Watchers Review:

TRUE COLORS

Story by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Written by CN Winters and Susan Carr (with additional writing from CSR)
Directed by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Produced by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Edited by Sharon Kierein
Sound by Steff
Art Direction by Chris Cook
Artists: Chris Cook, David Zahir, Humaira, Rob and Chantal

Check Mate

Story by Amazonchyck, CN Winters, Chris Cook and Zahir al-Daoud
Written by CN Winters, Amazonchyck and Chris Cook
Directed by CN Winters and Chris Cook
Produced by CN Winters, Susan Carr and Chris Cook
Edited by Sharon Kierein and Angie Wilson
Sound by CSR
Art Direction by Chris Cook
Artists – Chris Cook, Zahir al-Daoud, Humaira, Rob

Guest Starring: Amber Benson as Tara, Adam Busch as Warren, Kimberly J. Brown as Mary Allister, Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia, Louise Fletcher as Evelyn Manor, Rhona Mitra as Alex Neel, Andrew Robinson as the Librarian, Sam Waterston as Ira Rosenberg and Peter Woodward as Jordon Tyrell

Act Six: With Andrew’s instruction, Willow begins to fight back from within the sphere to do something techy. The Engineer is annoyed, because obviously Willow should have relied on her magic by now (which would only hasten her death and opened the dimensional portal). In response, he lets loose with the mystic lightening, trying to encourage her to tap her powers. In the meanwhile, the magic sucking thing is draining her too, still, but at a low rate – so, she’s really getting the tar beaten out of her here.

Ro takes off from the library, unwilling to stay behind when Wills is being killed. In the meanwhile, Tracey has been sent off to grab Jeff and return him to the library.

In the meanwhile, the Presidium army is still holding off the rest of the Slayers, including Buffy’s team. Dawn and Skye are holding their own when Ro arrives, trying to get to where Willow is suffering (and fighting to save her own life using Andrew’s relayed instructions).

There’s an important throw-away here that I’m going to bring up now – Heli, a Slayer we’ll get to know a lot more about in the coming seasons. Watch her closely – that’s all I’ll say. Watch. Her. Closely.

Back to this episode – Ro finds herself the target of Larmin, but is saved by Kennedy. Above ground, demons who’ve broken through the Slayer lines begin to invade the Council proper through the basement and streaming for the upper floors. Bonnie is freed from her basement prison….

As Willow struggles to disable the machine from within, and the Engineer is trying to get her to defensively turn to her magic, the demons invading the Council – among them vampires – have reached the upper floors. Their met by Watchers-in-Training (including Jeff’s mom that we haven’t seen since his abduction) who begin fighting for the Council’s survival!

Andrew is nearly killed by one of the vampire minions helping the Presidium, but is saved by Tracey. But the battle over the opening portal isn’t done…

Act Seven?!

Act Seven: More titanic battling – the Engineer tries to open (and temporarily succeeds) in opening the Invasion Portal himself using his own magic added to what was stolen from Willow!

Thankfully, it is only temporary and only a few dozen (!) more invaders make it through. But upstairs, the Watcher contingent is being over-run.

Becca, not able to stay locked away in Giles’ suite, ventures out to see how she can help (the lady is gutsy) and sees Bonnie trying to make her escape through the lobby in between the warring parties… OH NO YOU DON’T … Becca runs for the stairwell down into the melee, her goal to stop Bonnie!

Bonnie gets away after a brief scrape with Becca, but there’s plenty more battles to be fought. As this is taking place, Jeff finds his mother lying on the floor, a dead demon on top of her. It doesn’t look good for Lily.

Underground, as the Engineer tries again to open the portal with his own energies, Willow decides she’s safe to tap her magic. The Engineer wanted her to “die or fight”… well, she’s ready to fight!

Back in the lobby – Brell and Tram return to stand with their allies… they both wade into the grand fight for the Council’s future. And, their not alone!

Down below, the machinery has been destroyed, but it has caused a raging fire and the barrier keeping Willow down in the pit is still active. Now she’s in danger of being smothered or burned to a crisp!

Back in the lobby – remember Julia? She came to retrieve Mia forcefully… well, she suddenly finds herself in the middle of chaos. Slayer instincts win out over selfishness and she saves Giles and lends a hand (but not before she accidentally shoots Tram through the forehead – oh no!).

Oh, come on! I didn’t remember how many Acts this one has… (smile)

Act Eight: The battle ends, but there’s still one hell of a mess. The infirmary is filled to the brink with the wounded and dying. I’ll give only highlights here, because this review is really, really long – but its all SO DANG GOOD.

- Marsha was injured, but seems fine.

- Lily, Jeff’s mother lies in a coma.

- Tram was, indeed, killed by Julia on accident via bullet to head.

- Willow is beaten up and has minor burns.

- Dawn, with Buffy’s blessing (that’s a surprise!) decides she wants to stay and join the Council officially as a Watcher-in-Training. She’ll be joining the regular cast next season!

And finally, with the post-Apocalypse joking out of the way – we get a surprise visit to Willow from Tara!

Honestly, how much more could they squeeze into this episode… LOVE IT!

Tara, by the way, drops by to bless Willow and Ro’s getting together and lets Wills know that she’s alright.

We get some Faith/Buffy “beginnings of a beautiful friendship” banter and some Ro/Willow angst. For some reason, although Ro is ready to admit that she’s in love with Willow and she claims to have gotten comfortable with suddenly having gay feelings – she can’t get physical.

Willow storms off, not understanding the problem since Rowena won’t actually talk to her about it. She just believes that Ro is afraid to just accept some happiness… but we know that Ro was married to Jordan Tyrell and that he was pretty abusive (as his torturing showed in Broken Allies), but this will be an issue to be dealt with next season.

The Good: Holy Crap, that was looooooooong! But, as you’ll notice – I’m mentioning the fact in ‘The Good’. This was expansive and detailed and action packed, but the pace of the story never lagged. It was … well… something that means better than the words that are coming to mind: Damned Near Perfect.

Character Interaction: Fantastic.

Plot: Exciting. Tense. Awesome.

Artwork: Fantastic – a lot of it and really terrific. I’m just awe-struck.

Look, every detail of this gets put in ‘The Good’, alright. If you haven’t checked out WATCHERS yet – please, please do!

But if you want to just dip your toes in first, then read both parts of this season-ender, “Another Day and Another Apocalypse”.

The Bad: Not a damned thing. Even the guest-stars from episodes past were well used.

The Score: Easy and Obvious: 5.0 out of 5.

And, don’t forget to check out the MUSIC VIDEO at the end of Act 8!

Act Three: Planning begins between Xander and Giles. Xan gets to fall back on his construction guy experience to examine blueprints of their own building… and to plan where to plant the explosives to break through the Council’s foundation into the caverns below.

As the two men are discussing explosions, the women are discussing relationship issues. Specifically, Faith and Buffy discussing their relationship… the past, the present, being Slayers-in-Command… and it’s all excellent. They get to (at least a little bit, I’m not sure these two will ever completely get along) put away the knives that are always ready to be plunged into each other’s back (but admittedly, this seems to be more Faith’s problem than Buffy’s – especially in Another Day).

Plus, Buffy gives Faith the validation that the ‘Dark Slayer’ has already really wanted from her, even if she’d refuse to admit she ever needed that.

They also get to discuss Buffy’s not joining them in Cleveland which has been a sore point for Faith since the very first episode (in fact, since the fanfiction by CNWinters which preceded WATCHERS, if I remember correctly – I should have reviewed that). As Buffy explains here, she just didn’t have the passion for it like Faith has right now, and that could very well have led to her getting killed. And after 7 constant years of defending the planet, she needed to actually enjoy being in it for a while.

What’s even better about this scene though, is how it encapsulates the changes that Faith herself has gone through… her maturing into her role and responsibility… and her ability to recognize that Buffy had a right to take a break from the constant doom and gloom. They even get to share a real, honest-to-goodness, hearty laugh together.

In a Slayer rec-room, Kennedy is cleaning her own crossbow in ready for the coming big battle. This is another dialog heavy scene, this time with Mia. We get an update on the Slayer Sue that Mia rescued (not looking good for her legs, but she’s alive).

This is really about how the newer-to-the-Council Slayers (including Mia) are dealing with the reality of fighting for your lives and really facing that they it could end in life-altering injury… or just end, period. These are the girls who used to just go around picking off the loan vampire or robbing men of their wallets. It also introduces a possible Mia/Kennedy relationship for next season by having Mia lean in and plant a passionate kiss on the surprised Kennedy.

After Mia leaves, we find Vi also in the rec room, but off by herself staring out of the window. She hasn’t been taking things well since Rona died last episode. Here, she and Kennedy are going to do some bonding about being the last of the ‘Sunnydale Potentials’ still at the Council.

It’s also obvious that ‘off-screen’ Kennedy, Vi, and Rona had a closer relationship than what we’ve seen. Especially, it seems, Vi & Rona.

Elsewhere – Ro and Willow have a heated argument about confronting the Presidium so soon after their Slayers first defeat. We find out here that 30% of the Council’s forces are side-lined (or dead, there were nameless Slayers killed) and Ro and Giles both voted not to follow the “blast through the floor and let them know we’re coming” plan, which Rowena complains about here as well.

But there’s more to it… another reminder that Ro and Willow have grown very close over the season.

Ten minutes later and the assault by the Council begins….

(Oh, and I goofed in a previous review I think… I believe I identified The Engineer as being named Larmin. We find out here that they are definitely two different individuals – oops.)

Act Four: While Xander is working on blasting through to the Presidium’s hide out (which I should mention, The Engineer didn’t seem particularly worried over – and is actually looking forward to the attack in order to have a crack at Willow), Giles and the witch are meeting a surprise visitor – Julia from Gangland/Lessons Learned!

Buffy and Marsha wander into the lobby giving Julia a chance to meet THE Slayer (as Marsha refers to Buffy). Marsha is one of the Junior Slayers who’s gotten some screen time as Willow’s charge and the heroine of the episode Samhain where she led the Juniors in battle against Eemia.

She also obviously hero-worships Buffy and emulates her body language.

In the Watchers basement, Marsha has joined Andrew and is helping to clear rubble created by Xander’s blast. They’re not all the way through yet, but Marsha is a bit worried that by blasting a path to the Presidium, they’re also creating a path FOR the Presidium to attack the Council. Andrew has an unspecified plan and directs her to keep at the clearing up….

In the lobby, we get the confrontation between Julia and Mia. First, in the intervening months, the Council’s exposure (and more likely Julia’s exposure to Faith) has made her more Slayer-like… she’s reorganized around her remaining Slayers and has had them get ‘real jobs’ for money… they do vampire patrols instead of muggings and she tells Mia that they’re getting ready to rent a house for the group, rather than squatting.

But Mia has been exposed to the Council’s global operations now (remember, they have several branches, on of which is in Britain that has been mentioned throughout the season) and doesn’t want to go back to Julia’s “small time” operation.

Julia’s not the only unexpected Council visitors, though. Also from past episodes, we have the return of Brell (several episodes) and Tram (whose family was in Family Ties and About Last Night and who clued the Council into Bonnie’s duplicitous ways).

Brell and Tram offer to help the Council fight, but Giles turns them down, mentioning their deal (arrived at in the two preceding episodes mentioned above) that the Council was to keep them safe for information.

We finally get to where the gang is ready for their frontal assault, saying good bye to those left behind the lines (Andrew, Rowena [still hurt from last episode] and Becca, plus the injured Slayers who can’t stand and fight effectively and Giles).

And, because this is a BIG EVENT – we go into an extra act….

Act Five: While the Council is blasting through the last layer of rock into the Presidium, Julia is grabbing a gun. Her apparent plan? Force Mia at gun point to get the hell out of there and return to relative safety with her gang… not exactly well thought out – but Julia is very much like an earlier Faith.

We also get a mention of Watchers-in-Training which we’ve not adequately addressed throughout the season, really. Ironic, considering the series title is not SLAYERS… but it’s nice we get the shout out that there are more folks than our regulars in the organization.

As Faith, Buffy and the first team descend they come against rock-demons. Giles and Ro provide Watcher support in how to clear this first line of Presidium defense.

As Faith deals with more injured (and another Slayer dead – Connie, who I don’t think we’ve ever heard of before now), The Engineer orders Larmin to see to fetching ‘the witch’. Larmin assures him that she’ll reach him alive… dozens upon dozens of demons of all sorts ready to march against the invasive Council army of Slayers.

As the battle rages about (in excellently written prose – especially a Faith quip you’ll know when you read it) Willow tries to avoid battle with the peons so she can get to the Engineer. With her are an unnamed Slayer bodyguard, Xander, Robin and little-Slayer Marsha as support.

Alas, the Engineer has magic of his own. While everyone, foe and friend alike are strewn about, Willow finds the floor she was standing on suddenly vanish!

As battle resumes, Willow tumbles to the bottom of an artificial ‘bowl’ made of some sort of metal protrusions. Worse, above her head now sets the magic-sucking sphere with the Engineer sneering in a way that makes it obvious she did exactly what he knew she would… show up to the battle… and ended up caught like a fly in amber.

As Willow tries to chant a restraining spell against The Engineer – her energy is sucked into the ball. What’s more, Xander sees a portal opening! As he rushes to yell to Willow to stop what she’s trying to do, it comes too late and WILLOW BURSTS INTO FLAME!!

WHOA! Thank goodness – it was just a vision by Xander’s magically re-grown eye!

Willow is still trapped and a mystic barrier is keeping the others from her, but Xan is able to warn her not to work the mojo or it will kill her (not to mention opening that portal for thousands of invading demons thing).

She’s not safe though, by a long shot… remember when Jeff was used to run the test of the device and it spun and siphoned? Well, it starts to spin above her now and no, she doesn’t need to be strapped into it to work – remember how Faith told everyone it appeared to have been upgraded? Yep – Willow is being rapidly drained off all of her energy for use in the portal opening the Presidium has been planning for!

As Giles is looking desperately for a way to counter the Engineers magic (all of the Council is connected via earpieces, so those in the library can hear and advise), Andrew happens to see the sketch of the device that was discussed earlier.

And – his techno-geekness comes in handy – he immediately recognizes the sketch as an engineering schematic! Go, Andy!

And – it’s to another Act –

Another Apocalypse

Watchers Season 1 Finale!

Story by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Written by CN Winters, Susan Carr, Chris Cook and Gelfling21
Directed by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Produced by CN Winters, Susan Carr, Chris Cook and David Zahir
Sound by Steff
Edits by Kate and Amazonchyck
Art Direction by Chris Cook
Artists Chris Cook, David Zahir, Chantal, CN Winters, Libbi, Sarah

Guest Starring:
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers,

Lindsay Felton as Skye, Elijah Wood as Jeffrey Lindquist, Carly Schroeder as Marsha, Stephanie March as Bonnie, Thora Birch as Tracey, Felicia Day as Vi,

Norika Fujiwara as Mia, Becky Wahlstrom as Julia, Brad Dorif as Brell,

Brent Spiner as Tram, Katey Segal as Lily Lindquist and Jason Clarke as the Engineer.

Where We Are: The Presidium, recognizing that it’s time for the big season finale, has launched a massive attack on the Council. Their goal? Thin the Slayer army in order to open Earth up to extra-dimensional invasion and get their hands on the powerful witch, Willow Rosenberg. To facilitate the first part of the plan, they abducted Faith and held her in a booby-trapped cavern which cost the life of Rona during her rescue. Now, the Slayers are attempting a tactical retreat with the newly freed Faith, but find their escape route cut off by a horde of demons! One of which… a huge sea creature has sprung up from LakeEerie (guest starring the huge fiery venom spewing beetle from Starship Troopers).

Teaser: Faith orders the Slayers to run as the beetle rises from the shore, pushing a huge wave of water ahead of it. The creatures spews its fire and several Slayers (none of our ‘named’ though) go up in flames. Buffy Summers is able to get the Slayers with her into a protective rock alcove.

At the same time, Mia and her gang of Slayers (the former gang members under Julia that joined the Council in Lessons Learned) dive into a drainage ditch and head for the large pipe. Mia notices that one of ‘her’ Slayers hasn’t made it with them and, perhaps foolishly, goes back to retrieve her.

Meanwhile, back at HQ: Giles, Rowena, Willow, Dawn and Skye are researching for any information on the demon-types that Ro reported from an earlier encounter (Another Day). They’re hoping to pinpoint the Presidium’s home dimension with this information and through that, some weaknesses. Giles lets us know that Xander, Tracey and Andrew are on their way to the Slayers with more weaponry. With them is another group of Slayers to reinforce the Faith-rescue team.

In the rock alcove that Buffy and her group were taking refuge in, Faith, Kennedy and Robin managed to re-group with her. Kenn is worried over the absence of Vi and Mia with the recent loss of Rona preying on her mind.

There’s a more immediate concerns than grief, unfortunately though. They have a huge, rampaging beetle-demon-beast to subdue.

Faith suggests finding a way to crush it. Of course, in order to do that, they have to find something crushing… which they’re not going to find hiding in a cave; the foursome head back out into battle.

While Faith, Robin, Kennedy and Buffy rejoin the battle, Xander and his group are arriving in Council vans. Among the group of weaponry is a rocket launcher that Andrew asks about… ‘was this really necessary’… which – obviously a foreshadow of how the big galoot is going to be brought down… can’t wait (insert me grinning like a fool)!

Vi arrives at the vans and breathlessly points in the general direction of the gigundo (Ji-Gun-Doe) beetle-beast. The others see it peeking over the tree line… Xan gives Andrew a ‘see, rocket launcher’ look….

Act One: Behind the rampaging beast, Mia finds her lost Slayer (Sue, no last name yet). She’s alive, but she’s been pretty badly burnt by the demon-creature’s flame breath. Sue tries to tell her to leave her, but Mia isn’t about to leave a girl she helped convince to work with the Council behind.

While Mia is performing her rescue, Xander is readying the rocket launcher. Which, by the way, I love that Xan gets to blow up the beastie this time… Buffy usually gets the cool toys. And, since this is WATCHERS, I expected Kennedy or Faith to get the honors this time.

Back at the library, research is starting to pay off! I love this scene because even though it’s breaking into the exciting action, it has good continuity dialogue. The gang and the newly arrive Becca mention the Vutch attack (from when Jeff was abducted to run a test on the magic-sucker device by the Presidium), the book in Becca’s that helped Willow recover her blocked magic, and Giles and Becca’s first meeting. And, Becca continues to show her courage (along with Skye actually, everyone seems to take the sudden knowledge of demons, invasions, and magic with a shrug, don’t they?) and sense of humor. I really love Becca and (future-minor-spoiler) am really happy she sticks around with Rupert.

The gang quickly vacate the library as Giles and Becca start to argue over her getting out of town… again. Becca is adamant though – she’s not leaving just to come home later and find out he’s dead. But, she’s willing to stay at the Council – where the Junior Slayers are still which will hopefully provide her more security for Rupert’s sake.

Back at the battle, Xan blows up the beetle creature real good – nearly taking off Tracey’s head when she stands, unnoticed, behind the launcher. Fortunately, Andrew is there to tackle her to the ground a second before she would have been toasted… or blow apart… whatevs. The point is that Andrew makes a great impression on her and there are immediate sparks – what with Andy lying on top of her that way. Looks like are ambiguously-sexual nerd is going to have a girlfriend. This builds on an earlier scene, by the way, where the two slow danced together in an earlier episode (which I don’t want to hunt for).

Back to the library for another breather – the gang has found information about Vor – the Presidium’s dimensional homebase (and of the home of the Vutch, as well). The Vor Dimension was being tracked by the Old Council (it’s nice to know they did do something of value) – you know, side bar real quick – I know that Travers was stuffy and the Council was basically a foil for Buffy and all, but I don’t think that they were ever really given credit for what they did manage to do throughout the centuries. I mean, the Earth hadn’t been destroyed all the way up until Buffy quit them, after all. Plus, they were in the midst of making sure that Buffy got the information they’d collected on the First Evil before they were blown up – so they weren’t all bad, all the time.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right – the Old Council… anyway, they noted that Vor was actually ‘growing’. It appears that Vor was ‘taken over’ eons ago via magic. Details are not forthcoming at this minute, however, as we’re switching Acts.

Act Two: We’re in the Slayer dorms now with the wounded from the earlier battle. The Slayers and their reinforcements have obviously retreated back to the Council to tend the wounded and dead and re-trench for the coming follow-up attack by the Presidium.

We have some more great bonding between Faith and Kennedy in this scene. These two really work well off of one another and I’m just going to repeat here that I absolutely LOVE what the writing staff has managed to do with Kenn’s character this past year. From one of my least favorite characters in the world during S7 of BTVS to one of my favorite characters in the Buffy/Watchersverse is no shabby accomplishment. And, I have to add (even though this was way before BTVS: S8 of course) that they still do a far better job making Kennedy somebody we can care about than Joss in company do over in the comic book – so continued kudos, you guys.

In the meantime, notice how Buffy has gone into ‘take-charge’ mode. She’s the one to tell Faith they need to check in with Giles (and Faith is too distracted to get an attitude about it this time) and to head for the library while Faith is still busy with Kenn.

In the library at that moment, Giles is examining a spell left by Ethan when he’d visited around Thanksgiving (when he was ‘partnered’ with the now dead Amy Madison). Darn it – I have to make another side note here – I liked what WATCHERS did with Amy more than what Joss and company have done with her, as well. She was more bitchy and funny here rather than just psychopathic (though she certainly had that trait as well). And, of course, in the Watchersverse, she didn’t have time to overstay her welcome.

Anywho – there’s some Apocaypse-humor of the Buffyverse type we all love and Becca is right in the thick of things, which continues to be a delight. I know, I know – I keep heaping praise on her, but she’s such a wonderfully crafted Original Character.

So, Faith, Buffy and Robin arrive to check in….

The home-gang find out about Rona, which Faith mentions rather flippantly I have to say. It’s in character-Faith, of course, but I don’t like it when she gets this way about death of fellow Slayers, defense mechanism or no.

Oh, COOL! Callback that I missed the first time around – wait, wait, I have to set this up properly: Okay, so Faith sees a parchment that has a drawing of the device that Jeff was strapped into during the magic suckage. Faith recognizes it from when she was captured. She mentions that it appeared to be sucking down some serious energy because of its lights (okay, that’s pretty dubious reasoning, but just go with it). So, everyone is wondering where the energy is coming from that this machine is munching on…

… And Buffy says WILLOW. Which – here’s the cool part – totally explains why Willow was so tired in High Art! Which, I complained about at the time because it didn’t tie into Rupert’s alterna-reality at all and seemed to have no point to it… but it did! And, here’s the pay off! HAH!

Well, excuse me for liking continuity so much.

Buffy points out that everyone else probably didn’t notice how haggard Willow is looking because it has been gradual, but Buffy hadn’t seen her in a while. She noticed that Wills was looking tired out the moment she arrived face to face. The machine has been slowly draining Willow’s power unnoticed over at least several episodes (Faith mentions that the device looks different from the sketch – upgraded with more doohickeys – this must have happened at least as far back as episode 18 as we discover this also explains Willow’s not detecting Julia’s Slayers in Gangland).

Having established a connection between the Presidium’s plan and Willow, it’s time to visit the bitca-in-the-cell, Bonnie – who’s being held in the Council’s basement. We also get another BTVS-callback: Bonnie is being held off of the floor in a stasis-field (ala Willow being held by Giles’ spell in S6).

From a very scared and reluctant Bonnie they learn that the device is going to breach the dimensional walls, invasion, blah-blah. But the important part we didn’t know is that the caves in the park nearby (where Faith was held, the ambush took place, yadda-yadda) lead back to THE COUNCIL ITSELF!

The Presidium’s device is UNDER THEIR FEET!

C’mon, now that’s a cool plot development.


TBC

Watchers: The Virtual Series

S1, Ep. 23, Another Day

Story by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Written by CN Winters
Directed by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Produced by CN Winters and Susan Carr
Edited by Kate and Amazonchyck
Sound by Steff
Art Direction by Chris Cook
Artists - Chris Cook, David Zahir, Sarah, Libbi, Chantal, CN Winters

Guest Stars: Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers, Lindsay Felton as Skye,

Elijah Wood as Jeffrey Lindquist, Carly Schroeder as Marsha, Stephanie March as Bonnie, Thora Birch as Tracey, Felicia Day as Vi, Indigo as Rona, Norika Fujiwara as Mia and

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers.

Teaser: First, a little refresher: Last episode, Bonnie stirred up a mess o’trouble for our heroes by inciting the religious community against the pagan ritual set to take place on ‘May Day’ at the Council. In order to ‘save the children’, of course. At the end of that episode, the mob that had gathered had a spell they were under broken and began to drift away confused (and horny). Then Buffy Summers showed up at the Council announcing that she wouldn’t miss the coming apocalypse.

Now, we find out that Giles had spoken to Buffy earlier to warn her about the Presidium and to ask her to send any Slayers she knew of to Cleveland to help out. He wasn’t expecting her to come herself, as she had given up the Slayer-life to explore a more normal existence. Buffy came anyway, a fact which Faith is so unhappy about.

Faith and Buffy just stared at each other for a moment and no one in the room spoke.

"I thought I'd lend a hand," Buffy told her. "Looks like you guys could use it judging by the angry mob that's leaving a bit dazed and confused."

"We got it under control," Faith told her, "but thanks, B, for taking time out of your globe trottin' to ride in on your white horse at the last minute. Can't tell you how much I appreciate that."

"Faith," Willow began.

Giles gently tugged Willow's sleeve and shook his head, silently requesting that she stay out of it. Faith walked closer to Buffy, totally ignoring the witch as the blonde Slayer closed the distance between them.

"I knew you'd have a problem," Buffy sighed.

"Got that right. I've been busting my ass here for months and suddenly you just pop in to save the day. All the glory but none of the work. Is that it?"

Buffy shook her head. "That's not why I'm here. You've got something big going down and –."

"You don't have to tell me what we have, B. Believe me, I know. But it's what WE have, not you. You can go back to your merry life and we'll handle things."

"That's not gonna happen," Buffy replied soundly.

As you tell, Faith still feels inadequate whenever Buffy makes an appearance and she’s still holding a grudge that her rival didn’t bother hanging around after the battle with the First Evil (see Episode 1 – Something Ventured, Something Gained).

With Faith storming off to work out and “hit something really hard”, Buffy takes care of her hello-s with the gang. We also find out that Dawn refused not to accompany her to help out as well, and the Clevelanders get to meet Dawn’s girlfriend, Skye.

Elsewhere, Bonnie plots with Larmin, the Presidium ‘Engineer’. They are ready to put the first phase of their master plan in motion… because it’s the end of the season ;-)

Act One: The next morning in the Council library, Willow and Buffy chat amiably. The topic of conversation is Rowena, of course. Willow complains that Ro has been acting like she’s interested and then pulling away, making Willow wonder if she saw what she thought she saw in the first place. Buffy is playing the encouraging friend… Will needs to grab what she wants and let the chips fall where they may.

Elsewhere, Ro is taking her daily walk by the lake and comes across trouble in the form of two adults and a child… completely skinned. Charming.

In the Council kitchen, Jeff meets Skye Tallisker and is disappointed that Dawn has a girlfriend-girlfriend. Xander is there to commiserate.

Just a bit later and Faith has arrived at Ro’s location with nine other Slayers in tow. One of these is Kennedy and the other is (yea!) Mia. As Faith has her team spread out to look for clues as to the attackers (theorizing it may be some Gnarls), the group finds themselves under attack… a mass attack!

Nearly a hundred demons swarm the area, targeting our Slayers. Any bets that this ties into Bonnie and the Presidium?

At that moment, in Giles’ apartment, he and Becca are having breakfast. Rupert is trying to convince Becca to leave Cleveland until they have the Presidium situation sorted out. Becca is both brave and foolishly stubborn, however, and tells him that if the world is at its end, she plans on his face being the last one she sees… awwww.

While Giles and Becca cement their place as Council’s Cutest Couple, the Slayers are finding it difficult to fight off the massive demon assault. Fortunately for them, the Presidium agents are far more interested in abducting a particular Slayer rather than causing mass death… Faith gets nabbed and carted away in a van, but not before Kennedy grabs the vehicle’s driver and yanks her through the driver’s side window….

The Presidium has Faith, but the Council gets Bonnie!

Act Two: Giles and Buffy have a quick ‘talk’, which both of them already know what each will say. Buffy wants him to take care of Dawn if she doesn’t make it out of this one, he assures her that she’ll be fine and have many years left.

It’s a nice little scene, reflecting the years that Buffy and Giles have known one another and their obvious mutual affection.

Back at the site of the battle, Mia and Kennedy do a bit of light flirting but there are serious things afoot. Faith is missing, Slayers are injured or dead and Ro is unconscious with only a weak pulse.

Kennedy radios in to Robin for a medical team, but doesn’t know what to tell him when he asks about Faith.

Elsewhere, Faith comes to consciousness to find herself in a cavern surrounded by Presidium demons. Larmin and her exchange words and his dialog indicates that the Slayer was abducted to act as bait. As we know from earlier episodes, his real target it Willow and it has something to do with the Sphere of Magic Sucking Evil. It’s also my belief that the Sphere is to open a portal for an invading force (from future-episodes me; this turns out to be correct).

With Lori following the Presidium’s van in one from the Council, Kennedy accompanies the injured back to base to inform them of what has happened. It takes little thought to realize that the Presidium is making their move. Willow rushes off to Medical to check on Ro’s status, while Kenn informs Andrew that the demons really beat the Slayers badly… many of them are seriously injured.

On the good side, Ro is awake and her injuries turn out not as serious as they appeared in the field. And, they have Bonnie the Evil Real Estate Woman restrained in the library for questioning… except, of course, we know that it may not be a good thing. The Presidium wants the Council to find them and are using Faith as the incentive to get them where they want ‘em.

We have a good scene next between Willow and Kennedy that references their break up without either coming across as bitter about it. Kenn has noticed the obvious sparks between Will and Ro, but Willow has noted the same thing re: Kenn and Mia. It’s nice to see them both acting like adults about it and it’s equally nice that Kennedy isn’t holding any negative feelings about Willow, considering her behavior right after their break-up.

In the library, things are far more disturbing. I realize that Bonnie is evil and all, but nevertheless, I’m not a fan of torture. However, with Faith missing both Robin and Giles are showing little patience with Bonnie’s refusal to answer their questions. And, well, Giles has experience in being ‘convincing’….

Act Three: Things get even more intense between Giles and Bonnie. In the heat of the moment, Giles informs Bonnie that he’s killed for a Slayer before and isn’t above doing it again.

Though Bonnie goes with “you’re bluffing”, Xander, Buffy and Dawn are present at the interrogation and this is news to them. We realize that Giles is referring to Ben, but this never came out during BTVS’ run.

Later, after we check in on Willow and Ro, Buffy confronts Giles about his having killed people. He fills her in on the Ben-smothering thing. This leaves Buffy shaken and unfortunately Giles is too busy being Ripper-ish in his single-minded pursuit to get Faith back to discuss it at length. He tells her that if Bonnie forces him to kill her in order to find out where Faith is and get her back… or killing any ‘evil’ human to protect a Slayer under his charge, he’ll do the same thing.

Buffy clearly isn’t comfortable with this thought.

The threats have the desired effect, however, as Bonnie points out on an almanac where the Presidium’s cave-base is located. Giles lets her know that if Faith is indeed dead, she won’t have to worry about reprisals from the Presidium for her squealing.

In the Presidium cavern, Faith is secured to a wall by her wrists and ankles. The demons have set up a trap in order to “thin the herd of Slayers”. In other words, there are traps set to kill the girls when they rush the place to rescue Faith. And with her bound and now gagged, she’ll have a front row seat to watching them wiped out.

She starts working against her restraints.

As Ro and Willow work on identifying the types of demons that had attacked the Slayers earlier, Kennedy readies a troop of Slayers plus Buffy and Robin to go in after Faith.

They find her – but Kenn realizes that she’s a trap. Unfortunately, one of the Slayer’s we know doesn’t realize it until it’s too late.

Rona is almost instantly killed when a bucket of liquid falls on her head. She immediately bursts into flames.

Act Four: Act four deals with a few things… all of which is really excellently written, I have to say. Robin, Kenn and Buffy have to work to save Faith from her booby-trapped room. Ro and Willow work on narrowing down where the Presidium is from so they can look for weaknesses and contingency plans in case Faith’s rescue attempt fails.

Giles gathers more Slayer troops to back up the squads sent in after Faith.

Vi is crushed by Rona’s sudden death. Kenn orders the other Slayers to leave the immediate area around Faith so that none by her and Buffy will be at risk if their attempts to reach Faith go drastically wrong. Robin is ordered to stand by in case they get Faith out, but she’s too injured to leave under own power and Kenn & Buffy are killed in the attempt to get her.

Wow, this stuff is written really well. Anyway, in the Cavern of Doom, Buffy and Kenn manage to rescue Faith – sort of. They quickly find out that a mystic shield has locked them into the ‘prison cavern’. And, some sort of demonic bats are released from the ceiling to attack!

A bit later and they manage to escape – with some magical help – but when they leave the cave, they find a host of Presidium demons ready to set on them again. The battle intensifies.

And, things get worse from there!

(to be continued in next episode!)

The Good: The story, the plot, the writing, the character interactions… this one has it all and it’s all really well done. The Presidium’s plans to cut down the Slayer population really, for the first time since Jeff’s abduction, makes them a serious threat to the council. Bonnie is still a bitch, but it’s nice to see her get knocked down a few pegs and actually frightened for a change.

Buffy’s inclusion is handled fantastically… which I’m pleasantly surprised about. It would be easy to either push her into the background because WATCHERS isn’t Buffy’s show, or have her overpower the others but that doesn’t happen. She’s given a lot to do, but its always in relation to Faith, Giles, Willow or Kennedy – they remain the ‘stars of the show’.

All of the acts are well done, but Act Three and Four kicks ass. Exciting, diabolical, tense… loved it.

We also get the added seriousness of a face we know from BTVS and WATCHERS getting a sudden and ugly exit from the show.

The writing for the Giles/Becca scenes just make you love them as a couple. So well done – and Robin’s scenes after Faith’s abduction are great. He’s shows he’s tough, but still very human in his worry and fear over what may have happened to her.

The artwork is some of the best to come along since I lauded the same in ‘Restoration’, and in fact, I think it’s better!

The Bad: Well, there is just one itty, bitty thing: There’s some plot confusion involving the Presidium’s luring the Slayers into their trap. On the one hand, they keep talking like they want to be found, on the other – the Engineer tells a toady-vampire that Bonnie would never betraying them by ratting out their location… wouldn’t they want her to squeal where Faith is at?

I thought maybe they were concerned that Bonnie might reveal where they’re originating from and their over all plans, but it just doesn’t read that way – it sounds very much more like they don’t want Bonnie to rat out their secret cave – even though they want the Council to locate Faith… yeah, it’s a bit muddled. Maybe a writer will leave a comment explaining this?

Buffy, meet Rowena Allister.

Jeff finds out Dawn is 'unavailable', Xander can relate.

The Score: 4.75 out of 5… and that’s only because of the muddled Presidium POV on whether they want to be found or not because its such a major plot point for this two-episode arc. This is some great stuff.