Janes (a True Stan) and Nerdy Spice (a New Fan) are watching all of Buffy together and comparing notes.

Warning: May contain spoilers for later episodes.

Season 5, Episode 13 “Blood Ties”

Buffy is still trying to protect her little sister from Glory, who we now know is a god, not just a demon. Giles and Buffy finally reveal Dawn’s secret to the Scoobs–and once Dawn sees how weird everyone is acting around her, she decides to do some research. (Side note: I thought she had overheard earlier that she was the Key, but it seems she only overheard the word.) While on her way out of the house to investigate, Dawn runs into Spike, who’s stalking Buffy with a twentieth-birthday present consisting of the box of chocolates he’s already smashed over Mannequin-Buffy’s head while practicing his apology in the previous episode.

Spike offers to protect Dawn, in order to impress Buffy (which of course backfires on him later). The upshot is, Dawn finds Giles’ journal, which explains that the Key has been manifested as Buffy’s sister. Spike’s constructive comment is, “I guess that’s you, Niblet.” Dawn’s equally constructive response is to cut her wrists and stand dramatically in the living room asking everyone if she’s real. (It’s actually really moving. I just made a snarky remark because that’s what bloggers do.)

Unfortunately, it’s not just Glory looking for Dawn. There’s also some kind of band of monks, the same people who ambushed Buffy on her way to her interview with the Watchers last episode. They believe that the Key is a “link” that must be “severed.” Doesn’t sound like great news for Dawn. They’re easily defeated by Glory, who kidnaps one of them to find out where the Key is, and then basically rapes him (I think?) to try to get him to talk. He ends up at the mental hospital after Glory eats his brain.

The next day, Dawn becomes suspicious that no one really cares about her and sneaks out again (after burning her diaries since she realizes most of them never happened). This time she goes to the hospital to try to quiz some mentally ill people about her true nature, since Giles’ journal indicated that people detached from reality can see her better. She runs into the monk Glory tortured, who threatens to “sever” her–and in her fear, she ends up having coffee with Cute Doctor Guy Ben. He panics when he realizes Dawn is the Key, and tells her to run… but then morphs into Glory herself before Dawn’s eyes.

Luckily Glory doesn’t actually remember their conversation, so Dawn successfully distracts her and furthers her own agenda by asking for more info about the key. (Dawn asks what it’s for, but Glory doesn’t tell her, so we still don’t know.) Luckily the Scoobs are already at the hospital checking to see if Dawn was brought in, and they manage to find Dawn and Glory in Radiology. Buffy fights Glory, but isn’t really a match for her even with the help of Spike and Xander (she does take a thrown spear for Dawn, though). It’s Willow who finally defeats her by using a teleportation spell that gives Willow chronic nosebleeds and headaches. Glory ends up somewhere in Earth’s atmosphere and falls to Earth in a fireball, but something tells me that’s not the end of her.

–-Nerdy Spice

Notes from a New Fan:

• I love when there’s a mention of Spike’s crush in the previouslies. It means I can look forward to a good Spike/Buffy scene!
• Giles states that “all we have to worry about is that she [Glory] is immortal, invulnerable and insane.” Comforting.
• I know this makes me sound basic, but I hate when there are villains that just can’t be defeated, like (as I’ve probably mentioned before on this blog) Sylar, who just totally ruined Heroes for me. It’s not fun when a villain is too powerful, any more than when the villain is too weak. But now we know that Glory has two chinks in her armor: her godlike powers are reduced by being in human form, and she also is in danger of losing her mind if she doesn’t get access to human brains on the reg. Seems simple enough to bring her down! Just like when those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park got a lysine deficiency anytime they left the island. Just deprive her of brain for a bit and then she’ll be toast.
• Tara marvels that Dawn’s not real. Willow says, “She’s real, she’s just kinda… new.” Aww.
• Anya is dusting the store with a literal feather duster! I guess that’s probably what they used to dust when she was born. They probably didn’t have microfiber cloths.
• Spike tries to pick up the troll hammer and can’t, then says, “It didn’t go with any of my stuff, anyway.” Heh.
• Buffy is sad about not having a card from Riley. OH MY GOD who cares?! I’d already forgotten he existed!
• I sympathize with Spike!! I hate when people bother me just as my nails are drying! (Side note, I didn’t realize that their fingernails didn’t grow like that? But I love that Spike’s been carefully reverse-French-manicuring his nails this whole time.)
• Buffy is way too mad at Spike over his role in Dawn figuring out her identity. You just know that somewhere deep down, she’s glad to have an excuse to go to his crypt and get in his face. I mean, she assigns herself and Spike to canvass the east side of town together the next day when Dawn runs away. She didn’t have to do that!
• It occurs to me that the monks made a mistake by putting the Key in the form of a hormonal tween. Wouldn’t an eight-year-old have been easier to protect? Teenagers are so unreasonable! She’s a “hormone bomb,” as Spike describes her.
• Xander uses the fact that Dawn is a thousand years old to brag about the fact that she has a crush on him. “Big energy gal digging the Xan man.”  Oh my God, Xander. Have a little pride.
• I don’t get it, was Ben Glory this whole time? At one point he says that “Glory can’t lay a finger on me”… and Glory refers to him as “family”… so maybe he’s her brother? But then why does he morph into her? I’m so confused!
• I love that Spike pulls a Xander and gets knocked out early and just spends the whole final fight unconscious in the corner.
• Buffy comforts Dawn by doing a whole blood-sisters ritual with her that would have seemed very unhygienic even before the age of Covid.
• Why does Dawn cover for Ben? Or does she really not remember that he morphed into Glory before her eyes? Weird.

Notes from a True Stan:

• The Scoobies are all mad that Buffy didn’t tell them about Dawn, then proceed to act totally weird around Dawn. Which, incidentally, leads directly to Dawn finding out she’s the key. Maybe this is why Buffy didn’t tell you!
• Okay, it was bad enough when they were loudly talking about Dawn being the key in the kitchen, but Giles wrote it down?? They’ve lost all my sympathy.
• “Is that supposed to scare me?” Dawn asks, when Spike is trying to threaten her. He sighs, and grumbles, “A little tremble wouldn’t hurt.” Aw!
• If people “outside reality” can see that Dawn’s the key, then why can’t Glory see it? She seems pretty outside reality to me.
• Is it just me, or is the way Spike throws the lid off his coffin like, super sexy? No? Just me?
• Spike calling Dawn “niblet” is equal parts sweet and creepy.
• Dawn’s behavior is very understandable in this episode–she gets a free pass. That said, I hate this:

Season 5, Episode 14 “Crush”

It’s fitting that this episode is called “Crush,” because the premise is very high school (in a fun way). Dawn is hanging around bad-boy Spike’s crypt in an attempt at teenage rebellion. They also have a genuinely sweet rapport, especially since Spike is the only one who treats her normally after the whole Key thing. She’s also openly flirting with him, but as we all know, he actually has a crush on her big sister. (Oh Dawn, I feel your pain. Nerdy Spice and I have another sister who was a popular cheerleader in high school, and the boys I liked were constantly asking me for her number.) At one point, when Dawn says that Buffy is scared of him getting his chip out, he actually says, “So… what else does Buffy say about me?” It doesn’t get more high school than that!

When Buffy finds Dawn hanging out in Spike’s crypt, she’s not impressed. “Hanging out with Spike is not cool, Dawn, it’s dangerous and–icky!” Dawn’s justification for hanging out with Spike is also very high school: he’s “got cool hair,” he wears “cool leather coats.” (I mean, true.) She also calls Buffy a hypocrite because she dated Angel, and when Buffy points out that Angel had a soul, Dawn says, “Spike has a chip–same diff.” Not terribly wise, and yet she’s able to point out something very obvious that Buffy somehow hasn’t noticed yet: “Spike’s totally in love with you,” she drops casually. Buffy is stricken, but like, really? 

Buffy makes a big deal about telling Xander, who laughs it off. Buffy keeps telling him how SERIOUS it is, and it’s so CREEPY, and he rightly asks how upset she can get about Spike’s “fevered daydreams.” Usually I would think it’s obnoxious to dismiss Buffy’s feelings like that, but I kind of agree–if someone likes you and you don’t like them back, then you don’t really tend to care unless, um, you care! Then she acts all weird and awkward around Spike–and again, why would you be awkward if you thought someone completely ludicrous had a crush on you? You’d just feel sort of sorry for them and move on. 

She also acts completely weird when Spike invites her on what seems like a completely routine stakeout. A train full of people was murdered by vampires, and he thinks he found their nest. Buffy is totally jumpy about everything Spike does–when he sings the Ramones (cute), when he offers her a sip from his flask (gross). But of course, she turns out to be totally right. They walk into the nest, and there’s this hilarious moment where the vampires stand up, chests out, and say, “Slayer,” as if they’re about to challenge her to a duel, but then they just run away. LOL. Buffy figures out that these vampires couldn’t have come in on the train the night before, because they’ve clearly been there for weeks. When Spike opens the door for her, she figures out that he never thought these were the right vamps, it was all just a ruse. “The late-night stakeout, the bogus suspects, the flask… Is this a date?” Buffy asks, disgusted.

(Ah, the surprise date. A classic maneuver. Just like when I was in college, and a boy invited me to “grab something to eat” before a football game and ended up making reservations at a nice restaurant. Okay, I take back everything I said–it makes sense for Buffy to be jumpy around Spike, even if she didn’t have secret feelings for him, because if you’re not 100% vigilant, you end up in situations like this, where men trick you into romantic situations and then blame you for sending “mixed signals.”)

And for what it’s worth, Buffy does not send mixed signals in this scene. She says unequivocally that she has “no feelings” for him other than maybe “loathing and disgust.” He tries to tell her that he’s changed, and he’s capable of being good, but she says the chip is just holding him back. “You’re like a serial killer in prison,” she says. “Women marry them all the time!” Hee! His arguments don’t exactly hold water, but they are hilarious. For example, he waxes poetic about how he “lies awake every night,” to which Buffy points out, “You sleep during the day!” He tries to say “I love you,” but Buffy stops him and says venomously, “Don’t… say it.” 

To me, that’s abundantly clear, harsh even, but when Buffy tells her mom and Willow what happened, they get all in a tizzy about whether she actually said there’s “no chance.” They insist that she say those words out loud to Spike before he gets “dangerous.” They’re right, of course, but how annoying! She’s been very clear!

As Spike licks his wounds, he’s visited by none other than Drusilla! She recaps what’s going on on Angel, and honestly, I watched Angel and I still barely know what she’s talking about. (Angel set her on fire, I guess??) She knows about the chip, and she wants him to come back on the hunt with her, so he can get back to his old self again. Harmony interrupts this conversation, and Spike immediately tells her to “hit the road” so he can get back together with Drusilla. Poor Harmony.

Spike and Drusilla go to the Bronze, where Drusilla kills a girl so Spike can feed on her without activating the chip. He hesitates for just a moment, but then starts feeding, because yeah, he’s like a serial killer in prison! While they’re gone, Buffy visits the crypt to talk to Spike, and finds a super creepy Buffy shrine, complete with the blonde mannequin and a serial killer wall of photos. Spike and Drusilla return and surprise her, and Drusilla tases her. Drusilla’s all ready to eat Buffy, but then Spike tases her too! 

When Buffy wakes up, she and Drusilla are both tied up. “I think I shall be very cross with you when I’m free again,” says Dru. Spike uses this opportunity to tell Buffy he loves her and force her to listen. “You’re all I bloody think about, dream about. You’re in my gut, my throat.” It would be very romantic if she wasn’t, you know, tied up. He offers to kill Drusilla as proof of his love for her, but Buffy is unimpressed. So he ups the ante: if Buffy doesn’t give him a sliver of hope for their romantic future, he’ll untie Dru and let her kill Buffy instead. Buffy calls him over, whispers his name, and says, “The only chance you had with me was when I was unconscious.” Dark!

Spike lets out the primal scream of the entitled man and yells a bunch of things about women. “Why do you bitches torture me?!” he yells, while the women are tied up and threatened with death. He muses that maybe he’ll just kill both of them, when he gets blitzed from behind–it’s Harmony, shooting him in the back with a crossbow while Drusilla cheers her on. “Oh great, so you’re all ganging up on me now,” Spike grumbles. Hee!

“I thought I could change you, Spike,” Harmony says. “I thought if I gave and I gave and I gave, maybe you’d come around, stop treating me like your dog. But now I realize it’s you–you’re the dog.” Yes! Go Harmony! She makes a move to shoot him in the heart, but Spike attacks her. While they’re fighting, Drusilla gets out of her restraints and tries to kill Buffy, but Buffy fends her off, even while she’s chained up. When Drusilla is about to kill her, Spike punches her out. Drusilla looks deeply hurt, and says he’s lost to her as she sweeps out and goes back to Angel. 

Spike lets Buffy go, and gives her those puppy-dog eyes, clearly expecting credit for saving her life (even though he’s the one who put her in danger in the first place). Buffy punches him out, and he lands right in his serial killer photo wall. Yes!

Even after all this, Spike still chases after her, as if they’re just having a lover’s spat. Buffy clears this up quickly: “I want you out. I want you out of this town, I want you off this planet. You don’t come near me, my friends or my family, ever. Understand?” Spike still doesn’t believe this changes anything, until they reach Buffy’s house and he can’t follow her inside–he’s been uninvited. He tries to give her those hurt puppy-dog eyes again, but she shuts the door in his face. As she should.

–-Janes

Notes from a New Fan:

• It’s sweet to see Willow and Tara dancing.
• I’m so offended that Mrs. Buffy has to pretend that GIles is as good a protector as Buffy. And then he oh-so-humbly says he’s a “barely adequate” substitute? I’m sorry, is “barely” British for “not at all”? God. How much do the women of Sunnydale have to PANDER to the FRAGILE EGOS of their supposed male allies?!
• Drusilla says she’s “come to make everything right again,” and while I’m sure that’s not true, I also think that when Drusilla comes, she makes everything entertaining again.
• Harmony’s rule is no threesomes unless it’s boy-boy-girl or Charlize Theron. Not a bad choice.
• Oh, Mrs. Buffy! You asked if Buffy led Spike on!! That’s bad feminism.
• Buffy thinks it’s best to avoid Spike, clearly a little nervous that she can’t keep up the facade of being “repulsed” by him. Smart move. Meanwhile, her wonderfully trusting mother and best friend urge him to go meet him and make it really, really clear. Oh, Mrs. Buffy. Oh, Willow. Sweet summer children. Why in the world would you send a twenty-year-old to turn down a hot, dangerous man with a crush on her in the middle of the night, wearing a bright-red going-out top?
• This scene where Dru and Spike kill two people at the Bronze and feed on them is ridiculously sexy. You can see why the Victorians, having no other options, really got off on this stuff.
• OK, I know this is going to make me sound like a Very Bad Feminist, but I’m honestly shocked that I’ve never seen a clip of Spike pulling Buffy up by the chin to look at him while he has her chained in his lair. It’s weirdly hot. How was it never in any of the fanvids I saw?
• I love that Buffy can totally beat up Dru even when she has both her arms chained.
• Buffy shutting Spike out of her house is such a moment. He gives her a look like “How can you do this to me” and she just claims her space and goes into it. It’s so sad for him, so empowering for her–but also, it’s emotional, on Buffy’s side as much as Spike’s. And no one rejects someone with that much emotion unless they secretly want them. I’m just saying.

Notes from a True Stan:

• I love that Spike’s passion for the flowering onion has returned!
• Okay, so Buffy has every right not to want to hang out with Spike, but she’s acting like it’s crazy that he would try to chat with her and that seems a little much? If they’re not friends, they’re definitely friends-adjacent.
• This opening with the vampires murdering all of the passengers on a train is effectively creepy, but kind of feels like a different show? Between that and Buffy discovering the deaths from the newspaper, it feels a little like a procedural. 
• Spike and Harmony’s Slayer-vampire role play is a big YIKES. Poor Harmony.
• Wait, how did I never realize that when Buffy/Tara/Willow discuss Hunchback of Notre Dame, they were dropping hints about Buffy and Spike? Tara says Quasimodo can’t have Esmeralda, because he has “no moral compass, no understanding of right, everything he did was out of a love for a woman who was never going to love him back. Plus, you know the story’s not going to have a happy ending when the main guy’s all bumpy.” Aw, I love when characters’ homework assignments are perfectly applicable to their lives! 
• If Dawn really wants to call Buffy a hypocrite, then she should focus on Buffy getting all upset about Dawn liking Spike when she’s “only 14.” Buffy was 15 when she met Angel!
• I’m not gonna lie, I get a weird satisfaction from Xander getting all upset that Dawn likes Spike instead of him. My headcanon is that her crush on Xander was entirely implanted by the monks, and once she was able to have her own thoughts and feelings, she immediately moved on to a more interesting love interest.
• Harmony tells Spike she won’t do threesomes unless it’s MMF “or Charlize Theron.” Taste.
• Buffy spits at Spike that you “can’t love without a soul,” and Dru contradicts her: “We can love quite well, if not wisely.” Interesting. It all depends on your definition of love, I guess.
• It’s hard to understand why Buffy doesn’t stake Spike at this point (other than contrivance to keep James Marsters/the character around). Her justification has always been that he’s a harmless creature, but he spent this whole episode proving that he’s very much not harmless–he participated in killing innocent people and nearly killed her. Is this supposed to be another example of Buffy adhering to principles a little too stubbornly, or is it supposed to be an early sign that she does, in fact, have feelings for him?

Season 5, Episode 15 “I Was Made To Love You”

Buffy, upset because all two of her boyfriends have left town, decides that maybe it’s best to be exactly what men “want” (read: never talking about yourself, always laughing at their jokes). It seemingly works on Ben the Doctor, who she runs into at a party. It is also very depressing. And silly!

Speaking of being exactly what men want, a young woman named April with a big smile and very good posture arrives in town looking for someone named Warren. It’s a little creepy, but no one quite catches on that something’s actually wrong (probably because she doesn’t seem that different from the stereotype of a devoted girlfriend). Until, that is, she goes to a party and Spike hits on her and she throws him out the window. Which everyone but Spike massively enjoys. Then she pushes Buffy for suggesting she get over Warren! At that point the Scoobs figure out that April’s a sex robot.

They find Warren, who’s been running from April while trying to keep her a secret from his current, human girlfriend, Katrina. He explains to Buffy that he couldn’t get dates, so he built himself–not a sex robot, he clarifies, but a girlfriend. Unfortunately, though, he’s not in love with her because she doesn’t challenge him. Instead, he fell in love with a woman from class who gives him a hard time. (Oh, gee, who’s that remind you of?) So he ghosted his poor little sex robot, thinking she would just run out of battery. This guy is literally so much of a wimp that he couldn’t dump a machine.

Katrina, his human girlfriend, storms out when she realizes Warren’s keeping secrets from her. Unfortunately, she runs into April, who starts to choke Katrina when she hears the latter say Warren’s her boyfriend. By the time Buffy and Warren find them, Katrina’s limp and unconscious. Then Warren tries to dump her by tricking her into waiting at his apartment! AGAIN! Buffy won’t let him get away with that, so he finally admits that he’s in love with Katrina. Unfortunately, April thinks he means Buffy, so the two of them get into a fight, which Buffy wins when April’s battery runs out. The two spend some time sitting peacefully on the swingset while Buffy waits for April to lose consciousness forever. It’s really sad. But at least Katrina runs away from Warren so he doesn’t get a happy ending, either. And Buffy decides that she needs to be OK with being alone, unlike April, so she cancels her date with Ben.

Speaking of dating, Mrs. Buffy is dating again, and the girls help her try on outfits. She even gets flowers from her date the next day. But after canceling the date with Ben, Buffy arrives home and finds her mom splayed on the couch, her eyes open, not moving, and looking–not to put too fine a point on it–very, very dead.

Sidebar, a Spike/Buffy update: Last we saw Buffy and Spike, the two lovebirds were fighting because Buffy had uninvited Spike from her house. When this episode opens, she’s complaining to everyone left and right about how he has a crush on her. Dear Buffy: the more you talk about hating it, the more obvious it is that you kind of enjoy it. She continues to act like she’s repulsed by him, despite her raging mentionitis. Then Spike shows up at the magic shop and everyone stands up for Buffy, knowing that Spike is trying to get to her through them. Giles even pushes him and tells him to “get over it”! Glad to see everyone supporting Buffy’s bodily autonomy, although I have to wonder if they’re being so protective not because of feminism but because deep down they know she totally wants him too.

—Nerdy Spice

Notes from a New Fan:

• While sympathizing with Buffy about Spike’s crush being “gross,” Giles has to correct himself, “Not that you’re not attractive.” Awkward.
• Buffy is using Xander as a literal punching bag! I love it! So satisfying. If only we could get Riley into that suit, amirite?!
• Now, Xander is telling Buffy that she’s not “the problem” in her love life. After all those smart remarks about her bad track record?! (Which by the way was uncalled for anyway because, again, two breakups in five years.)
• Dawn asks if Mrs. Buffy’s date is a gigolo because he wears shiny shirts. Puh-lease, at that time, that was what EVERY dude wore. Every party I went to in college was full of dudes in slightly shiny buttondown shirts.
• I love how Mrs. Buffy’s meet-cute involves her not knowing anything about cameos and her new guy not knowing anything either, and her summary is: “So we had a lot to talk about.” 
• OK, I might sound mom-ish here, but I would 100% wear Mrs. Buffy’s date dress. It has, like, 3D fabric birds coming off it. It is so my style. I mean why waste your time wearing regular clothes when you can wear something with 3D birds coming out of it?
• Anya’s view on computers: “I’m eleven hundred years old. I had trouble adjusting to the idea of Lutherans.” Hee. And it’s very fitting that, having adjusted to computers eventually, she now makes money with online trading.
• Buffy laughs maniacally at Ben’s joke because she thinks that’s how to get men not to leave town. I don’t get it, like, has she noticed that these men pledged eternal love to her immediately before leaving town? Maybe she could try not falling in love with mercenary soldiers or, um, vampires? (Oh, who am I kidding. She’s going to fall in love with Spike. And I am HERE for it.)
• Xander bemoans that he sees everything through a construction lens. I’m impressed that he sees through any lens that isn’t boob-shaped.
• Mrs. Buffy claims to have left her bra in her date’s car, but it turns out to be a joke. Hee! To quote Tina Fey, sometimes grown-ups make jokes.
• Before they approach Warren, Giles cautions that they don’t know his motivation, and all the young’uns are like, “Um… I think we do?” Finally they explain the term sexbot to Giles, which clears it up.
• Wow, everyone’s all sorry for the lonely guy who had to make a sex robot, but no one has any sympathy for Spike! Which is fine, Spike doesn’t really deserve sympathy, but jeez, let’s also stop making excuses for sex robot guy. (I accidentally typed sexcuses, which makes me laugh.)
• When Warren claims to love someone else, April opens a file called “detroy_obsticle” and I guess it just goes to show you that bad spellers can still be computer geniuses.
• “Crying is blackmail,” April says, having been apparently programmed with this belief. “Good girlfriends don’t cry.” Oh MAN, Warren is the worst.
• We never find out why April’s batteries lasted so much longer than expected, do we?
• Wait, so… what is the deal between Glory and Ben? Are they siblings? Am I supposed to still be confused about this? Why can she inhabit his body? Why is he not surprised to wake up in a red tube dress? And when Glory says that Buffy turned “us” down, but she didn’t even know about the date, so are they one person sharing two bodies, or two people sharing Ben’s body, or what?! SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME it’s way over my head.
• Ooh, Spike orders a Buffy-shaped sexbot from Warren! Cree-pee.
• I KNEW Mrs. Buffy was gonna die! Sad, but necessary. It’s a literary trope that heroes only come into their own when their parent dies.

Notes from a True Stan:

• The “puffy Xander” scene is definitely Xander’s best scene in the whole show. And yet I still have a bone to pick: he’s being all sensitive and saying all the right things, that she’s not the problem, she didn’t drive her boyfriends away by being too strong or closed-off, but like, he was the one spreading this propaganda in the first place! Or has he already forgotten that he gave a five-minute monologue telling Buffy that she drove Riley away and everything was her fault? [Right??? Shut up, Xander! -Nerdy Spice]
• Joyce is so pretty. Has she not dated anyone since Ted??
• Poor Buffy, desperately changing herself to bag a man because she’s still single at the ripe old age of 21.
• I read that April was supposed to be played by Britney Spears, which would have been kind of awesome.
• Anya says that April “speaks with a strange evenness and chooses her words a shade too precisely.” Xander replies: “Some guys like that in a girl.” Aw!
• I laughed so hard when April picked Spike up by the collar and yelled, “You are not my boyfriend!!” 
• I love Giles’ deadpan description of babysitting Dawn: “We listened to aggressively cheerful music by people chosen for their ability to dance. We ate cookie dough and talked about boys.” This episode is so funny!!
• EW to Xander’s monologue about how all guys fantasize about having a sex bot: “beautiful girl, with no thought other than to please you.” Gross!! And then he says Oz would “get it” if he was still there, which–no, he definitely would not.
• OMG April’s folders include “sex,” “positions,” “fetish,” “neckrubs,” “listen sympathetically,” and “give him presents.” And Warren’s descriptors are “boyfriend,” “really smart,” “best lover,” and “snappy dresser.”
• “Crying is blackmail” is the best, most painful detail. No wonder Warren comes back as a villain next season, that’s some sociopath shit right there!
• Is it weird that I get so sad when April dies? Although not as sad as what happens in the next scene 😦 
• I usually stop this episode right before the end because it’s just too sad, but I made myself watch it this time. This shot of Buffy looking up the stairs with her mom’s body out of focus behind her is so well-done and tragic:
• Gah, and then SMG’s delivery of “Mom? Mommy?” kills me every time. I don’t know if I’m going to make it through “The Body,” you guys.