what* was he doing in the kitchen that was making Buffy into Squirmy Girl? Enquiring minds wanna know...

7) What's up with Warren being all Icky Guy? He's giving me the heebie-jeebies... and it makes me really nervous that he's got the map to Spike's chip... If anything, I can see Warren figuring out that Spike's fascination with Buffy actually has *meaning* now, and then trying to use that mapping of the chip to use Spike against Buffy...

8) Was anyone able to make out what the photos on Spike's refrigerator were? Just curious...

Final thoughts:

I'm *so* ready for Buffy to grow up already! I know, I know, that's the theme of the season... and I'm sure that part of my attitude is that, as my husband so bluntly puts it, I was a "Sheltered-Goody-Two-Shoes-Girl-Who-Didn't-Have-Fun-in-College." <whew, that's a mouthful> Personally, even though my hubby is convinced that I didn't have any fun when I was in school (you mean that staying up until midnight on a school night without studying isn't being a rebel?), I remember that it was *extremely* liberating to be half a country away from my parents... and learning about who *I* was as a person, as opposed to who my parents and high school buds thought I should be, was one heck of a learning experience. Heck - I'm still learning! I'm 30, I have 2 kids and 2 dogs, 2 car payments and a mortgage, and I think I'm going through my 2nd adolescence (which probably explains my Spike obsession, but that's another story). But even with all of that freedom to explore, I remember that the Real World was weighing pretty heavily on my shoulders by the time I turned 21... I was working a job along with trying to graduate early, I had grown-up bills to pay... and the memories of my husband (then boyfriend) having to call me to remind me to eat dinner on a nightly basis are flooding my mind at the moment.

Ahem. 'Nuff about the me. Back to Buffy.

Yes, Buffy's had a lot to handle on her shoulders in terms of being The Slayer, but how much responsiblity has she really shouldered as a "normal" person up to this point (I'm not counting keeping Dawn safe or the summer that she ran away to be a waitress - both of those things were really Slayage induced, weren't they?) Part of me really wonders if she would be acting out as much as she is if her mother *or* Giles were still around to call her on it... it will be interesting to see what happens when Daddy Dearest shows up on the scene. I do feel sorry for her character... she's been through hell, been to heaven, and then shot back... but like she said at the end of the episode, she can't just keep trying to take a vacation from herself and her life! She's been coddled, in a way, by all of her friends... at least Xander almost stood up to her in this ep. I'm really ready for one of the Scooby crew to tell her to get over herself already... of course, Dawn and Spike may have finally gotten that thought through her head. :-)

Buffy's got a heck of a journey in front of her, especially if the spoilers that are floating around are to be believed. My friends and I all agree that our early 20's were some of the roughest periods of our lives - childhood was gone, adulthood was staring you in the face... and sometimes it was hard to know if you were still a child or a world-weary wage slave. In a way, Spike's at that same point in his (un)life - except that we've already seen him start on his way. It's going to be messy - I fully expect a few steps forward, and then a couple leaps back... but the two of them are going to need each other. They can both wound each other so easily with nasty words, but at the end of the day, if one truly needs the other, they know that they've got someone at their back... and that's something that's hard to find. And if Spike can keep doing what he did tonight - stand up for himself when he needs to, try to be Supportive!Spike when needed (even if Buffy is snarky in return), then that just proves to me that he is indeed on a redemptiony path...

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Kris