Same Time, Same Place

"Same Time, Same Place" is the third episode of seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is the hundred and twenty-fifth episode altogether. It was written by Jane Espenson and directed by James A. Contner. It originally broadcast on October 8, 2002.

Willow cannot find her friends in Sunnydale, where flayed bodies are being found.

Synopsis


At the airport, Buffy, Dawn, and Xander wait for Willow to get off her plane and talk about how uncomfortable they feel about the situation. The plane clears, but the three don't see Willow. The scene repeats as Willow gets off the plane, but she doesn't see her friends waiting for her. A young man spray paints a wall of a construction site as a creepy, sing-song voice taunts him from the shadows and then attacks.

Willow lets herself into the Summers house, which appears to be vacant. Going up to what used to be her room, but now has been claimed by Buffy, Willow remembers the last time she was in the room. A door closes and Willow goes to investigate, but still her friends are nowhere to be seen. Alone, Willow curls up on the couch. Buffy, Xander, and Dawn return home and after talking about how Willow did leave England, but she had opportunities to divert to another location other than Sunnydale. They hear a noise upstairs and check it out, but find nothing. In the living room, the three talk about the reason for Willow's disappearance.

The next morning, Willow walks over to the Magic Box and finds Anya cleaning up the destroyed store. Anya is very cold to her and Willow feels guilty about everything. They talk a bit and Anya fills Willow in on everyone's activities since she's been gone. Willow checks out Xander's construction site and instead of Xander, she finds a skinned body. At the same time, Xander and Buffy are looking at the body and the familiar sight makes them wonder if Willow is back in her Dark aspect. They hear a noise but cannot see a disgusted Willow climbing the ladder behind them to exit the site at that very moment.



Willow walks the halls of Sunnydale High and proceeds down to the basement where she finds Spike acting insane. He talks to Willow about the dead body, but also carries on a conversation with something or someone else in the room that Willow can't see. Buffy and Xander maneuver through the basement and find Spike seemingly talking to himself. Buffy and Xander try to get information from him, but Spike is simultaneously conversing with Willow, so his words make little sense. Spike suspects they can't see each other and that Willow's responsible for it. Buffy and Xander interpret some of Spike's comments to mean that he knows about Willow and they suspect she might have something to do with Spike's unstable condition.

Willow goes to Anya at her apartment for help in finding the demon that skinned the guy at the construction site. Anya helps Willow cast a spell to locate demons all over Sunnydale. After the spell is complete, Willow asks Anya to teleport to a cave just outside of the town that showed up on the map. But Anya reveals that she can't for non-vengeance business as a result of her recently undoing a spell.



Instead, Willow takes the long way and walks there herself. At the Summers' house, Dawn immediately begins searching on the computer for demons that skin people. Although Buffy thinks it's a waste of time, Dawn soon finds a demon that meets their specifications named Gnarl. The demon paralyzes its victims with its nails, and then eats strips of skin from the body and drinks the blood.

Realizing they need to search for the scent of blood, Buffy decides to recruit Spike to assist in tracking the demon. He leads them to a cave where the demon can be found. Willow is already there investigating the cave and the Gnarl spots her. The rest of the gang enters the cave as well, but they don't see Willow. The demon scratches Dawn's stomach, inducing paralysis. Buffy and Xander take Dawn out of the cave and blockade the entrance, unintentionally trapping Willow with Gnarl. Trapped in the cave, Willow listens to the demon taunt her from the shadows in its sing-song voice. He slices her abdomen with a nail and thus paralyzed Willow is helpless against him as he sucks at the wound and starts to slice away slivers of her skin to eat.



Buffy and Xander carry a completely paralyzed Dawn into the living room while Buffy researches the Gnarl and the way to save Dawn. Anya is called to stay with Dawn while they prepare to return to the cave to kill the demon and save Dawn. Anya talks about seeing Willow and reveals that Willow may be at the cave. Panicked that Willow is trapped in the cave, Buffy grabs Anya to join them at the cave. Once Anya reveals that she knows about Gnarl, Buffy insists she come along. Gnarl continues to eat Willow's skin as he tells her that her friends have abandoned her and she's all alone for him to eat. Buffy arrives and attacks Gnarl while Anya tends to a badly injured Willow who still can't see her friends. While Buffy fights Gnarl, Anya informs Willow that her friends didn't leave her alone.

Buffy pokes the demon in the eyes with her thumbs, successfully killing it and ending the paralysis on both Willow and Dawn. Buffy and Xander look where they think Willow is while Anya runs for help, and slowly the spell making them invisible to each other wears off. Willow is relieved to see her friends and glad they didn't abandon her.

In the morning, Willow meditates and uses magic from the earth to re-grow the skin she lost. Buffy stops by and talks with Willow. Willow reveals that her fear of seeing her friends and their judgment of her led to the invisibility problem from which they all were suffering. Buffy confesses that she briefly suspected Willow of the grotesque killing, but Willow doesn't blame her for that. Willow struggles to start meditating again, but she's still weak. Buffy offers her Slayer strength to her friend and joins in the meditation.

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

Co Starring

 * Camden Toy as Gnarl
 * Anthony S. Johnson as Father
 * Matt Koruba as Teen Boy
 * Nicholette Dixon as Sister
 * Marshe Daniel as Brother

Production

 * This is the only episode of the series not to feature any guest stars billed at the start of the episode.


 * Dawn mentions to Buffy, "and I can wear heels more often." The comment could be a reference to Michelle Trachtenberg's desire to wear heels instead of sneakers in season seven, which she mentioned to Joss Whedon during an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences panel discussion with cast and crew.


 * This line of Dawn where she points out that Willow could be the one to blame for her own problems, was cut due to length:
 * Dawn: "Instead everyone just keeps secrets, and suffers alone, and then we're supposed to be all sympathetic when they start ripping the skins off people or dragging their sisters to the basement! I may have some stuff to work through."

Goofs, Bloopers & Continuity Errors

 * The demon "Gnarl" is said, by Dawn, to be a parasite because he eats the flesh of his victims until they die. This is actually incorrect; parasites do not kill their victims. Gnarl is a parasitoid. He eventually kills his "host" or victim.

Quotes
Xander - "I saved the world with talking! From my mouth! My mouth saved the world!"

Xander - "We could ask some questions over at Willie's Place." Buffy - "Or we could be smart... Sorry, Xander." Xander - "What?"

Xander - "I found it first thing this morning. I gave my crew the day off, and I called you right away." Buffy - "I got to get a job where I don't get called right away for this stuff."

Dawn - "It's smellementary!"

Dawn - "(Muffled) Stop talking about vomit!"

Continuity

 * When Willow asks Anya to help her do a demon locator spell, Anya asks her, "This isn't gonna get all sexy, is it?" The question alludes to the use of magic in Seasons Four and Six (in scenes involving Willow and her now-deceased girlfriend, Tara Maclay) to represent lesbian sex. One of the candles used carries the Chinese character for love.


 * Xander waits for Willow at the airport with a welcome back sign written in yellow crayon. This is a callback to the time in "Grave" when Xander mentioned to Dark Willow that she cried in kindergarten for breaking a yellow crayon.


 * Anya is seen cleaning up the debris from The Magic Box following the events of "Grave".


 * Willow and Anya are seen performing another spell together like they did in the season three episode "Doppelgangland".


 * On the map of Sunnydale, the location of the Demon is labeled Wilkins Grove, after Mayor Wilkins


 * The site where Dawn finds information about Gnarl - "Demons, Demons, Demons" - seems to be the same that Cordelia uses (in Angel) to find demons faster than Wesley, which has been used as a comedic joke several times in Angel.


 * When Spike says, "What's a word means 'glowing'...gotta rhyme," it is an allusion to the episode "Fool for Love" in which Spike, in a flashback as a human, was trying to think of a word that rhymes with 'gleaming' for a poem he was writing before being rejected by Cecily.

Arc significance

 * Willow returns to Sunnydale.


 * This is the first instance of Dawn fully participating in a "Scooby-hunt", taking the role of a backup/replacement for Giles in researching.


 * Anya's falling out with the demon community continues (she can no longer idly teleport).


 * During the spell, the area on the map that represents the high school starts to burn up due to the vast number of dots. This is an early indication of The First's army of Turok-Han's within the Hellmouth.

Music

 * Douglas Romayne - "On the Mend"