Guest Starring: 
     
 Anthony Stewart Head: 
 (Giles) 
   
 Karina Aufranc: 
 (Nancy) 
   
 DB Woodside: 
 (Robin Wood) 
   
 
 
  2. Beneath You.  
   
  Anya appears to have cast a vengeance spell causing a huge worm to terrorise Sunnydale.  
   
  Great quotes:  
   
 
Spike, who has gone mad.
  • Dawn: “It’s so cool. You’re [Buffy] coming to school with me; you’ll be with me – like – the whole time. You understand you cannot talk to me, look at me or hang out with my friends.”
  • Buffy: “Have you completely lost your mind?” Spike: “Well yes. Where have you been all night?”
  • Dawn to Spike: “You do sleep right? If you hurt my sister you’re gonna wake up on fire.”
  • Nancy: “Do you think I might give you a call some time?” Xander: “Just to check in?” Nancy: “No, I’m hitting on you.”
  • Anya: “Oh penis!”
  • Spike: “No more mind games, no more mind.”
  • Spike: “They put a spark in me and all it does is burn.”
  
  Fantastic moments:  
   
 
  • In the final scene Spike bares his soul by confessing to Buffy in a church and asking what he should do next. He reveals that in questing to regain his soul he was acting out of love for Buffy, he also addresses The First – although there is no way for the viewer to know this just now. At the end he slumps on a large wooden cross; as his skin burns Buffy looks on, incredulous at what she has just heard.
  • There’s a terrific moment when the Nancy asks the Scoobies who in their clique hasn’t had a relationship with each other. Spike and Xander eye each other distrustingly for a moment. Strange how Buffy and Anya are nowhere near as disturbed by the suggestion that they might have slept together, slash fiction anyone?
  
  Duff Bits:  
   
 
  • 1 minute and 40 seconds worth of ‘previously on’ is just silly.
  • The Sluggoth demon – get it? It’s a slug, therefore Sluggoth! It’s just rubbish, rubbish CGI, boring monster and several levels of dull.
  
  Dean's comments:  
   
 
A subtle nod to 'Alias' perhaps?
When did the writers of BtVS get so irritatingly po-faced with their own material? Gone for the most part is the tongue-in-cheek freshness of previous years, buried in wave after wave of big-badness and Eastenders-like soap trash. ‘From beneath you it devours’; what is the point of this phrase? Is it meant to scare anyone, did The First come up with it to intimidate potential minions? It sounds like a partially thought-out plot teaser from a bad sword and sorcery novel. Thankfully there are redeeming features in ‘Beneath You’, the final scene in particular – see above – but also Karina Aufranc’s appearance as Nancy brings home the annoyingly inward-facing cliqueyness of the Scoobies’ personal and social lives. If the writers wanted to let us know that Anya was being ‘bad’ again then I think they should have come up with a slightly less tortuous way of getting the message across.		 
   
 3/10 
 
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