Guest Starring: 
     
 Tom Lenk: 
 (Andrew) 
   
 Danny Strong: 
 (Jonathan) 
   
 Adam Busch: 
 (Warren) 
   
 Elizabeth Anne Allen: 
 (Amy) 
   
 Patrice Walters: 
 (Woman) 
   
 John Patrick Clerkin: 
 (Man) 
   
 Jack Jozefson: 
 (Rusty) 
   
 Rick Garcia: 
 (Reporter) 
   
 
 
  9. Smashed.  
   
  Willow goes out for a night on the town after suffering a break up with Tara. Spike confronts Buffy about their relationship.  
   
  Great quotes:  
   
 
Buffy and Spike bring the house down.
  • Buffy: "Way to go with the keen observiness Jessica Fletcher."
  • Buffy: "You'll just have to get your rocks off fighting demons" Spike: "There are other ways." Buffy: "And to that, and extreme 'see you later'."
  • Buffy: "He [Giles] left, I was upset and depressed, ergo vulnerability and bad kissing decisions."
  • Spike to Warren: "Help me out here Spock I don't speak looser."
  • Willow: "I'm all kinds of good."
  • Buffy: "How've you been?" Amy: "Rat. You?" Buffy: "Dead." Amy: "Oh."
  
  Fantastic moments:  
   
 
Amy the human.
  • Spike seems to instantly understand how the minds of the Geek Trio work, instead of threatening them he tells them that he'll destroy their 'Boba Fett' model if they don't help him. Warren replies "You don't wanna hurt the Fett; cos man, you're not coming back from that."
  • The Scoobies are trying to do research on a diamond-eating frost demon. Xander eventually finds such a monster, in a D&D manual. Oh how they need Giles back.
  • Standing out amongst several excellent set pieces in 'Smashed' is the final scene in which Buffy and Spike destroy a house while having sex. The collapsing house serves as a metaphor for the collapse of Buffy's life and as a literal representation of the primitiveness of her liaison with Spike. The scene immediately follows Buffy's discovery that Spike has the power to hurt her without causing himself pain; Buffy's reaction is first to attack him, but then to jump in his pants. This isn't some soft-focus cut-to-the-next-morning soap opera love scene, this is as in-your-face as US network television was ever going to allow with the looks on the faces of Spike and Buffy enough to leave little to the imagination.
  
  Duff Bits:  
   
 
  • The excess of concentration on Buffy and Willow's individual pain make bit-part characters out of the rest of the Scoobies. That's a real shame.
  • I know that the geek trio are meant to be clever but how can they have enough equipment to test the functionality of Spike's chip? That's just silly.
  • Spike believes that his ability to hurt Buffy is due to her being 'wrong', as opposed to his chip malfunctioning. Good theory, later disproved by Tara's wicca powers. I'm not convinced that there ever is a satisfactory explanation for this development beyond 'plot device'.
  
  Dean's comments:  
   
 
Willow and Amy raise hell ast the bronze.
This is a gorgeous piece of television, detailing the psychological and literal collapse of the lives of two characters who have - in recent times - only become stronger. The lives of Willow and Buffy are changing, they're meeting new people, having new experiences and trying new things; some of those things are scary, scary enough to push them towards darker sides of their characters. In short, they're growing up. Buffy and Willow are forced to experience the mundane emptiness that normal life can often bring. Buffy saves someone from an ordinary mugging instead of a vampire, Willow suffers the pain of not being able to make her life better with the swipe of a wand when Tara leaves her. In response to these life-changing events Buffy sleeps with - well they don't really get much sleeping done - Spike while Willow tries to be the teenager she never was by going out on the town with Amy (both of whom look mighty fine in their clubbing gear). What is most interesting is that Buffy only finally falls for Spike when he can actually hurt her; proof that the liaison between them isn't about love or caring, but about the need for companionship and the desire to feel anything - even if that's touch of your worst nightmare. This is - after all - what Buffy was singing about a couple of episodes ago. Once you add the outlandish comic asides of the Geek Trio into the equation, this intense story turns into a multi-layered classic about the pain of being an outsider in one's own world. This show is no longer for kids (if it ever was).		 
   
 9/10 
 
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