Dead Things

"Dead Things" is the thirteenth episode of the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is the one hundred thirteenth episode altogether. It was written by Steven S. DeKnight and directed by James A. Contner. It originally broadcast on February 5, 2002.

The Trio try to make Warren's ex-girlfriend Katrina their willing sexual slave by magical means. But when she fights back she is accidentally killed, they use magical and demonic forces to make Buffy think that she has killed Katrina. Between finding out the truth about her resurrection and believing she killed an innocent girl, Buffy's world begins to fall apart.

Synopsis
After a wild round of sex on the bottom floor of Spike's Crypt, Buffy and Spike carry on an actual conversation about decorating and Buffy's feelings for Spike. She admits to liking him occasionally, but when he questions her trust and displays a pair of handcuffs, Buffy assures him she'll never trust him. Meanwhile the super villains, having been forced to flee their basement lair and now hiding in a rented house, have put the finishing touches on a new gadget, a Cerebral Dampener. The evil tool will allow the three to turn any woman of their choice into their pseudo-willing sex slave.

Buffy takes a break at her job to talk in private with Tara. Buffy tells Tara that Spike is able to hit her, but not other humans. Suspicious that she returned to life "wrong" because of the spell, Buffy asks that Tara research the spell and find out just what is wrong with her. Warren browses a bar for attractive women while Andrew and Jonathan watch through a camera in Warren's tie and direct him to various women they would like to have as slaves. Irritated by the suggestions, Warren removes the earpiece and microphone and approaches someone familiar: his ex-girlfriend, Katrina. Katrina wants nothing to do with Warren, but he uses the Cerebral Dampener and suddenly, Katrina refers to her ex as "Master." Buffy returns home after a long, hard, dirty day at work to find her friends preparing for the wedding by teaching Dawn to waltz. Buffy is upset when she learns Dawn is spending the night at Janice's and decides to go to The Bronze with her friends instead of staying home.

The Trio enjoy champagne served by Katrina in a maid's outfit and admire Warren's selection of women. Warren takes Katrina away for his private use and while kissing, Warren asks Katrina to say things to him. After some minutes, when it is clear what sex acts Warren intends, the spell wears off.

Katrina lets loose on Warren and his buddies and reveals to Jonathan and Andrew that she is Warren's ex, which the two think is messed up. Katrina goes on to tell the guys that what they were doing to her constituted rape, which shocks Jonathan and Andrew, and suddenly their plan doesn't seem so much fun anymore. As she tries to escape, Warren hits Katrina with the champagne bottle and she falls. The Trio are all shocked to find that Katrina is dead. Warren leads a plan to get rid of the body, but Andrew and Jonathan are not eager to cover up the accidental murder.

At the Bronze, Buffy and Willow talk about Willow's recovery while watching Xander and Anya dance wildly together. While Willow joins them in dancing, Buffy goes upstairs to watch, feeling as if she doesn't belong. Spike finds her there and raises the issue of her friends' reactions to her involvement with him. Hidden mostly by shadows, Spike tells her to watch her friends on the dance floor below as he reminds her she belongs in the shadows -- in his world. Willow and Xander make their way to the Magic Box and encounter Tara who's on her way out of the shop with a book. The former lovers talk about the magic book Tara holds and Willow's success with staying away from magic. That night, Buffy patrols, but finds herself drawn to Spike's crypt. He senses her arrival, but as he opens the door, he finds that she's already bolted.

As she returns to patrolling, Buffy hears a woman screaming and follows the sound. She finds herself in a twisted scenario where her surroundings shift between the attack of several demons, the crying woman, and Spike finding Buffy in the woods. In the end, Buffy strikes out at something and instead of hitting a demon or Spike, she hits the woman whom we recognize as Katrina. Katrina falls down a hill and Buffy rushes to find her, discovering her dead at the bottom and assumes she's to blame. Hidden in the shadows, an apparently still living Katrina watches.

Spike escorts Buffy away from the scene and back to her house. Inside the van, Warren is pleased with the success of their efforts as the Katrina double returns to the van and shifts appearance to reveal a very bitter Jonathan.

Buffy dreams of Spike joining her in her bed and then of sex at the crypt with Spike bound by handcuffs. The figure of Spike shifts to Katrina and the scenery becomes the woods. Another shift shows Buffy lowering a stake to Spike's chest and then Katrina's eyes open as a stake is shoved into her chest. Shaken by her dream, Buffy wakes and dresses before going to Dawn's room. She professes her love to her sister and Buffy admits that an accident happened and she has to go to the police. Dawn's scared and is upset by the idea of losing her sister. Spike catches Buffy outside the police station and tries to stand in the way of her turning herself in to the police. He says that he took care of the body, but two cops passing by reveal that the body was found washed up by the river.

Despite the fact that Spike was unable to cover up the accident, he's still determined to stop her from admitting guilt and tries to goad her into letting her emotions out on him. She starts to beat on him and for the most part, he just takes it. She tells him that she is not and never will be his girl as she really tears into him. He makes a comment about "You always hurt the ones you love" and wounded by that comment she leaves him to enter the police station. Inside, while waiting to confess, Buffy overhears an officer identify the body as Katrina's and she remembers Warren's ex-girlfriend, immediately realizing that Warren was in fact responsible and had tricked her into believing that she had done it.



The Scooby Gang research and find that the demons Buffy encountered in the woods caused the time shifting and that Katrina was probably dead before Buffy even encountered her. Buffy knows Warren is connected to the incident and wants The Trio found and dealt with. Warren and Andrew are pleased with the general success of their murderous actions, while Jonathan is less than thrilled about it. The only disappointment is that Buffy didn't actually take the fall for Warren's mistake.

After researching the spell, Tara is able to inform Buffy that the spell didn't bring Buffy back wrong at all. She was changed ever so slightly on a molecular level, which apparently was just enough to keep Spike's chip from going off. Buffy is shocked and confesses to Tara that more than just an exchange of punches has been going on between her and Spike, but Tara is supportive, regardless of Buffy's motivation. Needing an excuse for her involvement with Spike, Buffy desperately pleads for something to be wrong with her. She breaks down crying with Tara comforting her, unable to accept that she alone is responsible for what she does with Spike.

Starring

 * 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 Starring

 * Amber Benson as Tara Maclay
 * Tom Lenk as Andrew Wells
 * Danny Strong as Jonathan Levinson
 * Adam Busch as Warren Mears
 * Amelinda Smith as Katrina Silber (as Amelinda Embry)

Co Starring

 * Marion Calvert as Gina
 * Rock Reiser as Desk Sergeant
 * Bernard Addison as Cop #1 (as Bernard K. Addison)
 * Eric Prescott as Cop #2

Production Information

 * Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy, disliked the way her character was treated in this episode, telling Entertainment Weekly, "I had trouble with the one where Buffy had sex with Spike on the balcony while watching their friends. I really thought that was out of character. And I didn't like what it stood for. That was the moment that I had the most problems with." Writer Steven S. DeKnight says, "I totally understand why that part made her uncomfortable... I wish that I could say it was my idea but it's something Joss Whedon had in the back of his head for a year. It just so happened that it happened in my episode." Despite Gellar's dislike, this episode is DeKnight's personal favorite because "it had humor at the beginning and then it had that great twist where the nerds accidentally killed Katrina and then it got dark, dark, dark, dark. We really wanted to highlight how unhappy Buffy was with herself and really show why she was mistreating Spike because she hated herself."


 * In the scene in which Buffy reveals to Tara that she has been sleeping with Spike, Buffy was scripted to lament how hard it is to lie to everyone about who she's sleeping with, and Tara responded, "Sweetie, I'm a fag. I've been there." Dailies reveal that the lines were filmed but cut in editing.


 * This line was cut due to length:

Xander: "According to this, they place the time of Katrina's death almost a fully day before you saw her in the woods."

Quotes
Willow - "We're not going to do have to that at the wedding, are we? 'Cause there's this last thread of dignity I've been desperately clinging to."

Buffy - "You know, this place is okay for a hole in the ground. You fixed it up." Spike - "Well, I ate a decorator once. Maybe something stuck."

Spike - "Are we having a conversation?" Buffy - "What? No! No. ... Maybe." Spike - "Hmm." Buffy - "What?" Spike - "Well, isn't this usually the part where you kick me in the head and run out, virtue fluttering?" Buffy - "That's the plan ... soon as my legs start working."

Tara - "I have this sudden urge to dedicate my productive cooperation." Buffy  - "Well, if you close your eyes and repeatedly smash yourself in the head with frozen meat, it'll go away. Eventually. I'm hoping."

Buffy - "(to herself) Don't think about the evil bloodsucking fiend. Focus on anything but the evil bloodsucking fiend. (A woman screams. Buffy looks upward gratefully.) Thank you!"

Continuity

 * During his post-coital conversation with Buffy, Spike jests about one of his many victims, and Buffy smiles at the joke, apparently undisturbed by such casual talk of murder at such an intimate moment. This sequence, itself rather a dark commentary on Buffy's current state of mind, may have been intended to counterbalance Buffy's later guilt over a death she believes that she accidentally caused.


 * We continue to see Buffy and Spike in what is a both physically and emotionally abusive relationship, with abuse coming from both sides - noticeably emotional from Spike and physical from Buffy. The final confrontation between Buffy and Spike reveals that Spike, at the time of the episode, is stuck at the motivational level of reward and punishment, unable to understand why Buffy would turn herself in if there's no evidence of her connection to the crime. Buffy cries that Spike "can't understand why this is killing me, can you?" In the season seven episode "Sleeper", Spike, now possessing a soul, realizes that he has killed people (not yet aware that he was under the control of The First), and immediately brings Buffy to see the bodies, despite the very real chance that she would kill him for his crime. In the next episode, "Never Leave Me", he also confesses that he finally understands self-loathing.


 * In this episode, Tara becomes the first of the Scoobies to find out about Spike and Buffy's sexual relationship, because of her role as 'confidante' in the Scoobies.


 * While in the Bronze, Xander and Anya dance like they did in their apartment in "Once More, with Feeling".


 * When Buffy asks, "Is there singing?! Are we singing again?" she's referring to the episode Once More with Feeling.


 * When Dawn says she's staying at Janice's house, Buffy says, "Right. And I'm falling for that again because of the surprise lobotomy?" This is a reference to the episode All the Way, when Dawn and Janice snuck out to go on dates with two vampires.


 * The plot involving Katrina and the Trio in this episode defines Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew's character arcs of the season. Warren emerges as much darker and more capable of actual evil than Andrew and Jonathan. While Andrew adjusts to the idea of getting away with Katrina's murder over the course of the episode, Jonathan remains uneasy. The Trio will begin to fracture culminating in Warren and Andrew attempting to use jet packs to escape in "Seeing Red" and leaving Jonathan to take the fall.

Music

 * Bush - "Out of This World"
 * Extreme music library - "Finger snap"
 * Red and the Red Hots - "Boo wah boo wah"
 * Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - "Sleeping Beauty Op the Waltz"