Lessons
60 min.
Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) battles the ghosts of Sunnydale High’s past in a lively seventh-season opener punctuated by droll dialogue.
Veteran Slayer-watchers will recall that Buffy’s alma mater was razed at the end of the third season during a fight with a snake-demon mayor. Now revamped and restored, the school has a new crop of students, which includes awkward freshman Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg). It also has a visitor, Buffy, who can’t resist a chance to tour the facility. But her curiosity soon turns to dread when spirits from the old school materialize to harass her. Elsewhere, Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) consoles a guilt-ridden Willow (Alyson Hannigan).
You remember, the heavily peroxided vampire , regular on the show, who spent both episodes of the Season Six finale fighing really tough demons and getting crawled on by evil bugs from hell so he could get his soul back?
How could TV Guide leave Spike out of the summary? Is he even in the episode? Or is UPN having James Marsters host the Season Premier Party because Spike isn’t in the episode and they knew that there are a lot of us out here who would have a hard time getting through an episode without him?
Come on, I’ve been waiting all Summer to see how The Peroxided One adjusts to the whole soul-having-back thing.
Well, being the serious spoiler whore I am, I can answer your questions. We WILL see him. As to how he adjusts…well, let’s just say he’s not 100%…I think you will like it.
Xander- checked out a Buffy board earlier, didn’t have much to say about him except that he’s supervising the finishing touches on the newly-rebuilt Sunnydale High School. But I do think he deserves some serious suffering. He never really did give Anya a sufficient explanation for dumping her at the altar (we in TV Land know and understand, but he never really told her thatwarning, possible spoiler
he was afraid of causing her thirty years of misery culminating in his caving her skull in with a cast iron skillet. From where Anya was standing, Xander not telling her the reason looked pretty much the same as not having one).
I also think that, through most of the last season, he was unduly harsh with Spike, who after all, did endure torture by an insane Hellgod to protect Dawn. I always had the feeling that Xander was Mr. Picked-On in high school, and instead of rising above it, got his ya-yas out by passing his misery along to someone who couldn’t defend himself. I see him being a major impediment to Spike’s redemption.
I hope Spike manages to patch up his relationship with Dawn. Through most of Season Five, Spike somehow managed to bring something out of Dawn, helped the viewer get a look at what was going on in her head, and she seemed to show more strength in his presence than with anybody else. I was disappointed at how little interaction there was between the two of them in Season Six, then there was that infamous bathroom scene…
Oh, and elf6c, I really can’t blame Dawn for whining her way through Season Six. I mean, look at what the poor kid has been through- coping with her mother’s death, coping with Buffy’s death, coping with finding out that Buffy was happy being dead and didn’t want to come back, being overprotected even when the Threat That Was Glory had long since been done away with… and she was starting to perk up toward the end of the season and be a more fun character to be around.
I personally think that this year Spike and Xander will no be friends, but will cooperate with each other “for the greater good.” After all, Xander is the heart of the gang, he’s not a bad guy. Yes, I do have some “Xander issues”, but I like him, and I think he may never like Spike, but he’ll move away from the trying to stake him thing.
