Wow. Just wow.

All the way from Willow’s visit to Tara’s grave to the gathering in the Summers’ living room, this was an awesome episode. The twist on the monster-of-the-week plot was brilliant, the way they mixed Buffy’s dayjob with her Slayerage into a rather unpredictable story. And the precog-girl wasn’t any less good. I kept asking myself: will she die, or will Buffy show her that the future can be changed? And then they solved it by balancing these options. (Or at least that’s how I perceived it.) Sheer genious.

I don’t think there’s anything I disliked about this episode, perhaps excepting the apparent absence of anything to speed up the progess of the season’s main plot, if such a thing exists. And that absence is only apparent, because the conversation between Buffy, Willow, Xander and Dawn can certainly be interpreted as plot-arc related: “What if I’m not sure that there’s anything I can do to help?” If this is going to be what I suspect it will, id est the Armageddon season of Buffy, then this phrase might be highly relevant in time. (Also, it is nice to see another instance where Hanne Tømta’s (head of the Rogaland Theatre) words, uttered in relation to Ibsen’s “Brand”, are seemingly confirmed: “A main character who never doubts the justness of his or her project, is a boring main character.” Other examples of main characters that confirms this hypothesis, are Jordan’s Rand al’Thor, and Goodkind’s Richard Rahl (this one actually confirms it by both having absolute faith in his own righteousness and by, for a few seconds in “Chainfire”, doubting his project to the brink of suicide).)

And seriously, I wonder moer and more about this principal. Is he a charming villain, or a charming innocent? One of the big mysteries of BS7 this far…

I hope this breathtaking episode’ll spur me to watch the rest of the season soon, too.