Summary: It’s 1977 and Spike is in New York City, fighting Nikki in a park during a rainstorm. A young Robin Wood hides behind a bench, unseen by Spike. Just as Spike is about to bite Nikki, Robin accidentally knocks over a trash can, distracting him. Nikki takes back the advantage and whips a stake at Spike. He catches it and tosses it aside, saying this is just the beginning of their little dance. He compliments her coat, then takes off.
Nikki tells Robin that he did a great job staying hidden. He wants to go home, but she says it’s not safe. She’ll take him to someone named Crowley instead. Robin wants to stay with his mother, but she reminds him of something they talk about all the time: “Always gotta work the mission.” She loves him, but she has a job to do. “The mission is what matters,” she says. As they start to leave, Robin goes back to pick up Nikki’s stake.
In the present: Buffy, Spike, and Wood fight vampires together in an alley. Wood’s in a bit of trouble, so Buffy tells Spike to go help him. Spike does, advising Wood not to be so afraid of using a stake. Wood’s definitely thinking of using his on Spike. He grips it so hard that he starts bleeding. “Just waiting for my moment,” he says to himself.
At school the next day, Buffy tells Wood that the trouble that was kicking up because of the seal appears to have subsided. And all it took was a few nerd tears! Buffy says ending this apocalypse wasn’t even that hard – she didn’t have to die. Wood tells her that she reminds him of his mother. Buffy replies that normally she wouldn’t love to hear that, but in this instance, she’ll take it. She assures him that everything’s fine.
“Everything’s terrible!” Giles exclaims as he runs in. “Total catastrophe!” The new library is full of computers! He would like to speak to a manager. Wood introduces himself and Giles says he’s happy to have him on board with the Scoobies and potentials. They’ll need all the allies they can get, because the First Evil is still gathering forces and war is brewing. Giles would like to go before the school board. No, not about the war – about the lack of books in the library.
He told the Scoobies he was going away for a while to gather up potentials, but he admits now that his trip had to do with Spike. He and Buffy quickly explain his chip and its removal to Wood, then bicker about whether the removal means Spike will hurt people. Buffy still thinks that his soul will keep him in line. Giles notes that the First could easily trigger him again. Wood’s confused about all the chip/soul/trigger stuff. Maybe Giles has some flash cards he can review.
Giles brought back something that might help them disarm the trigger and figure out what controls Spike’s behavior. Buffy’s already sure that it’s the song. Spike doesn’t seem to remember it, though, and Buffy didn’t find it catchy enough to recall. It’s “boring, old, and English, just like y…ul Brynner,” she tells Giles. Wood asks how the thing Giles brought will work. Giles says it’ll require some magic.
Xander chains Spike up in the Summerses’ basement, complaining that the chains weren’t there a week ago. Spike has questions, but Xander would prefer not to discuss his and Anya’s, uh, extracurricular activities. Giles explains that there’s something in Spike’s subconscious that the First is using to provoke action. He’s going to put a magical stone in Spike’s brain to show him what’s locked in his memories. Hopefully, they’ll then be able to break its hold on him.
Willow does a spell to make the stone turn into something that looks like a slug. It crawls into Spike’s brain through his eye, which would be gross and creepy if the CGI weren’t so bad. It’s painful, and Buffy runs over to comfort Spike. The effects kick in immediately, transporting Spike to a memory of before he was a vampire, when he was just an awkward poet named William.
He’s reading a poem he wrote about Cecily to his mother, Anne. She thinks Cecily is lovely and that William needs a woman in his life. He promises to look after Anne no matter what direction his life takes. Anne starts coughing, and since it’s 1880 and she’s coughing up blood, it’s a fair assumption that she has consumption. (Hey, that rhymes!) She doesn’t seem concerned, though. William sits with her and she sings his trigger song to him.
In the basement, Spike vamps out. He only calms when the stone/slug drops out of his eye. Wood looks at him like he’s thinking, “I think my moment’s here.” Buffy keeps Spike in chains for a while, not wanting to take any chances. Giles and Wood question him about the trigger song, which he says doesn’t mean anything to him. It’s just something his mother sang to him when he was a child.
Upstairs, Willow tends to Dawn, who got a little banged up when Spike vamped out. Kennedy and Rona are upset that Buffy’s been letting Spike live in the house when his trigger has been active all this time. Anya tells them that Spike has a get-out-of-jail-free card that the others don’t. He could slaughter a hundred frat boys and…a look from Xander makes her trail off and babble something about forgiveness. Andrew reports that someone named Fred is calling from L.A. to talk to Willow.
In the basement, Giles tries to probe why a song Spike’s mother sang him would be so significant. Buffy thinks it’s time to end this experiment and free Spike from his chains. Giles disagrees – Spike is still dangerous. Wood clarifies that the trigger is still working.
1880: William has met a woman who will forever draw his attention away from Cecily. Drusilla has turned him, and they do some dancing and some kissing before talking about how they’ll bring down the city. He plans to bring Anne along. She’s happy to see William, who’s been away for days. Drusilla introduces herself as “the woman who gave birth to your son.” William confirms that Drusilla made him who he is. He’s immortal now, a creature of the night. Anne thinks he’s drunk. (He is, a little.)
William wants Anne to become immortal, too. She won’t be sick anymore, and she’ll never grow any older. He asks her permission to turn her. Anne says he’s acting strangely, but he tells her he’s himself. “We’ll be together forever,” he promises, embracing her. He vamps out and tells her it’ll only hurt for a moment.
Present: Willow tells Buffy that she needs to leave for a little while. She won’t give any specifics about what she’s going off to do, but she thinks she might return with some good news. Buffy has decided to free Spike, which Giles disapproves of. She doesn’t want to hear it. As she and Spike go upstairs, Wood asks Giles to talk for a moment.
He thinks they agree that the First is waiting for the right time to use Spike against the Scoobies. After all, it told Andrew that it wasn’t his time yet. The First’s ultimate plan must feature Spike. “Something needs to be done,” Wood tells Giles. Giles says that Buffy wouldn’t allow it. Wood thinks she’ll listen to her Watcher. He mentions Crowley, who was Nikki’s Watcher and raised Wood after her death. Giles realizes that Wood is Nikki’s son. That means Spike killed his mother (which Wood says Buffy doesn’t know).
Giles doesn’t like that Wood has a personal vendetta against Spike. Wood doesn’t think it matters – Spike is “an instrument of evil” and is going to be all their undoing. Buffy will never see it coming. Wood wants to do “what needs to be done…for the greater good.” He needs Giles to acknowledge that he’s right. Giles reluctantly does, asking what Wood has planned. He tells Giles to just keep Buffy away for a few hours.
So Giles takes Buffy to a cemetery, telling her that she still has things to learn from him. She’s distracted, knowing that Wood is keeping an eye on Spike at his place. Giles tells her she needs to look at the big picture now. Buffy says that’s all she does. The other day, she gave a phone repair guy an inspirational speech. Giles tells it’ll take more than speeches to lead. As a general, she needs to be able to make difficult decisions. Buffy’s fully aware of that and has been making them. Giles says that’s what they’re there to see. She’ll have to kill a surfacing vampire, too, though.
Wood takes Spike to a workroom he sees as his sanctuary. It’s full of crosses. Like, imagine a room with walls covered in crosses. Now double the amount of crosses you imagined. That’s about how many Wood has. Spike asks what his story is. Wood says he’s just trying to make a difference. He asks the same question of Spike, who doesn’t really feel like reflecting.
Wood does something on a computer, then opens a drawer of weapons. He says that Spike is the kind of person who “careens through life, completely oblivious of the damage he’s doing to everyone around him.” Wood knows more about Spike than he thinks. He’s been searching for Spike for a long time – ever since Spike killed his mother. Spike notes that he’s killed a lot of people’s mothers, so Wood will have to be more specific. Wood clarifies that his mother was a Slayer.
Spike is like, “So I guess you brought me here to kill me, then.” Wood corrects that he wants to kill the monster who murdered his mother. He presses a button and Spike’s trigger song starts playing on the computer. Spike vamps out, and Wood says, “There he is.”
1880: William goes home after a night of what I assume was totally legal behavior with Drusilla and finds Anne looking healthy. He’s happy that she’ll be able to come along for his siege on London. But vampire Anne is much different from human Anne, and she’s not afraid to tell her son that a) she doesn’t want to spend time with him anymore and b) his poetry is awful.
We go back and forth between 1880 and the present, where Wood is beating up Spike, yelling for him to fight back. Anne admits that she’s hated William since the day he “slithered” out of her “like a parasite.” She wishes she’d killed him right after he was born. She prayed that he would find a woman and build his own life, but he always stayed with her. William says that’s not who he is anymore. “It’s who you’ll always be,” Anne tells him. “A limp, sentimental fool.”
Spike and Wood fight hard. Wood hopes he’s giving Spike the beating he gave Nikki. In the cemetery, Buffy fights the baby vamp, but as she’s about to stake him, Giles tells her not to kill him yet. He asks if she would let him live if it meant saving the world. Buffy says sure. The vampire, who introduces himself as Richard, appreciates that.
Buffy reminds Giles that they had this conversation back when she said she wouldn’t sacrifice Dawn to stop Glory. Giles says that things have changed since then. She’s different, and he thinks now, she would let Dawn die. Buffy admits that she would, if it meant saving the world. She asks if she can kill Richard yet, since he’s putting up quite a fight. Giles still won’t let her.
He wants to make sure that Buffy understands the tough decisions she’ll have to make and can accept that everyone’s expendable in this war. “Have you heard my speeches?” she asks. Yes, Buffy. We’ve all heard the speeches. Giles continues that they can’t let any threat jeopardize their chances of winning. Buffy says she gets that, but Giles doesn’t think she does.
Wood has Spike right where he wants him and is ready to finish him off. He takes back Nikki’s coat first, then pulls a cross off the wall. Spike remembers his mother taunting him about some weird sexual stuff, like how he wants to be back inside her and will never be able to be with Drusilla without thinking of Anne. Ma’am, please. It’s the 1880s. Have some decorum. William says he only wanted to make Anne well, but she thinks he just wanted to give her an “eternal kiss.”
He tosses her off of him, because she’s being inappropriately touchy, and she orders him out of her house. She grabs a wooden cane and hits him with it. He breaks it and she vamps out, repeating what he said when he turned her: “It will only hurt for a moment.” William apologizes, both in the memory and in the present. Then he stakes his mother.
Spike reaches up and grabs Wood’s hand before he can be staked. Wood asks if he really thinks his apology will make things right. Spike says he wasn’t talking to Wood. They fight again, and Spike admits that he doesn’t care at all about Nikki. He’s a vampire and killed a Slayer: “That’s the way the game is played.” Nikki knew what she was signing up for. I mean, she was called to it, so she didn’t really have a choice, but yeah, she knew the risks, got it. Wood notes that he didn’t sign up for it. Spike says that’s not his fault.
Wood growls that Spike took away his childhood and the only person he had. Nikki was his world. “And you weren’t hers,” Spike taunts. He may not have known Nikki, but he knows Slayers. They can be surrounded by people, but they still fight alone. That’s what happens when you’re the Chosen One. Wood knows that his mother loved him, but Spike says that wasn’t enough to make her walk away from slaying.
He loved his mother as much as Wood loved his, and he turned Anne so they could be together forever. Anne’s words to him have been weighing on him for a long time. But Wood helped Spike figure out that, unlike Wood, Spike had a mother who loved him back. The person who said those horrible things to him was the demon he sired, not Anne. She loved him with all her heart, and Spike was her whole world. He starts up the trigger song again, turning it off before it changes him. He thanks Wood for curing him. He’s no longer under anyone’s influence. That means that when he kills Wood, it’ll be because he wants to do it.
Back in the cemetery, Giles tells Buffy that Spike is a liability and both of them refuse to see it. Angel left Sunnydale because he knew how damaging his relationship with Buffy was. Spike doesn’t get that his is the same. Buffy argues that Spike is with the Scoobies because she wants him to be. They need him – she’s in the fight of her life. Richard thinks she’s talking about him. No, sweetie.
Giles can’t believe that Buffy wants Spike around even after what he did to her in the past. She insists that he’s different now that he has a soul. Giles notes that the First is exploiting that. Staking Richard, Buffy suddenly realizes that Giles is stalling her. He tells her it’s time to stop roleplaying like a general and start being one. She runs off as Giles yells after her that this is how wars are won.
Spike leaves the workroom, putting on Nikki’s coat. Buffy arrives and asks what happened. Wood’s alive, since Spike didn’t want to kill the son of a woman he killed. This is his only pass, though. Instead of lecturing Wood on trying to kill Spike, Buffy shares her own experience with losing her mother. She understands what Wood wants, but Nikki is dead. He needs to stop seeking revenge on someone who isn’t who he used to be.
Wood thinks that Buffy’s fooling herself in thinking that Spike has changed. She says that he’s the best fighter they have, so they need him if they want to survive this war. She warns Wood not to try anything against him. Spike will kill him, and Buffy will let him. She has a mission to win the war and save the world. She can’t waste time on vendettas. “The mission is what matters,” she says.
At home, Giles tries to smooth things over with Buffy, thinking that Wood killed Spike. She tells him that Spike’s still alive. Giles doesn’t think that changes anything. He starts to say that Buffy needs to learn something, but she cuts him off. “I think you taught me everything I need to know,” she says before closing her bedroom door in his face.
Thoughts: I kind of have a newfound appreciation for this season, which wasn’t that enjoyable when it first aired, and which I mostly avoided during rewatches over the years. Even when the writers don’t completely pull off what they obviously intended, I get more of what they were trying to do now.
Hmm, Damon Salvatore was also in New York City in 1977. Imagine the crossover. Imagine the carnage.
The episode’s writer and director, David Fury, said that they cast the actress who played Anne partly because she looked like Sarah Michelle Gellar and named her Anne because it’s Buffy’s middle name.
I loved what the Television Without Pity recapper had to say about Anya’s outfit in this episode so much, I wrote it down somewhere: “Anya appears to be wearing some sort of knit swim cap adorned with lilac flowers, paired with a knit tank top spackled with big purple polka dots. Shouldn’t someone with a fear of bunnies look less like an Easter egg?”
Willow doesn’t go into detail about where she’s going, but Angel fans know she’s going to L.A. to help with a little problem called the return of Angelus.
There’s a deleted scene from Buffy and Giles’ scenes in the cemetery where he tells her that he killed Ben to stop Glory. I wish they’d left that in, to drive home to her that war requires making decisions you wouldn’t make under normal circumstances. Also, I’m sure she’s wondered since then what happened to Glory.
'90s Flashback 
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