Buffy Season Eight: The Long Way Home, Part 2

Xander: "Amy. Long time, no desire whatsoever to see."

Synopsis:

Giles, somewhere, is drinking tea and lecturing Slayers on backing each other up. Cut to Buffy in Scotland, doing pretty much the same thing. Cut to Andrew, probably in southern Italy, lecturing to a group of Slayers on what was wrong with Return of the Jedi.

Xander talks with Giant Dawn as she bathes in a pond (taking up the entire pond), about the possibility that Dawn made herself gigantic in order to get Buffy's attention. "Dawn's abandonment issues have abandonment issues."

At Drextal Corp Recycling Technologies, General Voll talks with a suit about his current Amy operation against Buffy. Voll goes to bed alone and undresses, revealing the "sun half down" symbol on his chest.

Cut to Scotland. Buffy drags Xander into her bedroom and kisses him too hard, knocking his head off. (When Xander's disembodied head kept talking, I figured out it was a Buffy dream sequence.) Buffy is then eaten by a lizardy monster dragon (from part I? Maybe not). What's really happening is that Amy has unconscious Buffy tied spreadeagled to her bed and is about to stab her with a sacrificial dagger. Xander and four slayers show up and mystical protections shatter the dagger, but Buffy is still Sleeping Beauty and the only thing that can awake her is the kiss of true love.

Unconscious Buffy, in her dream, is talking with a man we can't see yet, one who calls her, "My love." Meanwhile, the living dead are attacking the castle and battling the slayers. And in the last panel, Willow returns. Thousands cheer.

Review:

I liked this one better than part one. It made me laugh out loud several times, and I liked the Sleeping Beauty thing. I'm enjoying Xander in his new role as head of everything, a lot. I'm finding the Dawn subplot fun and less annoying than any other Dawn subplot. And Giles and Willow are back. What more could I ask for?

Well, I can ask for Spike. Since I hear he's officially an Angel character now, I may have to get used to disappointment. But they need someone passionately devoted to Buffy to wake her from her spell, and who else? My second biggest wish is that I want them to figure out how to bring Tara back. I don't care how they do it. I just want it.

Finally, I'm still not sure I'm on board with this format. I'm enjoying getting some closure on my favorite series of all time, but I'm not a comic book person, and I'm not sure I want to review comics ad infinitum. I hear Angel season six is now coming, and I immediately thought, damned cool, but do I review that one, too? I review television shows, don't I?

Bits and pieces:

-- The cover of the first issue had Buffy alone, with the scythe. The cover for part two had Buffy and Xander. Xander looks cool and dashing with his black eye patch and leather jacket.

-- The background during the Giles panels had buildings and a statue that looked familiar, but I couldn't place them.

-- Buffy again singled out Leah, Satsu, and Rowena as her squad.

-- Renee is obviously in love with Xander. Seeing as his previous love interests are all dead, that's nice. For Xander, anyway. Maybe not so good for Renee.

-- Amy's frightening boyfriend is again mentioned, but not seen. I'm sure when we finally see him, it's going to be someone we know, and it'll be a shocker. It better not be Spike, that's all I have to say. That's not practical, anyway, seeing as he dissolved and ended up being mailed to Angel.

Quotes:

Buffy: "One slayer fighting alone is formidable. Two is formidabler... or... three? Mega-formidable. And after mega, it goes to mondo, then super, hyper, beaucoup d', crazy, stupid... it gets exponentially prefixy."

Andrew: "I mean, it's great that George Lucas wanted to have an African-Bespinian character in the mix, but then he shows up with a cape and the little bellbottoms ... I'll buy a race of teddy bears with unstoppable tree trunk technology any day over that outfit on a leader."

Dawn: "She just wishes I'd go away."
Xander: "She wishes you were at Berkeley getting an education in something other than stomping villagers, yeah."

General Voll: "There is no problem so big or complicated that it can't be blown up. That's not a saying we share with the public, but..."

Xander: "This isn't open-wand night in Sunnydale, sweetcheeks. You're dealing with pros."

Renee: "Please. There's no love."
Slayer: "No, right, of course. The sudden interest in comic books, James Bond movies and drywalling has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Harris."

Xander: "Who's breaching?"
Slayer: "Living dead, sir."
Xander: "Man, Amy, you're doing all the classics tonight."

Somewhat Buffy-sated but confused,

Billie
---
Billie Doux reviewed all of Buffy and Angel, so she knows the plural of apocalypse.

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