Season 3, Episode 12

Written by David Fury

Directed by James A. Contner

Original Airdate: 19 January 1999

"My own mother was a person with no self-respect of her own, so she tried to take mine. Ten years old, she had the scissors. You wouldn't believe what she took with those. But she's dead to me now. Mostly because I killed and ate her, but also because I know I won't be alone much longer. I'll have your daughter. I won't kill her - I'll just make her like me. Different. She'll go to sleep, and when she wakes up, your face will be the first thing she eats."
Zachary Kralik

REGULAR CAST

• Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

• Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris

• Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg

• Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

• David Boreanaz as Angel

• Seth Green as Daniel "Oz" Osbourne

• Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

GUEST CAST

• Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

• Jeff Kober as Zachary Kralik

• Harris Yulin as Quentin Travers

CO-STARRING

• Dominic Keating as Blair

• David Haydn-Jones as Hobson

• Nick Cornish as Guy

• Don Dowe as Construction Worker

SYNOPSIS

• Buffy and Angel go a few rounds of fighting until Buffy pins him and holds a breadstick to his heart. They talk, and Buffy reveals her plans to go to an ice show with her father for her 18th birthday. That night in the library, Giles is quizzing her on stones and having her concentrate on staring at them. Later, while on patrol, she's nearly staked by a vampire with her own stake when her powers suddenly stop playing to her advantage.
  
  Buffy's worried about her powers, and talks to Giles about it, while trying to throw knives at a target - but she misses terribly. Meanwhile, Quentin Travers, a head Watcher is setting up a test for the Slayer. She is to be locked up in a building, without any powers and has to defeat a powerful and insane vampire, Zachary Kralik. Giles meets with Travers, and tries to convince him to stop the test, but it's no good. At home, Buffy is disappointed to find out that Hank can't take her to the ice show for her birthday. While trying to get Giles to take her to the ice show, Giles has Buffy stare into a rock, and she then falls into a trance. He injects her with a muscle relaxant to take her Slayer powers away temporarily.
  
  After Cordelia saves the day where Buffy is supposed to, Buffy really begins to worry and enlists the help of her friends to figure out what's wrong. Buffy visits Angel and he gives her a book for her birthday. She tries to sound enthusiastic about it, but losing her powers has really begun to bother her. He tells her about how he saw her before she was the Slayer and how he loved her from the second he first saw her. Kralik has the chance to break out of his straight jacket while an assistant, Blair, is getting his pills and water. He then turns Blair into a vampire and when he wakes up, Kralik is completely freed from his restraints.
  
  Giles goes to find Quentin at the Sunnydale Arms building, but instead finds Kralik free and another assistant, Hobson, dead. Buffy, walking home alone is first confronted by two men looking for a lap dance and then Kralik. Blair chases her until Giles drives by and picks her up. At the Summers home, Joyce hears a noise out front and goes to check it out, but all she finds is Kralik wrapped up in Buffy's jacket. At the library, Giles tells Buffy everything that he did, and everything about the rite of passage. Buffy is very angry and tells him that she doesn't know him anymore and that he should stay away from her or she'll kill him. Cordelia shows up and drives Buffy home, where she then finds a picture of her mother in the hands of Kralik.
  
  Buffy goes to the Arms building, beats Blair into unconsciousness and is then chased by Kralik until his need for his pills becomes unbearable. Buffy steals them away, and slides down a laundry shoot where she finds her mother tied up. Kralik breaks through the door looking for his pills and water. After he downs the water, he's surprised to find out that Buffy has replaced his regular water with holy water. After he explodes into dust, Buffy tries to free her mother, and then Giles shows up and stakes Blair before he can hurt anyone.
  
  Back at the library, Quentin congratulates Buffy on her accomplishment, but Buffy tells Quentin that he has better be gone by the time she gets her powers back. Quentin tells Giles that he's fired because he's grown too close to the Slayer: his relationship with her is as more of a father than a Watcher. The next day, Buffy celebrates her birthday with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and her close friends. When Buffy, minus her strength, can't open the peanut butter jar, Xander offers to help - but he can't do it either.

TRIVIA

• Harris Yulin makes his first appearance as Quentin Travers in this episode and returns later in season five.

• Jeff Kober returns to the show as Rack for three episodes in season six.

• Zachary Kralik is the first insane vampire we see on the show. He is held captive by the Watcher's Council and they use him as a test against the Slayer. As a human, Kralik was abused by his mother, whom he later killed. He went on to torture and murder more than twelve women, and was committed to an asylum before he became a vampire. Buffy eventually kills him by tricking the vampire into drinking holy water with his pills. Zachary Kralik is actually the name of writer David Fury's young nephew. He thought it was a good name for a vampire.

• This episode was originally titled '18'.

• The Watcher's Council arrives in town and the news isn't good for Buffy or Giles. Their authority over the Slayer is seen properly for the first time. We also discover that there must have been Slayers for at least 1,200 years, as Quentin tells Giles, "It's been done this way for the past dozen centuries."

• Cruciamentum is Latin for torment.

• David Fury’s original idea for the episode was to have Buffy made to hallucinate that her friends and family were vampires. It was felt though, that this would be too close to the events of The Wish.

CONTINUITY

• Angel tells Buffy that he saw her being called as the Slayer on the steps of Hemery High. We saw this in flashback during Becoming (Part 1).

• Willow has been unsuccessful in transforming Amy back to human form, but she has bought her some great accessories, including a 'the cutest little bell.'

• Buffy mentions that parties in her honour tend to go wrong, referring to Surprise and Dead Man's Party. Angel refers to the former when he tells her that she looked more excited last year when she got 'a severed arm in a box.'

• Faith is mentioned as being on one of her 'unannounced walkabouts,' a fact that troubled Buffy in The Wish.

• Wesley refers to the Cruciamentum in Angel's Spin the Bottle, and believes that they have been selected for one such test.

GOOFS

• Buffy states that she and her dad go to the ice show every year for her birthday. They didn't go last year.

• After Buffy sees the photo of her mother she gets changed and does her hair before going to rescue her.

• Buffy places a book on a table and stands up, and as she does the book begins to slide towards the floor. In the next shot the book is laid flat on the table on top of another book.

• The boom mic can be seen during the teaser as Buffy fights the vampire.

• Why doesn't Buffy ask Angel for help against Kralik?

Anne | Dead Man's Party | Faith, Hope and Trick | Beauty and the Beasts | Homecoming

Band Candy | Revelations | Lover's Walk | The Wish | Amends | Gingerbread

Helpless | The Zeppo | Bad Girls | Consequences | Doppelgangland | Enemies

Earshot | Choices | The Prom | Graduation Day (Part 1) | Graduation Day (Part 2)