5.7 - Fool For Love

Spike recounts his tale, including his origin and his account of killing two slayers.

***

This is what I'm talking about! Doug Petrie is awesome!

Buffy gets stabbed by one of her own stakes in battle and decides she needs to know more about how her predecessor slayers have been killed.

So she goes to Spike, who has killed two himself, for a first hand account.

Now, something I may or may not have mentioned before is that I am a huge Highlander fan. Not as much the movies as the television show where they really boiled down how much it could both rock and suck to live forever.

This episode captures what I love about Highlander and transplants it into something else I love...Buffy. We get a flashback of William (Spike) in the 1880s and see him approached by Drusilla. We see his evolution, see the rivalry with Angel, see Darla, all in their heyday. I wish we could have had hours and hours of this stuff, but it's fine as it is.

This episode also gives us one of the coolest images of all of Buffy. I wish I could have found a decent jpeg of it, but I looked for a long time and nothing came up. We see Angel, Darla, Spike, and Dru in China, early 1900s, walking in slow motion out of the fire that is burning the city to the ground. It's so powerful as a visual.

Then we get to see Spike killing the slayers. The first one is a Chinese Slayer, and it's a pretty cool fight. The second one is awesome, Spike looking like Billy Idol on the Subway in New York talking out a 70s blacksploitation type slayer (and this will come back to haunt him later) and then stealing her coat, which is his trademark black leather duster.

This also seems to have been a crossover episode with Angel where we find out the history of Darla and more about her and Angel's side of this stuff, but since I am on a Buffy marathon, Angel is going to have to wait until I'm finished with the Buffster. Shouldn't be too long, though.

What really sealed the deal on this episode was at the end when Spike vows to kill Buffy, gets a shotgun and goes to her house. She is on the front steps crying because her mom is going into the hospital. In a split second, Spike goes from wanting to kill her to asking her what's wrong and what he can do to help. He's so in love with her that he's forgotten his motive. He sits next to her and gently pats her on the back. He doesn't know how to comfort someone...he's evil. But he tries, and you can't help but love the character for it.

Rating: 10/10