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| 78. Restless Original Air Date: May 23, 2000 Written by: Joss Whedon Directed by: Josh Whedon Guest Cast: Emma Caulfield (Anya) Amber Benson (Tara) Marc Blucas (Riley Finn) Seth Green (Oz) Phina Oruche (Olivia) Kristine Sutherland (Joyce Summers) George Hertzberg (Adam) Armin Shimerman (Principal Snyder) Mercedes McNab (Harmony) Sharon Ferguson (Primitive) David Wells (Cheese Man) Michael Harney (Xander's Father) Buffy, Riley, Giles, Willow and Xander are visiting Buffy's mother. As we join them, Riley is saying good-bye. The hearing on his disobedience and desertion is being held tomorrow and, presumably, he wants to rest up. He is confident that he isn't going to be too severely punished, because he helped Buffy and the gang save many of the personnel in the Initiative as it was being destroyed. Besides that, he also is a key witness, so the authorities won't want to make him into an enemy. He kisses Buffy good-bye and after he leaves, Joyce scolds Buffy for withholding Riley from her. As Joyce goes off to bed, the gang gathers in the living room for a video film festival. They haven't slept since before the assault on the Initiative, but they're too jazzed from the action to sleep. Xander wants to open with "Apocalypse Now", but the girls veto it for something more upbeat. He begins the first movie and they are all asleep before the FBI copyright warning ends. In Willow's dreams, she and Tara talk about naming their kitten, as they watch it play in slow motion. Tara thinks that the kitten will let them know what her name is, so she's not worried. Willow comments that Tara never worries, so Willow always feels safe with her. But Tara hints at a secret and tells her that "they" will find out about Willow. Willow is painting a poem by the ancient Greek poetess, Sappho, on Tara's back. From Tara's shoulders to her lower back, Willow has written a long series of Greek letters. Tara wonders if Willow will make it to her first drama class on time, but Willow doesn't want to leave. She pulls back a thick curtain; outside is a blazing sun and a desert-like landscape. She is afraid of something outside and in a series of flashes we see a vague shape move across the ground. Willow meets Xander and Oz in the college halls. Xander asks about Willow doing spells with Tara. He's using witchcraft as a code for sex between the two women, just like Spike implied that Willow's friends did, when she wasn't around. The bell rings and Willow rushes to class, leaving Xander to admit to Oz that he uses thoughts of Willow and Tara in his fantasies. Willow arrives at drama class to find everyone backstage, dressed in costume and preparing for a performance. Harmony, in a Hiedi outfit, grabs Willow and gushes with excitement over the show. Buffy, dressed as a Roaring Twenties flapper, runs over and tells them that Willow's entire family is in the front row of the audience, looking angry. Willow is totally confused. Riley joins them wearing an old movie cowboy outfit. Buffy compliments Willow on her costume and tells her that no one will guess her secret. Willow wonders why there were no drama classes before the show. She worries that they are going to perform Madame Butterfly, because apparently she has issues with that play. Giles, acting as Director, calls for everyone's attention and gives a pep talk that's a strange combination of Broadway cliches and ominous warnings. As Harmony begins to sneak around, Willow catches a glimpse of something prowling between the performers. Harmony comes up behind Giles, now she is in full vampire face. Giles chides her to mind her manners as he tells the players that the audience wants them dead. He instructs them to take their places for "Death of a Salesman". Willow turns and sees a bald man with round spectacles. He tells her that he made room for the cheese, which is sliced in yellow sandwich squares and spread out on a small table before him. Willow walks between two long curtains. She sees Tara peeking out from a seam in the right curtain and Tara confirms Willow's suspicion that something is following her. On stage, Riley, Harmony and Buffy are performing a bizarre set of lines. Tara tells Willow that if everyone finds out about the real Willow that they will punish her. When Willow tries to find out more, Tara hushes her and when Willow looks around, Tara is gone. Something sharp cuts through the curtain, inches from Willow's head and she runs. She is knocked to the ground, as hands and blades poke through the curtains at her. Her hand is badly slashed before she is pulled from the curtains by Buffy. They are now sneaking through a deserted classroom, but Willow is unable to tell Buffy what they are hiding from. Willow mentions the play and Buffy instantly relaxes, telling Willow that the play is long over and suggesting that she change out of her costume. Willow protests that these are her normal clothes. Buffy reaches for Willow's shoulders and makes a ripping motion and sound. Willow now finds herself dressed in a modest brown dress with long straight hair, white hose and brown shoes, a look reminiscent of her high school days. She is standing in front of a full classroom, which finds her predicament amusing. Oz and Tara, her first love and her current lover are whispering to each other and snickering. She just begins to read her book report when she is attacked. Her attacker is wrapped in gray rags and appears dark-skinned with stringy black hair. Nobody else in the classroom seems disturbed as the creature begins to suck the life from Willow's body. Sleeping on the couch in Joyce's living room, Willow's body begins to writhe as if gasping for air. Xander dreams that Giles and Buffy are critical of "Apocalypse Now", as they watch a soldier walk through the jungle repeating old war movie cliches. Xander remembers a better movie. Willow is sleeping and still suffering, but no one seems concerned. When Xander goes upstairs to the bathroom, Joyce approaches him in a nightgown and tells him that the others have already left. They begin to talk suggestively about men as explorers and conquerors. She suggests that he lay in her bed, but he still needs to visit the toilet first. As he stands over the bowl, exposed, he notices behind him a large group of Initiative personnel, including technicians taking notes. He decides to seek other facilities. Crossing the hall, he passes through a door and finds himself in his basement apartment. At the top of the stairs connecting to his parent's house, something is trying to open the door. At a playground, Xander finds Buffy sitting in a sandbox. Giles and Spike are playing on a swing set, dressed in tweed suits. Spike brags that he has become Giles' apprentice. Xander reflects that he has other commitments that represent progress in his life. A short distance away, he sees himself working on the ice cream truck. Suddenly, concerned for Buffy, Xander cautions her to be careful in such a big sandbox. Buffy now sits on a sloping sandy hill. The desert stretches to the horizon, broken only by mountain ranges, rock formations and scattered brush. She assures him that "it" isn't coming for her yet and, despite Xander's concern, she reassures her "big brother" that she is ready. The Xander in the back of the ice cream truck watches his other self talk to Buffy in the sandbox. He moves forward to the driver's seat and the truck is already in motion, with Anya sitting beside him. She questions whether he knows where he is going and then she begins to talk of a renewed interest in vengeance, even if she can't be a vengeance demon anymore. Xander argues that vengeance is bad and reminds her that she should follow the rules of society. Just then, he becomes aware that Willow and Tara are in the back of the ice cream truck, gazing dreamily into each other's eyes. Their outfits are sluttier than normal. As they whisper and giggle together, Willow plays her fingers over Tara's thigh. Willow invites Xander to watch, as they embrace, and he stares at them, as we hear loud, sloppy kissing noises. Tara invites Xander to join them and, surprisingly, Anya agrees, saying that she can drive the truck with hand gestures. It's a long way to the back of the truck, as Xander climbs over boxes and pushes his way past plastic coolers. He finds himself back in his basement apartment. The thing at top of the stairs is starting to pound on the door. Retreating, Xander almost bumps into the bald man with the round spectacles, holding a plate of cheese slices. He tells Xander that the cheese will not protect him. Xander retreats through the side door as he hears the sound of the upstairs door breaking and a creature's growl. He now passes into a hallway at the college, which is filled with students. No one seems to notice that everything has an eerie green glow. He finds Giles who tells him that all this is happening because of something they did. He begins to tell Xander some life-saving instructions, but when he speaks, now a voice similar to a French language instruction tape comes out. Anya joins them and she speaks with a French woman voice. Unable to make him understand, Anya and Giles grab him by the arms. The students in the hallway circle Xander and pick him up with his legs in the air. Suddenly Xander is in the "Apocalypse Now" jungle. He is a prisoner being marched to see Col. Kurtz. Principal Snyder plays the Colonel. He tells Xander that he thought the High School students were pretty worthless and Xander expresses his gratitude that the Mayor, in the form of a snake-demon, ate Snyder. When Snyder asks Xander where he is going, Xander tells him that he is trying to find Willow and Tara, and maybe Buffy's mom. Snyder tells him that time is short and Xander admits that he is trying to get away from something. Snyder dismisses Xander as worthless. Xander is now outside Giles' door and the creature is getting closer. He rushes into Giles' to find Buffy, Giles and Anya gathered in concern around the sleeping, struggling Willow. He can't get through to them. He walks from the living room, into the back hallway, but instead of reaching Giles' bathroom, he passes into a dormitory hall. As he weaves his way through the crowd of students, behind him a person in gray rags with black hair bounces after him on all fours. He flees into Buffy and Willow's room, but no one is there and he seeks a hiding place in Willow's closet. The closet becomes a dark passageway, which leads Xander, back to his basement apartment. The creature is still hammering on the upstairs door. As Xander stands at the bottom of the stairs, the door swings open. At the top of the stairs is a blinding white light and Xander's father is standing in the doorway. He rants at Xander for ignoring his family. He descends the stairs telling Xander that the line ends with us and that Xander hasn't kept the heart. The man shoves his hand into Xander's chest. Xander sees an arm wrapped in gray rags sticking from his chest. He also sees a dark face, covered with white paint. The creature rips Xander's heart from his chest. In the real world of Joyce's living room, Xander's body forms a rigid arch, as if in seizure. Now, we move on to Giles. Giles is using a pocket watch to hypnotizing Buffy in the ways of proper behavior, but she giggles instead. Buffy is now in coveralls and pigtails and she sounds like an eager child as she drags Giles and Olivia through a carnival in a cemetery. Olivia comments that Buffy is eager to train and Giles thinks she hasn't learned any lessons in patience. They stop in front of the "Crack Drac" booth. It's a coffin with a lighted top and a stiff figurine bouncing behind it, as a recording repeats endlessly that this is a vampire. With Giles correcting her, Buffy manages to knock down the carnival vampire with her second ball. When she looks to Giles for approval, he coldly tells her that he doesn't have any reward for her. Olivia scolds Giles for being so hard on Buffy. As they argue, Buffy takes an ice cream bar on a stick from a vendor. Giles warns her not to get it on her face and when she turns her face is covered in paint. Giles suddenly recognizes what she looks like, but before he can put a name to it, Spike calls to Giles to follow him into a crypt. Spike is entertaining tourists, by assuming menacing poses, so they can take pictures. Olivia sits to the side weeping. Giles is confused and Spike teases him for not having it figured out yet. Crossing to the back wall of the crypt, Giles passes the bald spectacled man with the cheese slices now on his head. Giles finds a doorway in the crypt that leads to the Bronze, where he joins Willow and Xander, who are studying ancient books. Willow knows that she is near death and Xander shows off his open chest wound. Anya is on stage awkwardly trying to tell the joke about the duck that goes into a doctor's office with a man stuck to his butt. Willow accuses Giles of being responsible for all their troubles. She tells him that a primal force is after them and Giles tells her that that force used to be them. Anya finishes her joke and despite an atrocious delivery, the audience laughs and applauds. Willow wants Giles to stop being distracted by Anya, because they have to figure out what is happening, in order to save themselves. In answer, Giles begins to sing. He goes to the stage and stands at the microphone as he sings theories and instructions. In melodic tones, he sings that the spell they used to defeat Adam, which combined their individual abilities with Buffy's, somehow attracted a primeval creature that seems vaguely familiar. He croons for Willow to search the Slayer Chronicles for a warrior-beast. As the music intensifies, Giles grabs the mic and the crowd holds up their burning cigarette lighters. He sings that he must warn Buffy, for she must be the next victim, and he pleads for Willow and Xander not to bleed on his couch. Another thought occurs to him, but before he can sing it, the microphone shorts out. To find the problem, Giles begins tracing the microphone wire. Crawling on all fours, he passes through a curtain on the stage and finds a large bundle of wires. From the tangle he pulls a pocket watch. Suddenly, it all makes sense to him. There is a flash of lightning and standing over Giles, is a human, with dark skin, wrapped in gray rags, showing a face painted white and a large machete. Giles is confident that he can defeat the creature, as it comes up behind him. As the being slowly takes a handful of Giles hair and approaches his hairline with the sharp blade, Giles tells the attacker that they couldn't know how capable Giles is, because they never had a Watcher. As blood flows down Giles' face from the scalping, his real, sleeping body convulses and shakes, before lying still as death. Buffy appears to awake in her dorm room, but, instead of Willow, it is Anya in the next bed, whispering pleas for Buffy to wake up. Buffy resists the pleas and rolls over. Above her, suspended by chains, the white-faced wraith bares its teeth and growls. Buffy awakes again, this time in her bed at her mother's house. Suddenly, Buffy is dressed and standing in her old room, looking at the tousled bed. She comments that she and Faith just made the bed . Tara is suddenly there, asking Buffy for whom did she make the bed. Buffy thinks that Tara is supposed to tell her that. Buffy asks about her friends and Tara says that Buffy lost them, but Buffy thinks she can still find them, if it wasn't so late. Tara dismisses the clock in the room and offers Buffy a Tarot card, the Manus, the hand - the role Buffy played when she combined her power with her friend's abilities to defeat Adam. Buffy thinks she is never going to use Tarot cards, but Tara warns that Buffy doesn't have the future all figured out; that Buffy can't predict what she is going to become. Buffy leaves to find the others and Tara cautions her to be back before dawn. Buffy wanders the halls of the college asking about her friends. She comes to a hole in the wall and finds her mother's face beaming from inside. Joyce seems content with her life behind the wall. She encourages Buffy to keep looking for her friends. Buffy is concerned with Joyce's safety and Joyce suggests that perhaps Buffy could bring down the wall, but Buffy sees Xander going up some stairs and she leaves her mother to pursue her friends. Buffy finds Riley and human Adam, in an Initiative conference room. Riley tells her that his hearing went well, he is now the Surgeon General and they are working on a plan for world domination, through coffeemakers. She expresses concern about seeking world domination, but Riley assures her that that is what the government does. The other man speaks and Buffy recognizes a totally human Adam. Adam states that human aggression is a normal instinct, but that isn't how he and Buffy got theirs. The black-skinned being with the white face stands behind Buffy and growls at Adam, as Buffy denies that she is any part demon. Riley asks her to let them get back to work. The white face is gone from behind her. She asks Adam what his real name was, but he tells her that no one remembers. Suddenly, the alarms go off and Buffy begins to re-live the demon breakout. Riley sends Adam to round up some pillows, so they can build a fort. Dark figures begin to move behind Buffy and she finds a weapons satchel at her feet. When she opens it, it is filled with mud. She dips her hands in the mud and begins to paint her face. Riley leaves her alone. As she walks through the Initiative, the floors give way to sand and she finds herself on that sloping sandy hillside, which we saw earlier. Her face now clean, Buffy doesn't think that she can find her friends here. Tara approaches and tells Buffy that she is here to speak for "her". As Buffy argues that "she" should speak for herself, we see "her" come up behind Buffy and circle her. She is black, with long wispy black hair, long gray rags wrapped around her body and a white painted face. She crouches and circles Buffy like an animal sizing up her prey. Buffy demands that she speak, but Tara tells Buffy that she has no language or name, she is just action, fighting and destruction, all done alone. Buffy realizes that this primitive woman is the first Slayer. In Buffy's hand, she finds a photograph of her and her friends in her mother's living room. The people in the photo move about. Buffy is not alone, she tells her ancestor. The aborigine Slayer insists, via Tara, that the Slayer is meant to move outside the circles of the real world, but Buffy insists that she is a part of the world, living an almost normal life. She paints a picture for the ancient Slayer of a better world, where there are green trees, comfortable beds and a life worth living. That is Buffy's life and now she demands the return of her friends. The savage Slayer manages a hoarse whisper and insists that the Slayer's life is just killing evil, killing alone. The bald man with glasses waves a couple of slices of cheese at Buffy, but she ignores him. She feels that this has gone on long enough and she demands to awaken. The first Slayer attacks. The two Slayers kick, punch and wrestle briefly. They pause in a face-off and Buffy states that the two will fight no more. But the primate Slayer tackles her and they roll down the dusty hill together. The word "Enough" rings in Buffy's ears and she awakens on the carpet in her mother's living room. Her friends lie still. Suddenly, the primeval Slayer is on her. She stabs Buffy in the chest repeatedly with a stone blade, until Buffy impatiently asks her to stop. Buffy is unharmed and she announces her intention to ignore her ancestor. The confused Aborigine watches as Buffy rises from the floor and resumes her position on the couch. Buffy tells the primitive Slayer that she is not the source of Buffy's power. Buffy is giving her counterpart hair care tips, when she really awakens. Around her, her friends begin to stir and look at each other. Later, they sit at the dining room table, analyzing what happened to them. Giles reasons that the spell that combined their unique abilities with Buffy's Slayer skills angered the spirit of the first Slayer. Buffy reprimands Giles for not warning them and he explains that he did give them a warning of possible danger, but she thinks that that is the same warning he gives, no matter what they do. Joyce joins them and after Willow explains what happened, she calmly offers them hot chocolate. She asks Xander to help her and he is obviously uncomfortable, considering his dreams about her, repeatedly calling her "Buffy's mom". Buffy admits to Giles that she is still a little shaken by the experience of meeting the first Slayer. The others agree that they don't want to dream about any more Slayers. As Buffy leaves the table for a shower, she is at least happy that the others didn't meet a weird man with cheese slices - she doesn't know what could have caused that apparition. The others look at each other with unspoken questions. Upstairs, Buffy pauses to look at her old room. Before she moves on, Tara's voice reminds us that Buffy has no idea what her future holds, a future that had barely begun. Summary by: OBCooke at EpisodeGuides.com |
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