Guest Starring:           Marc Blucas:     (Riley)           Ivana Milicevic:     (Sam)           Ryan Raddatz:     (Todd)           Adam Paul:     (Skanky Vamp)

15. As you were.           Riley is back in town, and he's married.           Great quotes:           Riley and the wife. Anya: "I think we died in this car on the way to the airport and now we're in hell." Sam: "You're like Santa Claus or Buddha or something." Buffy: "Fat and jolly?" Buffy: "Riley... It's you." Riley: "It's me." Buffy: "You're here" Riley: "I know." Buffy: "And... were you always this tall?" Buffy: "Who's hungry? We got..." Dawn: "... ice cubes." Buffy: "All you can eat." Xander: "I hate my whole family, that's why I'm marrying you [Anya], to start a new family. Have children. Make them hate us. Then one day they'll get married and we'll sleep on their couch. It's the circle of life." Riley: "We can do this the hard way or we can do this the fatal way."     Fantastic moments:           Willow on Sam: "What a bitch!" Willow offers to hate Sam for Buffy even if she is far too nice for Buffy to feel that she can do it herself "Just so you know, I'm prepared to hate this woman in any way you want.... please, let me carry the hate for both of us." By the end of the episode though, Sam has endeared herself to Willow by understanding her addictive plight and exchanging email addresses. Willow's parting words to Buffy on Sam: "What a Bitch." Brilliant. Buffy officially breaks off her relationship with Spike. She walks straight out of Riley's departure into Spike's crypt and admits to herself that she's simply been using him to offload her emotions and that she could never love him. She finally calls him William and as she turns and walks away from him she goes into a bright light, a metaphor for the lifting of a great pressure on her shoulders. The exposition scene in Buffy's house - in which Riley outlines the 'Suvoutle' demon - is actually refreshing and funny. Since Giles left it has been a long time since we had anything like that on the series. It gives Sam the opportunity to endear herself to the Scoobies while Willow does her best to glower at her disapprovingly.     Duff Bits:           There's a rare post-production slip in the episode. After Sam is introduced and Buffy makes a faux pas by killing the Suvoulte demon, Sam says, "We better regroup." The problem is that her lips don't move. I'm surprised they didn't have a better take of that scene to use. Spike was 'The Doctor' then? That's just silly.     Dean's comments:           Wedding plans continue at full pace. What a wonderful episode to have in the middle of this ever depressing sixth season. The show opens with Buffy in the Double Meat Palace, she's depressed, struggling to work, to live, to earn money. Dawn is trying to be a teenager, Buffy is trying to shrug off the fading dreams of childhood, Xander is trying to be responsible and Willow is trying to go cold turkey. In short; life is hard. Then bam! Riley comes back into their lives and suddenly everyone's enjoying life again, the weight of impending adulthood and responsibility is lifted and the world is great. This is just what the season needed, a light-hearted episode in which the Scoobies can do what they do best (make the occasional quip), Spike does what he does best (be bad for no apparent or coherent reason) and Buffy does what we fell in love with her 6 years ago for doing (beating the bad guys while being way cool). For 25 minutes in 'As you were' everything is indeed 'as you were', BtVS goes back to its roots, back to the old school where life was easy. Kill the demon; solve the mystery, lust over a tall dark unattainable demon-fighting hunk while all the time Xander is worried about girls and Willow is insecure yet chipper. A wonderful beacon of light in a dark season, 'As you were' is brilliant in its simplicity and charm.           9/10

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