Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"Checkpoint"

Airdate: January 26, 2000

Sure, he usually just gets hit over the head, but sometimes Giles kicks ass. Plus, he's totally sexy.

I've always had a thing about authority figures. When I was a kid, I would deliberately step out onto the curb, even though the lollipop lady told me not to. I wasn't gonna be pushed around by someone wearing PVC in those days. (Though now, it's an entirely different story.) Which is why, watching this episode, I couldn't help but squirm like I was back in Juvie (reality note: I was never in Juvie), getting raked over the coals for little things like using my compass as a weapon (reality note: I would never do that. Steel rulers are much more effective).

'Cause this is an episode all about who's the boss, who's in charge, and who's coming to dinner. (Tony Danza, Scott Baio and Sidney Poitier, respectively.) Giles adorably thinks it's him. Glory's pretty damn convinced it's her. Buffy's history professor -- a dunce who doesn't realize that Rasputin was a vampire -- has delusions of academic superiority, and of course, Spike always has to be the big man on something.

But the main winners in the wrong stakes are the Watcher's Council. Man, do they suck, them and their beady little eyes, their smarmy, self-satisfied attitudes, their creepy English-ness. Oh, but that Buffy. She showed them. She showed them all. It was very cool.

As you will no doubt recall, Giles last episode entreated the aid of the Council in the researching of Glory. Glory, bad hair, bad clothes, bad demon Glory, about whom our Scooby Gang appear to know nothing, except for the above mentioned.

It turns out he was right to go to them (sorry, Giles, however could I doubt you?), since it seems they do know Glory stuff, and are more than willing to share. So eager are they to impart of their wisdom that they leave their Council Chambers (I'm assuming they have Chambers -- or possibly a Castle), in order to fill the Sunnydale-bound in.

Once Buffy passes their tests, of course.

So, they question her methods, her training, and her friends. (Including Spike, if you can believe it, and the Watcher chick has a crush on him... it's pretty funny.) They shut the Magic Box, threaten to deport Giles, and seem to imply all kinds of other sinister beaurocratic things like IRS audits, and enrolling Buffy's name on the Reader's Digest mailing list. They just have that kind of power.

Glory, meanwhile, has one of her Dark Crystal-refugee minions go and tell Intern Ben that Buffy is the Slayer, in order for him to reveal her whereabouts. (Yeah, 'cause none of the demons or vampires in town could have revealed that top secret piece of information.) He says no, like a good little cute guy... go you Intern Ben! And go to a hairdresser, also. Please.

Despite this refusal, Glory goes over to Buffy's house for a little visit, meets Dawn without even recognizing her in all her Keyness, and just kinda cracks wise and threats death. As a result, the most illogical -- and yet potentially interesting -- plot development occurs.

Somebody said that magic word again... (It's "Spike", in case you were wondering.)

Buffy takes her Mom and Dawn to Spike, for safekeeping? "You're the only one strong enough to protect them," she says. Yeah, from anything except humans. I can't figure out if this was done to a) advance the Buffy-knows-Spike-loves-her plot, b) show Spike in his increasingly humanized light or c) allow for some more Spike and Joyce bonding, in the "little marshmallows" vein. It makes no sense at all, really, but what does that matter, when it's just so... well... sweet? (I have to apologize, here, to regular reviewer Lisa Kincaid, whose long-held conviction that Buffy and Spike are a match made in Sunnydale has ever been a source of no little mocking to me. 'Cause... I almost see it now, bandwagon-jumper that I am.)

Leaving her family watching Passions in Spike's crypt (Timmy's a doll?), Buffy then heads over the Magic Box for more tests, getting waylaid by a couple of Knights of Byzantium (sounds like a fantasy novel I'd probably buy). The cute one in the hessian reveals that his brethren will keep on coming for her, Order of Taraka-style, while she protects The Key. (That Dawn sure is one popular little figment of everyone's fake memories.) Threats of thousand aside, Buffy comes out of the altercation victorious: she even gets a nifty silver sword out of the deal.

And then she goes on to kick some Watcher asses, but this time with words instead of her allegedly dubious fighting style and a few unnecessary backflips. She makes her old friend Quentin "Helpless" Travers submit to her terms, quit it with the testing, make Giles official again, and give up what he knows about Glory.

And what he knows about Glory is nobody's business but those who have seen the episode. But I can tell ya... it's pretty exciting.

-- Rachel Hyland

Buffy the Vampire Slayer airs at 8/7c, Tuesdays on the WB.

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