Helpless
Helpless
Season 3, Episode 12 (Episode 46 of entire series)
Ch-ch-ch-changes. Everyone's up in arms for Buffy's birthday. Your basic identity-search, who can I trust in this changing world (which I would have hyphenated, but that gets a tad tedious) sort of thing. Some good continuity from Becoming part 1 where Angel first spies Buffy in LA. This episode also marks the end of Giles's duties as Buffy's Watcher, as dictated by the Watchers Council. Oh My Gosh! But..he's still librarian, so..don't buy those tickets for the Titanic just yet. (??) Don't ask, I don't know.
Show opens up with Buffy and Angel doing the training-laced-with-innuendo thing. We learn that Buffy's going to hang out with her dad for her birthday..at the ice show!
Buffy goes to meet Giles to do some Slayer-study and everything sort of degenerates from there. Basically, Giles has Buffy studying some weird crystal things. Then she goes off to patrol, and finds herself weakening as she fends off a vamp. She manages to get the upper hand by having the vamp fall on a stake as he pounces on top of her. But yikes.
When Buffy goes to tell Giles that it's freaksome, he doesn't seem to make too much of it. He does suggest that she not patrol for about 48 hours or so, though.
Later, Buffy finds out that her dad can't uphold their bonding at the ice show tradition...he's had to cancel. So she kind of hints around that she'd like Giles to take her. This episode is big in terms of the Watcher/Slayer relationship, and I'm glad. I liked those bits we'd get in earlier episodes, y'know, Season 2 and I'd even say Season 1. But Giles will have none of it. He's like, Focus Guy. Focus on the Crystals Guy.
Freakier still, when Giles and Buffy are doing the Crystal Ship thing again -- no, there is no real correlation between my using Ship here and Titanic up there -- Buffy kind of goes into this hypnotic trance thing which allows Giles to inject her with some kind of drug thing. I admit I at first thought it wasn't really Giles, you know?
Anyhoo, there's a supposedly new evil thing in town. It's a big vamp a la straitjacket. He, like, needs his pills all the time. It's like watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, only instead of someone yelling, "I want my cigarettes!" we get the vamp and his pills. I admit I wondered if this was some sort of commentary about taking anti-depressants, but then I just sort of forgot about it as I looked at the pretty crystals.
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Where was I? Oh, yeah. So anyway, the vamp gets his pills, etc., courtesy of these two guys (yeah, you know, they're just going by Blair and Hobson now) who are working for this Quentin Travers, the guy sent by the Watchers Council to administer the Slayer test.
Which brings us to the test...it's called Cruciamentum, and it's when the Slayer reaches her 18th birthday. Basically, the Slayer's doped up with muscle relaxants and stuff of that sort, to disable her. Then she's sent to fight "a vampire foe."
Anyway, the vamp foe, Kralik, gets loose, and Buffy's running amok in the streets. When she finally learns that Giles was the one who injected her, she's mucho upset. I mean, I can dig that. She calls him a bastard. Yow.
Basically what happens is Joyce is taken hostage by the vampire foe, and Buffy's got to go fight Kralik in order to save Joyce. A few near misses, but she outsmarts the vamp using his Achilles heel. Okay, well, just his pills weakness. She puts holy water in his glass and I guess you could say he's cleansed...Anyhoo, Buffy passes her test, and will regain her powers soon. As for Giles...Quentin tells Giles that he's fired since he spilled the beans to Buffy. He goes on to say that Giles has more than a strictly Watcher/Slayer relationship with Buffy..he outs the paternal love Giles has for Buffy. Shocking? Not really. But I gotta say, it hurt to see Giles get fired. Dammit.
Oh yeah, Cordy had some good lines in this ep., as always. She must pay her writer plenty, no?
1. Buffy pointed the stake so it would plunge into the Park Vamp's heart.
2. To kill Kralik, Buffy spiked his glass of water with holy water.
3. That other vamp...it was too dark for me to see...will have to check the tape again...
1. Amy's still a rodent.
2. Buffy's still into ice skating.
3. Mr. Pointy (Kendra's stake) hasn't been forgotten.
4. The Watchers Council bites.
5. Cordy's still on the rebound.
6. I still maintain there's some in-joke about arms.
7. When Faith isn't in an episode, she's on a "walkabout."
8. Willow's obsessed with Snoopy.
9. There's gold kryptonite?
1. Is Willow really stubborn or does she just like the Amyrat too much? I mean, she could always go to Giles for help in changing Amy back, since Giles helped Amy change the Buffyrat back in Phases. Then again, maybe this is her first pet since Angel(us) killed her fish in Passion. Or it just makes for a running gag?
Oz: "Ice is cool. It's water, but it's not." -- on the topic of ice shows as being "girlie."
Coming Soon!
1. Sunnydale High School
2. Angel's place
3. Some streets
4. Sunnydale Arms (Boarding Room House)
5. Buffy's house
6. The playground
1. Buffy
2. Willow
3. Xander
4. Giles
5. Cordelia
6. Angel
7. Oz
8. Joyce Summers
9. Zackary Kralik
10. Quentin Travers
11. Hobson
12. Blair
13. Posse Jerk Guy
14. Random Jerk Buddies -- may remove
15. Park Vamp
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