Sing along!
It's your party,
you can die if you want to....
Note: A word to the English majors out there. Sorry, but I switch back and forth a lot between past tense and present tense through this. I don't know if I've been doing that with previous episode writeups, but I didn't feel like fixing them. I wrote this over a couple of days. That's my excuse.
The game started as Andrew, Gillian and Amy went to see a tarot reader in Ypsilanti, MI that had given her card to Andrew in the previous episode, offering him a free reading.. Andrew had his card read and the reader warned Andrew that he will be given a chance to clear the sins of his past soon but he will be given two ways to do it. One way, would make at is his crimes had not happened. The other will be by doing a great deed. As they were leaving, Andrew and Gillian noted that the tarot reader had written in her journal that she did the free reading for "Andrew Wells." Wondering how she knew his real name, they left.
I don't think I want to know how I die. -- Gillian to the Andrew and Amy on why she does not want a tarot reading
Afterwords, they decided to hang out at the local arcade, Pinball Pete's, and invited George and Jessica to go with them to play Dance Dance Revolution. While waiting for the others to arrive, George saw a demon going to the local comic shop, The Underworld. When the others arrive and Amy goes to check it out. She doesn't see any demons but sees a cute boy (played by the young guy from Everwood) talking about D&D to his friend. While there, she orders a Capt. Archer action figure to give to Andrew as a gift sometime.
Gillian, Andrew and George then go to the comic shop. Andrew starts looking at the action figures when Gillian maneuvers him to talk to the cute gamer. (Amy and Gillian decided last session to play matchmaker for Andrew, who is still denying he's gay.) The guy's name is Matt and his friend is Joe. Matt tells Andrew that he is starting a D&D game and is looking for players. He gives Andrew his number and says the first game session will be next week. Gillian sneaks off as Andrew is talking to the two guys.
George sees the demon who entered the comic shop exiting the back room and leaving. Apparently, the demon is an employee at the shop.
Downstairs, the three return to find Amy and Jessica playing DDR and gathering quite an audience. While Jessica is playing another game with some guy who wanted to challenge her, Gillian notices a vampire hanging out in the arcade. Amy confronts him and challenges him to a game of Street Fighter II. While they are playing, Amy says "You should at least try to pretend you breath." The vampire loses the game as he gets nervous and tries to leave.
Outside the arcade the street is busy. The vamp tries to get on his Harley, but Gillian pulls/throws him off. The crowd starts to watch the fight, when Amy and Andrew pretend to fight and distract the people as Gillian stakes the vamp. When the crowd looks back, Gillian stands in a poof of dust. George gets on the Harley pretending it was his and drives off with Gillian.
Friday comes and the Ann Arbor Scoobies head out to Windsor, Ontario for a night of fun. Gillian has just turned 19 and they want to celebrate her birthday in the proper tradition of Michigan teens. (The drinking age in Canada is 19.) While crossing the border there was some tense moments as the guards checked Andrews passport and found Gillian's stakes, but they made it through. They stopped for pizza and went to a casino, where Amy noticed what seemed to be a magic spell being cast in the offices on the guests. They leave and go to Danny's.
Danny's is a strip club with male strippers for the ladies. Andrew and George are dragged in. They see a stripper that looks a bit like Dorian Garham, the vampire. Amy approaches him and asks him to give a private dance for Gillian in a vampire cape.
As the group is leaving, they catch a glimpse of Drusilla. What is she doing here. They lose sight of her in the crowd.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Nigel Harker is checking out a wooded area with Gar, the Garouf demon (the pimply faced demon from a few episodes back) and Van, a Panglos demon. They swear to him that this is the location that they escaped from and the three find an abandoned series of tunnels that used to be the home of the Initiative HST holding facility. They look around and Nigel decided to come back later and see what's behind some suspicious walls. Nigel promises to Gar that he will help him find his clanmates and Gar pledges that if he helps him save his people, the Garouf clan will forever be in debt to the watcher.
Bring sledgehammer, crowbars, Gillian.... -- Nigel to himself, making a list of what to bring back to the abandoned Initiative base
As the Panglos drives away from dropping off Nigel, Nigel notices a bug like creature drop from the undercarriage of the demon's car and scurry away. He goes inside and checks his books and in Tobin's Demon Guide he finds an illustration of the demon: a Crimslaw demon. A particularly nasty demon, a Crimslaw eats about 10-15 fresh hearts in a feeding by ripping them out of the chest of the victims. He tells Dr. Post and the two begin searching Ann Arbor for the demon.
On the ride home from Windsor, Amy is a bit quiet and sullen. A short wait at the Ambassodor bridge and the group returns hom about 3 am. After Gillian falls asleep, Amy gets up and quietly sets up some water around Gillian's bed and puts a frayed electrical cord in it, plugged in. She wakes Gillian screaming that there is something trying to get in the door. Gillian steps on the floor to get up and ZAP! Luckilly, for Gillian, she survives the electrocution as she manages to fall forward out of the water. Any normal human would have died. On the ground, her head hurting and her limbs completely without feeling or motor control, Gillian looks up to see Amy start kicking her in the head.
Down the hall, Andrew is sleeping and his normally scheduled dream is interupted as Anya appears in the dream. "Wake up! Wake up you idiot! She needs you!"
Andrew wakes up and tells George that he thinks Gillian is in trouble. The two run to Gillians room where they find the two struggling. Amy trying to stab Gillian with a knife but the recovering Gillian manages to hit Amy first and sends Amy flying acroos the room. Amy then levitates the knife with her mind and tries to send it at Andrew but Andrew dodges and Gillian hits her again and knocks her out.
Jessica wakes up as her symbiote seems to be very twitchy. She quickly realizes that it's reacting to something that is going on in Gillian and Amy's room. She arrives. George opens the door for her and she sees behind him, Andrew and Gillian are tying Amy up in a chair.
Gillian calls Nigel and tells him what has happened. With no luck on the Crimslaw hunt, Nigel goes to the dorm, leaving Dr. Post to hunt alone.
They decide to call Amy's grandmother and take Amy to Nigel's to meet with her and try to exorcise whatever has come over Amy. They find that Amy's power has been increased when she starts TKing things around the room. Gillian knocks her out again. (Gotta love cinematic violence where a person can get knocked out by one hit with no permanent damage.)
Nigel gets a call from Dr. Post. He has found the Crimslaw. Dealing with Amy he asks Jessica and George to go help Dr. Post.
As they are moving Amy to Nigel's car, Amy becomes aware of Andrew's mind and telepathically shares a bit of her new power and her newfound hatred for the slayer and all her friends with Andrew. Andrew excuses himself to the bathroom and returns with two small demons and a hellhound. There is a fight and Andrew is defeated just as he shakes off the effects of Darth Amy's mind control. The three rush Amy to Nigel's.
At a church in downtown Ann Arbor, Dr. Post points to the Crimslaw on the roof and explains to Jessica and George that is extremely dangerous. The three climb up to the roof using the scaffolding on the side of the church which is being renovated. Their is fight that eventually ends with Jessica, armored up through her symbiote, pinning the demon on the ground. She rolls off it and the three demon-hunters attack it with weapons. Jessica strike the killing blow with a sybiote-made blade and cuts off it's head. She has that now-familiar feeling of stealing essence from the demon.
At Nigel's home, Amy's grandmother looks at Amy. She has been "spiked" with magical energy and something else. Something has brought out her anger....her wrath. (At this point, Amy had a temporary Sorcery level of 10. Far from Dark Willow, but a lot more than she is used to.) Amy and her grandmother exchange heated insults in Chinese. Through some incantations and magical acupuncture (after fighting for TK control of the needles with Amy), Grandmother eventually releases the power. Andrew sees the power and thinks of taking it for himself but decides not to. They talk to Amy and find out that Amy has a blank spot in her memory from the time at the strip club. She got up to go to the bathroom and the next thing she remembers is leaving. With eidetic memory, Amy never forgets things and this is strange. Andrew holds her hand and uses a power that he has been recently discovering and had used a few times this episode already, Pychometry. He sees a bit of her past and a moment that was missing: Drusilla whispering in to Amy's ear.
I see Drusilla. She's touching Amy. *pause* It's not a bad touch. -- Andrew
It's Drusilla, of course it's a bad touch! -- Amy
Dr. Post, Jessica and George arrive at Nigel's and everyone realizes that Gillian has left.
Gillian leaves and rents a motel room for the night.
The next morning she is determined that she will not go to the birthday party that her friends are throwing for her that night, nor will she return to the dorm. She rents a room near campus that rents for the week and lays down on the bed for a good cry. She then sees one of the "grey men," he is looking at her. She screams at him to go away and he steps in the shadow to disappear. This freaks her out. She does not feel safe sleeping here either. She does not want to return to her friends. She is afraid of putting them in danger or her enemies manipulating them again. So, she decides to go to Dorian's.
Gillian's friends become worried about her and try calling her. They also try to do a locator spell but she does not show up anywhere in Ann Arbor. They get a bigger map and she does not show in Michigan.
Gillian, it's your roommate. Sorry I tried to kill you. We need to start planning your party. Stop pouting and give me a call. -- Amy, leaving voice mail for Gillian
Gillian is at Dorian's. She talks to the vampire for a bit and finds that for a soulless bloodsucker, he's not that bad a guy. He admits to her that he has not killed a human for a very long time, but warns her that he is still evil. He just likes his life better this way. Talking to Gillian, Dorain finds out that Gillian is avoiding her friends and is told why. He convinces her that the problems in Ann Arbor are not her fault and that the increase in demons in the city happened before she arrived and was the fault of the government's special project that let a whole bunch of demons escape. He also tells her that her friends have chosen to stand with her and face the darkness and that it would be a shame to push a friend away. He tells her that years ago he lost a friend over a disagreement and he wishes it had not been so. Gillian decides to go to the party and invites the vampire, unaware that Amy had already sent him an invite...as a joke.
The party goes well. Amy traps Gillian in to dancing with some attractive guy that arrived named Eric. Andrew meets up with Matt (from the comic shop) and talks roleplaying with him. George is obviously jealous of the guy dancing with Gillian. Dorian shows up and stays awhile, with Nigel watching him like a hawk.
More quotes from the episode can be found here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fazzari/Buffy/GtVS/Quotes.html
Posted by Nuadha at January 19, 2004 9:48 AM