charisma carpenter deserved better

spike is a pretty big upgrade from the predictable antics of the master and the anointed one. after proving himself to the latter, he displays a subtle touch setting up buffy outside the bronze. he's just there to deliver a message, though: he'll kill her on saturday, in accordance with some prophecy or another.

buffy has other problems. principal snyder has decided the two worst behaved girls in school -- buffy and the newly introduced party girl sheila -- are to be in charge of organizing parent-teacher night. sheila is a sort of proto-faith whose crimes include stabbing a teacher with shears.

parent-teacher night falls on thursday, just a couple days before the prophesied murder date. buffy scrambles to get everything together with minimal assistance from sheila, who seems to always be at least a little drunk. meanwhile the rest of the gang is readying buffy's arsenal for the big vampire fight.

when thursday night comes around, buffy and willow try their best to keep buffy's mom joyce from interacting with any of her teachers or principal snyder. just as this silly subplot reaches a breaking point, spike and a small army of vampires attack the school, literally bursting through windows. buffy quickly shepherds civilians into hiding places. the gang is separated, locked in different rooms while vamps patrol the halls.

given how one-dimensional previous villains were, this simple display of tactics establishes spike as a new type of threat. also, we've arrived at the pun in the title. it's like die hard in a school with vampires instead of terrorists. get it?

buffy is soon crawling through vents in classic bruce willis fashion. when she meets up with giles and jenny in the library, we're told xander has fled to seek help from angel.

i feel like there might have been some scenes cut here, but xander and angel come back to the school. xander says something about angel knowing a lot about this spike fellow. angel grabs xander by the neck. his ploy is to pretend to be evil, and he does not let xander in on this.

spike's backstory is revealed in an earlier lore dump and expanded on here. he's over a hundred years old (young for a vampire) and was known as william the bloody. his current name comes from stories of torturing victims with railroad spikes. also, angel (or more accurately, angelus) is his sire. his "yoda", as spike says.

spike sees through angel's act. xander and angel run away. sheila shows up, apparently late for parent-teacher night. psych! she's a vampire. i'm writing this awhile after watching the episode, but i'm pretty sure she didn't die onscreen and i would love some more sheila.

buffy and spike have their climactic fight and it seems like spike has gained the upper hand... but here comes joyce with a fire axe! she bops spike on the noggin and he takes off. joyce tells buffy that snyder had only bad things to say about her, but buffy's heroism tonight has convinced joyce that her daughter is on the right track.

snyder conspires to cover up the attack by saying it was by gangsters on pcp. spike reports back to the anointed one, who is none too pleased by spike's failure to kill the slayer. instead of apologizing, spike kills the anointed one and takes over the role of big bad.

there is a boy named chris whose brother daryl died tragically. him and his friend eric (the aforementioned pervert) have somehow managed to bring daryl back from the dead as a stitched together zombie monster.

but he's lonely! he needs a mate. the boys have constructed a body from the parts of three young women who died in a car crash. the formaldehyde rendered the brains unusable, however, so they need a 'fresh' head.

daryl chooses cordelia as the head he wants on his bride. the squad saves her. daryl and the headless bride die by fire. yadda yadda.

the more interesting parts of this episode involves the two romance arcs: buffy and angel, and giles and miss calendar. the former bicker like an old married couple while killing a vampire and seem comfortable with each other again by the end. giles struggles with asking out jenny, but she is fortunately more than happy to take charge.

xander has a lot of strange moments in this episode that involve him sympathizing with the grave robbing corpse raisers. just wanted to note that.

buffy isn't entirely intact, however. her death at the hands of the master last season has left her with ptsd. her parents are at a loss as to how to help her. her nights are troubled -- we see a horrifying nightmare where giles tries to kill her. she pulls at his face and the mask comes away, revealing the master beneath.

part of buffy's mental health journey in this episode involves her being a real jerk to everyone. cordelia, now a much friendlier figure to the gang, tries to warn buffy that she'll alienate her friends.

as it turns out, the stakes are much higher than that. cordelia is kidnapped as buffy walks away, and thrown into confinement with a battered jenny calendar.

he anointed one is gathering vampires and plans to raise the master from the dead using his decrepit bones and the blood of someone "close to the master". (guess i was wrong about the 'glorified GPS' thing.)

buffy, unaware of the kidnappings, assumes that means her blood. a rock gets thrown through the library window with cordelia's necklace attached as well as a note demanding buffy come to the bronze. buffy, insisting she cannot protect all of them while fighting, leaves the squad behind at the library to walk into this obvious trap by herself.

at the bronze she finds angel, whom she threatens with physical violence. inside the club there is a single female vampire. the underwhelming display of force makes it clear this was a ruse. buffy leaves the defeated vamp with angel and rushes back to the library.

the place is a wreck, and devoid of friends except for a bloodied xander. the vampires need the blood of those who were closest to the master when he died: that means giles, jenny, cordelia, and willow. xander blames buffy for them being taken, even going so far as to say he'll kill her if willow has been hurt.

just when things feel like they can't get any more bleak, we move on to a scene of buffy torturing the captured vampire to find the location of her friends. as we all know, torture works flawlessly, and buffy and co are led to the final showdown.

buffy kills a lot of vampires in an impressive action sequence while angel and xander save the hostages. she punches and stabs the ptsd out of herself, smashes the master's skeleton, and falls into angel.

in the epilogue, buffy is apparently back to her cheery self. the anointed one, conspicuously absent from the climax, bemoans his rotten luck.

this one is about a body hopping parasite demon worm that penetrates a victim's torso like a chestburster from 'alien' and controls their body. it finds victims at a local singles bar, always doing the horrible body swap post coitus. it will continue until it finds the perfect body. it's implied it's been doing this for quite some time.

much like ridley scott's classic film, the body horror element evokes sexual assault. the demon worm is characterized as a sort of lonely serial killer looking for a twisted form of love.

angel, while investigating the singles bar, becomes interested in a woman named kate. they're both awkward people used to solitude. the parallels between the singles at the bar and the demon are obvious but not without thematic merit.

doyle and cordelia taking on the giles and willow roles of doing research while the action hero goes out and actions is a fun change of pace. they're both, to be honest, a little dumb, but nonetheless prove competent in identifying the demon.

there's a random but quite fun bar fight scene kicked off by doyle defending cordelia's honor with a well placed headbutt. angel and doyle clean up shop and neatly avoid the blame as their opponents are known troublemakers.

kate turns out to be a cop, and finds angel standing over a dead body. (second time this scenario has been documented on this blog.) after a series of misunderstandings and a surprise body surf reveal, they team up to take down the worm once and for all.

we start off with xander, unfortunately. he is practicing pickup lines on willow at the bronze, intending to finally ask buffy out. as usual, he's oblivious and insensitive about willow's obvious crush on him. at the same time, buffy is dealing with a routine vampire hunt, and giles is reading the slayer lore tome that angel procured for him last episode.

an earthquake suddenly hits, scaring the bejeesus out of everyone and causing structural damage to the school library. the next day, buffy tells a troubled giles that there are more vampires around than usual.

then it's back to xander. he asks buffy to the prom, and she predictably says no and tells him she doesn't see him like that. he takes it poorly, making an unkind joke about her relationship with angel and stalking off like a sullen child.

jenny calendar shows up in her first appearance since "i, robot... you, jane". she presents giles with news reports of apocalyptic portents, such as a cat giving birth to snakes and a child born with their eyes facing inward. the anointed one is mentioned. (remember him?)

then, incredibly, it's back to xander. willow tries to comfort him over the rejection, and he responds by asking her to prom. she is suitably offended by being his second choice. god i hate this guy.

buffy enters the library late at night and accidentally eavesdrops on angel and giles's conversation. giles says that according to prophecy, buffy will face the master on the night of the prom and she will die.

sarah michelle gellar sells buffy's reaction like no one else could. you can feel the fear and pain she is experiencing. she decides to quit being the slayer. after all, she is sixteen, and she does not want to die.

buffy remains deeply depressed, and her mother gently encourages her to go to the dance and presents buffy with a dress she'd had her eye on. it's simple, elegant, and goes great with her leather jacket.

one of the more frightening scenes in this season is willow and cordelia's discovery of a group of teen boys killed by vampires. among them is cordelia's boyfriend, which naturally causes her to freak out (though in classic btvs style she seems to have forgotten this happened by the end of the episode). willow is traumatized, and there is a poignant scene in her bedroom where buffy comforts her and tells her to stay inside that night.

back to the library, where giles and calendar discover that the anointed one is mentioned in the bible as the kid from the "and a child shall lead them" verse. giles realizes that buffy never killed the real anointed one, who is a child.

one of my favorite parts of the episode is giles. in keeping with his protective streak and fear of failing buffy, he arms himself and decides to face the master alone. buffy, as the heroine and action star, has the duty of punching him out to save his life.

she finds the anointed one immediately, and he leads her by the hand to the master's lair and promptly disappears from the episode. yes, after all that buildup, the anointed one is essentially a glorified GPS who seems to pose no threat to anyone. do you see what i mean about this feeling rushed?

xander and angel join forces to rescue buffy from the master. xander is, rather nauseatingly, presented as being especially noble for trying to save the girl who rejected him.

buffy's first confrontation with the big bad leaves her drained of blood and drowning in shallow water. as vampires do not breathe (which handily got established last episode), xander has to be the one to revive her with CPR involving mouth-to-mouth. y'know, because joss whedon is icky like that.

the master has risen, and an army of the undead is waiting for him. cordelia rescues willow in a memorable and awesome sequence that involves her smashing her car through half the school to get to the library. barricading herself inside with jenny and willow, the three are shocked when a little shop of horrors-esque trio of monster snake heads rise from the cracks in the ground. the hellmouth is open.

buffy, her hair a glorious mess from her near death experience, does a badass walk to the school with xander and angel flanking her while nerf herder's iconic btvs theme plays. after a confrontation on the roof of the school, buffy throws the master through a skylight and he is impaled. it's... a little anticlimactic, but cool-looking. with his death, the hellmouth closes, and everyone decides to go to prom and "party".

the inciting incident involves a floating baseball bat beating the shit out of cordelia's jock boyfriend. he survives, and describes his attack while being wheeled out of the school on a stretcher. this kicks off a running gag about principal snyder being concerned about lawsuits.

giles and the gang speculate it could be the work of a poltergeist. another attack occurs: this time, cordelia's friend harmony is dragged down the stairs, hurting her ankle. snyder asks her not to sue.

when buffy investigates the school after hours she follows the sound of a flute and literally bumps into the entity in question. giles describes walking through a ghost as a distinct, unmistakable sensation. (he claims to not have experienced it firsthand. armed with my knowledge of his as yet unrevealed backstory, i'm not buying it.) because this did not happen to buffy, our heroes conclude that they're after a flesh and blood person who has turned invisible.

the invisible girl is marcie, an embittered band geek portrayed by certified scream queen and 90s teen icon clea duvall. after years of being treated like she did not exist by her teachers and peers, she has simply faded away. the mechanics of this are explained poorly even by 90s fantasy tv standards. giles says some nonsense about quantum physics and perception and everyone just accepts it and moves on. it would've made just as much sense and fit in with the show's lore much better if they had just said a wizard did it.

around this time, angel pops up in the library to talk with giles. seeing buffy would be too painful, he explains, but he'd like to help her. after a brief but well-acted conversation where giles comes off as a kindly father-in-law, angel agrees to help giles find an obscure tome on slayer lore.

buffy goes back to the band room, this time searching more thoroughly and discovering a hidden room where marcie has been biding time between attacks. there is a bed and a number of personal effects such as a teddy bear, her flute, and her yearbook.

the next attack is against miss miller, a teacher who is shown to have a soft spot for cordelia earlier in the episode. marcie tries to asphyxiate her with a plastic bag, but cordelia arrives in time to save her life.

flashbacks reveal marcie being ignored and mocked by cordelia and her friends, and even the moment she started to disappear. miss miller calls on everyone in the class for input on the reading except for marcie. her raised hand starts to become translucent. no one notices.

a defaced photo in the yearbook confirms that the attacks are an attempt to lash out at cordelia in particular. it's revealed that not only do xander and willow not remember signing marcie's yearbook with the bog-standard "have a nice summer", they each had four classes with her last year and never noticed her.

cordelia comes to buffy for protection, which indicates to me that she's smarter than she lets on. she says her reasoning is that buffy tends to show up when weird stuff happens, is very strong, and often heavily armed. the logic is sound enough to me, even if her conclusion that buffy is in a gang is off base.

it's decided that cordelia will be bait, and buffy will protect her. this leads to our first real moment of sympathy for cordelia. she seems able to relate to marcie, saying she often feels alone when surrounded by people. this mirrors cordelia bullying buffy and making her feel similarly earlier in the episode (and throughout the whole season, really).

meanwhile, the rest of the gang are trapped in the boiler room by marcie, the enclosed space slowly flooding with gas. with them taken care of, marcie is able to drug and abduct both buffy and cordelia. they wake up tied to chairs at the bronze.

marcie reveals that her plan is to perform amateur surgery on cordelia's face and make her truly memorable. angel shows up in the nick of time to save giles and company. buffy manages to slip her bonds and beats up marcie.

the end is a little strange. two FBI agents who have been lurking in the background of the episode bust into the bronze and take marcie into custody. buffy asks them if this has happened before -- if other kids have turned invisible due to "quantum physics". they don't give her any information, but this is quickly revealed to be true. there are so many invisible kids that marcie is being inducted into a secret federal school for invisible saboteurs and assassins.

cordelia thanks buffy and the gang earnestly, then goes right back to being a bitch as soon as her boyfriend shows up. it's okay. i know she doesn't mean it.