

Season 7, Episode 4
Written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Original Airdate: 15 October 2002
“Poems. Always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil.”
Xander
REGULAR CAST
- Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
- Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
- Emma Caulfield as Anyanka
- Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers
- James Marsters as Spike
- Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
GUEST STARRING
- Azura Skye as Cassie Newton
- Zachery Bryan as Peter Nichols
- Glenn Morshower as Phillip Newton
- Ron Gonzalez as Thomas
- Kevin Christy as Josh
- Sarah Hagan as Amanda
- Jarrett Lennon as Martin Wilder
- D.B. Woodside as Robin Wood
CO-STARRING
- J. Barton as Mike Helgenburg
- Daniel Dehring as Red Robed #1
- AJ Wedding as Red Robed #2
- Marcie Lynn Ross as Dead Woman
SYNOPSIS
Once the lights are turned out at a funeral home, Buffy, Xander and Dawn climb out of caskets. They chat about Buffy’s nervousness about her new job and the struggle she may face while trying to mix her Slayer job with being a counselor. The three find a deceased woman in an open casket that they suspect of being a vampire and rightfully so as the woman comes to life and is promptly staked. At the high school the next day, Buffy talks with various students who all have their own problems ranging from trouble with bullies and violence to boredom. Willow and Xander talk walk together and talk about Buffy’s struggles and Willow’s worries about her role in dealing with the impending Hellmouth danger. Willow walks off on her own and proceeds towards Tara’s grave.
Buffy talks with more students, including her own sister, but one girl named Cassie Newton stuns counsellor Buffy when she confesses that she’s going to die next Friday. Buffy has tons of questions, but Cassie doesn’t have many answers. She doesn’t understand it, but she just knows that she’s going to die and that there will be lots of coins. As she leaves for class, Cassie compliments Buffy’s shirt and warns her against the danger of spilling something on it. Buffy reports this to Principal Wood, but he’s not as helpful as she’d like. After spilling coffee onto her white shirt, Buffy gets suspicious and sends Dawn to befriend Cassie. Dawn catches up with Cassie and they talk about Cassie’s friend Mike who has continuously asked Cassie to the dance and been rejected every time.
Willow investigates Cassie on the computer and finds Cassie’s own site with tons of sad, morbid poetry. Dawn returns home from school and thinks the reason for Cassie’s problem is Mike, but Buffy and the others don’t pay much attention. Willow finds a website on Cassie’s father that shows his troubled past with the law and alcohol. Buffy and Xander go visit Cassie’s father and confront him with their suspicion that he may get drunk and hurt his daughter. Mr. Newton confidently denies the accusation and after he goes on about how little time his ex-wife allows him to spend with his daughter, Buffy and Xander leave. Cassie shows up outside of her Dad’s house and although she appreciates Buffy’s efforts to find the cause, she knows there’s nothing Buffy can do to stop her death. Cassie talks about all the things she wishes she could do, but she knows she never can.
Meanwhile, a group of guys in red cloaks walk around a circle and burn pictures of Cassie on a tray in the middle. Still motivated to help Cassie, Buffy reads poetry from Cassie’s site and continues to investigate with the rest of the gang. Buffy goes to the school basement and asks Spike if he knows anything about Cassie. Because he “hurt the girl,” he’s punishing himself and trying to stay away from the voices. He doesn’t have any information for her and Buffy leaves him, thinking her presence hurts him more than when she’s not there.
Upstairs, Principal Wood and another administrator search through student lockers for anything suspicious. Buffy catches Mike in the halls and drills him to see if he may have intentions of hurting Cassie because she rejected him. He makes it clear he doesn’t care that much and has already moved on to thinking about Dawn. A bunch of coins fall from one of the lockers, drawing Buffy’s attention. Buffy takes one of the coins and the number of the locker where they came from and talks to the student the locker belongs to. After some violent prompting, the student confesses that some of his friends want to hurt Cassie.
Dawn and Cassie walk away from the school as Cassie reveals how she knows Buffy sent Dawn to befriend Cassie. A student named Peter approaches and asks Dawn about the dance, but only to be a jerk, not to ask her out. At the school that night, the cloaked group gathers again around a circle of coins and one of the boys turns out to be Peter. He checks with the others to make sure the school is secure and no one can get in or out. Then, he pulls a bound and blindfolded Cassie out to the circle and holds a butcher knife to her neck. She is to be a sacrifice to a demon that will provide the boys with tons of money.
As Peter starts the ritual, Buffy suddenly rips off her cloak, unveiling herself to the group and then smacks Peter around a bit. She doesn’t think the ritual was a success, but a large demon appears behind her, proving her wrong. Buffy fights with the demon and Spike shows up with a flaming torch to help. Buffy uses the torch to burn the demon while Spike cuts Cassie free from her bonds. Cassie tells him, “Someday she’ll tell you” which shocks Spike and he retreats away. Desperately, Peter moves towards the fried demon and wants to know where his money is. The burned demon leans up and bites Peter on the shoulder one before exploding into dust.
Buffy and Cassie walk away together, leaving Peter to deal on his own. A crossbow booby trap set by one of the cloaked boys nearly kills Cassie, but Buffy stops the bolt. Soon after though, Cassie gasps and unexpectedly falls to the ground, dead. The next day, the Scooby Gang gather at Buffy’s and solemnly talk about how Cassie died of a heart attack. Buffy feels as if she’s failed, but Dawn corrects her, saying Buffy couldn’t fail since she tried to help. Buffy has a hard time dealing with the fact that there are just some things she can’t save people from.
TRIVIA
For the first of three episodes this season, Emma Caulfield is credited on the opening titles, but is absent from the episode. However, a scene with her in a bar trying to get a woman named Lulu to wish for vengeance on someone was in the script.
Azura Skye plays the enigmatic Cassie Newton. Azura is named after the gemstone Azurite. Azura means Blue, so her name can be read as “Blue Skye.” She appears again in Conversations With Dead People. Sarah Hagan, who plays Amanda, the bullied student who comes to see Buffy, appears again as a potential Slayer later in this season.
Guest star credits included Beth Skipp and Anthony Harrell. Neither of these actors were actually in the episode as their scenes were cut.
Cassie’s website was originally put online, but has since been deactivated. The episode’s writer, Rebecca Rand Kirshner, composed the poetry and created the art that appears on the site, based on her own teenage journals. Christopher Buchanan (president of Mutant Enemy) said of the site: “Well, could we put up a site, not affiliated with the official Buffy site or anything, but just, like, this is a teenage girl’s site that she put up on GeoCities. Very simple. And we didn’t really publicize it. There was no link on the Buffy site. It was just kind of something we did for fun. Three of the writers were having a chat on one of the fan sites and mentioned just to check it out. By the time the show aired, some of the fans already knew about it. But 5 million people saw it, and all of a sudden, it just went crazy. We’ve had almost 200,000 hits. I get with alarming frequency things saying, ‘You’ve exceeded your data transfer limits. For $5, you can have another 500 megabytes.’ But it’s been a lot of fun. The thing that’s been amazing to me is, we put a basic guest book on there. I think it allows 50 entries. It has filled up 30 times. And we have so many e-mails, we’ve been returning the e-mails in Cassie’s voice, and we’re 100 behind. It’s just been a blast. The thing about it I loved was, we did things like, when we registered the domain, we registered it as Cassie Newton, and of course, the fans are like, “We notice that she lives on 13 Shadow Lane” [in Sunnydale].”
CONTINUITY
On Tara’s headstone, her date of death is shown as May 7, 2002, the date that Seeing Red aired. Her birth date is shown as October 16, 1980. This puts her birthday about three weeks before Family, the season five episode showing Tara’s 20th birthday, aired. This episode aired in the week of Tara’s birthday so it’s suggested that Willow visited the grave in memory of Tara’s 22nd birthday. Willow places stones on Tara’s grave. This is a common Jewish practice: the stones are a way of honouring the deceased and of showing that the grave has been visited.
Cassie’s being a precognitive gives viewers many hints about the rest of the season. She tells Buffy that she’ll go deep underground, which happens in both Bring on the Night and Chosen. She also tells Buffy that she’ll make a difference, implying the activation of the Potential Slayers in the finale and, also from Chosen, she tells Spike that Buffy will one day tell him that she loves him.
Cassie’s death is the second of only two deaths on Buffy that are completely natural. The other one was Joyce in The Body.
GOOFS
The booby trap was designed so that if someone opened the left hand door, an arrow would shoot at the right hand door.
When Cassie falls down, her head is upright, looking up at the ceiling, in the next scene her head is towards Buffy and then up again towards the ceiling.
When Buffy talks to the Principal after meeting Cassie, her neckline or necklace changes length and then changes back while she’s talking.
When talking to Cassie in the library, Dawn’s hair is straight. When she gets home and talks to the Scoobies, It’s curled.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
EPISODE
Same Time, Same Place / Selfless
STORY ORDER
Same Time, Same Place / Selfless









