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Lessons (Ep. 7.1)"Won't Get Fooled Again" Back to Sunnydale, back to the cemeteries, and demon-slaying. It's Season 7, and it's alive. "Lessons" picks up where "Grave" led us to believe the summer might lead us - to a happier place where Buffy isn't such a depressive spaz and everyone isn't doing their level best to prove that they're really not very good friends. In specific, this fall school year seems to be the one where Dawn gets to become something other than a hostage or dependent mouth to feed. After a year of stomping and screeching, I was relieved how much I liked Dawn in this episode... especially since I remain of mixed minds about most of the other characters. . . . Istanbul. A young woman is being chased through the night city by mysterious men in hooded robes, through the streets, over rooftops. She doesn't make it. The gang grabs her and pins her down. A robed arm brandishes a knife. Murder in the first minute of the episode. Surely this can't be good. Cut to Sunnydale. Buffy observes a vampire crawling out of his grave, something we haven't seen for quite a while. Zen-like, she begins a running commentary as the creature drags its arms through the churning earth. "It's about the power," she lectures. Nearby we see a nervous Dawn, brandishing a stake. It's Slayer-in-training time. Classroom-style, Buffy continues to grill her sister - in this scenario, who's got the power? Dawn thinks it over - the vamp is new, and she's got a stake. Buffy tells her she's wrong: the vamp has the power, and she should never, ever forget it. The subject of this lesson isn't really holding up his end of the job, however - it's stuck, and needs help getting out of its grave. An exasperated Buffy hauls out the newly undead creature and sends it snarling toward Dawn, who stakes it... and misses the sweet spot. The Slayer puts a stop to the impending bite and, post-dusting, tells her sister she did pretty good. "On my first time out, I missed the heart too," she says. Sister-bonding over killing things. Well, it's an improvement over last year. As the two walk from the graveyard, they make apprehensive noises about how what they just faced is nothing compared to what's coming back in a few days. Let's skip the misdirection and just get on with it: the high school is reopening, in a brand-new building, constructed right over the old site. Over the Hellmouth. This can't be good either. Willow has apparently spent her summer break being taught how to use magic responsibly by the (all-female?) coven mentioned in "Grave." The magic, Giles tells her, is not a hobby or an addiction. "It's inside you now," he says. Well, so much for the drug analogy, thank god. Now don't we all wish that Giles had realized that Willow needed mentoring last season before things got so bad? Willow is also wondering why Giles is going "all Dumbledore" on her. She realizes, uneasily, that the coven witches are afraid of her, and can't understand why they don't just kill her, or lock her "in some mystical dungeon for all eternity," believing that she "deserve(s) a lot worse." Giles asks if she wants to be punished. "I just want to be Willow," she says simply. He then smiles kindly and tells her, "In the end we all are who we are. No matter how much we may appear to have changed." At this moment, I had the uncomfortable realization that the very sight of Xander now makes me wince. Even after having seen him talk Willow down from destroying the world, I'm still not over his walking out on Anya, and the way everyone just let it slide. No harm, no foul, huh Xander? Cheery old Xander, gettin' on with life. Picking up Dawn for school. Ingratiating himself into Buffy's daily routine, just like he'd been waiting for that opening all along. Good old reliable Xander. There for his best friends. Ditched his demon bride, and still not too sad about it. Que sera sera. And I used to really like Xander. Now, just the thought of having to listen to one of his hateful diatribes makes my stomach lurch. Sorry - mark me down as one of Anya's friends instead. But hey, into the Summers' house he goes, all smiles and useful purpose. He and Buffy compare notes over the new school. Buffy is understandedly nervous about sending Dawn there, given her own past at Hellmouth High. Xander, having been construction man on the rebuilding project, has been making sure that no pentagrams or secret passageways have been included, although when they match the plans of the new school to the old, they note that over the location of the old library - and thus the Hellmouth - is now the principal's office. "So the principal's evil?" Dawn asks casually. "Well, the last two principals were eaten," Xander shrugs. This scene - and the rest of the episode as well - shows Buffy in an organized, momlike light. "Go. Talk with your mouth full," she shoos Dawn to the kitchen, where she "made cereal" for breakfast. Her angst, at least, seems to be a thing of the past. She's also regrown her hair over the summer to its more familiar, longer length, and redone herself blond. One thing new she seems to have picked up, however, is a healthy dose of paranoia. "Nothing creepy? Strange?" she quizzes Xander relentlessly about the high school plans. Then, all the way to school, she drills Dawn about what to do in case of an emergency until the exasperated teen beats a hasty retreat from her overcompensating sister. However, Buffy's new supermom role is one she's none too comfortable with yet. Her face promptly falls when the new Principal, Robin Wood (a very attractive man of color, by the way - rowr!), mistakes her for Dawn's mother. So much so, that unsatisfied with simply dropping off her sis, Buffy commences to skulk around the new building on a quest for evil things, visiting the girls' bathroom in the process to check that her 'do doesn't qualify as "mom hair." (Actually, Buffy? That pulled-back-in-a-clip look? It does.) In the bathroom, she notes a Blair Witch-style twig object. Lifting it, she is startled to see a rotting corpse reflected in the mirror behind her. "You couldn't protect her and you couldn't protect me," the image growls. Another corpse attacks her, shouting "get out get out get OUT!"... but as Buffy recoils (having a Dawn flashback, no doubt), the apparitions vanish. Alarmed, Buffy bursts into Dawn's class-in-progress. "We have to go! It's not safe," she barks loudly... interrupting Dawn in the process of winning over the other students with a perky self-introduction. The entire class stares and Buffy, belatedly realizing the social gaffe she's just pulled, bluffs her way back out again ("I just thought you were in danger of, uh, smoking") while Dawn cringes. "I also have a sister," she winds up her speech with a pained smile as Buffy exits. And she used to think the robot was embarrassing. When Halfrek had first shown up, I'd figured her for a pushy friend who would goad Anya into a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus outlook that would wreak havoc on her relationship with Xander prior to the wedding. Instead, we get Halfrek the concerned coworker. The two come off like saleswomen comparing notes. "I know I've always been a little competitive with you," "Hallie" confesses, but goes on to say that she's "always looked up to" Anya, who was "the single most hardcore vengeance demon on the roster." "Good times," Anya agrees wistfully, but this nostalgia doesn't seem to extend to enthusiasm for her current vengeance gig: Halfrek notes that instead of turning a man into a frog, she made him French. "He's smelly!" Anya protests weakly. The change in Anya over the summer is startling. Gone are the platinum blonde curls and sexy clothes. She now looks like a spinster librarian, complete with mousy, pulled-back hair and a buttoned-to-the-neck grandma blouse. And there's no doubt of the reason for this transformation: When Halfrek tries to reason out Anya's sudden soft-touch - "You lost your powers. It happens. And then you fell for this Xander guy" - Anya is quick to claim that "It was a glitch. A summer thing" - but it's clear that her almost-marriage has taken its toll, and not only on her self-confidence. When Anya demands, "What is this, an intervention?" and wonders why all her demon friends aren't there to deliver the wake-up call, Halfrek looks at her pityingly and tells her that they are. Ouch. Which now begs the question: does Anya still have any other friends at all? Despite the vengeance demon's overt heroism in the season finale (staying with Giles till the bitter end, maintaining the protection spell at great personal risk, etc.), it's beginning to look like the Scoobies have shrugged her off like a bad habit now that her help is no longer required... exactly the same way they treated Spike last year. I'm beginning to feel that there's a point being made here... or rather, that there better be a point coming. While Buffy stammers her way through explanations, Dawn has a ghostly encounter of her own. A boy next to her asks to borrow a pencil, which Dawn hands over... only to have it suddenly stabbed into her eye. Dawn falls to the floor shrieking before realizing that the ghost is gone and the class is staring. She makes up a quick story about a bee and a severe allergy, and escapes to the bathroom. "Guess it runs in the family," a classmate mumbles. In the bathroom, runs across another student - a goth girl named Kit, similarly freaked out. They're on their way to becoming friends in a crisis when the overhead lights begin to explode, and the ghosts reappear. Hands reach through the floor, grabbing at their ankles. Finally, the floor collapses, and they fall through into the basement. Whatever's happening at Neo Sunnydale High, it's big: Willow feels it all the way from England, and falls to the ground in a seizure. She clings to Giles and babbles that she "felt the Earth... but it's not all good... there's deep black... I saw its teeth." The hellmouth is going to open, Giles posits. Willow agrees. "It's going to swallow us all," she cries. In the basement, Kit tells Dawn what the ghosts told her. "She said she died here, and everybody dies here, and I was going to die too." Dawn deadpans, "and here I was worried about not fitting in." The group then expands to include another student: Carlos, a Latino bruiser who just came down to the basement for a smoke but "ran away like a girl" when he saw one of the ghosts. As if on cue, the apparitions materialize to taunt them: there's nowhere to run, it doesn't matter if you scream - "nobody ever hears you." Tipped off by the word "hear," Dawn suddenly remembers her new "weapon" - a cell phone. I'd always wondered why nobody in Sunnydale had one of those. Alerted by the call, Buffy quickly finds the hole in the floor and drops through. It doesn't take long for the zombies to find her and begin regaling her with tales of how they died... and how it's all her fault. Buffy's response is that she doesn't really care. She just wants her sister. "If I'm the one who let you die, why take it out on her?" she glares at the zombies. The stabbing-pencil zombie claims that he'd "like Dawn to be my girlfriend." Buffy isn't buying it. "Wrong sister," she blurts, staring critically at the gangrenous corpses confronting her. "I'm the one who dates dead guys. And no offense, but they were hotties." In response, another zombie wonders aloud if Buffy was too busy making out with her "dead boyfriend" to protect her from a werewolf attack. And wait, was that the first time Buffy's ever said something vaguely positive about Spike? Huh? The zombies are insistent. She must leave. "This place is ours now. It was built on our graves," they say. Buffy decides that it's more likely they're trying to keep her from reaching a particular door behind them, and after a brief scuffle and impressive leap, manages to reach it. Just as she does, however, the door suddenly swings open to reveal... Spike. Despite the urgency of the situation, Buffy is stunned into stillness. "Are you real?" she whispers, a not unreasonable question considering the appearing and disappearing of recent moments. His response is a laugh... one that goes on at least a couple of beats past the comfort zone. Uh-oh. Since last season's fadeout, we've been left wondering what the newly souled version of Spike was going to turn out like. Now we have our answer, at least for the moment - he's simply lost his mind. This fits: he was already teetering on the edge of insanity after the rape attempt of "Seeing Red," his alternately chilling lucidity and Drusilla-like ranting registering as only a minor, unsettling note among the rest of the episode's Flowers in the Attic Grand Guignol. InsaneSpike ver. 2, however, is crazy in a more recognizable way. Having worked in fast food during the Reagan years - those tender-hearted times in which our president decided that the best place to care for the mentally ill was "at home" (for "home" read "street") - I became very familiar with the spectacle of former mental patients shuffling in to count out a pocket of filthy pennies for a cup of McDonald's coffee. (For more fascinating fast food trivia, check the review of "DoubleMeat Palace.") With this and a decade's worth of life in a major urban center under my belt, I've since observed four major phenotypes for insanity, at least of those considered ambulatory enough to be let out of a state institution. There's your Shouters, your Starers, your Overenthusiastic Conversationalists, and your Talking to the Invisible People... which we now see represented here. Spike looks at Buffy with unfocused amazement, and reaches out a hand to touch her face. "Buffy... duck," he says quietly. Too disoriented to parse this warning, Buffy simply stares at him until she catches a lead pipe to the head and is brought back to the situation at hand, fighting the ghost-zombies. Seemingly oblivious to her plight, Spike mutters something to the tune of "no visitors today, terribly busy," and shrinks back into the darkness. Distracted only for a moment, Buffy throws off the attack and retreats behind the door, slamming and locking it, shutting herself in with Spike. Adrenaline now pumping, she fires a businesslike question over her shoulder about Dawn. His response is an abrupt shout. "Don't you think I'm trying?" he barks, backing away. "Not a quick study," he continues as if trying to explain, then begins rambling, calling up some distinctly schoolboy imagery about chalkboards and canings. Disturbed, Buffy approaches him carefully and gingerly tugs his shirt open. Deep cuts are etched across his chest. "What did you do?" she asks softly. "Tried to cut it out," he tells her. An incoming call interupts before Buffy can react to this. It's Dawn, wondering where the hell Buffy is. Buffy reassures her sister she's on her way, and they compare notes on the spirits - Buffy just can't figure them out. "Ghosts can't touch you and zombies can't disappear," she grumbles. "Not ghosts," Spike speaks up from behind her. She turns to see him crouching in the corner, seemingly talking to himself. "Manifest spirits controlled by a talisman, raised to seek vengeance. A four-year-old could figure it," he states firmly. Buffy absorbs this, then turns back to her phone, advising Dawn that "these things can hurt you. You can hurt them too. Find a weapon," then snaps the phone shut and turns back to Spike, asking, "are you gonna help or..." He cuts her off with the statement, "This is my home. I belong here. Always been here," then turns away again. "It's in the walls..." he mumbles. Buffy watches this, puzzled, and retreats with an uncertain "I'll get back to you." ...but she still loves her secrets, our Buffy. "How'd you know it was a talisman?" Dawn asks as the happy-to-be-alive students return to the lighted corridors upstairs. "There's always a talisman," Buffy replies airily, pointedly neglecting to mention her encounter with Spike. Sigh. Yes, Buffy. Don't mention the insane vampire living in the basement. That's a good idea. Nothing could go wrong with that plan. Not. However, "Lessons" finally brought home for me what it was about Season 6 that seemed so out of character for the series, as much as I otherwise enjoyed the toothy character development - it was often unbearably slow. Season 7, on the other hand, starts off at a brisk trot, with Buffy fighting zombies whilst confronting her mentally challenged near-rapist vampire ex-lover and talking on a cell phone all at the same time. Put her behind the wheel of a car with a latte in her hand and she's a California motorist. Multitasking is where it's at. But where did these "manifest spirits" come from? Down in the basement, Spike crouches in the dark, mumbling to himself. "I had a speech," he mutters, sounding faintly lucid for a moment. "I learned it all." He then breaks down again, mumbling over and over that "she won't understand." A voice chimes in to agree. It's Warren, builder of the Buffybot, who delivers his own speech, then morphs into Glory. Then Adam. Then the Mayor. Then Drusilla. Then the Master. Then... Buffy. "It's about power," this latest effigy says smugly, echoing her earlier words to Dawn. Why these particular voices in Spike's insanity chorus? The implication is clear: he's not imagining it. There really is someone else there. "No one comes here. It's just the three of us," he'd told Buffy when she first found him. This shape-shifting something, then, is the mysterious "third" person. Moreover, although most of these faces have personal meaning to Spike, two are people that, as far as we know, Spike never met. What's going on here? There are two key hints. One: whatever this is, it's old - "deep black," "older than the old ones." This might tie in with something I'd wondered vaguely about at the time, why Spike had to go all the way to Africa for the resouling. As the cradle of humanity, Africa implies ancient powers. The First Slayer, too, came from there. "We're going back to the beginning," the "Master" boasts. What "beginning"? Second: In speaking to Spike, these characters alernate between generally encouraging his self-loathing (not that he seems to need the help), telling him that "it isn't about right or wrong," and boasting about a plan to take on the Slayer. "She's right where I want her. And so are you, Number 17," the Adam effigy rumbles. Why does this sound familiar? Well, partly because everything ends up being about Buffy eventually, but also... ...in the S3 episode "Amends," a being called the "First Evil," described by Giles as "absolute evil, older than man, than demons," put Angel through similar torments with ghosts from his past.... and abruptly vanished at the end of the episode, never to be heard from again. It could have been a one-off, isolated incident... but I wonder. Or is it just the Master back again? (Not that I'd mind the latter - I love the Master, fruit-punch mouth and all.) And finally, typical for BtVS, the episode title "Lessons" has a double meaning: every character over the summer became either a teacher or a student... or both, and "Lessons" is where we get a Cliff Notes-style status report on what they learned, or failed to learn. After all, when it comes right down to it, there's always someone who knows more... even than the teachers. Hey, for all we know, maybe even the teachers are evil.
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