This episode opens with a title card, and a date: November 12th, 2002, 8:01pm. As far as I can remember, that’s the only time that’s ever happened, as if to flag up how special this episode is supposed to be. It is, at least, several hundred times better than last week’s mess of an episode, which is ironic, since Conversations with Dead People was written by four different people, each taking on a section of a really bizarrely structured episode.
Post-credits, Andrew and Jonathan, the remaining two-thirds of the geek trio that unsuccessfully menaced Buffy in season 6, are rolling back into town. Even they, the most out-of-the-loop characters in the whole show, are in on the First Evil thing, though Andrew mistranslates the First’s slogan as “it eats you, starting with your bottom”. Hee. Chez Buffy, Dawn is getting into all sorts of mischief: stealing Buffy’s clothes, eating pizza despite specific instructions not to, blowing holes in the living room wall with a crossbow, talking to her friend Kit on the phone (though Kit has been completely absent for 5 episodes) and watching horror movies on TV. Before long, though, her fun is spoiled by spooky banging noises. Then all the electronics in the house start going screwy. Dawn sensibly takes an axe to them, but is taken aback when her dead mother appears sprawled on the sofa in exactly the position we last saw her. When Buffy discovered that she was dead. Ouch. At the library, Willow is visited by Cassie from Help who, er, is supposed to be dead. Cassie tells Willow that she’s been sent to talk to her by Tara, and there’s some really adorable stuff where Tara allegedly says she still sings to Willow, and Willow cries and pours her heart out to Tara, with Cassie mediating. It’s adorable for as long as you can convince yourself not to think about it, anyway. Meanwhile, Andrew and Jonathan break into the school, searching for something called the Seal of Danzalthar which is apparently located in the school basement. The plan initially seems to be to find it, destroy it, and then go tell Buffy that they’ve saved the world in an attempt to make friends with her, but the spectre of dead Warren seems to have other ideas… We get a very short scene of Spike at the Bronze, apparently chatting up a mystery blonde, before we’re back with Dawn. Something is growling from the darkness, and then there’s another glimpse of dead Joyce on the sofa again, this time being preyed upon by a scaly blue monster, and some pretty standard poltergeist activity going on. Dawn starts going a spell (does she have magical abilities, then?) to ward off the monster… …and over at the school, Andrew and Jonathan have found and dug up the Seal of Danzalthar. Jonathan chats for a bit about how much he misses everyone he went to school with, and how much he really cares about them, and generally is a really really nice person in order to make it more shocking when Andrew stabs him dead and uses his blood to activate the seal. Uh oh! Buffy and the vampire, who is apparently called Holden Webster, as unlikely as that sounds, are having a bit of a breakthrough: it turns out Buffy has a superiority complex about being the Slayer, but then feels guilty about thinking she’s better than everyone else, so she has an inferiority complex about having a superiority complex. Also, she avoids intimacy because her dad cheated on her mother. Or something. Just as Buffy is about to stake him, Holden reveals something that’s actually interesting, rather than just sub-Freudian ramblings: he was recently sired by Spike. The same Spike who’s supposed to be physically incapable of harming humans, and who was, last episode, moved into Xander’s spare bedroom. Nice going, Buffy.
There’s a quick scene where Spike bites the mystery blonde he met at the Bronze, before we cut back to Dawn, who’s finally managed to drive out the demon in the house. A glowing, angelic Joyce appears to her then, telling her that Buffy won’t save her from what’s coming – that, actually, when the time comes, Buffy will side against Dawn. Which, okay, doesn’t sound very good, but considering the trouble Buffy’s liable to land you in when she is on your side, that might actually be for the best. I’m just saying. Back in the library, Cassie encourages Willow to kill herself in order to avoid going mad and killing everyone else, which finally tips Willow off that something’s wrong. “Cassie” reveals herself to be a manifestation of The First when Willow quotes “from beneath you, it devours” and Cassie corrects her: “Not ‘it’. Me.” And then she turns herself inside out using a cunning bit of CGI.