Guest Starring:           Danny Strong:     (Jonathan)           Adam Busch :     (Warren)           Tom Lenk:     (Andrew)           Kali Rocha:     (Halfrek)           Edie Caggiano:     (Mother)

18. Entropy.           Anya returns after being jilted by Xander, intent on revenge.           Great quotes:           Anya and Spike... Willow: "It's between a hitch and a kink with a side of a twinge." Anya to Willow and Tara: "You're lesbians, so the hating of men will come in handy. Let's talk about Xander." Buffy: "Whoa. Guys? There have only been four. Three! Three guys. And that's barely plural." Buffy: "I'm the embarrassing Mum who tries too hard. When did this happen?" Buffy: "You stole a toothbrush? As far as rebellious teenagers go you're kinda square." Dawn: "Dental hygiene is important." Buffy: "How about the pet store, you didn't take anything from there didya?" Dawn: "Pocket full of goldfish. It didn't work out." Anya to Xander: "... you spend your whole life telling stupid pointless jokes so that no one will notice that you are just a scared, insecure little boy!" This girl doesn't hold back on the punches. Tara to Willow: "It takes time, you can't just have coffee and expect... There's so much to work through, trust has to be built again, on both sides. It's a long, important process. Can we just skip it? Can you just be kissing me now?" Yes, you are allowed to cry...     Fantastic moments:           Anya tries to get people to wish malice upon Xander. Anya and Spike have a brilliant heart-to-heart chat before having sex on the table in the magic shop (although it does go on a bit too long). They drink most of a bottle of JD and commiserate about relationships. She says: "Next think you know, I'm changing to please him [Xander]... I'm singing in the shower and doing my sexy dance." Spike: "Exactly! I have no dance." She then excuses her actions by claiming that she's only sleeping with Spike because "... I'm lonely and drunk and you smell really good." I was entertained by Anya's endless attempts to get people to wish harm on Xander. She wishes his intestines into knots, when Xander tells her that he feels the pain she gets annoyed: "Those are metaphor intestines! You're not in any real pain!" She then goes through all the Scoobies trying to get them to wish all kinds of hurt and pain upon him. Rather than being bizarrely disturbing, the scene is played for comedy as Anya's bumbling attempts to appeal to Xander's friends fall on deaf ears. Everyone's reactions to seeing Anya and Spike shagging are great. Funniest of all is Andrew, who doesn't understand what he's seeing and then says Spike is cool before quickly correcting himself "And the girl's hot too." Xander takes things pretty badly though, he takes a stake and goes to find Spike.     Duff Bits:           Willow is rather implausibly able to tap into the geek trio's system of cameras and see what they're doing. This really is stretching the boundaries of plausibility, couldn't the script just make them cast a spell or something? As mentioned elsewhere in this review, the build up to Spike and Anya's encounter takes far too long and gets boring.     Dean's comments:           Tara and Willow start to make up their differences. Whoa baby, was there enough sex in that episode? Well it certainly needed something to spice it up; after all, the episode returns to the territory of 'BtVS the soap' for the first half and then spends far too long building up to the moment when Anya and Spike are caught in camera. Luckily the reunification of Tara and Willow could not have come at a better time; their flirting, Willow's desperate attempt to laugh at Tara's joke and the barely concealed passion they show for each other as they arrange to meet for coffee are all a real tonic for a thematically dark episode about the harshness of relationships. The third act of the episode goes on for far too long though and drags the pace down unnecessarily. If they were aiming for a 'Lock Stock...' style ending where all interested parties are unknowingly zeroing in on the same objective then they really failed. Thankfully the show ends beautifully, with Anya and Xander expressing the pain inherent in their love and Buffy's liaisons with Spike revealed to compound the emotional nadir. The final scene gives everyone hope though, as Tara tells Willow that she would rather be with her than endure the emotional torment of being apart any longer.           7/10

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