So. Just dropping by for some quality time with Mr. Gordo?

season two  >  what's my line part one

It's Career Week at Sunnydale High, and we all know what that means! It means multiple-guess tests that decide your future!  Shrubbery! Mysterious dialogue along the lines of "It's a whole week of "What's my line" and I don't get to play"! (For the record, I never really got that line.  What the bejeezus does an obscure British comedy show have to do with career week? Was Buffy looking forward to a long, fulfilling career of talking out of her ass?  And now, because of her sacred duties, it can never be? Damn you, sacred calling!  Daaaaaaaaaaamn you!) [That's Who's Line Is It Anyway, Silly. What's My Line was that game show back in the 50's where a panel of celebrities tried to guess who really had the job of the day. Or something. You would know this if you obsessively watched the Game Show Network like a normal person does. -SP] Willow being all geekery! Xander being all blustery! And last, but certainly not least, and keeping with the season's theme, cranky, bitter Buffy!

That's right, folks, she's bitter. She's mad that no matter how much she wants to work with shrubbery or be Dorothy Hammill it's never going to happen, not as long as she's the Slayer. She's peeved that her career test chose for her a life of polyester, donuts and brutality instead of one involving knee high boots, mini skirts and big hair. [Wait a second... but that's what she gets with her life as a Slayer! -SP] And this upsets her. Greatly.  Life isn't fair, ya know?  On top of all this, Giles is getting on her back about her less-than-spectacular slaying techniques, and he just doesn't understand the pain of being a teen. It's all very horrid and trying for her, but at least her mother is out of the house.  This enables her pedophile of a boyfriend to sneak on in and molest Mr. Gordo before the sappy music is cued and Buffy professes her need for a normal life with her freaky undead boyfriend.

Really. When you stop to think about it, it's all extremely odd.

But I digress.

Okay then. Just a regular kid and her cradle-robbing, creature-of-the-night boyfriend.

The long and the short of it goes a little something like this:  Snyder, still awaiting his surgery to remove the emu from his ass, forces Buffy to participate in Career Week, oblivious to her pain and seemingly not caring that she could better spend her time hunting down the order of Taraka.

What, you ask? Taraka. A society of assassins, some human, some not, though all appear to be lame, whose members wear matching rings and espouse the credo "Sow discord and kill the unwary" (which kind of makes them wussy, by assassin standards.  The unwary?  What, you can't handle a challenge?).  These charming sowers of discord are hired by Spike to keep the Slayer busy and/or dead while he performs some perfunctorily cheesy ritual to heal his delightfully loopy Drusilla of the mysterious mystical ailment a mortal mob of Prague-ians put upon her.   

So, anyway, Taraka is on the case.  Three assassins arrive, one sadly by bus (though, for a bit of fun, check out the extra acting her heart out as what seems to be a young lady taking leave of a mother.  She appears to be crying.  It's an emmy clip, if ever I've seen one.)  The second is a make-up salesman who kills Buffy's neighbor and sets up camp.  There's a message in that one, yes indeedy.  The third person to arrive is not actually the assassin as ME would have us believe, but rather Kendra.  And we'll get to her and her "very specific dialect from a tiny town in Jamaica" accent later.  

My Dorothy Hamill phase. My room in L.A. was this major shrine - Dorothy posters, Dorothy dolls. I even got the Dorothy haircut.

In the midst of all this wackiness we, the viewers, are treated to a scene of spectacular horror.  Buffy, in an alarming effort to be a "normal" girl that actually comes off more frightening and oddly reminiscent of '70's movies that involved ice skates, glides across the ice as she waits for Angel to arrive.  I'd like to know how handy that undead bastard is on ice, since I'm sure it was a rather popular sport in Ireland in the late 1800's, but sadly we never find out.  For first we must watch Buffy twirl.  And twirl some more.  And  then there's a bit more twirling.  It is quite possibly the same twirl cleverly inserted a hundred times. Seriously.  It's hard to watch.  And then, when you think you can't possibly handle it one more fucking time, you get a lovely shot of someone who is very much not SMG skating along, and then fwap.  Our heroine is attacked by the Tarakan fond of public transportation and Angel rather "fortuitously" arrives to help her.

* " "'s denote the use of sarcastic quote marks.   

The bad guy is decidedly non-bad ass and it's rather anti-climatic, so we'll just say that Buffy slices his throat open with her ice skating blade, then has a make-out victory session with Angel in vamp mode, while Kendra watches.  

And then, you know, everyone wigs out.  Angel sees the ring and wigs out.  Giles hears about the ring and wigs out.  Buffy sees Angel and Giles wigging out and wigs out.  Xander makes poorly timed jokes.  All because the assassins decided to announce their presence by wearing their fraternity rings.  Dumbasses. Buffy, mid-wig, takes off at what appears to be a leisurely stroll through the school hallways, but must in fact be a super-fast stroll shot in slow motion, because Xander reports back that he couldn't find her anywhere.  

Paranoia, stress, and a complete lack of classes drive Buffy to Angel's house in the flannel of disillusionment. Angel, however, is not there as he went to our favorite snitch Willy for some information. Karma kicks Angel's ass as he is punished for threatening Willy by having his ass kicked by Kendra.  She locks him in the flimsiest cage this side of Sunnydale High's Library's cage, and padlocks it shut with what seems to be a child's bike lock. Angel, who has in the past leapt tall buildings in a single bound, is inexplicably trapped.  And guess what?  The sun's a risin'!  Let's all forget, of course, that the sun should be extremely high in the sky right now, considering everyone else is at school, and just give in to the drama of Kendra saying "the sun's a comin'!"   

Buffy, stupidly curled up in the bed of a demon, is awoken by an axe coming at her head.  Enter Kendra.  Begin chick fight.  Watch the table disappear and reappear.  Admire the lower back muscles on Kendra's stunt double.  And pretend to be surprised and enraged all over again as the fight ends and Kendra utters those infuriating words: "I am Kendra, the vampire slayer."