LIFE SERIAL
Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Buffy discovers her mother's body. Willow tells Buffy she's broke. Buffy
shows concern to Giles about money problems. Warren, asks Jonathon and Andrew
if they want to take over Sunnydale. "We're like… supervillians (har
har)." Buffy and Spike sit alone on the porch and talk. Buffy rushes off
to see Angel.
Buffy walks in the front door late at night carrying a bucket of chicken for
dinner, only to find Willow, Giles, Tara, and Dawn all sitting at a freshly set
dinner table with Tara ready to serve something. But all make Buffy welcome by
asking for various chicken pieces. Dawn wants a drumstick… "I'm a breast
girl myself… but then again you already knew that" says Willow,
smiling/blushing at Tara. After an awkward silence, Dawn asks Buffy how the
meeting with Angel went. All look understandably curious, but Buffy begs the
question off, saying she'd rather not talk about it, simply saying it was
"intense." Giles tells that they have been discussing what Buffy is
going to do, what her plans might be, and Buffy starts telling of ways she's
though of to pay the pay the utility bill if she holds off paying the plumber.
Giles stutters a bit, saying that he meant what she's going to do with her
life. She admits she has no idea. She hints that she'd like to return to
school, but she missed the late enrolment "busy being dead and all…"
Willow and Tara tell her that she could attend their classes and audit them
until registration for next semester begins. Buffy says it's a good plan!
Jonathon complains that the Slayer is too smart, to powerful, and will always
be one step ahead. It is daylight and he stands in someone's driveway as Warren
rolls out from underneath a black conversion van, telling Jonathon that's why
they've devised a series of tests for her, to check her powers out. Jonathon
asks for a run-through of the van, and Warren gets all excited, opening the
interior to a whole SLEW of electronics! Most of it is surveillance equipment,
but all Jonathon wants to know is whether they'll be detected in it by Buffy
while they watch her. Warren says they're safe, there's no way she'll spot
them. Both guys walk around the other side to find Andrew spray painting a huge
mural of the Death Star on the side of the van. Warren freaks, saying they've
gotta NOT draw attention to themselves! He says that tomorrow, "the
games" begin with the Slayer!
Opening Credits: Nothing new.
Special Guest Star: Anthony Stewart Head. Guest starring: Danny Strong, Adam
Busch, Tom Lenk, Amber Benson as Tara.
Buffy walks with Willow into one of Willow's classes. Buffy sits and the
conversation on Social Construction of Reality begins. Buffy is instantly lost
while students fly conversation back and fourth with the instructor. Willow
tries to make Buffy more at ease by telling her she's no dumber than the class
or herself, then Willow proceeds to answer a very complex question with a
complex answer. Buffy looks on, confused.
Outside of class, Buffy tells Willow of her desire for a class a little easier,
like advanced walking. They meet up with Tara in the hall as a guy bumps
roughly, rudely into Buffy, planting a very small diamond-like thing on her
person. It's Warren, and he reports into a hidden microphone that the mission
is complete, the target is tagged, "the inhibitor is on."
Tara tells Buffy that they've got some time to kill before the next class, so
Tara hands Buffy a big book. (Renaissance pictures I think). When she opens the
book, Buffy hears this weird digitalized WHOOOSH sound and suddenly Tara is
sitting on a nearby bench talking about cooking and yummy faces. Buffy seems to
have spaced out for a few moments? Tara starts to tell Buffy about how she
spaced out watching Sponge Bob Squarepants when Buffy hears the WHOOOSH sound
again. Tara now appears at the end of the hall, calling for Buffy to come in to
class with her. Buffy rushes up to the door just as it closes for the beginning
of class. WHOOOSH! Buffy turns around, confused, just as the door opens and
Tara appears, asking where Buffy was, that she missed art class! Buffy says
something strange is going on "it's as if…" and she glances up at the
clock. WHOOOSH as the clock suddenly speeds forward 20 minutes. Buffy stands in
the hall talking… to herself! She runs out of the school and sees Tara walking
off in the distance. Buffy starts to call after her, but then WHOOOSH again,
with people suddenly walking by very quickly in a big blur. Buffy stands as
people start to blur very fast back and forth by her, then she gets knocked to
the ground and confused. Time is advancing at a rapid rate as Buffy crawls on
the ground, getting hit here and there, disoriented, to a nearby table and
crawls under it. Underneath, she hears some sort of noise (couldn't tell if she
was picking out a swirling moaning noise or this light chirping noise). She
says it's something on her and takes off her jacket (to reveal this real icky
looking flowered girdle-type thing.). She finds the little diamond-thing on her
jacket and puts it in her hand. Time still whizzes by.
The three geeks in the van watch her on a monitor, saying, "she's found
it! She's found it!" We see Buffy on a monitor, looking at… her hand! (a
hidden camera in such a small item?). One of them gets the "self
destruct" mechanism ready. As Buffy goes to nudge the diamond-like object
again with her finger, Warren hits a big red Self Destruct button in the van
and PAF! The diamond-like thing disappears in Buffy's hand. Time instantly
returns to normal.
In the Van, Warren asks Jonathon and Andrew to "score" him. They give
him 50 points for ingenuity, 30 points for actual contact… they give him an
averaged score of 7, good for 140 points, giving him a grand total of… 220.
Warren then challenges them both to "Beat that!"
Commercial Break: At Burger King, the Whopper is King!
A hard-hat wearing Buffy walks with a hard-hat wearing Xander at his job's
construction site. Xander says he had to pull in a few favors to get her a try
out on the crew. He then asks if Giles had any idea about the time
displacement, but Buffy says no, that he thought it was maybe stress related,
that she might be just blacking out, but he was still checking it out. She does
mention the thing on her sweater and how it disappeared. "Maybe it was
lint… evil lint." Xander gives her a good bit of advice by saying that
when they meet Tony the foreman, "you might wanna leave stuff out like…
blacking out and evil lint."
An enthusiastic Buffy is introduced to Tony, but Tony isn't too pleased at
having to "babysit" her. "Princess's" first job is to move
some very heavy beams, which she picks up easily (of course). She's very
talkative and hard working, to which a co-worker tells her to slow down, they
get paid by the hour! Meanwhile, outside in the van, Warren and Jonathon spy on
her (and argue about which direction "Twelve O'clock" really is) then
tell Andrew that it's his turn… "you're up." Andrew sits in the back
of the van, crosslegged, and starts playing some Pan-pipes.
While getting some water from a cooler, Buffy looks up, hearing some flute-like
music in the distance. Just then, Tony walks up and startles Buffy. He smirks,
asking if she's jumpy, to which Buffy GRABS him and throws him out of the way…
a demon is behind him! Tony of course goes unconscious as two more demons
appear (typical demon-y looking, with weird heads, head-tentacles, and ragged
clothing). The fight commences! Lots of kicking, throwing, and punching… and
wrecking of the construction site walls and such. During the fight, two workers
are thrown aside by the demon, obviously seeing what's going on. Buffy picks up
a shovel and stabs a demon with it. The demon "melts" into
nothingness. Second demon is dispatched by a hanging chain around the throat,
third gets trapped under a hydraulic lift's gears.
Warren looks on through binoculars from the van, which sits across the street.
Andrew tries to wrestle the binoculars away, saying it's his turn! Andrew falls
across the Van horn and the theme from Star Wars is suddenly trumpeting from
the Van! Buffy hears the odd car-horn and looks momentarily, spying the van
across the street as all three geeks dive for cover in the back. Warren and Jonathon
look pissed at Andrew… "Aww… all you said was lose the mural!"
Xander walks in on Buffy and sees the mess, the two shaken workers, and a newly
conscious Tony. Xander asks what happened, Tony says that Buffy went berserk
and attacked him. Buffy takes Xander aside and tells of the three demons that
attacked, but Xander says "no, not at my job. That's your job!"
"I can't help where the forces of darkness choose to attack me,
Xander." she counters. Xander starts going off on her, saying look at the
mess and damage that was caused. Buffy looks for proof, but points out that the
demons melted. Then she brings up that the two workers saw the whole thing! One
of them denies what she's saying, claiming that it's probably "that time
of the month." Buffy barges off, pissed.
Xander walks off the site with Buffy, saying that she'd better get back to the
Magic Box right away and get to working with Giles on this right away.
"You're firing me, aren't you?" Buffy asks. "Big time."
Xander offers help to go through mug shots after work.
Commercial Break: Windex makes it SHINE!
At the Magic Box, Buffy walks with Anya, saying that she's always wanted to
work retail (yeah, right). Buffy notices Giles has a large number of books for
research to go through, saying that the time displacement and the demons may
not have any connection and it might take a while. Anya then begins to explain
how to enter sales into a ledger, and Giles chimes in with some more
instructions. All of this goes on as the camera pans around to a skull that
sits on a shelf… there's another camera inside!
From the van, the three geeks watch the dullness. They wonder what Buffy
actually does… "She's a student, she's a construction worker, and now
she's some kind of… selling-stuff lady?" Andrew asks? "She's
completely without focus" says Warren. Jonathon says he's ready from the
back of the van and the three gather in a spell circle. Jonathon says they have
to hold hands, to which Andrew goes "eeewww." Warren picks up a large
object and Jonathon yells "Stop touching my magic bone!" Warren and
Andrew giggle as the three start a spell. "it's in Latin, so don't laugh…
it's supposed to sound like this." The spell is cast and white smoke
starts BILLOWING out of the bone, filling the van.
Inside the Magic Box, we see a woman walking in the door (with the mysterious
black van billowing smoke out the back in the background). Giles and Buffy
notice the new customer and Giles cleans his glasses as he offers some helpful
advice on sales, saying he always thought it better to imagine he was in the
library instead of a store, to concentrate on the service rather than the sale.
Buffy says she'll have to find her own style, but Giles is only half with her
and he nods at… whatever she just said. Anya comes up to Buffy and notices the
woman "That woman… go sell her something!" Buffy starts off towards
the woman but is interrupted by a man looking at a display of candles. He asks
which candle creates a more romantic atmosphere. She sniffs one: Lemon
Seduction. She sniffs another: Essence of Slug. She hands the Lemon Seduction
candle to the customer and continues on to the woman, who is looking for a
Mummy hand. Buffy cracks a bad joke, then says she saw one downstairs and goes
to fetch it.
Downstairs, Buffy sees many rare ingredients and objects. She finds the ancient
Mummy hand sitting on a crate, and it instantly goes to grab for her throat!
She wrestles it down onto the crate again and stabs it with an ornate dagger.
Back upstairs, Buffy presents the Mummy hand, still impaled on the dagger.
"… and you get the Dagger of Lux for free!" The woman declines the
sale, saying it's dead, the power is gone…
Giles and Buffy notice the new customer and Giles offers some helpful advice on
sales… again! Wait! Buffy says "what? Huh?" He's saying the exact
same thing, and even ignores her response in the same way!
In the van, Warren says "oh, oh dude, you did it! She's looping!" Jonathon
says that he planted a spell that will loop her with a task that will resist
solving… thus, the sale of the mummy hand.
Anya walks up to Buffy, Buffy walks into male candle looking customer, then up
to mummy-hand seeking woman. Buffy hesitates, knowing what happened the first
time.
The three geeks sense that Buffy already may know what is happening and how to
break the spell by making the sale. They compare her situation to an old Star
Trek Next Generation episode "or Mulder in the X-files episode where the
bank kept blowing up?" Warren chimes in. "Scully wants me so
bad." Andrew says… Warren and Jonathon look at him weird.
Buffy goes downstairs and with dagger in one hand, tongs in the other, she
approaches the finger-strumming hand… Buffy presents a bag to the woman who
looks in it in disgust. "fingers sold separately."
Buffy hears the door bell chime. The customer walks in again. Anya approaches
Buffy, asking where Buffy's going? Buffy tells her the woman needs a mummy
hand, which confuses Anya as to how she knows… Giles approaches and starts his
offer of helpful advice. Buffy counters with "YES! And then I'm going to
marry Bob Dole and raise penguins in Guam!" Giles walks off, ignoring her
again. She approaches the woman, saying "mummy hand, right? You've got it
lady!" while simply "handing" the Lemon Seduction Candle to the
gentleman.
Cut to scene of Buffy wrestling the hand away from gripping the woman's throat.
Buffy turns to hear the door chime again. The same customer! Buffy gets pissed,
ignoring the candle man and barges up to the door and walks out…
… and back into the Magic Box's rear entrance! Both customers, as well as Giles
and Anya, look on confused.
Buffy sighs as she looks down at the mummy hand that threatens her with the
tongs.
Buffy hears the door chime again, walks up to it, and rips it off the door
frame, smiling.
Buffy walks by the candle man, tossing him a slug candle. "You like slug?
Go with Slug! She ain’t gonna sleep with you anyways!"
Warren and Andrew joke in the van, looking at Buffy on a monitor. "This
hand has ceased to be! It is an ex-mummy hand!" (little Monty Python humor
there, folks…)
Giles starts to clean his glasses and give his helpful advice as Buffy grabs
his glasses and stomps them into the ground. Buffy hears the door chime again
and sees the woman. She rushes the customer, saying she's to blame!
Door chime…
Buffy turns from Giles and Anya…
Door chime…
Candle guy gets Candle thrown in his gut…
Door chime…
Buffy stands crying while Giles and Anya look on…
Door chime…
Buffy confronts the woman, saying that she knows they promised her a mummy
hand, but she can't get it… it's defective. Buffy then gets an idea…
"There's no way I can get… that hand, but I can Special order one!"
Buffy rings up the woman at the register "Thank you for shopping at The
Magic Box!"
The three geeks high five each other and go to tally their scores. Warren had
the 220, Andrew got bonus points for getting Buffy fired, but Jonathon says it
should be based on how long it took Buffy to figure out each problem. She spent
the longest on this problem, but Andrew points out that from Mr. Giles'
perspective, it was very short. Wondering what to do, Warren says, "it's
not over…"
Giles congratulates Buffy on her first sale, but Anya quickly notices that she
didn't charge for delivery, and says they can just take that out of her pay!
Buffy slaps her "hello my name is Buffy" nameplate on the counter and
walks out.
Commercial Break: Next on America's funniest Police Chases…
In Spike's Crypt, she sits on a coffin top drinking vodka with Spike! She
complains about her life and how someone else seems to be screwing it up
further by doing these little "things." She says Giles is
"working" on it, but Spike tells her that's not the way to get things
done. Spike tells Buffy she's a creature of the Darkness, like him, and she
should try on his world… and maybe it will get them the info they need.
Spike walks into a bar with a very tipsy Buffy and asks for the back room
action while Buffy grabs a huge bottle of scotch and starts drinking from it.
Spike sits down to a poker game in a back room with three other demons (after
throwing a fourth out). Buffy wonders why he's gonna play cards. Spike says
that he can get more info out of them like this than beating it out of them.
Buffy plops down in a corner chair with her bottle of scotch as one of the
demons says "antie up!" The demons all reach down by their sides and
place small, cute, fuzzy kittens in a basket in the center of the table.
"You play for kittens?" Buffy says, a little shocked, but more just…
drunk.
The three geeks drive in the van, looking for Buffy's next location. They
compare themselves to real supervillians like Dr. No in James Bond before all
three start arguing who was a better James Bond: Roger Moore, Sean Connery, or
Timothy Dalton.
Spike lays down a straight flush as the other three demons moan. Spike starts
putting all the kittens in a larger basket as the other demons accuse Spike of
cheating! "Cheat? I cheat? He's the one who's got X-ray vision."
Spike points to one of the demons. Another stands up and says he's not
cheating, but all notice an Ace sticking out from a "fold" of skin in
his arm. The three say that Spike has caused enough trouble and tell him to get
out, leaving his winnings. Spike says that they didn't count on he and the
Slayer showing up (to which Buffy gives an appropriately timed
"hic"). "I'm not going to get into a bar fight! I'll beat um up
for information, sure, but not to defend your right to gamble for kittens,
which, by the way is stupid currency!" Buffy jumps up and turns the basket
upside down, letting all the kittens scamper around.
Buffy is walking out of the bar as Spike stops her, asking what's wrong. She
complains, saying he was gonna use roughness to get the info and that didn't
work, then she complains about "stupid Buffy, too dumb for college… freak
Buffy, too strong for construction work… and my job at the magic box… I was
bored to tears even before the hour that would never end! And now the only
person I can stand to be around is a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten
poker!" She storms out, with Spike in tow…
In the van, the three continue the argument over which Bond movie was better
(and Warren makes some good points for Moonraker being very stupid!).
Spike catches up with Buffy in the back alley as she spies the black van off in
the distance and starts slowly towards it.
The three geeks are now physically wrestling over the Bond argument when they
notice Buffy walking closer on one of the monitors! "Jonathon… grab your
magic Bone!" Warren says, then he breaks out laughing…
Buffy approaches the van just as a "demon" jumps out from behind it!
It is… large and cartoonish, with big wings and huge horns and very masculine
in appearance. "Ah, you have discovered me! But do not try to defeat me,
for I have been testing you and have discovered your weaknesses!" He
bellows as the van drives off behind him! Buffy punches at him (she's still
drunk) then kicks him in the privates, and he falls to the ground immediately
in pain. She stumbles to the ground herself. Spike helps her up as the demon
"calls on the misty portal to my demon dimension" and throws
something to the ground that causes a lot of smoke to rise up. We see him very
obviously run off behind the smoke, but Spike and Buffy think he's disappeared.
At the van, the demon runs up and complains that she hit him all over. He
undoes a spell and… the demon shrinks into Jonathon who crawls into the back of
the van, in only his shorts and in a lot of pain. Warren now says that they
tested the Slayer and they know her strengths and weaknesses, her speed and
such, and they survived! "Plus, look what Warren and me found as we drove
away!" Andrew looks at a monitor… all three chant in unison "Free
Cable Porn…"
A hung over Buffy comes tentatively from her bathroom door as Giles hands her a
glass of water. Giles apologises for not finding anything on the demon. Buffy
complains that she screwed up, but Giles says that she's not at fault, that some
unknown force is testing her. Buffy starts laying the pity trip on herself when
Giles presents her with a check. She refuses the money, but as Giles starts to
take the check, she says, "No, I was just being polite!" She smiles
at Giles, saying that it's a little like having Mom back… Buffy gives him a
heartfelt thank you and goes to show the check to Dawn to cheer her up. Buffy
turns to tell Giles the check… and him, it "makes me feel safe… knowing
you're always going to be here." She turns and walks out as Giles smiles
uncomfortably.
Grrr… Arrrg…
Written by Leoff, Courtesy The Buffy
Cross and Stake