Choices
Choices
Season 3, Episode 19 (Episode 53 of entire series)*
Boy..all those allusions Buffy's made about John Wayne really took on a new meaning tonight. Western-type face-off, anyone? This episode featured both Buffy and Willow making choices about their future, and Willow's standing up to Faith. The Mayor and Buffy meet face to face for the first time.
Show starts with Faith in the driver's seat...okay, actually it's just the big comfy chair in the Mayor's office. The Mayor's giving her some instructions about going to the airport to pick up something that's vital to his Ascension. It's all sounding a lot like it did when Spike had the minions getting pieces of the Judge. Except for the part where the Mayor supplies cookies. And a present. Gee, what I wouldn't give to have a big powerful man giving me daggers. The thrill!
Cut to Angel and Buffy doing their dusting vamps thing in the cemetery. Buffy moans about being stuck in a rut, something I occasionally do, only I don't have a vamp to listen to me. Then again, I don't want a vamp to listen to me. Anyhoo, she goes on wondering if they're going to be slaying nightly when she's 50 and he's..not. Heh. This is where Angel gets to be amusing by saying, "Let's just get you to fifty."
Next thing y'know, Buffy's at home, and Joyce finds out that Buffy got into Northwestern. It made me wonder which crew member might have gone there...Buffy seems to think she won't be able to go anywhere, resigned as she is to being the slayer. At lunch the next day, Snyder pops up to harass some guys about their lunch. He thinks they're into drugs. The man ain't no bloodhound. Or those dogs that sniff out drugs. Don't get me started about dogs that sniff things.
Meanwhile, Buffy's having lunch with her pals, bemoaning the sitch about not being able to leave the Hellmouth. Even more interesting, Xander's reading On the Road. Okay, I never read that, myself. But I guess it's symbolic or something to have him reading it. Cordy comes by and does the weekly insult thing, with Xander getting into it big time. When Buffy tries to lend assistance -- verbally! -- Cordy says something nasty and heads off.
Okay, it's been a few days since I saw this episode and I lost my train of thought. Sorry! Anyhoo, Buffy's in the library telling the Watchers about her school acceptance and her possible future, but Wesley will have none of it. It gets to the point where Buffy says that she'll take the fight to the Mayor, thwart the Ascension, and come back for slaying on holidays and vacations from school. There's a plan that'll get you frequent flyer miles...
Meanwhile, Faith's gone to get the box from the messenger at the airfield. Talk about your dark scenes. The guy steps off the plane, and he's handcuffed himself to the box. He meets up with a vamp who's driven to take him back to the Mayor to make a trade...think: box for moola. Lots of moola. While the two yammer on about it, the guy dies courtesy of a projectile from Faith's crossbow. Assume she cuts the box/wrist off of the guy with her nifty dagger or something.
Anyhoo, Faith delivers the box to the Mayor and he freaks out when she goes to open it. Meanwhile, Buffy had been hiding in the bushes, and saw Faith carry the box into City Hall. She gets some info. out of Driver Vamp. The gang decides to steal the box, while Wesley gets more and more annoyed about how this is all proceeding without his say-so, etc. He reminds the gang that the Mayor probably put a supernatural spell on the box to safeguard it. Okay well I yammered too much. Basically, Angel, Buffy and Willow are atop the roof of City Hall. Willow does a spell to rid the supernatural barrier, and splits the scene. Angel lowers Buffy (who's in a harness thing) to get the box, an alarm goes off, the pulley contraption thing gets stuck, and fighting and running ensues.
Meanwhile, on his way to get the ingredients for the spell that'll destroy the box, Xander can't resist going into a dress shop and goading Cordy some more. He learns she got into some good schools, and then he insults her some more... Later at the library, Xander gives Oz the ingredients and they set about making the goop to destroy the box.
Willow gets captured by Faith back at City Hall. She kills a vamp, discovers the Books of Ascension, and mouths off to Faith about how Faith didn't have to turn to the dark side, but she did, and it's too late to go back now. She calls her selfish and worthless and stuff. Probably not something you'd do to someone who can beat the hell out of you. But hey. People do that on this show, you gotta love it.
After a big scene in the library where Wesley says, destroy the box, it's the only way to save everyone (and it'll also give Buffy her ticket out of Sunnydale), the gang calls the Mayor to make the trade.
The "showcase showdown" (showbox?) goes down at the school. The Mayor is pretty evil about the whole Angel/Buffy romance. It's just a big lead-in to the spinoff, because it's not anything new we haven't already heard a million times. But hey. It was a speech. I listened. Snyder comes in to bust up the scene. He's like, Man With Cops On the Hunt For Drugs. One of his cops opens the box of Gavrok and lets out a mechanical-looking face-clamping spider thing. It kills him, pretty much. Snyder's way surprised to see the Mayor involved. And then another spider comes out of the box. Faith kills one that was on the wall near Wesley, and Buffy smashes one when it clamps onto her back and she falls on it. She also shuts the box top on one of them.
So where does this leave stuff? Willow gives Giles some pages she ripped out of the Books of Ascension, and she tells Buffy that she'll be going to the University of Sunnydale or whatever they named it so she can continue fighting evil and become a bad-ass wicca. And Angel and Buffy get cozy at the cemetery, living life in denial land about their future together. Whatever. Sorry for the yammery dry report. But check out the Character Pages, since those are going to be more fun this time out.
1. Angel and Buffy killed some vamps in the cemetery.
2. Buffy killed the driver vamp (offscreen), supposedly with Mr. Pointy.
3. Willow did a spell to combat the supernatural barriers so Buffy could get the box.
4. Willow killed a vamp with her floating pencil trick.
5. The gang traded the Box of Gavrok for Willow.
6. Buffy killed a spider thing, Faith killed a spider thing.
1. Angel has a sense of humor..so why doesn't it come out more often?
2. Cordy got into some good schools...Columbia, even! (My dad & brother went there, woo.)
3. Willow eats danger for breakfast. It's part of a nutritionally balanced breakfast, I guess.
4. Xander reads! (It's funny if you took the Zeppo dingo action. Check out those results.)
5. You can get busted just for eating your sack lunch under Principal Snyder's jurisdiction.
6. The Mayor's wife was named Edna Mae.
7. Willow does more than doodle; she draws diagrams to help Oz and Xander make the ritual goop.
The Mayor: "She deserves that poor excuse for a creature of the night." -- to Faith, about Buffy's thing with Angel.
The Mayor: "Raise your hand if you're invulnerable." -- to Buffy and the gang, about the spiders in the Box of Gavrok.
Xander: "We bohemian anti-establishment types have always been persecuted."
Oz: "Well, sure. You're all so weird." -- after Buffy mocks Xander's new philosophy, courtesy of On the Road.
1. Sunnydale High School
2. The Mayor's Office
3. A cemetery
4. City Hall/Mayor's Office
5. Buffy's house
6. The airfield
7. Dress shop where Cordy works. (April Fool)
1. Buffy
2. Willow
3. Xander
4. Giles
5. Cordelia
6. Angel
7. Faith
8. The Mayor
9. Joyce Summers
10. Wesley Wyndam-Price
11. Driving Vamp
12. Oz
13. Principal Snyder
14. Lunch Sack Kid
15. Cordy's Dress Shop Boss
16. Random Vamps (no page for them, one will be mentioned on Willow's page.)
This episode was to have originally aired before Earshot, so I preserved its episode numbers at top.
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