(haven't read anything yet -- further comments once I have)
This is my opinion on last night's ep ---
Buffy is *so* jealous!
The Spike and Faith scenes were excellent! Totally the highlight of the episode!
And honestly, the only parts that were really interesting. The stuff with that priest guy – kind of annoying and kind of boring and more confusing than not havin' him around – is this the new warrior of the First? Or is this guy like Jasmine from Angel?
Buffy: It could be a girl. A potential trying to get to us.
Giles: Or it could be a stapler.
*snort* Loved that line. THAT is Giles-ish. Moreso than he has been of late.
Still, the Spike and Faith stuff was the best. The punching and the "Stop. Hitting. Me!" hehe. And the whole scene after Buffy shows up and punches Faith in the face: Faith asks if B's protecting vamps and wonders if she's the good slayer now and lalala – and why are they chasing a helpless…
Buffy: That's one of the bad guys.
Faith kicks the vamp's ass and they trek back to Slayer-Central. And hostility –
Oh and thank the gods for CONTINUITY! Faith has Dawn memories and Dawn has Faith memories – oh they wrote something in! *jumps for joy that they didn't forget!*
Then Faith must escape the raving teenagers! So, she has a smoke with Spike in the basement. And was that like the coolest conversation in Buffy history or what? And this is where the 'Buffy is so jealous' bit comes from – she comes down the stairs and is concerned about Faith and Spike talking? Um – they're really not all that different – they have LOTS they could talk about – continuity again – the "This Year's Girl" scene! – and Buffy would only be overly concerned if she was still in love with Spike – which, yeah, I think she is. How does Spike feel about her? Hard to say – but he seems to be way more mature about this whole 'relationship' than Buffy is.
The scenes in this ep would lend well to a Faith / Spike spin-off – but from my understanding, that idea might be scrapped b/c of Eliza's Fox pilot… but, there's time still I guess – b/c I think Joss said he didn't wanna do a new show for the next season – he wanted to wait – probably not a bad idea – take time to work out ideas and such – we'll see.
Can't believe I forgot this -- but what the hell did they do to Xander?! OMG!!
Btw - this episode is better the 1st time through - b/c I liked it a bit until I started trying to watch it the 2nd time - and it was not as interesting -- so I skipped to the Spike parts...
added @ 12:45 EST -- where was Anya? I don't remember seeing her at all in this ep. And they didn't mention her either.
Oh - one more thing -- Andrew is annoying. Can we get rid of him? Sure, he was there to exposition to the potentials about Faith - someone has to, that used to be Giles' job...