Anne (episode)

"Anne" is the first episode of season 3 of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy has fled both Sunnydale and her duty; the Scoobies try to carry on without the Slayer.

Summary
Back in Sunnydale, lacking a Slayer, the Scooby Gang try to temporarily take her place. They attempt to slay a vampire, but they're just not the Slayer. Meanwhile, Buffy has taken up residence in Los Angeles where she's living in a tiny apartment and working as a waitress at a diner, Helen's Kitchen. She dreams about being on the beach and Angel finds her. He tells her, "I'll never leave. Not even if you kill me". She then wakes up.

The next day, school starts in Sunnydale. Willow is disappointed when Oz tells her that he will be repeating his senior year of high school, since he didn't graduate and didn't go to summer school. She doesn't know what to think about it. Giles continues his search to find Buffy, following all the leads he has, only to be disappointed by them. Xander and Cordy, having been away from each other all summer long, both look forward to seeing one another but seem to have forgotten how to talk together.

While working in Helen's Kitchen, Buffy finds herself subjected to sexual harassment by a couple of guys she waits on, and encountering homeless teens, Lily and Rickie looking for a meal for the minor change they have. After recognizing the girl as vampire-wannabe Chantarelle, Buffy leaves the diner, claiming to not be feeling well and heads to her apartment where she just sits, staring at a can of food. While Buffy is still alone and roams the streets in search of solidarity, Giles returns from his failed search to talk to Joyce. She's afraid to leave the house in case Buffy calls or shows up. Giles tries to comfort her and tells her not to blame herself. She doesn't, instead blaming him for taking her little girl away and having a secret life with her.

Xander, Willow and Oz mope at the Bronze, listening to the music of BellyLove and talking about how terrible their slaying technique is. Xander suggests they use bait...Cordelia. That night, Lily a.k.a. Chantarelle, finds Buffy on the street and they discuss their previous lives. Lily asks Buffy if she has any money and wants to go to a rave. Buffy says she wants to be alone, but is willing to give Lily the money to go spend with Ricky. An old man walks past them, rudely and then stops in the middle of the street as an oncoming car drives towards him. Buffy rushes out and pushes him out of the way, only to be hit by the car instead. People gather around her and try to call for help, but she claims to be fine and runs off. She runs into a guy, named Ken, who's passing out flyers about a group home and knocks all of his flyers to the ground. As they pick them up, he tries to make friends with her and get her to visit the home. She declines, claiming she is just fine.

Lily goes to Buffy the next day, telling her that Ricky is gone and she's worried that something bad might've happened, and asking for help. They go to the blood bank that day to see if they had seen Ricky. Lily and Ricky went there before to get some money...and cookies. The doctor tells them she hasn't seen him, and Buffy leaves with Lily to go search for Ricky. Buffy finds him dead on the streets, after drinking drain cleaner with one problem: he appears to be about eighty years old.

When Buffy tells Lily, she doesn't take it very well and leaves. When she hits the streets, Ken finds her and convinces her into coming to the family home, telling her that Ricky was already with them, and not dead. At the blood bank, Buffy goes searching through the files trying to find out what happened to Ricky. The woman shows up and after Buffy makes it very difficult for her not to cooperate, she says that she just gives the names of the healthy ones to them.

Meanwhile, Ken has gotten Lily to change clothes for the "cleansing" and leads her into another room.

At the Sunnydale Cemetery, Cordelia complains about being chosen as the bait. Oz checks to make sure everyone is "packing" with stakes and crosses and they all move to a hiding spot. Cordy follows after Xander and attempts to tell him that she didn't miss him over the summer and accuses him of having a summer fling. Just then a vampire comes up from behind Willow and attacks her. Oz knocks the vamp off and attempts to stake it, but is thrown off. Xander tries too, then Cordelia tackles the vampire and all three go down to the ground, the stake impaling the vampire and leaving Cordy on top of Xander. The two kiss passionately.

Back at the "Family Home" in Los Angeles, Buffy tries to enter undercover. When that doesn't work, she kicks down the door and finds Ken with Lily over an icky pool of black. However, it's too late for Lily, she's already been sucked in. Buffy tries to save her but Ken tries to keep her out. Instead, both fall through the black pool and into another dimension where time flows at a different rate. Ken reveals himself as a demon of some sort with a human face glued on, and sends his guards after the girls. The two are quickly caught and told that they will be living there for as long as they can serve as useful slaves. In this dimension time runs differently, in that decades pass there but only hours or days in the real world. Slaves who are too old to work are returned to their former dimension to die on the streets.

When the opportunity presents itself, Buffy reveals herself and fights off all the demons. After many rounds, she is stopped when Ken holds Lily at knifepoint. When he is distracted by a lecture he's presenting to Buffy, Lily pushes him off the platform and he falls. Buffy tries to escape with all the others through a large iron gate. As she tries to get underneath while holding the heavy gate up, Ken pushes her through and in turn, gets impaled by the stakes on the gate. Buffy smashes in his head with a well-timed quip about Gandhi. After Buffy returns with all the others, the black pool disappears.

After giving Lily her identity as "Anne," Buffy leaves and heads back to Sunnydale. Back at home, Buffy's mom opens the door to find her daughter on the front steps. After a few moments, they hug.

Starring

 * Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
 * Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
 * Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
 * Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
 * David Boreanaz as Angel
 * Seth Green as Oz
 * Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

Guest Starring

 * Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
 * Julia Lee as Lily Houston (formerly Chanterelle)
 * Carlos Jacott as Ken
 * Mary-Pat Green as Joan the blood bank doctor
 * Chad Todhunter as Rickie Thomas

Co Starring

 * Larry Bagby as Larry Blaisdell (as Larry Bagby III)
 * James Lurie as Teacher
 * Michael Leopard as Roughneck
 * Harley Zumbrum as Demon Guard
 * Barbara Pilavin as Old Woman
 * Harrison Young as Old Man
 * Alex Toma as Aaron
 * Dell Yount as Truck Guy

Trivia

 * There's a 3 minute, 24 second single shot at the beginning of the first act starting with Giles and Willow coming down the stairs in the library and ending with Xander and Cordelia's encounter in the lounge with nothing to say to each other. It is followed by a smash cut to Buffy by herself sitting on the bed of her apartment in Los Angeles. It shows the all of the mayhem at the start of the school year in contrast to Buffy being alone by herself. The long shot has been broken up in the syndicated versions, potentially lessening the aforementioned intended effect.


 * Social issues covered by this episode include teenage runaways and sweatshops.


 * Seth Green appears in the opening credits starting with this episode.


 * Guest star Carlos Jacott who played Ken is one of only five actors to appear on Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. He appeared in "Bachelor Party", the seventh episode of the first season of Angel, and the pilot episode of Firefly.


 * At one point in the battle with Ken's henchmen, Buffy wields both a hammer and a sickle. The factory setting, hard labour and the hammer and sickle not only shows a theme of communism circa 1922 onwards - but more importantly the unification between peasants and workers to reach a better goal, seen here when everyone unites to defeat Ken's men.
 * Buffy's temporary neighborhood of residence is in the area around 11th Street on the south side of downtown Los Angeles; the intersection where she is hit by a car is the corner of 11th and Broadway, and the leaflets for the Family Home give its adress as 1123 S. Hill Street, just around the corner.
 * During this episode, Lily wears a white t-shirt underneath a green sweater. The visible part of the t-shirt says, "Dent" and has a red heart with the words "Home of" visible inside the heart. This is most likely a nod to the cult classic "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," in which a billboard is visible in a graveyard. On the billboard, there is a large red heart with the word "Denton" above it (Denton is the name of the town in which the film takes place) and the phrase "The Home of Happiness" inside it.

Willow: "Oh! That reminds me. I asked around about Andrew Hoelick, our gymnastic vampire, and apparently he used to like to hang out in Hammersmith Park and pick up grilles! Or, okay, that could be girls."
 * The following line was cut from this episode for length:

Quotes
Giles(to Willow, Cordelia and Xander) - "Well, for God's sake, be careful. I mean, I appreciate your efforts to keep the vampire population down until Buffy returns, but if anything should happen to you, you should be hurt or killed, I shall take it somewhat amiss."

Continuity

 * This episode is the first time the Scoobies are shown patrolling as a team sans Slayer. They will be required to do this several more times throughout the series, most significantly at the beginning of Season 6.


 * Willow leads the gang in Buffy's absence she will do so again during the period Buffy is dead between seasons five and six.


 * Time passing differently in alternate dimensions is introduced here; it will become more relevant with Angel's and later Buffy's return.


 * Lily's character first appeared as Chantarelle in "Lie to Me". She adopts Buffy's persona at the end of this episode. "Anne" would later appear on the spin-off Angel as the social worker Anne Steele, helping Angel on a couple of occasions.

Music

 * Bellylove - "Back to Freedom"
 * Christophe Beck - "Deliverance"