Author: JennyTrout

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will finish Hemlock Grove and sit there for an hour going, “What the hell did I just watch?” She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

1. Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
2. Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
3. Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
4. Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
5. Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
6. The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
7. All the monsters look like wieners.
8. If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
9. Angel is a dick.
10. Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
11. Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
12. Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
13. Science and technology are not to be trusted.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.


The episode opens with Cordelia and Harmony strolling the hall with some random guy who has his arm around Cordelia. They’re talking about the Spring Fling dance that’s coming up, and how Cordelia is having her dress specially made. And I have this painful and crushing memory of what a bitch I was in high school, when I had my prom dress specially made to copy one that Nicole Kidman wore in Vogue, because I thought I was that damn special. With the money I spent on it, I probably could have bought someone else a dress and a prom ticket. God, teen me sucked.

Anyway, the guy walking with Cordelia says she should wear a dress that’s blue like her eyes, and Cordy points out that her eyes are hazel. She also calls him Helen Keller, and I’m like, “No, Cordy! Bad Cordy!” and I smack her cute little nose with a rolled up newspaper.

Ever the sycophant, Harmony is quick to tell Cordelia and this dude that they’re going to look awesome when Cordy is May Queen. Cordelia is trying to downplay her chances, in a really phony, self-gratifying way when Buffy spills her ass into frame. You know, for a slayer, she’s kind of clumsy, isn’t she? I mean, she can do all this cool arial kick fighting shit, but this is at least the second time she’s tripped and spilled all her weapons out.

Buffy: “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing with this stuff, huh?”

Cordelia: “Wow! I’m not.”

Buffy: “Uh, for history class. Mr. Giles has this, like, hobby of collecting stuff, which he lent me… for… show-and-tell. Did I mention it was for history class?”

If anyone in Sunnydale isn’t guilty of #8, it’s Harmony, who says:

Harmony: “She is always hanging with that creepy librarian in that creepy library.”

Unfortunately, I’m betting money that Harmony isn’t creeped by inappropriate student/teacher relationships, just the fact that Buffy seems to have an interest in knowledge and learning. Still, she shows more self-awareness of the situation than any of the faculty members or Buffy’s own mom.

Cordy, the random dude, and Harmony all walk off laughing at Buffy and the time she attacked Cordelia at The Bronze, and Buffy looks all dejected and hopeless.

In English class, Cordelia answers a question about The Merchant of Venice by calling Shylock self-involved and too wrapped up in his own oppression to see the pain of other, less oppressed people. Did I mention she’s saying this to a woman of color? Because she’s saying it to a woman of color, who appears to be not real impressed:

Cordelia: “People who think their problems are so huge craze me. Like this time I sort of ran over this girl on her bike. It was the most traumatizing event of my life, and she’s trying to make it about her leg. Like my pain meant nothing.”

You want to imagine something wretched? There are probably people who were like, “Yeah, right on!” when they watched this for the first time. Probably the same people who agree with Spike and Giles on the subject of Native American oppression in season four.

But we’ll get there.

The teacher looks super relieved when the bell rings, but when Cordelia approaches her to talk about her final paper, the teacher congratulates her on her “good observations” in class, and Willow does the most epic background eye-roll ever caught on film:

Xander: “What kind of moron would want to be May Queen, anyway?”

And Buffy looks like this:

Snyder: “Where do you think you’re going?”

Buffy: “Um, Mitch wanted me to get his comb. He- He likes his comb.”

Snyder: “I don’t think Mitch needs his comb right now. I think Mitch needs medical attention, and you need to stay away from the crime scene. Always sticking your nose in.”

Man, the Buffster is really not on her game this episode. I mean, of course she was going to get caught. Look how close she was to Snyder when she said she was going to go check out the scene:

Giles “It’s a bit of a puzzle, really. I’ve never actually heard of anyone attack by a lone baseball bat before.”

Xander: “Maybe it’s a vampire bat.”

And this is the response he gets:

Whatever, Xander. I thought your pun was masterful. You combined my love of grisly murder and my love of baseball in a way a baseball bat normally couldn’t. Or… no, you know what, baseball bats can do the grisly murder on their own, can’t they? Especially in Sunnydale.

Giles suggests a few options. Either the bat is possessed, someone is pulling a Carrie, or they’ve got an angry ghost on their hands. Though I’m not sure how angry a ghost you would have to be to give in to the temptation of beating Mitch nearly to death. He gave off a real date-rapey frat jock vibe. If I were a ghost, I’d probably have taken a few swings at him.

Buffy tells Willow that compiling a list of dead and missing students would be a good start. Yeah, Willow, get right on that, and in forty years when you’re done, we’ll pick up the investigation. Giles asks Xander to help with research, but Xander isn’t keen on doing anything extracurricular with regards to vampire slaying. He says he wants Buffy’s job of asking around to find out what happened to Mitch, but when she points out he’d have to talk to Cordelia, somehow Giles starts to look like the better option.

In that cool outside upstairs hallway thing Sunnydale has, Harmony finds Cordelia and asks her why she wasn’t in fifth period. Cordelia says she went to the hospital to see Mitch, and when Harmony asks if he’ll be okay, Cordelia says:

Cordelia: “Well, the doctor says he’ll be fine. They’re gonna send him home tomorrow, but you should have seen him lying there, all black and blue. How’s he gonna look in our prom pictures? How am I ever going to be able to show them to anyone?”

So, once again, Cordelia isn’t concerned about someone else’s suffering, just how it affects her. Mitch was beaten and terrorized by a bat-wielding poltergeist, and Cordelia is just worried he’ll embarrass her with his terrible face. Just as Harmony comforts her about the wonders of airbrushing, we’re invited into a grainy flashback wherein Cordelia tells Harmony of her plans to date Mitch if he makes the varsity baseball team. Then we hear someone (from the POV of the camera) say hello to them, only to be cruelly rebuffed for daring to speak to them. Then we resume the scene the flashback interrupted. Buffy stops Cordelia at the top of the stairs and asks to talk to her, and Harmony is about to deliver some scathing verbal beat down when an unseen force pushes her down the stairs.

Okay, let’s leave poor Harmony falling down the stairs a minute to talk about something I feel is important. I know we’ve discussed how BtVS isn’t the icon of feminist television it gets credit for being, and there are underlying themes that really squick me out now that I’m older and, if not wiser, at least slightly less ignorant than I used to be, BUT. Harmony’s friendship with Cordelia is a part of the show I really like. Yes, Harmony joins in with Cordelia to bully people, and later she turns on her, but in the first and second seasons, we see Harmony being a caring and supportive friend to Cordy, even when she doesn’t deserve it. Should Harmony tell Cordelia to suck it up, at least she didn’t get beaten nearly to death? Well, Harmony can’t, because she’s just as selfish and short-sighted as Cordelia, but that’s beside the point. As crappy as she treats everyone who isn’t in her social sphere, Harmony displays actual care and concern for Cordelia in this episode, and this lays the groundwork for our #10.

Where were we?

As Buffy and Cordelia rush to Harmony’s aid, Snyder comes up and sees just another potential lawsuit on his hands. Cordelia insists that Harmony just fell down the stairs, but Harmony swears she was pushed. The same disembodied laughter from the locker room can be heard again, but only Buffy seems to hear it. She follows it up the stairs and sees a door closing as if it had been opened by no one at all. Inside the room, Buffy collides with something she can’t see. She investigates further, stepping into the band room, where we see a ceiling tile lifting up. Buffy calls out to whoever is there and promises she isn’t there to hurt them, she just wants to talk.

Outside the school, these two super cool characters are hanging out, trying to blend:

Giles: “A girl on campus with the ability to become invisible.”

Xander: “That is so cool!”

Willow: “Cool?”

Xander: “Well yeah, I would give anything to be able to turn invisible. I wouldn’t use my powers to beat people up. I’d use my powers to protect the girls’ locker room.”

Giles: “It must be a fairly heady experience. Having that ability.”

Buffy: “I think Cordelia’s going to be working on her May Queen dress tonight. Maybe there’ll be some action.”

Okay, in a previous scene we’ve already been told in a bit of incidental dialogue that Cordelia’s dress is finished. And also, that someone else was making it. And Cordelia is not the Molly Ringwald, make-my-own-dress-for-prom kind of quirky girl. So what does she have to work on?

The whole thing seems to be a convenient excuse for the next scene, in which Buffy looks wistfully through a window at Cordelia and her friends… well, I’m not sure what they’re doing.

And when he turns around, he sees:

Cordelia: “God! I am never sitting through another one of those alumni lectures again! Two hours of ‘My trek through Napal.’ Hello, there is nobody caring.”

Bathroom mirror Girl: “Did you guys see his toupee? I mean, it looked like a cabbage.”

Cordelia: “And those slides? ‘That’s a mountain. That’s a mountain, too. Now look at some mountains.'”

Harmony: “I swear, he had three slides and just used them over and over.”

Bathroom mirror girl: “I know, but did you see his toupee? I mean, it was like, the worst.”

Harmony: “We’re talking, okay?”

Cordelia: “Oh, and did you guys check out that extreme toupee? Yeah, that’s realistic. It looked like a cabbage.”

Why did Cordelia steal that joke? That joke wasn’t even funny. The dude is a mountain climber who went to Nepal and now does inspirational speaking. There is tons of material there. For example, right off the top of my head:

• Did he steal that toupee from the Yeti?
• What’s that toupee made out of, a Sherpa’s back hair?
• A toupee? Why? Did you have to amputate your comb-over when it got frostbite?
• Did you spend A Night on Bald Mountain? (And come on,  invisible girl is a band geek, why didn’t she immediately go for that one?

 The bathroom girl looks after the other girls adoringly as they leave, but finding herself alone again, her expression sours.

In the courtyard, in the present, Snyder is declaring Cordelia May Queen, and of course, she takes the whole thing super humbly:

Cordelia: “Being this popular is not just my right, but my responsibility.”

Xander and Willow make little, “Oh, Cordelia” faces as they pass through the courtyard to find Buffy, who’s watching the whole May Queen presentation go down. She believes Cordelia is the key to whatever is going on. Willow gives Buffy the list of dead and missing students, which is multiple pages. Because Sunnydale. #8

Definitive proof that the teen girl is an invasive species.

Willow: “Oh my god. ‘Have a nice summer.’ ‘Have a nice summer.’ This girl had no friends at all.” 

Giles: “Uh, once again I teeter at the precipice of the generation gap.”

Buffy: “‘Have a nice summer’ is what you write when you have nothing to say.”

Buffy asks Willow and Xander if they knew Marcie. They deny it, and Buffy points out that they both wrote “Have a nice summer” in Marcie’s yearbook. Okay, in Willow’s defense, she wrote “have a great summer,” but she’s still horrified to realize that they both had four classes with Marcie the year before and still have no recollection of her. Due to something Giles explains with quantum mechanics rather than mystical forces- okay, score one point against #13 on that one- that because Marcie was perceived as invisible, she became invisible.

Of course, Buffy has a throwaway line about living on a Hellmouth and mystical energy, and I’m like, come one, guys. Even the X-Files occasionally had an episode where it wasn’t aliens.

We see a flashback to Marcie in English class with the teacher she just tried to murder. Though she keeps putting her hand up, the teacher is calling on everyone except her. And then shit starts to get real:

Buffy: “This isn’t some great power that she can control. It’s something that was done to her. That we did to her.”

And as Buffy suspected, Marcie’s end goal is doing something horrible to Cordelia. This is something Cordelia has figured out, as well, and she runs into the library to beg for Buffy’s help in a way only Cordelia could:

Cordelia: “I knew you’d be here. Buffy… I, uh, I know we’ve had our differences, with you being so weird and all, and hanging out with these total losers… ooh. Well, anyway, despite all of that, I know that you share this feeling that we have for each other deep down.”

Willow: “Nausea?”

Cordelia: “Somebody is after me! They just tried to kill Mrs. Miller- she was helping me with my homework- and Mitch and Harmony… this is all about me! Me, me, me!”

Cordelia figured from the super strength, the weapons, and the fact that Buffy’s around whenever weird stuff happens, that Buffy is in a gang. She’s looking for protection, because she doesn’t know what else to do. Oh, and Giles points out that she’s never been in the library before. So, I guess Cordelia is street smart, instead of book smart. Buffy gives in and decides to help her. Despite the numerous times we’ve seen Cordelia in the same place as Marcie and interacting with her, when Buffy shows Cordelia a photo, she can’t remember Marcie.

In her hidey hole, Marcie is ranting to no one about how Cordelia and all her “slut friends” ruined Marcie’s life. She’s going to make them “learn,” and as she says this she reveals a rope and a doctor bag.

Cordelia: “Hey. You think I’m never lonely because I’m so cute and popular? I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone. It’s not like any of them really know me. I don’t even know if they like me half the time. People just want to be in a popular zone. Sometimes when I talk, everyone’s so busy agreeing with me, they don’t hear a word I say.”

Buffy: “Well if you feel so alone, then why do you work so hard at being popular?”

Cordelia: “Well it beats being alone all by yourself.”

So now we’re starting to get a sense of what Cordelia is really like. Being popular is only important to her because she’s afraid of being alone. No matter how little we care for Cordelia, we have to sympathize with her here. And as Marcie becomes more destructive, and Cordelia becomes more constructive (opening up to and trusting people who aren’t “in a popular zone”), now the audience should become less supportive of Marcie, and come over to Cordelia’s side a bit.

In the library, Xander, Giles, and Willow hear flute music, and they rush to the source, hoping to catch Marcie and, between the three of them, subdue her. But when they find the source of the music coming from a tape recorder in the school’s basement, they realize they’ve been trapped. They’re sealed in a locked room with a gas leak and the most boring flute recital recording ever.

At The Bronze, Buffy and Cordelia have woken up tied to the coronation thrones on the stage. Cordelia is panicking because she can’t feel her face. Oh, and this is also going on, so… that’s ominous:

Marcie: “You should be grateful. People who pass you on the street are gonna remember you for the rest of their lives. Children will dream about you. And every one of your friends who comes to the coronation tonight will take the sight of the May Queen to their graves.”

So, to the pain, then?

Oh, and the reason Cordy’s face is numb? It’s loaded up with local anesthetic so she can be awake for her entire disfigurement.

This is some Red Dragon shit.

While the Scoobies start to valiantly die together, Cordelia tries to talk Marcie out of Why-So-Serious-ing her:

Down in the basement, Giles has nearly succumbed to the gas, and he’s just kind of slapping at the door in futility when out of no where, Angel is there to rescue them. He arrived via basement to give Giles The Codex, and he smelled gas. Because Angel can’t breathe, he’s the perfect guy to fix the gas leak while Willow, Giles, and Xander stumble to safety, gas drunk.

Buffy decides that although she had sympathy for Marcie before, she doesn’t now because Marcie is “a thundering looney.”

You know what I want to add? #14: Mental illness is treated poorly. From everything we’ve seen in the story so far, we should hate Cordelia and love Marcie. After all, Marcie is just a vigilante, right? Getting revenge on the people who wronged her in an unfair system? Cordelia is responsible for Marcie’s invisibility, at least in part. And she’s proven to be a self-centered, cold person, despite a slightly small, kinda chewy loneliness center. But we care about her, because the last time we saw her, she was pouring her heart out as a victim of her own popularity. The last time we saw Marcie, she was raving and jabbering to herself. And nobody likes a crazy person, I think my fellow mentally ill people know that all too well. So, we wind up with our title character declaring that she can’t be sympathetic to someone who is mentally ill, and that’s a good reason to beat her up. No, Buffy. A good reason to beat her up is because she’s attempted to murder people. Not because she’s “crazy.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the last time we’re going to see #14. It will figure in heavily in season 5, as well.

In order to fight Marcie, Buffy has a very special moment of zen that lasts five seconds, at least:

Do you ever have one of those moments where you think, “I should do [x] before [y] happens,” and then, before you can do anything else, [y] happens and you’re like, “Fuck you, self. Why didn’t you warn me in time?”

Something wretched has happened to me. I think I have food poisoning. I’ll be back if I don’t die. Recap of Buffy is on hold. Recap of 50 Shades Freed is on hold, because I’m nauseated enough.

Sorry, guys.

ETA: I am no longer dying, but if I don’t wind up P90X ripped from the workout my chest and abdomen got last night, I’m going to be piiiiiiiiissed. Look for a Buffy recap and a late edition of Roadhouse on Monday.

As for everyone who suggested I was intentionally poisoning myself to avoid reading 50 Shades Freed… that’s actually quite a good idea.

And I tweeted it. [View the story “#BreakingJenny” on Storify]

If you follow me on twitter, or if you were awakened this morning by what sounded like the screams of a thousand beansidhe wailing for the future of original fiction and fandom in one long, desperate howl, then you’re aware that Amazon is a nest of fucking vampires who will not rest until they suck the very life out of the industry that built them. I’m speaking, of course, about the new Kindle Worlds program, a venue for fanfic writers who really don’t give a shit about the creations they’re purporting to love to exploit the fuck out of fandom and sell what in the past has always been given away for free out of integrity and a need to not get sued. You can read about the fucking travesty here at The Mary Sue, although they take a much different view of this bullshit than I do.

I was going to come here and write a scathing post about why this is shitty and why it will harm both fandom and original fiction, but you know what? I am tired of feeling like Ned Stark at King’s Landing. I’m not going to be the Hand of the King on this one. If readers and ficcers want to be Robert Baratheon and refuse to see that the boar of paid fanfiction is wearing Amazon’s Lannister colors…

Wait. Let me dial my nerd back a little.

Basically, I’m not going to rant on the subject (at least here; my twitter account is going to be bitter and terrible for A WHILE), because it has yet to do me any good other than getting a nice mad on and whipping you all up in an angry frenzy. Instead, I’m going to do something constructive that I’ve been considering for a little while.

Ever since I started recapping 50 Shades last year (Jesus, a year. A year of my fucking life) I have had requests to read people’s original fiction and fanfiction. Some of you have written to me asking if I can be as critical of your work as I am of 50, and that’s very flattering. However, everyone has gotten a no. Not because I don’t love and care about you all, dear readers, but I just don’t have the time to fulfill these requests. I write about forty-thousand words a month, excluding the 50 and Buffy recaps, so I really just don’t have time left over for stuff like beta reading or leaving the house or showering.

In my spare time (which exists in the same magical realm as dragons and unicorns and plus-sized jeans that aren’t made of stretch material that make them super fall-downish), I’m the president of a not-for-profit group that seeks to help writers at all stages of their careers. We have a mentor program, in which an author further along in their career helps someone who is either just starting out or is stuck and doesn’t know the next step or whatever, and sometimes that turns into a beta reading relationship. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before, but you can credit one of the blog regulars, Thea K, with giving me the mental push into, “Oh yeah, I could do this” land.

If so many of you are looking for beta readers… why not pair y’all up HERE?

So, this is how it’s going to work:

1. Leave a brief comment with the genre, word count (or estimated word count), and a one sentence description of your work. That’s really all that someone needs to know whether or not their project is for you. “High Fantasy, 100k, a girl embarks on a quest to avenge her father, murdered by a wizard.”
2. Leave people some way of getting ahold of you. Your twitter (if your account is unprotected), your facebook, your GoodReads account, your email address (youraddress at domain dot com, to avoid spambots) so that if someone is interested in beta reading your work, they can find you.
3. Volunteer to read someone else’s work. This will only be beneficial to everyone if everyone participates and volunteers their time. You can work it out between yourselves and set your own limits, whether you’re looking for someone to read a chapter at a time or the whole work in one piece, and what you’re willing to do in return. But you have to give something back, either to the person who volunteers or another person in the comments section.
4. Leave a follow up comment when you have a reader. This is for two reasons: one, so you don’t keep getting people offering you help when other people on the list are waiting, and so there’s a record that someone read your work, in case something… untoward goes down. Which leads us to the next and final step:
5. Don’t be a dick. Don’t plagiarize, don’t leak chapters, don’t mock people, just don’t. Don’t be a dick. I think most of us here are not dicks, so this should be a pretty easy one to follow.

The other day, I got the most delightful tweet:

I sit on the barstool beside my husband, who just looks radiant: freshly showered, his hair damp, wearing a crisp white shirt and that silver-gray tie. My favorite tie. I have fond memories of that tie.

And the picture that resulted?

Hanna stands aside, and Prescott enters my office. She’s on a mission, bristling with professional efficiency.

When other people are professional, it’s a positive thing. When Prescott does it, she’s “bristling.”

“Mrs. Grey, Leila Williams is on your proscribed list of visitors.”

“What?” I have a proscribed list?

No, Ana. Nobody is that controlling, right? Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen Jose in a while. Maybe he’s proscribed.

Take a minute to think about how really, truly scary this is. Ana is constantly surrounded by security, allegedly for her own “protection.” But now we know there are a list of people who are never allowed to come near her. Ana didn’t know about this list; for all she knows, people who love and care about her have tried to contact her, only to be turned away, and Ana would never know. Her husband is literally keeping her a prisoner.

There is a reason handcuffs are on the cover of this book, and it has nothing to do with kinky fuckery.

I frown, not understanding. “Is she dangerous?”

Hold up, Ana. She pulled a gun on you, like, three months ago. She broke into your then-boyfriend’s house to watch you sleep. I would say she’s probably not not dangerous.

We find out that the only reason Ana knows Leila is in the building is because she happened to come in when Prescott was taking a pee break.

I realize that even Prescott has to pee, and I laugh. “Oh dear.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Prescott gives me an embarrassed grin, and it’s the first time I’ve seen a chink in her armor. She has a lovely smile.

Ah, Ana. You are nothing if not predictably horrible. She has never had a single nice thing to say about Prescott up until now. Then Prescott fails at something, and Ana can compliment her. Ana can only like other women if she perceives them to be less competent than she is. Now that Prescott has made a mistake, Ana is free to think a single positive thought about her.

Ana knows that Christian is going to be informed of Leila’s presence, and she desperately- for some reason that is never made clear- wants to see Leila. The person she was terrified of all through the last book. The woman who pulled a gun on her and had to go into a mental health facility just a few months before. Time is short, because Ana knows Christian is going to send Taylor and put the whole situation on lockdown. Setting aside the fact that Leila really was a danger to Ana in the past, you are now reading a “romance” in which a woman is playing beat-the-clock in order to talk to someone her husband, the “romantic hero” has forbidden her from talking to.

Furthering our themes of “you have got to be fucking kidding me” and “absolutely none of this bullshit makes sense,” Ana has Hannah show Leila and her companion into the conference room so Prescott can frisk them. This is all going down at work. Now, I know that Ana isn’t worried about getting fired, because Christian plans on giving her the entire company, but she isn’t at all worried about looking unprofessional? Because meeting with your husbands’ ex in the conference room doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m super invested in my career and I won’t let my personal life get in the way of it.”

Hannah reminds Ana she has an appointment across town at four, and Ana tells her to cancel it. Spoiler alert, it’s another appointment for her birth control shot.

What the hell does Leila want? I don’t think she’s here to do me any harm. She didn’t in the past when she had the opportunity.

Except for when she broke in to watch you sleep and when she pulled a gun on you. But let’s face it, Ana has no clue what constitutes harm, otherwise she wouldn’t be married right now.

Christian is going to go nuts. My subconscious purses her lips, primly crosses her legs, and nods. I need to tell him that I am doing this.

I’m sure that will mitigate any damage.

Ana sends an email to Christian telling him she’s going to meet with Leila and she’ll slap her if she has to. No, really:

I’ll use my newly acquired slapping skills with my now-healed hand, should I need to.

Tee hee, she’s tough, tee hee, let’s joke about the woman who committed B&E to threaten you.

I stand, smoothing my gray pencil skirt over my hips, pinch my cheeks to give them some color, and undo the next button on my gray silk blouse.

Is she trying to fuck Leila? Because it sounds like she’s trying to fuck Leila.

Also, don’t pinch your cheeks to put color in them.

Leila looks much better. More than better- she’s very attractive. There’s a rosy bloom to her cheeks, and her brown eyes are bright, her hair clean and shiny.

Because people who are mentally ill are always visibly so, by being unattractive, ashen, and greasy haired, of course.

There’s another woman with Leila: Susi, who is another of Chedward’s ex-subs. Hannah enters and tells Ana that Christian is on the phone, and even though Hannah is just Ana’s assistant, she’s pretty insistent. Which means Hannah probably knows that if Ana doesn’t take the call, her job is on the line, because these two assholes treat people like they’re fucking disposable. Ana doesn’t take the call, and says she’ll call him back shortly.

Susi speaks. “I know this is all kinds of weird, but I wanted to meet you, too. The woman who captured Chris- “

I hold up my hand, stopping her in mid-sentence. I do not want to hear this. “Um… I get the picture,” I mutter.

“We call ourselves the sub club.” She grins at me, her eyes shining with mirth.

 So, is this a survivor’s group? Because it kind of seems like they’re there for an intervention or something.

Susi leaves so Leila and Ana can talk alone, and we find out that Leila’s nickname is apparently Lulu, which is fucking stupid because it’s exactly the same number of syllables as Leila and also, why do we need to know her nickname? Why is she even here? What is the point of this?

Susi and Christian… it’s not a thought I wish to dwell on.

But you probably will.

Prescott hands her phone to Ana. Of course, it’s Christian:

“What the fuck are you playing at?” he shouts. He’s seething.

“Don’t shout at me.”

“What do you mean, don’t shout at you?” he shouts, louder this time. “I gave specific instructions which you have completely disregarded- again. Hell, Ana, I am fucking furious.”

Ana tells Christian she’ll talk to him when he’s calmer, then hangs upon him. Let’s all keep in mind, Ana is having all of this go down at work. She’s on the phone to her husband, telling him not to shout at her, as she stands outside the conference room. How humiliating is all of this for Ana? And none of this, not Prescott, not Leila, not shouty phone calls, has anything to do with her. It would be awesome if Ana would get frustrated with this and acknowledge the fact, then come to terms with whether or not this is a life she wants. Then she and Christian could actually work on their relationship, which would be a better and more believable story than constantly running from cartoon villains.

Leila has come because she wants to apologize for breaking into Ana’s apartment and fucking up her car, and to thank her for not pressing charges. Not that Ana had any choice in the matter; Christian is so anti-police that I’m pretty sure his mom’s pimp was a crooked cop or something. Ana asks Leila if her doctor knows she’s there, and the answer is no, because what legit doctor is going to say, “Oh, you want to find the person you tried to kill like three months ago and confront her in person unsupervised? That’s a great idea, pack your bags!”

She looks suitably guilty. “I know I’ll have to deal with the fallout for this later. But I had to get some things, and I wanted to see Susi, and you, and… Mr. Grey.”

“You want to see Christian?” My stomach free-falls to the floor. That’s why she’s here.

“Leila.” I flounder, exasperated. “It’s not up to me, it’s up to Christian. You’ll need to ask him. He doesn’t need my permission. He’s a grown man… most of the time.”

She gazes at me for a fraction of a beat as if surprised by my reaction and then laughs softly, nervously twiddling the ends of her hair.

“He’s repeatedly refused all my requests to see him,” she says quietly.

Oh shit. I’m in more trouble than I thought.

Why are you in more trouble, Ana? You couldn’t possibly have known that Christian didn’t want to see her, because he never once told you that she was trying to contact him.

I’m sorry, but I’m getting to the point with these books that I feel like I’m just saying the same thing over and over again, and that same thing is always just, “Christian is a huge dick.” He’s being contacted, apparently more than once, by his ex who tried to kill Ana. And he hasn’t mentioned this to Ana! What the hell?! If Ana gets a phone call from Jose, Christian acts like she ran out and vengeance fucked thirty-five people, but his murderous exes can call him, that’s fine? I’m so tired of this book, you guys. I’m just tired of this whole thing.

Once again I’m speechless. What does she expect me to say? Surely she should be saying these things to Christian, not to me.

“And for art school. I can’t thank him enough for that.”

I knew it! Christian is funding her classes. I remain expressionless, tentatively exploring my feelings for this woman now that she’s confirmed my suspicions about Christian’s generosity.

And your suspicions that Christian’s money isn’t really your money, after all. My husband and I put our money together; it’s just easier for us than keeping track of who is going to pay what, and it works for us. Our money is our money. If one of us decided we were going to pay for someone else’s education, we’d damn sure have to tell the other spouse about our plans. If Christian truly believed that what is his is also Ana’s, he’d have told her about paying for art school for Leila with what is, according to him, Ana’s money.

To my surprise, I feel no ill will toward her.

To my surprise, too, because it’s completely out of character to the point of being entirely unbelievable. Ana dislikes all women for imagined slights; this woman has an actual connection to Christian.

It’s a revelation, and I’m glad she’s better. Now, hopefully, she can move on with her life and out of ours.

She’s not better. If she were better, she wouldn’t have shown up at Ana’s work in the hopes of seeing Christian. If she were better, she would see how unhealthy her behavior is.

Ana asks Leila if she’s missing classes, and Leila tells her that she is, but only two because she’s leaving Seattle the next day. She also mentions that Christian has two of her paintings.

What the hell! My stomach plunges into the basement once more. Are they hanging in my living room? I bridle at the thought.

That’s a weird word choice, isn’t it? In this context, she could mean she lifted her chin to express resentment, or she took offense. There has to be a clearer verb to use there.

Leila asks Ana if they can speak frankly, then she launches into her personal life, telling Ana she loved her dead boyfriend, her husband, and Christian.

This is not news to me. When she lifts her brown eyes to mine, they are wide with conflicting emotions, and the overriding one seems to be apprehension… of my reaction, perhaps? But my overwhelming response to this poor young woman is compassion.

This sudden shift in characterization makes no sense at all. So far, all we have seen of Ana is that she feels every single woman on Earth is a threat. Even when they’ve had no contact whatsoever with Christian except in very minor capacities required by their jobs. Women whose names he will never even know are out to take him from Ana, so she has to be possessive and give them hateful nicknames. But here is a woman who was not only in an intimate relationship with Chedward, but she was in love with him and willing to kill him. Ana being totally unthreatened by her makes no fucking sense whatsoever, and at this point, we’re reading about a totally different character. And she still sucks.

Mentally I run through all the classical literature I can think of that deals with unrequited love.

Given Ana’s definition of romance as it pertains to classical literature, I assume the books she’s thinking of are Mein Kampf and Frankenstein.

“I know, he’s very easy to love,” I whisper.

Her wide eyes widen further in surprise, and she smile. “Yes. He is – was.” She corrects herself quickly and blushes. Then she giggles so sweetly that I can’t help myself. I giggle, too. Yes, Christian Grey makes us giggly.

 Again- and I am loathe to point this out- a waitress even flutters her eyelashes because the air conditioning vent is on too strong and Ana is ready to blind her for the crime of gazing upon the perfection that is Christian Grey. Leila admits to being in love with Christian and it’s happy giggles slumber party times?

Ana’s characterization does a complete 180 in the middle of the last book of the series? Well, of fucking course. Because that’s just how these books roll, and you can either roll with it or get rolled over. So strap in, because Saint Ana, Our Lady of Sisterly Protection, has stepped into the role previously occupied by Ana, Hater of Blondes and Scourge of Seattle.

My subconscious rolls her eyes at me in despair and goes back to reading her dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre.

So, what this is not so subtly trying to tell us is that Leila is the crazy wife in the attic and Ana is Jane.

“You’ll get your chance to see Christian.”

“I thought I would. I know how protective he can be.” She smiles.

So this is her scheme. She’s very shrewd. Or manipulative, whispers my subconscious. “This is why you’re here to see me?”

Reluctantly, I have to acknowledge that she knows him well.

She was probably with him longer than you have been, Ana!

Leila tells Ana that Christian seemed happy with her on those occasions that Leila broke into his apartment to spy on them.

Do I want to hear this? A shudder runs through me. My scalp prickles as I recall my fear when she was the unseen shadow in our apartment.

She wasn’t unseen. You saw her. WORDS MEAN THINGS.

Christian arrives, as Leila was anticipating:

Christian’s burning gray gaze pins first me then Leila to our chairs. His demeanor is quietly determined, but I know better, and I suspect Leila does, too. The menacing cool glint in his eyes reveals the truth- he’s emanating rage, though he hides it well. 

Well, if he’s emanating it, he’s not hiding it, is he?

Could you imagine working at SIP? Some random woman just started working there, gets promoted to editor within a week, and now her husband is bursting in unannounced and causing a scene just, you know, whenever? What a stressful environment.

“You,” he says to Prescott in a soft tone. “You’re fired. Get out now.”

I blanch. Oh no- this isn’t fair.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ana, make up your damned mind. You have been lobbying for this woman’s termination for fucking ever, now she’s fired, and you don’t want her to be? Oh, wait, I’m trying to assign past Ana’s actions to St. Ana, when she’s CLEARLY not the same character.

Leila peeks up at him through long lashes,

IT’S AN EPIDEMIC, PEOPLE!

He stands, glowering at her. “Leila, if you come anywhere near my wife again, I will cut off all support. Doctors, art school, medical insurance- all of it- gone. Do you understand?”

“Christian-” I try again. But he silences me with a chilling look. Why is he being so unreasonable? My compassion for this sad woman blooms.

Because you’re viewing your own victimization as it’s happening to another person.  There’s really nothing else to say about that point. It is what it is.

Christian grills Leila about the purpose of her visit, why Susi is there, and if Susi knew about Leila’s stalking spree when it was going on.

“I had to know.” And for the first time she looks up directly at him.

“Had to know what?” he snaps.

 “That you’re okay.”

He gapes at her. “That I’m okay?” he scoffs, disbelieving.

“Yes.”

Okay, this is an example of a writer who needs to do some word economizing. This is an easy hole to fall into, because what’s happening is E.L. is writing the way people talk. A lot of writers do this, I’m sure I’ve done it before, but when you have a conversation like the one above, the reader is going to notice how repetitious it is, and they’re going to get annoyed with it. This is a place that could definitely have been trimmed. It could have looked like:

“I had to know.” And for the first time she looks up directly at him.

“Had to know what?” he snaps.

“That you’re okay.”

and then he could go on to say the next part, about being fine. Or, it could have looked like this:

“I had to know.” And for the first time she looks up directly at him. “That you’re okay.”

So many words could have been trimmed there. So, writers, don’t fall into this very easy trap. Readers don’t like to read characters repeating dialogue, even though people actually talk like that.

“I’m fine. There, question answered. Now Taylor will run you to Sea-Tac so you can go back to the East Coast. And if you take one step west of the Mississippi, it’s all gone. Understand?”

*Raises hand* No. I don’t understand. What’s gone if she crosses the Mississippi? The east coast? Will the east coast be gone? Because that’s what that says. I don’t want that to happen, so I really hope Leila stays put.

“It might not be convenient for Leila to go back now. She has plans,” I object, outraged on her behalf.

Christian glares at me. “Anastasia,” he warns, his voice icy, “this does not concern you.”

“This is the Christian Grey I know,” she says, her tone sad and wistful. Christian frowns at her, while all the breath evaporates from my lungs. I can’t breathe. Was Christian like this with her all the time? Was he like this with me, at first? I find it hard to remember.

He’s like this with you NOW, you daffy- UUUUURRRRRGGGH! This is not how you show character development for Christian Grey! Just having Ana say, “Oh, gosh, I don’t remember how abusive he is and was!” doesn’t make Christian magically not an abuser anymore or not an abuser in the past.

Christian asks when Leila’s flight leaves, and tells her he’ll send someone to Susi’s house take her to the airport. I like how he just inserts himself in other people’s plans like that. Shows he really knows how to be a dickbag.

I glare at Christian. He can’t dictate to her like this… and how does he know where Susannah lives?

There’s the Ana I remember! Weird and suspicious because Christian knows where one of his exes lives. Which is a totally normal thing to know, if you’ve been in a relationship with someone.

Leila leaves- although she says “Yes, Sir,” to Christian on her way out, which made me “What the hell?” because it kind of shows that Leila isn’t as better as she says she is.

After Leila leaves, Ana tries to preempt Christian’s anger:

“Don’t even think about being angry with me,” I hiss. “Call Claude Bastille and kick the shit out of him or go see Flynn.”

I guess this is the first time I’m noticing how obvious a name Claude Bastille is. I suppose Jacques Fromage was simply absurd.

“You promised me you wouldn’t do this.” Now his tone is accusatory.

“Do what?”

“Defy me.”

Well, it probably would have been easier for her to not defy you by seeing Leila if you had let her know she had a “proscribed” list of who is and isn’t allowed to be near her. Which, by the way, is still so fucked up that I can’t get my head around it. But this is a new and exciting area of abuse for this couple; now he gets to make rules without telling her, and emotionally punish her when she disobeys them!

The thing that’s really bothering Ana here is Christian’s attitude toward Leila. She asks him why he was so dismissive and cruel to her, and Christian’s response is pure douchebag gold:

“Anastasia,” he says, as if to a child, “you don’t understand. Leila, Susannah- all of them- they were a pleasant, diverting pastime. But that’s all. You are the center of my universe. And the last time you two were in a room together, she had you at gunpoint. I don’t want her anywhere near you.”

Okay, I get him not wanting Ana around a woman who tried to shoot her. This part, I truly understand. What I don’t get is how he feels it is in any way acceptable to refer to women, to OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, as pleasant, diverting pastimes. No, you simpleton. They are people, with feelings. GOSH I WONDER WHY LEILA WENT CRAZY AND WHY THEY HAVE A FUCKING SUPPORT GROUP TOGETHER.

Look, if there is one thing I’ve learned from romantic comedies, it’s that if your exes need to form a support group because of you, you’re doing something very wrong.

Ana points out that Leila was really, really mentally ill- no one notes that she probably still is, by the way. She’s just cured now. Keeping in mind we’re in, what, August? And she pulled the gun on Ana in June, probably? But I’m sure, I’m absolutely sure, that she’s 100% cured and this meeting with Christian and Ana won’t cause her any kind of setback.

“But you’ve just played right into her hands. She wanted to see you again, and she knew you’d come running if she came to see me.”

So, what you’re saying, Ana, is that Leila is not better at all. Because that was why she was stalking you in the first place, because she wanted to get Christian’s attention.

Christian shrugs as if he doesn’t care. “I don’t want you tainted with my old life.”

A chapter couldn’t go by without discussion of BDSM as a filthy thing only diseased perverts do, right? Ana is too good and pure to be “tainted” by his past lovers, the women who willingly engaged in and enjoyed BDSM.

Ana points out that Leila still cares about him, and his response:

“I don’t give a fuck.”

Again, I can see both sides of this. “I don’t give a fuck,” because you threatened my girlfriend with a gun, but at the same time, “I don’t give a fuck,” about a person you had a relationship with that wasn’t bad until she became mentally ill and dangerous (probably due in part to your abusive actions).

This is the Christian Grey I know. Leila’s words rattle around my head. His reaction to her was so cold, so much at odds with the man I’ve come to know and love.

The man who has a secret list of people who aren’t allowed to get near you, and you had no idea it existed or who is on it? The man who gave you so many hickeys on your honeymoon that you were embarrassed to wear a bathing suit, all because you accidentally sunbathed topless in France? The man who shamed you for your virginity and tried to get you to sign a sex contract so he could beat you in order to take out his anger at his dead mother? YEAH THIS SOUNDS NOTHING LIKE THE MAN YOU’VE COME TO KNOW AND LOVE.

“Look, Christian, I don’t think Leila and I will be swapping recipes and knitting patterns any time soon. But I didn’t think you’d be so heartless to her.”

His eyes frost. “I told you once, I don’t have a heart,” he mutters.

Ana doesn’t laugh directly in his face, which is what I would have done. But at least she sees through his bullshit and thinks that he’s being adolescent.

It’s painstakingly obvious that he cares. Why does he deny it? It’s like his feelings for his birth mother. I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all look like the crack whore. No wonder he’s so mad. I sigh and shake my head. Paging Dr. Flynn, please. How can he not see this?

He has an enormous blindspot, just like you do? Remember that whole, “This is nothing like the man I fell in love with” bullshit you tried to pull just a page ago? Also, it’s “painstakingly obvious that he cares?” As in, “It’s diligent and carefully obvious that he cares?” Yeah, that’s not the right word for that sentence.

Christian tells Ana that the discussion is over, and they’re going home, but it’s too early, Ana still has work.

“Home,” he insists.

“Christian.” My voice is weary. “I’m tired of having the same argument with you.”

He frowns as if he doesn’t understand.

“You know,” I elucidate, “I do something you don’t like, and you think of some way to get back at me. Usually involving some of your kinky fuckery, which is either mind-blowing or cruel.” I shrug, resigned. This is exhausting and confusing.

Christian seizes on “mind-blowing” and runs with it to distract Ana from the very real concern she’s brought up.

Crap! I do not want to discuss this in SIP’s meeting room. My subconscious examines her finely manicured nails with disdain. Shouldn’t have brought the subject up, then.

You’re right, subconscious. She should have just kept her mouth shut and not called Christian out on the fact that he uses sex to punish her. If she just ignored it, it would all go away. Because that’s what’s making her relationship so awesome right now.

So, because it’s worked in the past and will continue to work in the future, Christian decides to seduce Ana, running his finger over her lip and getting real close so he can talk softly in her ear.

Pursing my lips, I strive to appear unaffected by his touch. He is so artful at diverting me from anything painful, or anything he doesn’t want to address. And you let him, my subconscious pipes up unhelpfully, gazing over her copy of Jane Eyre.

I’m torn. On the one hand, her stupid subconscious has a point. Christian is doing this because he’s found this behavior affective in the past. On the other hand, I resent the implication that women should train men like they’re fucking toddlers. It’s a little too close to, “If I love him enough, he’ll change.”

Christian wants Ana to list off all the “mind-blowing” things he’s done to her, because god forbid she cease feeding his ego for even a moment. Then he tries again with the “come home” bullshit:

His lips curl in a slow carnal smile. “Come home.” His tone is seductive.

“I have work to do.”

“Home,” he says, more insistent.

We gaze at each other, molten grey into bewildered blue, testing each other, testing our boundaries and our wills I search his eyes for some understanding, trying to fathom how this man can go from raging control freak to seductive lover in one breath.

He didn’t. He’s still being a control freak, demanding that you come home and fuck him because he wants you to.

“We could stay here.” His voice is low and husky.

Oh no. No. No. No. Not in the office.

Remember in the first book, when they’re in the restaurant and he basically threatens to rape her there? And remember how everyone insisted that he’s suuuuuuch a different person in this book from the first one? He’s done this big emotional journey that turns him into a nice guy? Yeah, so basically if Ana doesn’t go home and fuck him, he’s going to try to seduce her here.

Ana says she doesn’t want to have sex in a room where his mistress has just been.

“Don’t overthink this, Ana. She’s history,” he says dismissively.

I sigh… maybe he’s right. I just want him to admit to himself that he cares for her. A chill grips my heart. Oh no. This is why it’s important to me. Suppose I do something unforgivable. Suppose I don’t conform. Will I be history, too? If he can turn like this, when he was so concerned and upset when Leila was ill… could he turn against me?

Yes. Yes he can.

“Oh, Christian, you scare me sometimes.” I grasp his head in my hands, twist my fingers into his hair, and pull his lips to mine. He stills for a moment as his arms fold around me.

How does he manage that? He’s either moving or not. He can’t do both.

“Why?”

“You could turn away from her so easily…”

He frowns. “And you think I might turn away from you, Ana? Why the hell would you think that? What’s brought this on?”

Then Ana goes, “Uh, just exactly what happened like two seconds ago, right here in this room.” And then Christian goes to the hospital because he has jerknesia.

Not really. What happens is:

“Nothing. Kiss me. Take me home,” I plead. And as his lips touch mine, I am lost.

So basically, his manipulative ploy worked again, and we’re once again being told that this is romantic. That if a woman doesn’t do exactly what a man wants, when he wants it, he can cast her aside like trash and that’s ROMANTIC.

They go home, they have sex, and she gets him to admit that he does care about Leila. Then there’s a section break, some emails that reveal it’s now three days later, and Jose senior calls Ana to tell her that Ray is in the hospital, presumably after an attempt on his own life in a desperate bid to escape this book. Hey. We needed MORE subplots in this mess, right?

Hey there everybody! I’ve got .pdf ARCs of The Boss available for reviewers. To request one, fill out this form.

I’m asking that only people who seriously want to review the book, either on their blog, or another blog they review for, or a GoodReads account, request ARCs. I’m not trying to be elitist or jerky and let some readers have something other readers don’t get, it’s just a signal boost for the book as we near the end and the release of the free ebook and the paperback version.

IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED “THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR” DO NOT GO PAST THE JUMP.


Here are my predictions. I feel all of these could be true, or just a few of them.

1. The Great Intelligence is The Doctor. First of all, Richard Grant has already played The Doctor in Scream of The Shalka. Which is going to be released on DVD in September. You know, in plenty of time for new Who. So, you know. There’s a clue. We also know that at some point, The Doctor becomes The Valeyard. And we know that when The Great Intelligence entered The Doctor’s time stream, he fractured into a million pieces… just like Clara, who experienced birth, life, and death in several time lines. So, we could have very well seen The Great Intelligence growing up as a child and dying as a man in that snowman episode, while still being an incarnation of The Doctor.

2. Clara is also The Doctor. She entered his time stream, and went to a place where only The Doctor existed. But she was there. See also, the fracturing into a million pieces thing.

3. John Hurt’s version of The Doctor is an alternate timeline Nine who got trapped in the Time War. Because how would that not be the most fucking amazing thing you’ve ever heard of?

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to rewatch “The Name of The Doctor” then a marathon of 6th Doctor episodes. And I will eat all the cereal in the world.

This is not a proper post, just link spamming, but I felt like this link might speak to a large portion of my readership and if any of you had missed it, well. I would feel terrible knowing such a horrible tragedy could have been prevented. So, here’s a link to pictures of Prince Harry looking so hot, the bottoms of your feet will tingle.

That is all.

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will forget to change this opening comment before posting. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

1. Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
2. Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
3. Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
4. Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
5. Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
6. The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
7. All the monsters look like wieners.
8. If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
9. Angel is a dick.
10. Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
11. Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
12. Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
13. Science and technology are not to be trusted.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.

Dreams in the Buffyverse are awesome. There, I said it. And with the exception of the season four finale, no episode of Buffy does dreams as awesomely as this one.

We open in The Master’s lair. Buffy is there and ready to slay, stake in hand. But when she faces The Master, it doesn’t go well:

Know what happens when a Slayer has a bad day?

Willow: “My parents don’t even bicker. Sometimes they glare. Do you know why your folks split up?”

Buffy: “I didn’t ask. They just stopped getting along. I’m sure I was a really big help, though. With all the slaying and everything. I was in so much trouble. I was a big mess.”

Willow tells Buffy that she’s sure her dad didn’t leave because of that, but it’s clear that Buffy still feels differently. Wow, what a powerful conversation guys, really. This not only clears up questions the viewer has about Buffy’s home life, but it adds another layer to Buffy’s burden of being the Slayer. She has this destiny she has been chosen to fulfill, but she believes it destroyed her parents’ marriage. In this scene, Buffy not only becomes a more realistic character, but she becomes a sympathetic figure to children of divorced parents everywhere, because face it, everyone thinks that they are somehow personally to blame for their parents’ break ups.

In a classroom, Cordelia is admiring herself in a compact mirror when a “doofus” blocks her light. Xander sticks up for Wendell the doofus by taunting Cordelia (fairly, in this case) for her belief that the world revolves around her. The bell rings, and they sit down. Willow asks why Cordelia is so “Evita-like,” a slur I repeat here only because any time I mention Juan or Eva Peron on my blog in any context whatsoever, I’m handed my ass by angry Peron fans in the comments. So, let me state here that I think Willow has Eva Peron mixed up with Patti Lupone’s portrayal of her in the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, and the comparison is unfair.

Xander asks if there was any homework, and Buffy and Willow remind him that it was on active listening, a skill the teacher demonstrated with him the day before. Xander wasn’t actively listening, though, because the teacher had on a tight blue sweater. Xander does remember the sweater, so he feels pretty confident that he was really listening. (5)

Buffy drops her pencil, and when she looks up, baby Joseph Gordon-Levitt is there!

Willow: “I don’t like spiders, okay? Their furry bodies and their sticky webs, and what do they need all those legs for, anyway? I’ll tell you. For crawling across your face in the middle of the night. Ew! How do they not ruffle you?

Xander: “I’m sorry. I’m unruffled by spiders. Now if a bunch of Nazis crawled all over my face…

Did anybody else start singing, “What do they need all those legs for anywaaaaay? SPIDERS! SPIDERS IT MUST BE SPIDERRRRRRS!”

Just me? Okay.

Xander actually has a pretty good handle on the situation here, citing the Hellmouth as the reason he can’t get too shaken up about stuff like spiders coming out of books. He has utter faith that Buffy will slay anything that threatens them.

In the library, they find Giles acting kind of suspicious. He comes out of a back room and tells them he “got lost.” How big is the Sunnydale library? Not big. At this point in the episode, the storyline hasn’t become entirely clear to the viewer, and later we’ll be like, “Okay, so that’s what’s going on,” but in my head canon this scene has nothing to with the plot of the episode at all, and Giles was back there with Jenny Calendar losing her piercings all over the damn place. It would explain why he looks so guilty and confused when he comes out of there.

Giles tells the kids to go talk to Wendell who is at school for some reason. I am sorry, I send my kids to school with runny noses or if they’re just having a bad day. I’m like, “suck it up, you’ll have to go to work like this when you’re a grown up.” But if their textbook was full of fucking tarantulas? You know what? Take a few days off. Or like, maybe go to a different school altogether.

Cordelia berates Buffy for not knowing where history class is, and for skipping it all the time. You’re probably thinking, “Okay, since when does Cordelia care about Buffy’s academic issues?” and you’re right. Cordelia doesn’t care. Buffy goes into the class she’s never even been to, sits down to an amazingly long and brutal essay questions only test packet, and her pencil immediately breaks. She starts to sharpen it and loses time; class is almost over, and she hasn’t even started on her test.

In the hall, a student tells her friend she’s going to go take a smoke break, and she heads into the school basement. Mini-JGL says, “You shouldn’t go in there,” and I’m like, “No shit, this is Sunnydale high, the fucking last place you want to be is a dark and scary basement.” But the girl goes down there, anyway, where the meth-head cousin of Sloth from Goonies beats the shit out of her while muttering about “Lucky 19.”

Doctor Exposition Dump: “She’ll recover. She’s got a couple of shattered bones, a little internal bleeding. She got off pretty easy.”

Buffy: “Easy?”

Giles: “Have you looked up the word lately?”

Doctor Exposition Dump: “Well, the first one’s still in a coma.”

Buffy: “First what?”

Doctor Exposition Dump: “The first victim. They found him a week ago, exactly the same M.O. as the girl, only he’s in worse shape. If he doesn’t wake up soon… Somebody’s got to stop this guy.”

Okay, this is all pivotal plot information. And I get that this is before HIPPA, but come on. Even before HIPPA, a doctor wouldn’t just give all this information out to any random person. There had to be a better way for them to get this info. Maybe the could have overheard some nurses talking about how the cases were similar, or a detective could have come to speak to Laura. Instead, we get this doctor who watches too much CSI speculating on modus operandi of criminals in two cases that might be entirely unrelated, and it’s up the viewer to suspend disbelief. Look, we’re already out here accepting that there are vampires and witches and Hellmouths, so the real world details have to be right. If they’re not, we will fixate on them like an out-of-pattern tile.

Meanwhile, in the same community theatre production of Grease:

Willow and Xander are sort of idly talking about the strange goings on going on, when the mom of one of the T-Birds comes in and aggressively starts kissing on him and telling him how much she loves him. Xander observes that just because Wendell dreamed about spiders and spiders erupted out of his text book, that doesn’t mean the two incidents are related. Then he and Willow walk into a classroom and:

In the library, a newspaper has exploded:

Buffy: “What do you mean? You can read like, three languages.”

Giles: “Five, actually, on a normal day. But the words here don’t make any sense. Gibberish!”

I’m going to state for the record that “gibberish” is an underutilized word.

Why does Giles have so many newspapers. I find it difficult to believe it took more than one or two tries to realize that the problem was with him and not the papers themselves. There are like, a minimum of two hundred thousand newspapers on that table.

Buffy picks up a paper and notices Mini-JGL on the front page, wearing a Little League uniform. Well, actually she says “kiddie league” but Little League is trademarked and they can get right on your ass for that. She reads about how he was found beaten after a game. She and Giles put two and two together, that she can’t have seen this kid at school if he’s in a coma. Giles suggests that it might be an astral projection, and Buffy notices the nineteen on Mini-JGL’s uniform. Just then, a wild ALMONZO appears:

Hank Summers: “It was you.”

Buffy: “Me?”

Hank: “Having you. Raising you, seeing you every day. I mean, do you have any idea what that’s like?”

Buffy: “What?”

Hank: “Gosh, you don’t even see what’s right in front of your face, do you? Oh well, big surprise there, all you ever think about is yourself. You get in trouble. You embarrass us with all the crazy stunts you pull. Do I have to go on?”

Buffy: “No. Please don’t.”

Hank: “You’re sullen and rude, and you’re not nearly as bright as I thought you were going to be. I mean, Buffy, let’s be honest. Could you stand to live in the same house with a daughter like that?”

Buffy: “Why are you saying all of these things?”

Hank: “Because they’re true. I think that’s the least we owe one another. You know, I don’t think it’s very mature getting all blubbery when I’m just trying to be honest. Speaking of which, I don’t really get anything out of these weekends with you. So what do you say we just don’t do them anymore?”

And Buffy looks like this:

Jesus, Almonzo, why are you such a dick?

This is actually a super hard episode for me, because I was, in fact, brutally rejected by my own father. Not quite so eloquently as old Hank here, but still. It’s rough, and I suspect there is more than one person out there who identified strongly with Buffy’s horror in this moment, because they had been there. I know I said some really awful shit about David Greenwalt’s writing before, and it was all deserved, but this scene is like bottled reality, and it’s the bottled reality moments in Buffy that make it so special. You can throw vampires at an audience all day long, but the things that really scare them are torn from real life.

Buffy’s dad leaves, and Buffy catches a glimpse of Mini-JGL, but she looks away; she doesn’t want to believe that the things her father said to her aren’t true, or are a figment of her imagination. Kudos to Sarah Michelle Gellar for her acting in this scene, because you get literally everything on Buffy’s side from her facial expressions.

Willow and Xander find Giles in the library and explain Xander’s bought of sudden public nudity. While recounting the details, Willow muses aloud that the attention would be the worst part. Xander calls the experience “a total nightmare,” and Willow has a lightbulb moment.

Xander: “Um. Our dreams are coming true.”

Giles: “Dreams? That would be a musical comedy version of this. Nightmares. Our nightmares are coming true.”

HA! Careful what seeds of bad ideas you plant in Xander’s head in season one, Giles, because they will bite you in the ass when you find yourself providing lead vocals for a training montage in season six.

Giles realizes that it’s Mini-JGL who’s causing all of this, by astrally projecting out of his own nightmares and bringing everyone else’s nightmares with him.

Remember the nice thing I said about David Greenwalt’s writing? When Willow asks how Mini-JGL managed to bring everyone’s nightmares to life, this is the only response the script offers:

Giles: “Things like that are easier when you live on a Hellmouth.”

Deus Ex Hellmouth much?

“I thought I was gonna die!”

Xander: “You were a lousy clown. Your balloon animals were pathetic. Everyone can make a giraffe!”

Go Xander!

The scoobies run outside, where they find general chaos:

Giles: “Things are getting worse. In a few hours, reality will fold completely into the realm of nightmares.”

How do we know this, Giles? Baby, you know I love you. But you gotta be more specific, because you always are. I know it’s not your fault. It’s the writing. In every other episode so far, the audience  has been given detailed backstory about why things are happening, and when. To ask us, in episode ten of a twelve episode season, to just blindly accept that because Giles says stuff is bad, it is, isn’t going to fly. Especially when Giles a) can’t read the books that would lend him expertise on this crisis and b) has admitted to not really understanding what’s going on. If the story takes away his power in the mentor/exposition role, then the script can’t ask us to trust that he has the answers.

Giles thinks if they wake Mini-JGL from his coma, everything should be fine, but they can’t leave Nightmare High without looking for Buffy. They notice that across the street, things are looking a little odd…

Willow: “Excuse me. When did they put a cemetery in across the street?”

Xander: “And when did they make it night over there?”

The gang rightly assumes that Buffy should be in that cemetery. As they walk, Xander wonders aloud about whose nightmare they could be in. And then Giles spots a headstone with Buffy’s name on it.

Giles: “It’s mine. I failed… in my duty to protect you. I should have been more… cautious. Taken more time to train you. But you were so gifted. And the evil was so great. I’m sorry.”

 No worries, Giles!

Giles: “You never told me you dreamt of becoming a vampire.”

Buffy: “This isn’t a dream.”

Giles: “No. No, it’s not. But there’s a chance we can make it go away. This all comes from Billy. Now, if we can only wake him up, I believe that the nightmares will stop and reality will shift back into place, but we must do it now. I need you to hold together long enough to help us. Can you do that?”

This is enough to help Buffy regain her confidence in her skills, but she warns them that she’s getting hungry. In other words, she’s got to keep from eating her friends before getting unvamped.

This is one of my favorite Buffy/Giles scenes, because it shows how much he cares about her, and how highly he regards her, even after just a few months. He is truly in awe of her skill and her strength, and he wants her to succeed. Which for a slayer basically means not dying, but also, not giving up even when some dire shit like being turned into a vampire goes down.

As they head to the hospital, Willow asks Giles how he knows things will go back to normal, and what will happen if they don’t, and Giles tells her, as politely as possible, to shut up. It’s going to be rare in the series for Giles to be curt with Willow. In fact, it seems to only happen when he’s worried about Buffy. Because of this, I’m going to use any time Giles snaps at Willow as proof of #2 throughout the entire series.

You know what’s a shitty place to be when reality is turning to nightmares? The hospital. The place is in chaos, there appear to be zombies, and Dr. Exposition Dump’s hands have turned to deformed claws. They find Mini-JGL, still comatose, and Giles’s expert solution is to shout in the kid’s face. Luckily Mini-JGL is like, bi-locating? He’s standing beside his own comatose body when he says that it won’t work. And you know, Mini-JGL is right, without ever having to go to medical school. Shouting at people in comas rarely wakes them up. Reeeeeeally dropping the ball here, Giles. You’d think a dude with his history of head injuries would understand that.

Willow discovers that outside the window, a near Biblical invasion of wasps is plaguing Sunnydale. The ugly man appears, and that’s good, because Buffy the Vampire Vampire Slayer is spoiling for a fight to reduce her stress. She beats the ugly man unconscious, then tells Mini-JGL he has to do “the rest.” Wait, what? Is she going to make a twelve-year-old commit murder?

Nah, he just lifts the ugly man’s face off like a rubber mask on a Scooby-Doo villain. Light pours out, and everything goes back to normal. Mini-JGL wakes from his coma and reenacts the end of The Wizard of Oz, and Giles is about to go get a doctor when Mini-JGL’s kiddie league coach comes in. When the man fondly refers to Mini-JGL as “lucky 19,” Buffy reveals that Mini-JGL is awake and tells the coach that they’re on to him. They know he beat Billy in revenge for missing a catch in the game. Mini-JGL tells the coach that it wasn’t his fault they lost the game, there are eight other players on the team. When the coach tries to run, Xander and Giles stop him. Buffy congratulates Mini-JGL on his victory, but maybe she could also drop in a, “Please don’t solve all your problems by turning reality into a living hell wherein all our darkest fears come true next time, okay?”

At school, where everything is back to normal, Buffy expresses disbelief that an adult could go so psycho over baseball. She tells Xander it was heroic to grab the coach, and they’re all glad he’s in jail where he belongs. And oh, look!

Yay, momentary reprieve from inevitable parental abandonment!