| Episode No. | Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3, Episode 12 |
|---|---|
| Directed by | James A. Contner |
| Written by | David Fury |
0:57 : It’s Buffy’s 18th birthday, which Oz mentioned in the previous episode. Buffy’s birthday is generally believed to be 19th January and each season celebrates her birthday between episodes 12-14.
1:18 : Buffy mentions that she’s going with her father to the ice show. We haven’t seen Hank since When She Was Bad, but heard him in Becoming. We won’t see him this time either…
1:54 : Buffy mentions that Faith is on ‘one of her unannounced walkabouts.’ Indeed, Faith hasn’t been seen in the field since Revelations.
2:09 : Notice Buffy’s unfortunate handling of the crystal and how it corresponds to the sexual tension between her and Angel in the opening scene. Someone’s frustrated…
2:25 : Presumably Giles has been dosing Buffy slowly over the course of the days leading up to her birthday.
2:45 : The vampire tackles Buffy when her powers dim out for a moment and manages to turn her stake against her! Buffy isn’t injured often, but it proves dangerous in Fool for Love, when she’s stabbed.
5:00 : A brilliant line from Buffy: “I’m way off my game. My game has left the country. It’s in Cuernavaca.”
5:33 : Buffy, by the sound of it, has just done what Kendra did in What’s My Line? and killed the ‘bad lamp’.
5:15 : Buffy’s interest in ice-skating goes back to What’s My Line?
5:17 : Buffy says that every year her father takes her to the show… Except we’ve never seen him do this, ever.
6:27 : Buffy mentions that parties thrown in her honour tend to have dubious and unfortunate endings, and unusually high body counts, which happened in Surprise and Dead Man’s Party.
7:06 : For Hank’s quarterly projections, see his secretary…
7:34 : We cut to a boarding house somewhere in Sunnydale that doesn’t look particularly friendly: the Sunnydale Arms. It’s abandoned and boarded up. Sunnydale has a lot of houses like this it seems…
7:41 : Blair is seen cementing the wall in preparation for later in the episode. He’s played by British actor Dominic Keating, who went on to star in Star Trek: Enterprise as Malcolm Reed.
7:51 : Harris Yulin, acting legend, plays Quentin Travers for the first of three appearances in this episode. A native of California, Yulin had performed in the business for decades, known to a generation of movie goers as the angry Judge in Ghostbusters II. To Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fans, he played the role of Marritza in the first season episode ‘Duet,’ which as a result is simply one of the best character performances on television EVER. He sadly passed away in June 2025.
7:55 : Hobson is played by David Haydn-Jones, who played Arthur and Alex Ketch in nearly twenty episodes of Supernatural.
8:48 : A lovely moment here as Buffy insinuates that she wants Giles to take her to the ice show as her father figure.
9:30 : Surprise! In a rather sinister moment, Giles injects Buffy with an unknown compound in a syringe. We receive no explanation at this point, which makes it doubly scary. It initially seems wildly out-of-character and the creepy smile Giles gives her as Buffy comes round? Shivers…
10:55 : Willow is excited that she has bought Amy a wheel for her habitat and ‘the cutest little bell’. She confirms she hasn’t managed to de-rat Amy yet. Amy transformed into a rat in Gingerbread, and will remain that way until Something Blue.
11:08 : The jackass who pushes Buffy and threatens Cordelia is played by Nick Cornish. He later appeared in Gossip Girl.
12:33 : The tradition of the Tento di Cruciamentum goes back centuries and is the Watcher Council’s way of testing the current Slayer on her 18th birthday. It’s unclear if every test is the same; Buffy is locked in an abandoned house with a deranged, dangerous vampire, without her powers. ‘Cruciamentum’ is Latin for ‘test of torture’ or ‘torment’.
12:44 : Giles gets a strongly-worded line here which reminds us that he didn’t want to become a Watcher and that he generally doesn’t agree with their methods. He calls the Cruciamentum ‘an archaic exercise in cruelty’, and while he’s ordered to participate, by the end of the episode he makes it clear he abhors the whole process.
12:44 : It’s been suggested by some that Faith’s Watcher was killed during her Cruciamentum, although no confirmation of this appears onscreen.
14:17 : The incomparable Jeff Kober appears here, as insane vampire Zachery Kralik. As an actor, he’s had many a role in television series such as Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead and The Pitt. He’ll make a rare return to the Buffy universe, as a different character completely, as Rack in Season Six.
15:28 : In case you’re wondering about the Kryptonite argument, Oz is correct. Gold is the power sucker.
16:46 : What’s interesting in this episode is that Kralik seems addicted to the pills. We never find out what illness he has; what causes the bone-crushing headaches – but there is certainly a question over whether the pills would affect him the way they seem to here. Would anti-psychotic medication work on a vampire, and don’t they want him psychotic? They can’t be sleeping pills…
18:35 : Angel mentions that Buffy looked a lot more excited last year when she received ‘a severed arm in a box,’ a reference to the Judge in Surprise.
19:20 : Buffy makes a reference to Kendra’s lucky stake, Mr. Pointy, which she kept after Becoming and which we’ll see in later episodes.
19:44 : She’s not very subtle, but it’s a hilarious moment: Buffy says that her old self was more like ‘Spordelia’ and could make Cordy look like a classical philosopher!
20:00 : Angel tells Buffy that he saw her before she was the Slayer, the day she was called on the steps of Hemery High, which we saw in Becoming and The Origin.
20:23 : Here, it’s made clear that his love for Buffy from the moment he saw her wasn’t ick-inducing. He was in love with her soul. He could see how bright and pure her heart was, and wanted to cover it with his own to protect it. This is the sweetest thing anyone in Sunnydale has ever said. Or incredibly gross.
21:15 : Considering it’s still the same day presumably, Blair transforms into a vampire relatively quickly. Isn’t there usually a full night before new vamps rise as the undead?
22:35 : Another interesting question, since he’s disappeared in this scene and Giles can’t locate him either; has Quentin gone to check in on Faith? You would think someone would at least check while they were there in town.
25:07 : Note Sarah Michelle Gellar here: she’s actively running more like ‘a girl’ – a task she found quite difficult after years of fighting back.
25:42 : This is the first time that Giles’ car is actually good for something and never makes that ghastly noise!
27:33 : When Buffy calls Giles a ‘Bastard’ for what he’s done to her, it’s the first instance of an expletive in the series. It was also cut from the scene in the UK.
28:00 : Sarah Michelle Gellar and Anthony Stewart Head knock it out of the ballpark with their performances here. His guilt, her feeling of betrayal, the inability to look in his eyes. Superb!
28:40 : Charisma Carpenter steals the scene again! Cordelia enters the library and then stops, asks if the world is ending – and then hastily adds that she has a paper due and she’s not going to bother if the world is ending! It’s all in her delivery.
29:45 : Buffy’s red coat will be transformed next season into a Halloween costume when Buffy goes to a party as Little Red Riding Hood…
31:38 : As if you hadn’t noticed yet, Kralik has an issue with mothers. He’s aware of it.
35:55 : This one is most likely a coincidence, but Kralik actually references Little Red Riding Hood!
37:37 : Buffy finds herself in a room filled with photos of Kralik and Joyce. Our question: when did he have the time to do all of this?
39:39 : Buffy gets the line of the episode and the last laugh: “If I was at full Slayer power, I’d be punning right about now.”
39:49 : Just when did Buffy have time to swap the water in the glass around though?
40:37 : Travers is quite satisfied and tells Buffy that she passed the test. She’s thrilled of course.
40:58 : Giles’ line here underscores not only how he sees the mission ahead of him, but also has a very good point: he tells Travers that “you’re waging the war. She’s the one fighting it. There is a difference.” Buffy’s relationship with the Council is damaged forever by this moment.
41:18 : Giles is fired as Buffy’s Watcher on the grounds that he is incapable of impartial and clear judgement in Buffy’s case as he has a “father’s love” for the girl.
41:18 : Please note, Faith is the official Slayer who the line runs through, and Travers hasn’t checked on her at all? Perhaps he would have noticed her darkness before she became a bigger threat?
41:48 : Giles is told that he is not to interfere when the new Watcher arrives, whenever that will be. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce will arrive in Bad Girls. Again, there’s no mention of Faith, perhaps hinting that this episode was written before the producers knew what was coming?
41:48 : Travers will next be seen in Season Five’s Checkpoint.
42:03 : Buffy, rather more angrily than she when said it in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, tells Travers to “Bite me.”
42:20 : A beautiful and poignant moment follows, not unlike the scene at the end of Innocence. Giles silently reaches down and starts to clean Buffy’s wound on her head, as she slowly lets it all sink in.
43:30 : And Buffy manages to smile through it and keep up her birthday tradition of gut-wrenching misery and horror. As Oz says, there’s ‘a bright side to everything.’ However, Giles will not have fun on Buffy’s next birthday either. He won’t be feeling himself…
