The episode begins with Buffy hammering down Xander’s door in the middle of the night, looking for Spike. She really, really owes Xander an apology right about now, along the lines of “I’m sorry I made you shack up with a serial killer.” But she’s Buffy, so she won’t. Meanwhile, Spike is digging a grave for the girl we saw him biting last week. The credits roll, and then we’re in London, where a Watchery-looking guy has just come home to find a dead girl on the floor and some guys in black robes waiting to kill him. Do the Watchers Council do a wardrobe check before they admit members or something? Is that tweed suit mandated? It makes for an easy visual shorthand, anyway. Looks kind of like Giles? Must be a Watcher! Over in Xander’s flat, Anya’s going through Spike’s bedroom, trying to find evidence that he’s been killing people, but because she’s Anya she manages to be loud enough about it that Spike wakes up halfway through and there’s an excruciating scene in which she pretends she’s there to have sex with him, even though she’s plainly terrified of him. Awkward. Very awkward. He rebuffs her, anyway, and goes out – so, basically, she’s served very little purpose being there. She calls someone we don’t see to tell them that Spike’s left, and we cut to Buffy following Spike through a really, really busy street. Where the hell is this? Why is it that the series spent ages telling us that Sunnydale is a tiny town and people don’t go out after dark only to turn around and present us with a bustling after-dark metropolis as soon as the plot calls for it? Actually, the plot doesn’t even call for it, so that was definitely a fuckup. Spike chats up some random girl and leads her into a dark alley, but just as he’s about to bite her, Buffy walks in – and encourages him. Uh oh!
The next day, Buffy accosts Spike and asks him to explain what he was up to last night, but it emerges that he can’t remember what he’s been doing on his nocturnal walkabouts. He says his soul wouldn’t let him kill people, but Buffy’s unconvinced and sets out to find proof. There’s a really daft scene in which Buffy asks Willow to see if there’s been a rise in neck injuries lately, which, considering this town is overrun with vampires, wouldn’t seem to prove very much, and what the computer turns up is that there are ten new missing girls. Which, again, proves absolutely jack shit. Good detective work, guys. At the house, Spike tells Buffy he needs to show her something in the basement. She’s hesitant, which is weird because you’d think she’d be able to take him down, or, if she’s that worried, not leave him locked in rooms with her best friends all the damn time, but eventually descends into the basement, where Spike tells her he’s buried loads of victims. Gulp. The First-Spike sings a few lines of an old-fashioned sounding song and Spike suddenly snaps, vamping out and attacking Buffy. As they fight, all the girls buried in the basement start to rise as vampires, which is super-creepy, but sort of anti-climactic since as soon as Spike tastes Buffy’s blood he returns to normal, and she stakes all the other vampires in less than a minute. So that was easy.
Spike tells her to kill him, but she’s twigged that there’s something else there, and takes him home with her instead, explaining to everyone that she needs to learn about what it is that’s controlling him. Er, yeah, but if you could also stop putting everyone around you in danger, that’d be nice.