Guest Starring:           Tom Lenk:     (Andrew)           Danny Strong:     (Jonathan)           Adam Busch:     (Warren)           Elizabeth Anne Allen:     (Amy)           Jeff Kober:     (Rack)           Fleming Brooks:     (Mandraz)

10. Wrecked.           Buffy and Willow are forced to deal with the fallout from yesterday's events. Amy takes Willow to see a powerful dark warlock.           Great quotes:           Willow trips out on magic. Buffy: (disgusted) "Last night was the most perverse, degrading night of my life." Spike: (smug) "Yeah, me too." Spike: "I may be dirt, but you're the one who likes to roll in it slayer." Anya discusses wedding plans with Xander: "At least I'm not asking you to perform he groom's rite of self-flagellation." Willow: "I don't mean to vibe at you."     Fantastic moments:           There's a wonderful contrast between Buffy's and Spike's reactions to waking up naked, together and in a destroyed house. Spike leisurely lounges about naked grinning like a Cheshire cat while Buffy franticly searches for her clothes in order to get away as quickly as possible. He taunts her, telling her that she should stay and that she's never had it so good. Despite her obvious disgust, Buffy permits most of his sexual advances before threatening him with death if he ever tells anyone what happened. Rack - the dark warlock who runs a dark magic junkie's den - is very scary and wonderfully played by Jeff Kober. He sends Willow and Amy on an LSD trip of a magical binge where they experience shifting time, space, colour and reality. The scars of the aftermath of a drug-induced experience are all too plain to see when Willow showers the next day and is wracked by uncontrollable shaking. Willow, in pursuit of another magic fix, puts Dawn in great danger by taking her to Rack's place. Willow crashes Like, whoa dude! a car and is given the rollocking of a lifetime by Buffy as she breaks down into tears over what she has become. If there's one thing Alyson Hannigan's really good at, it's getting sympathy from the audience by crying on demand and making it look genuine.     Duff Bits:           Hasn't Willow ever played Dungeons and Dragons? Doesn't she realise that a wizard has to rest in order to regain used spells? She's obviously not quite the geek we all thought.     Dean's comments:           The morning after the night before. So we approach the mid-point of the season without a big bad, or at least no big bad in the conventional sense, and with an episode that follows directly from the events of 'Smashed'. The writers of BtVS took a dangerous and exciting path in the sixth season, their show started to become less about the science fiction and more about the emotions and lives of the characters. Therefore the season's big bad is nothing more than the conflict of emotions that the characters feel as they try to get on with their lives. Alyson Hannigan deserves all the plaudits for her acting in 'Wrecked', she plays Willow as a junkie, a woman addicted to the casting of spells as a crack-head is to their next fix. Amy's description of using powerful magic is a description of drug use, Rack's place is a junkie's den, Willow's post-magic shakes are identical to someone 'coming down'. This blatant metaphor for the danger of substance abuse works very well, as does the horror and shame that Willow experiences as she realises that she has put her loved ones in danger in order to feed her addiction. In the final scenes no one is scared of the monster from which Willow and Dawn run, instead we Rack. fear Willow's power and how her recklessness is likely to endanger Dawn. In addition to Willow's 'addiction' there is the morning-after-the-night-before for Buffy, a woman who is disgusted by her liaison with Spike. By the end of the episode both women convince each other that they've given up their bad habits for good, no one is convinced though.           9/10

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