Smashed

Season 6, Episode 9
Written by Drew Z. Greenberg
Directed by Turi Meyer
Original Airdate: 19 November 2001

“If rats could dance, they probably wouldn’t gnaw so much.”

Amy

REGULAR CAST

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Emma Caulfield as Anya Jenkins
Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers
James Marsters as Spike
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg

GUEST CAST

Danny Strong as Jonathan Levinson
Adam Busch as Warren Mears
Tom Lenk as Andrew Wells
Elizabeth Anne Allen as Amy Madison
Amber Benson as Tara Maclay

CO-STARRING

Patrick Clerkin as Man
Jack Jozefson as Rusty
Rick Garcia as Reporter
Kelly Smith as Innocent Girl
Jordan Belfi as Ryan
Adam Weiner as Simon
Melanie Sirmons as Brie
Lauren Nissi as Girlfriend

SYNOPSIS

Buffy saves a woman from being mugged and although Spike tries to help, the human muggers are untouchable to him. They talk about their occasional habit of making out and Buffy denies that there be another repeat of that and leaves. Spike accuses her of teasing him, but he is confident she’ll return when she figures out he’s the only one out there for her. Still depressed over the loss of Tara, Willow is inspired to try and return Amy the rat back to her human form and uses her magic to bring the girl back.

Jonathan, Andrew and Warren break into a museum and steal a large diamond. They use a Freeze Ray to encase the security guard (and by accident, Jonathan’s arm) in ice and escape. Willow fills Amy in on everything that’s been going on while she has been a rat for so long. Buffy arrives and discovers Amy’s return and also hears about the security guard that was frozen at the museum. Spike is waiting for Buffy outside the museum when she gets there to investigate the scene and they banter and fight. Spike hits Buffy and he’s shocked when the chip doesn’t go off, but pretends it does anyway and she leaves with a final insult.

Excited about the opportunity to hurt humans again, Spike tries to attack a woman on the streets, but his chip stops him. Tara and Dawn spend some time together and Tara tries to explain the necessity for her leaving. Dawn doesn’t blame her and subtly mentions that Willow has been not so obsessive with magic lately. The Scooby Gang meets at the magic shop for updates on the frozen security guard and research. Just when it looks like Willow has returned to a bit of her computer roots, she uses magic to operate her computer and this disturbs her friends. They mention her break-up with Tara, but Willow brushes it off and returns to Amy at the house.

Spike goes to the threesome of geeky villains and demands that they examine his chip to see what’s causing him so much trouble. When the chip appears to be in perfect working order, Spike concludes that Buffy is the problem. Amy wants to get out of the house and persuades Willow to join her for some actual fun. Tara brings Dawn home and although she wants to leave to avoid Willow’s return, Dawn convinces her to stay.

Willow continues to tell Amy of all the latest news of Sunnydale while they play pool using magic. A couple of guys want to dance with the girls and Amy tries to encourage Willow by putting a spell on a nearby woman, but Willow doesn’t like the idea. Later, when the two guys find Amy and Willow chatting, they make a rude comment to Willow that results in the guys locked in cages, dancing in their underwear. At the magic shop, the gang is fed up with trying to find the demon responsible for freezing the security guard and talk about Willow using too much magic, instead. Spike calls and cryptically tells Buffy to meet him at the cemetery.

She runs into Spike on the streets later that night and he taunts her into hitting him. Given the motivation, he hits her back and happily informs her that he felt nothing and she came back from Heaven not completely human. The fight continues inside of an old abandoned building as Buffy continues to deny the possibility and Spike reassures her it’s true. Meanwhile, Willow and Amy go crazy with magic at the Bronze until they get bored and decide to find somewhere else to have fun.

Buffy and Spike continue their fight, throwing punches and verbal attacks at each other all the while weakening the building by knocking into the walls and support beams. Just as the fight reaches an intense peak, Buffy switches the game and kisses Spike. Their fighting takes on another form as they kiss viciously and very obviously have sex, ignoring the fact that the building is collapsing around them. Even when they fall through the floor of one level and land on the one below, they don’t stop.

TRIVIA

Amy Madison is finally transformed back into a human in this episode, her first since Gingerbread in season three. Elizabeth Anne Allen had this to say on her return to the show: “This year it just happened to fall together really brilliantly. I was available, they had an open space in their storyline and voila! They asked me and I said, “Heck, yeah”. I love it. Managers and agents talk once a year and sort of touch base with what’s going on in our lives, where they are in the storyline and what’s going on in my career. It just seemed that, brilliantly, everything seemed to fall together so neatly this year. I love that I’m back for more episodes. It gives you more time to create your character and grow and show all the ways that you’ve changed. I’m thrilled with it. I can’t wait to see where Amy goes, I’m looking forward to it.”

When interviewed by the BBC, the writer of this episode, Drew Greenberg, mentioned that Alyson Hannigan had difficulty with doing the Italian spell in this episode: “The only issue that Alyson may have had, was the Italian spell that she had to do at the beginning. She was unhappy with me for forcing her to speak lines and lines and paragraphs of a language of which she wasn’t completely familiar.” Willow’s spell was “Cio che fu non e piu. Cio che fu fatto disfa. Passata e il pericolo, finita e la prova. Mette le cosa a posto.”

Drew Greenberg also told the BBC his feelings when he discovered that Amy’s de-ratting would be in his episode, “I was excited too because I’ve been a fan of the show from the first episode myself, even before I was even working on it, so I’ve been waiting for Amy to come back. When I found out that that was going to be part of my first Buffy episode ever, I jumped up and down as a fan. Then, as a writer, you sit down and you’re like, “Oh God, how am I going to make this happen?””

Marti Noxon, executive producer also had comments on the Spike and Buffy situation that was started in this episode: “This was the beginning of the most divisive story we’ve ever had, which was Buffy and Spike boning. Really, I’ve never seen such a strong reaction on both sides. People either love it or hate it. To this day, people either truly believe that Spike is completely redeemed and should be treated a lot better, or they truly believe that Buffy is a fool for trusting someone who’s been evil and how can she be so unheroic as to allow herself to be caught up in this really sordid romance? So you get the total Buffy/Spike shippers or you get the attitude, ‘I just don’t respect Buffy any more.’ It’s fascinating to see. The thing I keep saying is that it’s not black and white. I’d love it to be, but it’s not. To me, this is much more real. If these two crazy kids can make it work, it will be a lot more interesting than a kind of perfect romance with obstacles thrown in. To me, this is real life; this is people making their own problems. If they can get it together, that would be amazing. But it was never going to be easy. That’s why Spike did something radical at the end of the year. Joss came up with the idea of the house coming down around them while they made love. It was perfect, because we needed something catastrophic to go along with this huge dangerous union.”

CONTINUITY

Willow explains to Amy that a) Larry is gay (Phases), b) Larry’s dead (Graduation Day (Part 2)) and c) high schools’ kinda over. Amy also references the ‘big-snake’ which is reference to the Mayor and also learns of Snyder’s death.

The diamond that the Trio steal is on loan from the British Museum, which is where Giles used to work as curator.

Amy sees an advert for the Doublemeat Palace on the television. Buffy ends up working there in… Doublemeat Palace.

Xander mentions Buffy’s “exploding lint” from Life Serial.

Willow tells Amy she can provide a forgetting spell “only, you might wanna sew your name into your clothes first”. She’s referring to the events of Tabula Rasa when her spell caused the Scoobies to forget their memories.

GOOFS

Why is Amy’s hair longer and a different colour?

Andrew claims to have seen every episode of Doctor Who. Not unless he’s mastered time travel, he hasn’t: 97 episodes of Doctor Who have been missing since the early 1970s, junked by the BBC Archives.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

EPISODE
Tabula Rasa / Wrecked

STORY ORDER
Dad / Wrecked