Last Week
Buffy entered Thunderdome to fight the Uber Vampire and provide motivation to the watching Slayers. She came, she saw, she kicked its booty.

Ten Second Recap
Spike and Buffy train the wannabe Slayers. Dawn discovers that she is a potential Slayer. Clem returns!

Buffy Summers: the drill sergeant with the heart and hair of gold. Faced with yet another apocalypse, Buffy leads a rag tag group of young pre-Slayers and teaches them the ways of the force, err�Slayer. Her lessons are stern because the stakes are so high. She imparts her wisdom, techniques as well as her philosophies. As it turns out, Buffy has a pretty morbid outlook on the life and death of a Slayer.

With Buffy spending all her time coaching the Slayerettes, it's only natural that Dawn feel left out. All too often we've seen pouty Dawn raise her ugly (well, not so ugly) head when Buffy's attention is focused on anyone other than her. I often find myself wondering if the Monks that made Dawn didn't add a little too much narcissism to the recipe.

One glaring hole in either the writing of this week's episode or the thought process of the characters is that everyone incorrectly assumes that the next Slayer will be called after Buffy dies. No one recalls that Buffy died two seasons ago (for the second time) and a new Slayer wasn't called. A new Slayer will only be called if Faith dies. Amateurs.

This entire plotline doesn't bode well for Faith unless she gets the Buffy spin-off show.

The Scooby gang discovers that another potential Slayer is living in Sunnydale, and Buffy puts the gang in change of locating her while she takes the newbie Slayers out on patrol. As Willow, Anya, Xander and Dawn try to discover who the unrevealed Slayer in waiting is, the show takes a predictable turn. The Slayer in waiting is revealed to be Dawn. If you follow behind the show news or just have a knack for guessing the surprises, this one didn't catch you off guard.

Having Dawn replace Buffy as the Slayer is good from a casting standpoint (easier to just use a proven character rather than get fans to connect with someone new), but it also opens a wealth of emotional avenues for Dawn's character to explore.

Eager to prove her bravery and worth, Dawn helps Amanda, a fellow Sunnydale student, out with her vampire problems. While Dawn and Amanda deal with the vampire, Buffy gives the Slayerettes their first real experience with a live (dead) vampire.

Buffy's lessons underscore Dawn's fight with the vampire at Sunnydale. It's meant to show that Dawn has instinctually learned the lessons of a Slayer. While it accomplishes that, she also makes the same mistakes that her sister made just a few episodes ago. She enters a situation unprepared and panics when things don't immediately go her way. Those demon slaying Summers girls are more alike than they know.

Spike was back in the Scooby gang this week, no longer haunted by The First, at least for the time being. He helps Buffy train the girls by being Buffy's punching bag and vampire expert.

All season long Buffy has been saying that Spike needed to be kept alive because he had inside information about The First. Somehow revealing that vampires want to suck blood doesn't seem to be the valuable information Buffy was counting on.

In the end, Dawn learns she's not a Slayer but rather just another Zeppo. Her final scene with Xander is touching and if I wasn't such a hard-hearted bastard, I might have gotten teary. Buffy delivered another solid episode this week with no big jaw dropping moments. I sincerely hope that those moments are coming soon.

Line of the Week
Buffy: "He's not evil, but when he's gets close to it he picks up the flavor like a mushroom or something."

Michael Goodson