Reviewed By: Adam Bardwell
Rating: 8.5/10
Say what you like about the finale itself but this part of the story builds up the tension's which have being building all season nicely and is a very good episode. I disagree with some of the choices Buffy makes in it but I can understand where she is coming from. The Faith / Buffy story comes to a head in dramatic fashion with one of the best Slayer versus Slayer fights we have seen (although as good as it was I still don't understand how the hand cuffs gave Buffy an advantage!). I do have few qualms about this fight and its resolution but from an action point of view it was brilliant. Along with this this episode also was very important for it saw Buffy break her ties with the Watchers Council (I love the idea that she graduated from it) and Willow and Oz consummate their relationship - without Barry White!
At the beginning of the episode we see Faith kill a volcano professor in cold blood - she didn't ask the Mayor why he wanted him dead. This shows that Faith has lost all sense of morality (but not that she can't regain it as we see in later episodes). This was actually a huge tactical mistake by the Mayor for the gang now know that he can be killed in his demon form. As Wesley put it this inadvertaty provided them with a clue to defeating him. The only problem was that it wasn't that inadvertent! Why would the professor tell the Scoobies about the dinosaur like skeleton found in a volcano? He wouldn't and the gang wouldn't think to ask! The Mayor would have been far safer if he hadn't sent Faith on this job - it would have most likely been years before someone put the information together to be able kill him had he not.
Faith's next task was to distract Buffy - her method is to shoot Angel with a wicked painful mystical poison on which will kill him if the gang cannot come with a cure which is what they spend a good part of the episode attempting to do along with researching the ascension but that goes without saying really. It is the Watcher's Councils unwillingness to help the gang find a cure which leads Buffy to quit in a similar vein to what she attempted to do in "Prophecy Girl" except there she was attempting to quit being the Slayer which is something that she, seemingly, can never do. This development also gives us some funny scenes with a delusional Angel mistaking Oz (off screen) then Willow (on screen) for Buffy.
The discovery that only a Slayer's blood will cure Angel leads to Buffy going after Faith with the intention to feed her to Angel. To quote Faith - "If you kill me you become me" - this was a highly immoral selfish thing for Buffy to do. She would sacrifice a human being however messed up for her ex-lover, a vampire? I can understand her motivation - she still very much loves Angel but this doesn't make her actions right. The episode ends with Buffy putting Faiths own knife into her gut. Faith falls from her building into a truck and a coma. This was a bit of a strained way for Angel to be denied Faiths blood but that really isn't the point. As Faith points out when she wakes up in "This Year's Girl" Buffy is soon to move on from Angel and forget the woman she put in a coma for it i.e. Buffy really didn't gain from her actions except to piss Faith off. She also removed her from being a main player in the season finale which was a pity as this really was the year of Faith.
It was some of the little touches that this episode had that I really liked. The very beginning with Willow and her nostalgia disease for example - its so true. I've recently left school (we don't graduate here but finishing my A-levels is an equivalent thing) and you really do start to miss the things you used to hate - like Willow with Harmony -little did she know that she would see more of her in season 4. I also liked the lesson where they played hangman - again too true - its something you always do when there is no real need for you to be at school. There is a fringe theory that Xander and Cordelia had make-up sex for there last period. Suspicion comes from them agreeing to skip last period but I'm sceptical. The Anya / Xander material is good. Its nice to see Anya being useful and the seeds here are set of not just there relationship but Anya's complete lack of understanding of humanity.
A little comment made by Buffy that Angel was to be her last office romance really fly's in the face of what is to come (who you are, you've only just begun - I digress!!!) with Riley just that kind of relationship she said she wanted to avoid. Maybe that is the point however much Buffy wants a normal relationship she is just naturally attracted to those in the same line of work as her or that she can only be with some one who understands what she goes though (all you Buffy / Faith 'shippers calm down - I'm not going that far!). From the way Buffy and Riley's first sex scene was edited in "The I in Team" it seems clear to me that killing demons is like foreplay to her.
Great Buffy Moment: Has to be Faiths last words before falling off the building her apartment was in - "Shoulda been there, B, quite a ride!".
In a Nutshell: Good set-up work with a great Slayer Vs. Slayer contest although Buffy's morality must be called into question.