Lessons

Season 7, Episode 1
Written by Joss Whedon
Directed by David Solomon
Original Airdate: 24 September 2002

“Do you have everything? Books? Lunch? Stakes?”

Buffy

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

SPECIAL GUEST STAR

Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

GUEST CAST

Kali Rocha as Halfrek
Alex Breckenridge as Kit Holburn
D.B. Woodside as Robin Wood

CO-STARRING

Mark Metcalf as The Master
Juliet Landau as Drusilla
Harry Groener as Mayor Richard Wilkins III
George Hertzberg as Adam
Clare Kramer as Glory
Adam Busch as Warren Mears
David Zepeda as Carlos Trejo
Jeremy Howard as Dead Nerd
Ken Strunk as Dead Janitor
Rachael Bella as Dead Girl
Ed F. Martin as Teacher
Simon Chernin as Student
Jeff Denton as Vampire

SYNOPSIS

In Istanbul, a young woman runs for her life as several cloaked men chase after her. They eventually capture her and hold her as a knife is raised and plunged down above her. Back in Sunnydale, Buffy lectures Dawn about “power” in slaying as a new vampire tries to rise from his grave. Dawn is a bit overconfident and gets in a bit of trouble when Buffy lets her try to slay the fledgling. Buffy saves her sister and as the two leave the graveyard, they talk about the great horrible threat of the return of Sunnydale High School. In Westbury, England, Giles rides a horse through a field to find Willow sitting in the grass, making a flower grow out of the ground. They talk about how the Coven has been teaching Willow to deal with her magic, but Willow knows they are all very afraid of her power.

Clad in a business suit, Xander arrives at the Summers house. In attempts to calm Buffy’s nerves, Xander reviews the plans for the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High, confirming that every possible effort was taken to make sure the school was as guarded against evil as possible. He also reveals that the Hellmouth is located under the principal’s office now instead of the library. Buffy checks to make sure Dawn is ready for the first day of school and gives her sister a special “weapon.” Xander drops the Summers girls off at the new school and as Buffy tries to let go of her own personal experiences at the high school. The new principal, Robin Wood, welcomes them and then Buffy lets Dawn go off on her own.

After the students have started their classes, Buffy walks alone around the school’s quiet and empty halls until a basketball is thrown across her path into a locker. She follows the young teen that threw it, but looses track of him. In the bathroom, Buffy finds a strange object on the counter and then two creatures appear to her briefly and try to scare her away. Dawn introduces herself to the class, but is interrupted by her over reactive sister who barges into the class announcing that it’s not safe for them. Realizing her mistake, Buffy tries fix it, but the damage to Dawn’s social life has been done.

Anyanka and Halfrek have drinks at the coffee house while they watch a couple of singers perform. Halfrek points out that Anyanka is losing her “evil” touch and that she needs to start acting more like a Vengeance demon because something evil and incredibly old is about to surface and Anyanka cannot afford to be borderline evil. Buffy reports to Xander about what she saw in the bathroom and worries that the return of Sunnydale High School is a sign of something bad. A student asks Dawn for a pencil and Dawn hands him one only to have the student be a zombie creature that stabs her in the face with the pencil. Dawn freaks out and as all eyes in the classroom turn on her, she realizes she’s not injured and excuses herself to the bathroom to recover from the second major embarrassment of the day.

Dawn finds another student in the bathroom crying in one of the stalls because she thinks there are others in the bathroom with them. Dawn tries to comfort and befriend the girl, Kit, but the zombie creatures appear in the mirrors and the girls are pulled through the bathroom floor to the basement below. Meanwhile, Principal Wood finds Buffy roaming the halls and starts up a conversation about Buffy and her history at the school. In England, Willow suddenly starts to freak out and Giles tries to comfort her. She reveals that she felt evil from the earth, specifically the Hellmouth reopening.

Kit wakes Dawn and as the two search for an escape from the basement, they run into another living student, Carlos. Before they can get to know each other or find the way out, a janitor and two student zombie creatures surround them and offer threats and cryptic warnings about there not being an escape or help for them. Buffy tries to explain her colorful record to the principal and out of fear for her sister, attempts to convince him that Dawn’s trouble and doesn’t belong at the school. After receiving a cell phone call from Dawn, Buffy finds her way to the basement to rescue her sister. While waiting for her sister to find them, Dawn is grabbed by one of the creatures. Buffy runs into the creatures and learns that they’re all mad at her for her failure to save them from their deaths. Buffy is more concerned with finding Dawn and suspects they’re trying to keep her from the door behind them, so she fights with them until she gets past.

Instead of finding her sister behind the door though, she encounters Spike. She’s stunned and wonders if he’s real, but the zombies attack and interrupt. Temporarily rid of the spirits, Buffy focuses on Spike, but he only speaks crazy nonsense that she doesn’t understand. Upon closer examination, she finds that his chest is cut up and he explains that he attempted to cut “it” out. While Buffy talks with Dawn on her cell phone, Spike reveals that the zombie creatures are manifest spirits and that a talisman is responsible for their vengeful actions. Still confused by him, Buffy rushes off to find Dawn. Remembering the object she saw in the bathroom, Buffy calls Xander on her cell phone. Dawn and the others put together a weapon with Kit’s bag and a couple of bricks just in time for the creatures to appear and attack.

Xander makes his way to the girls bathroom and is momentarily pleased to find the large hole in the ground for him to fix later. Buffy finds Dawn and fights off the spirits while she waits for Xander to find the talisman in the bathroom. He does, despite an attack from one of the spirits, and breaks it just in time. Finally back upstairs, Buffy offers some advice to Dawn, Carlos and Kit and the three head off to class together. The principal is impressed with her ability to communicate with the troublemakers, Kit and Carlos. He offers Buffy a low-paying job as a counsellor who can reach the students on their own level and Buffy eagerly agrees.

Spike talks out loud seemingly about what he could have done when he saw Buffy and how she’ll never understand him. It’s revealed that he’s not alone as Warren appears and talks to him about how Buffy cannot understand what he is. Warren morphs into Glory who warns that soon she’ll be the talk of the world. Glory turns into Adam who announces that everyone is where they should be. The Mayor is the next figure who comments about Spike’s soul and then he turns into Drusilla, who proclaims that Spike belongs to her. She turns into the Master, who explains there will be a return to the real beginning in the eventual future. Finally, the figure morphs into Buffy who reveals, “It’s about power.”

TRIVIA

D.B. Woodside plays Principal Robin Wood. D. B stands for David Bryan. He told the BBC in an interview about how he got the job on Buffy: “I’d never actually watched the show. The summer before the seventh season I got a call from my manager – I guess [the producers] had seen some of my work – and they wanted me to come in and screen for this character. I said no, a week passed and they asked me again – and I said no again. Finally, thankfully, my manager twisted my arm and forced me to go in. Shortly afterwards I fell in love with the role and the rest is history. I’m so glad my manager pushed me.”

Robin Wood is the new Principal at Sunnydale High. Joss Whedon deliberately kept the unisex name as he wasn’t sure in his script if Robin would be male or female, or good or evil.

At the end of this episode, Spike is confronted by various manifestations in the form of previous Big Bads The Master, Glory, Warren, Drusilla, Adam and Mayor Wilkins. The actors’ names were omitted from the guest stars list in the opening credits so as not to spoil the ending.

The scenes of Willow and Giles in England were actually filmed on location at Anthony Stewart Head’s house in England. They were directed by Joss Whedon. The place is named as Westbury in the show, but he actually lives near Bath in Somerset. Westbury is in Wiltshire and is famous for a massive horse drawn into a hill with chalk. There were going to be more scenes in England, but bad weather interrupted the filming. Head explains: “The shot of me on Otto [the horse] has rain running down me … my hair is plastered to my forehead, but you wouldn’t know. It looks glorious because our brilliant director of photography made everything look great.”

Anthony Head explains how the shoot happened: “Basically, Joss had always wanted to shoot in Britain. He announced that he wanted to shoot some scenes with Willow in England, and I was very excited, because it’s my neck of the woods and it meant I could stay longer with my family before I went back to the States. Then he said he wanted to shoot in and around Bath, because that’s where we said we’d set it if we ever do the Ripper series. I’d pitched Bath as an interesting environment, a good backdrop because it’s a cool place. Somerset is just riddled with myths and legends and folklore – ley lines and all sorts of things … it’s very spiritual. Joss said yes, so when it came to shoot Giles at home he said, “Can we do it at your house?” I thought I’d better ask my partner, Sarah, and she said, “Go on.” I said, “Yeah, but a film crew?”, and she said, “Get over it, it’ll be fine!” Actually the house loved it, it was very “smiley” … it loved having all the attention. It’s a lovely house.”

This season’s opener is the first since the start of the show where there have been no changes to the regular cast. Each of the previous seasons there have been either cast members added or removed at the beginning.

Mark Metcalf, George Hertzberg, and Clare Kramer were originally intended to return again by the end of the season, but they were unable to make their schedule work with Joss’s. Harry Groener filmed his segment three weeks after the other actors in that scene. David Solomon and Joss Whedon also note in their DVD commentary that Kali Rocha was performing on stage during the beginning of season seven, but they managed to fly her in and film all of her season seven scenes in one day (including the scene here and all her scenes in Selfless).

The scenes of “Istanbul” were actually filmed at Universal Studios, and the graveyard shown in the teaser was built indoors. Dawn’s classroom was constructed in the same location of the Scoobies’ classroom in their high school years.

CONTINUITY

Xander makes references to the last two Principals of Sunnydale High (which coincidentally is built on the same site as the last one). Both of them were eaten. Notably, Principal Wood’s office is in the location where the library used to be… directly over the Hellmouth.

Spike is back in Sunnydale, living in the basement of the school where he is ‘haunted’ by hallucinations (apparently) of the show’s previous villains. In the order in which they first appeared, he sees the Master, Drusilla, Mayor Wilkins, Adam, Glory and Warren, and for some reason, Buffy.

Willow is in England with Giles, seemingly recovering from the end of last season and Tara’s murder.

Buffy tells Dawn not to worry, as she missed the vampire’s heart the first time she killed one too, which was seen in a flashback to Buffy’s calling in Becoming (Part 1).

Buffy references the past dangers of Sunnydale High when she warns Dawn to watch for hyena people (The Pack), fish monsters (Go Fish) and invisible people (Out of Mind, Out of Sight). She also claims that she’s the one who dates dead guys, referring to both Angel and Spike.

GOOFS

Joss Whedon points out in his commentary that Buffy’s clothes don’t have any pockets, yet she manages to put her phone into an “invisible” pocket at the back of her trousers a couple of times. At one point she tucks it into the back of her trousers but in the next shot it’s gone.

During Buffy’s fight scenes you can see that she’s wearing trainers – but before and afterwards she’s wearing high heels.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

EPISODE
Grave / Beneath You

STORY ORDER
Tomorrow / Beneath You