He's back! Spike has retruned to Sunnydale, and he's in a bad way. Drusilla has left him, and to get her back he decides to kidnap Willow and Xander to get Willow to cast a love spell for him.
This episode is definitely the funniest this season, if not ever for Buffy. The lovesick Spike is wonderful to behold, as he goes round all the Sunnydale residents to get some sympathy. In one hilarious sequence, Spike goes to Buffy's mum, and we are led to think he is going to kill her, but he just talks through his problems with her. When Angel arrives and discovers he can't get inside (thanks to Giles' spell last season), Spike starts making to bite Joyce behind her back.
The dialogue is fantastic as well, with vampiric ways of love sounding so much simpler than ours. Deciding to win Dru back, Spike decides he'll have to use his old technique, "tie her up and torture her until she agrees to go out with me again."
In the meantime, all the kids' love lives get some shocks. Buffy realizes she and Angel can never be anything other than lovers, and they both know what will happen if they sleep together again. And while held captive, Xander and Willow give in to their feelings, only to be rescued at the least convenient time by the two people they least want to know about the event: Cordy and Oz.
Finally, when things take a sudden dramatic turn at the end, there's a superbly executed 'final reel' joke that catches the viewer completely wrong-footed. A fantastic episode that's well worth repeat viewings. Let's hope Spike comes back again soon.
*****
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