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Season 7, Episode 4
Written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Original Airdate: 15 October 2002
"Poems. Always a sign of pretentious inner
turmoil."
Xander
REGULAR CAST
GUEST STARRING
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Azura Skye as
Cassie Newton
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Zachery Bryan as
Peter Nichols
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Glenn Morshower as
Phillip Newton
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Ron Gonzalez as
Thomas
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Kevin Christy as
Josh
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Sarah Hagan as
Amanda
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Jarrett Lennon as
Martin Wilder
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D.B. Woodside as
Robin Wood
CO-STARRING
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J. Barton as
Mike Helgenburg
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Daniel Dehring as
Red Robed #1
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AJ Wedding as
Red Robed #2
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Marcie Lynn Ross as
Dead Woman
SYNOPSIS
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At the airport, Buffy, Dawn and Xander wait for
Willow to get off of her plane and talk about how uncomfortable they
feel about the situation. The plane clears, but the three don't see
Willow. The scene repeats as Willow gets off the plane, but she doesn't
see her friends waiting for her. A young guy spray paints a wall of a
construction site as a demon taunts him from the shadows and then
attacks the frightened man.
Willow lets herself into the Summers house, which appears to be vacant
of her friends. Going up to what used to be her room, but now has been
claimed by Buffy, Willow remembers the last time she was in the room. A
door closes and Willow goes to investigate, but still her friends are
nowhere to be seen. Alone, Willow curls up on the couch. Buffy, Xander
and Dawn return home and after talking about how Willow did leave
England, but she had opportunities to divert to another location other
than Sunnydale. They hear a noise upstairs and check it out, but find
nothing. In the living room, the three talk about the reason for
Willow's disappearance.
The next morning, Willow walks over to the magic shop and finds Anyanka
cleaning up the magic shop. Anyanka is very cold to her and Willow feels
guilty about everything. They talk a bit and Anyanka fills Willow in on
everyone's activities since she's been gone. Willow checks out Xander's
construction site and instead of Xander, she finds a skinned body. At
the same time, Xander and Buffy are looking at the body and the familiar
sight makes them wonder if Willow is back after all. Unbeknownst to
them, a disgusted Willow climbs a latter to exit the site.
Willow walks the halls of Sunnydale High and proceeds down to the
basement where she finds Spike acting insane. He talks to Willow about
the dead body, but also carries on a conversation with something else in
the room Willow can't see. Buffy and Xander manoeuvre through the
basement and find Spike seemingly talking to himself. Buffy and Xander
try to get information from him, but Spike's simultaneously conversing
with Willow, so his words make little sense. Spike suspects they can't
see each other and that Willow's responsible for it. Buffy and Xander
interpret some of Spike's comments to mean that he knows about Willow
and they suspect she might have something to do with Spike's
Willow goes to Anyanka for help in finding the demon that skinned the
guy at the construction site. Anyanka helps Willow cast a spell to
locate demons all over Sunnydale. After the spell is complete, Willow
asks Anyanka to teleport to one particular location, but Anyanka reveals
that she can't for non-vengeance business as a result of her recently
undoing a spell. Instead, Willow takes the long way and walks there
herself. Dawn searches demons on the computer and although Buffy thinks
it's a waste of time, Dawn finds a demon that meets their specifications
named Gnarl. The demon paralyzes its victims with its nails and then
eats strips of skin from the body and drinks the blood.
Realizing they need to search for a trail of blood, Buffy decides to
recruit Spike to smell the way. He leads them to a cave where the demon
can be found. Willow is already there investigating the cave and the
Gnarl spots her. The rest of the gang enters the cave as well, but they
don't see Willow. The demon scratches Dawn's stomach and paralyzes her.
Buffy and Xander take Dawn out of the cave and cover up the entrance,
unintentionally leaving Willow with Gnarl. Trapped in the cave, Willow
listens to the demon taunt her from the shadows. He slices her abdomen
with a nail and then paralyzed, Willow is helpless against him as he
sucks at the cut and starts to slice away slivers of her skin to eat.
Buffy and Xander carry a completely paralyzed Dawn into the living room
while Buffy researches the Gnarl and the way to save Dawn. Anyanka is
called to stay with Dawn while they prepare to return to the cave to
kill the demon and save Dawn. Anyanka talks about seeing Willow and
reveals that Willow may be at the cave. Panicked that Willow is trapped
in the cave, Buffy grabs Anyanka to join them at the cave. Once Anyanka
reveals that she knows about Gnarl, Buffy insists she come along. Gnarl
continues to eat Willow's skin as he tells her friends have abandoned
her and she's all alone for him to eat. Buffy arrives and attacks Gnarl
while Anyanka tends to a badly injured Willow who still can't see her
friends. While Buffy fights Gnarl, Anyanka informs Willow that her
friends didn't leave her alone.
Buffy pokes the demons in the eyes with her thumbs, successfully killing
it and ending the paralysis on both Willow and Dawn. Buffy and Xander
look where they think Willow is while Anya runs for help and slowly, the
spell making them invisible to each other wears off. Willow is relieved
to see her friends and glad they didn't abandon her. Willow meditates
and uses magic from the earth to re-grow the skin she lost. Buffy stops
by and talks with Willow. Willow reveals that her fear of seeing her
friends and their judgment of her led to the invisibility problem they
all were suffering from. Buffy confesses that she suspected Willow of
the grotesque killing, but Willow doesn't blame her for that. Willow
struggles to start meditating again, but she's still weak. Buffy offers
her Slayer strength to her friend and joins in the meditation.
TRIVIA
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For the first of three episodes this
season, Emma Caulfield is credited on the opening titles, but is absent
from the episode. However, a scene with her in a bar trying to get a
woman named Lulu to wish for vengeance on someone was in the script.
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Azura Skye plays the enigmatic Cassie
Newton. Azura is named after the gemstone Azurite. Azura means Blue, so
her name can be read as "Blue Skye." She appears again in
Conversations With Dead People.
Sarah Hagan, who plays Amanda, the bullied student who comes to see
Buffy, appears again as a potential Slayer later in this season.
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Guest star credits included Beth Skipp
and Anthony Harrell. Neither of these actors were actually in the
episode as their scenes were cut.
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Cassie's website, was online but has now
been deactivated. The episode's writer, Rebecca Rand Kirshner, composed
the poetry and created the art that appears on the site, based on her
own teenage journals. Christopher Buchanan (president of Mutant Enemy)
said of the site: "Well, could we put up a site, not affiliated with the
official Buffy site or anything, but just, like, this is a
teenage girl's site that she put up on Geocities. Very simple. And we
didn't really publicize it. There was no link on the Buffy site.
It was just kind of something we did for fun. Three of the writers were
having a chat on one of the fan sites and mentioned just to check it
out. By the time the show aired, some of the fans already knew about it.
But 5 million people saw it, and all of a sudden, it just went crazy.
We've had almost 200,000 hits. I get with alarming frequency things
saying, 'You've exceeded your data transfer limits. For $5, you can have
another 500 megabytes.' But it's been a lot of fun. The thing that's
been amazing to me is, we put a basic guest book on there. I think it
allows 50 entries. It has filled up 30 times. And we have so many
e-mails, we've been returning the e-mails in Cassie's voice, and we're
100 behind. It's just been a blast. The thing about it I loved was, we
did things like, when we registered the domain, we registered it as
Cassie Newton, and of course, the fans are like, "We notice that she
lives on 13 Shadow Lane" [in Sunnydale]."
CONTINUITY
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On Tara's headstone, her date of death is
shown as May 7, 2002, the date that
Seeing Red aired. Her birth date is shown as October 16, 1980. This
puts her birthday about three weeks before
Family, the season five episode
showing Tara's 20th birthday aired. This episode aired in the week of
Tara's birthday so it's suggested that Willow visited the grave in
memory of Tara's 22nd birthday. Willow places stones on Tara's grave.
This is a common Jewish practice: the stones are a way of honouring the
deceased and of showing that the grave has been visited.
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Cassie's being a precognitive gives
viewers many hints about the rest of the season. She tells Buffy that
she'll go deep underground, which happens in both
Bring on the Night and
Chosen. She also tells Buffy that
she'll make a difference, implying the activation of the Potential
Slayers in the finale, and also from
Chosen, she tells Spike that Buffy will one day tell him that she
loves him.
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Cassie's death is the second of only two
deaths on Buffy that are completely natural. The other one was
Joyce in The Body.
GOOFS
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The booby trap was designed so that if
someone opened the left hand door, an arrow would shoot at the right
hand door.
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When Cassie falls down, her head is
upright, looking up at the ceiling, in the next scene her head is
towards Buffy and then up again towards the ceiling.
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When Buffy talks to the Principal after
meeting Cassie, her neckline or necklace changes length and then changes
back while she's talking.
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When talking to Cassie in the library,
Dawn's hair is straight. When she gets home and talks to the Scoobies,
It's curled.
Lessons |
Beneath You |
Same Time, Same Place |
Help |
Selfless
Him |
Conversations With Dead People |
Sleeper |
Never Leave Me |
Bring on the Night |
Showtime
Potential |
The Killer in Me |
First Date |
Get It Done |
Storyteller |
Lies My Parents Told Me
Dirty Girls |
Empty Places |
Touched |
End of Days |
Chosen
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