It's Oz's time of the month, which means he has to spend three consecutive
nights locked in the book cage of the library while someone watches over him.
After Xander comes in to relieve Willow of her post, he lies down on the table
and falls asleep. At the cemetery, Buffy patrols for vampires with Faith. Neither
of them are close enough to the woods to detect a chase, which ends brutally
for a boy named Jeff Orkin.
The next morning, Buffy, Willow, and Oz meet up with Scott and two of his
friends: Pete and Debbie. Oz offers his old biology notes to Debbie, so they
plan to meet up later. Buffy then heads off for her required therapy appointment
with the counselor while Willow and Oz go to the library. To both Oz and
Willow's dismay, Giles and Xander inform them of the murder that occurred the
previous night. The fact that Xander slept through most of the night and the
window inside the caged area is open does not bode well for Oz. Meanwhile,
Buffy meets her counselor, Mr. Platt. While she's hesitant to discuss the full
details of her reasons for running away, Buffy does come to respect Mr. Platt's
helpful manner. After school, Buffy meets the others in the library and learns
that Oz may have killed someone while he was a werewolf. Giles tells Willow,
Xander, and Cordelia to go to the morgue and inspect Jeff's corpse, while Buffy
must be on the look-out for the killer if it isn't Oz. He'll have Faith watch over Oz
that night. At the morgue, Willow collects evidence which clearly indicates that
Jeff was mauled by a savage animal. She then passes out due to the realization
that Oz is the most likely suspect.
Outside, Buffy encounters someone running
wild through the woods. To her surprise, that someone is Angel. However, he's
not exactly in his right mind, and he immediately attacks Buffy. They fight for a
while before Buffy finally knocks him out. She then takes him to Spike and
Dru's mansion, where she uses some of Dru's old chains to lock Angel up and
keep him from escaping out into the woods. Unable to communicate with
Angel, Buffy notices the burnt pattern on the floor that indicates the spot where
Angel landed at the end of his return trip from Hell. Unable to spend the rest of
the night at home, Buffy goes to the library and takes over for Faith.
Giles finds Buffy asleep in one of the library chairs the next morning. He
notices the books she's been reading, which deal with demon dimensions and
Acathla. After Buffy wakes up, she asks Giles if Angel could ever return from
Hell, and if so, what would he be like. Buffy would rather not tell Giles right away
that she found Angel. While Giles doubts the possibilty of Angel's return, he
goes on to say that because time moves much faster in the other dimension,
Angel would have been trapped there for an incredibly long time. After so many
years of torture, he couldn't possibly be the same person mentally that he once
was.
Later, at lunchtime, Buffy joins Scott, Pete, and Debbie at their table.
Unable to straighten out her feelings, Buffy leaves shortly and goes to the
mansion. As soon as she rests a hand on Angel's shoulder, he goes berserk.
Shaken by how much he's changed, Buffy heads back to Sunnydale High.
Inside, Buffy goes to Mr. Platt's office and confesses that she truly needs help
with all that's going on in her life. Unfortunately, she won't get any help from Mr.
Platt, whom she soon discovers has been murdered, most likely by the same
attacker that killed Jeff Orkin.
After school, Pete pulls Debbie into the
maintenance room to make out for a while. Inside, he notices that a jar once
containing a glowing green formula is now virtually empty. Debbie tries to deny
doing anything with it, but she soon admits that she got rid of it in order to help
Pete get better. However, Pete convulses and transforms into a hideous,
monstrous form of himself, proving to Debbie that he doesn't need the formula
anymore. During this phase, Pete strikes Debbie in the face, knocking her to the
ground. Pete then regains control of himself and changes back to his normal
self before joining Debbie on the floor. Despite being struck by her boyfriend
turned monster, Debbie has no problem excusing Pete's actions. Afterwards,
Debbie meets Oz by the fountain to get his biology notes. Noticing the bruise
on her eye, Oz stops Debbie from leaving right away by lightly grabbing her
shoulder and asking if she's okay. From a distance, Pete watches this whole
conversation.
With evidence indicating that Mr. Platt was killed during the day, Oz is off the
hook. In the library, the group draws a connection between the two victims and
Debbie. Oz tells the others about Debbie's bruised eye, which doesn't quite
follow with the suddenness of Mr. Platt's death. This leads them to suspect
Pete, both for the two murders and for striking Debbie. While Oz locks himself
in the cage for the third and final night of the month, Buffy and Willow confront
Debbie. Unfortunately, Debbie refuses to help them stop Pete. During the
conversation, Angel breaks his chains free of the mansion wall and escapes.
Buffy and Willow have no idea that Pete is in the library at that very moment,
ready to kill Oz for touching Debbie. Pete changes into his monster form and
rips the door off the cage. After throwing Oz around the library for a little while,
the sun finally sets and the moon shines, allowing Oz to turn the tables on Pete.
In his werewolf form, Oz is an even match for Pete's ferocity. The sounds of
their battle alerts the others to the library. Buffy tries to knock them out with the
dart gun, but shoots Giles instead when Debbie pushes the gun off to the side
just as Buffy pulls the trigger. While the tranquilizer dart takes Giles out of the
action, Oz and Pete break apart and escape into the school hallways. Willow
and Faith take down Oz with the dart gun. Buffy chases Pete to the
maintenance room, where she finds Debbie dead on the floor, murdered by
Pete. Another fight ensues. Just as it appears that Buffy's about to lose the
fight, Angel arrives and kills Pete. To Buffy's suprise, Angel manages to say her
name before falling to his knees and embracing her.
The next day, Buffy can't find the words to console Scott, who lost two of
his best friends without ever knowing the truth about what really happened.
Later that night, Buffy watches Angel as he sleeps on the floor of the mansion.
He constantly flinches and trembles, apparently suffering from nightmares of
his time in Hell.
Flubs
When Oz transforms into wolf form right in front of Pete, he doesn't remove his
own clothes first. During the transformation, we do not hear any sound effects
of Oz's clothes being ripped apart. When we see a full-body shot of Wolf Oz, his
clothes are gone.
While Cordy says the line, "Great. Now I'm gonna' be stuck with serious
thoughts all day," she moves off to the right of the screen, revealing Xander
right behind her. During this close-up shot, the strap of Xander's bag is
covering the right side of his collar. In the very next shot, that strap is suddenly
under his collar.