Some Assembly Required
Plot:
While fighting in the middle of a cemetary (because Angel is jealous of Xander and refuses to admit it) and waiting for a new vampire to wake up, Angel and Buffy discover that someone has been robbing graves. This is almost enough to distract Giles from working up the nerve to ask Ms. Calendar out on a date; after Buffy retrieves Willow from registration for the science fair (where she's discussing projects with science nerd Chris and in-general nerd Eric), they quickly conclude that the missing girl was a cheerleader killed with three others in a car accident. They also discover that the girl was indeed not a vampire, and make plans to dig up the other two graves. Cordelia oh-so-reluctantly declines to help, because she has cheerleading practice. Buffy also refuses to involve Angel.
The Slayerettes dig up the grave, and discover it empty, to no one's surprise. Meanwhile, Cordelia gets chased across a parking lot and hides in a dumpster, only to emerge and realize it's Angel, looking for Buffy. Then she realizes the dumpster is full of parts of the missing girls. The Slayerettes return to the library to find Cordelia still clinging to Angel. Angel and Xander raise hackles at each other, they exchange information, and Cordelia backs Angel into taking her home. The Slayerettes perform a locker search on the only students who could perform the kind of dissection done on the girls, and narrow their search down to Chris and Eric, who have managed to assemble most of a girl in a basement lab.
Giles attempts to ask Ms. Calendar out, and she winds up asking him to go to the football game that night with her.
The Slayerettes conclude Chris and Eric are still missing a head, due to formaldehyde decay, they eventually conclude. The two ghouls agree -- and conclude they have to kill to get one. We also discover why the boys are doing this -- to provide a girlfriend for Chris's older brother Daryl, who he reanimated after his death and promised to take care of. Daryl chooses Cordelia's head for his 'mate'. Chris tries to back out, and Daryl guilts him into continuing.
At the game, Eric attempts to kidnap Cordelia, and is stopped after Buffy, who investigated Chris's basement to find their chosen victim, interferes. Cordelia promptly heads for the field, while Buffy convinces Chris to come forward and stop his insane quest.
They're not in time; Daryl and Eric together kidnap Cordelia and take her to their lab. Buffy follows, with the Slayerettes in chase, and Daryl and Buffy fight, while Xander attempts to rescue the strapped-down Cordelia. In the fight, gasoline and fire combine badly and the lab begins to burn. Everyone gets out except Daryl, who chooses to die with his 'girlfriend's' body.
Angel shows up in time to see everything wrapped up. Ms. Calendar tells Giles he shouldn't make a first date this exciting or he won't be able to match in on the second date. Giles stutters. Cordelia attempts to thank Xander for saving her life and Xander cuts her off, then goes back to complaining to Willow about how they never get dates. Angel admits in the tag that he was jealous, and he and Buffy walk off hand in hand, to the sound of much 'Awwing' from the audience.
Continuity:
A more-or-less stand-alone ep plot-wise; no story arcs that I'm aware of. One note: vampires tend to be very disoriented when they first awaken after being brought across. Oh, and Angel is 241, which makes him born in 1756 CE.
Relationships:
Cool, we're dealing with Buffy's stunt last week, and she did indeed succeed in making Angel jealous. But they kiss and make up, which is cute. Great fight; and they're both very aware that their relationship can only exist at night, which is sad. But Cordelia had better keep her hands off the boy or Buffy's going to do some damage.
Giles and Ms. C. continue to be too cute for words as they go on their first date, and Ms. C. angles for a second, which Giles is sure as heck not objecting too. Very cute how the kids handle Giles dating -- like teasing your older brother.
Xander has taken a major step back from getting a clue about Willow, and returned to angsting. At least he's not actively angsting over Buffy anymore, just about being alone. :P
Characters:
Giles is so cute. I'm going to keep saying that, because it's so true. He has to tolerate the kids teasing hima bout dating -- he actually puts up with far more than msot people would have -- and he has obviously not had a great deal of practice with women. Frotunately, Ms. C. does the dirty work and basically asks him out. He's lucky she's making it this easy for him. And, of course, he'll give buffy less hell the next time Slaying conflicts with something socially important -- trapped between his date with Ms. C. and stopping the bad guys, he was in the same position Buffy was in in 'Never Kill a Boy'. There is justice....
Ms. C. has Giles pegged. Utterly nailed. She's going to take her time reeling him in, but he's down for the count, and doesn't she know it! *g*. Although she's not sure yet if she wants to keep him.... As usual, she deals with the chaos well -- I'd like to see her get more into the action, actually; so far, she's been unconcious for one crisis and just sort of on the sidelines for the other.
One *thwap* to Xander for cluelessness, angsting about being alone, as Willow stands wide-eyed and listens with pain. She shoulda smacked him. Although, in his defense, the emotions he was digging up last week probably scared the hell out of even him; I'm not surprised he's backpedalling. At least he didn't make a pass at Cordy when she expressed her gratitude....
Cordelia's got a rather big shock in store for her when she finds out that Angel (who she's been drooling over from day one and is getting blatent about) is a vampire. Gods, I want to see her face when it hits her! Because I'm sure she hasn't got clue one -- she's never seen him with his game face on. And we continue to see her obsession with cheerleading -- her social status seems to be about all she hs to hold onto and cheerleading helps with that; maybe that's why she's so hyper-intense about it. But she can't quite bring herself to completely turn her back ont he events around her, now that they've been shoved into her face. She followed Willow to the library to find out what was going on, and stuck around with Angel to tell the others after they found the body parts. Although she had some ulterior motives there...
Angel, Angel, Angel... If you're going to have a jealous fit, at least admit it! Very cute that he finally admits that he's jealous of Xander -- although I think Xander is just the most convenient focus; Angel is jealous of anyone who gets to share the parts of Buffy's life that he'll never be able to. And, for such an old guy, he's still relatively cluelessa bout women; Cordelia sure trapped him in the library. But then, she's a force of nature, so we can't blame him too much. And Annoying Guy is back in force a time or two -- David is really doing a nice job with Angel, now that Angel's allowed to show some emotions. Lots of fun!
It's cute that Angel and Buffy are taking turns walking away from fights, with the other one refusing to allow it. Not much other character stuff for Buffy; she's more or less back to normal, and dealing with the hassles from her friends over what she pulled with the dance and all, which she well deserves. I'm glad they're dealing with it instead of just forgetting it.
Oh, and Xander and Angel are apparently still going to go at it; with Angel it's jealousy of Xander's place in Buffy's life, with Xander, it's more or less just habit, I think. Which is fine by me; I'm amused that the two of them can work so well together in a crisis, then revert to adolecence as soon as the danger passes.
Best Moments:
The entire fight in the graveyard with Angel. Angel's crack about Buffy's dance with Xander, his denial of jealousy, the vampire attack and their scramble around to find a stake, Angel stalking off, then coming right back when Buffy falls in the grave -- just *priceless*.
Xander and Buffy harrassing Giles about Ms. Calendar. 'Nuff said.
Cordelia being scared by Angel. She's growing a brain, and using it, and her expressions when she realized a) it was Angel and b) what she was sharing the dumpster with were great!
Angel and Xander facing off in the library. Testosterone flying, machismo everywhere....
Xander's "//cough// Karma" to Cordelia. All of the zingers he landed were great, but this one was classic! Angel's expression as Cordelia dragged him out of the library. Trapped and helpless -- how cute!
Xander and Willow casually moving into Giles' date. Xander snatched his popcorn, for heaven's sake! And Ms. C was sooo amused.
Angel rushing up after action. "I saw the fire." Obviously he's starting to recognize her handiwork.*eg*
Buffy's oh-so-casual "Can I walk you home?" to Angel. She's never going to give up on finding out where he lives. And the way he took her hand... *sigh* A very WAFFy scene all around.
Questions:
Okay, the writers carefully and wisely avoided most technobabble. Except for discussions of "current", we have no idea how Chris reanimated his brother, and kept the girls' bodies from decaying. Good thing they avoided it, but it still niggles.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5. Plot holes a truck could be driven through, but priceless character interaction. Niiice.
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