Recap / Buffy The Vampire Slayer S 7 E 8 Sleeper

"Man, I hate playing vampire towns."

—Aimee Mann

"There's something playing with us. All of us."

Directed by Alan J Levi

Written by David Fury, Rebecca Kirshner, Jane Espenson, & Drew Z Greenberg

Spike digs a grave for and buries a woman's body while he hums a tune. In London, a man with a briefcase finds a young woman he knows lying dead. When he investigates her body, a robed figure attacks the man with a dagger, but the man fights back. Another robed figure joins in and soon, the man is stabbed and falls dead next to the young woman. Willow arrives at the Summers' house and finds the house a disaster and Dawn still in shock. Dawn tries to tell her what happened and how she saw Joyce, but Willow explains that it was a big evil messing with their minds.

At Xander's apartment, Buffy and Xander talk about the possibility of Spike turning a human, even in spite of his chip. Buffy doesn't want to believe it because she knows the chip still works, but she and Xander have to wonder if maybe Spike's been acting all this time. Spike returns to Xander's apartment and receives a somewhat cold reception. In attempts to get a reaction from him about Holden Webster, Buffy mentions the encounter to Spike, but he reacts with complete calm and heads off to bed. Both having things to do, but not wanting to leave Spike alone, Xander gets a reluctant Anya to come over and stay with Spike. She doesn't like the idea of being stuck weaponless with Spike when he may be able to bite again. Xander tells her to call if Spike decides to go anywhere and then leaves for work.

Buffy returns to find the downstairs of the house trashed from Dawn's encounter with the unknown, hostile entity from the previous night and freaks out until she finds Willow putting Dawn to sleep. Willow informs her about the "evil" visits she and Dawn had and Buffy tells Willow about her encounter with Holden. Buffy wonders if they've been victim of lies and tricks, or if something else has been going on. Armed with a stake, Anya quietly searches Spike's room and clothes while he sleeps, but he awakes and catches her. She tries to lie about her intentions, claiming to want sex, but Spike doesn't really believe her and isn't interested in her offer. Later, after the sun sets, Spike leaves the apartment with an apology to Anya for any potentially hurt feelings. She quickly makes a phone call to Buffy about Spike's departure.

Spike walks the streets and passes by a man playing a harmonica, but as the vampire passes, the tune changes to the one Spike was humming earlier. The sound seems to have a hypnotic effect on Spike and he begins to hum again. Buffy follows him, keeping out of sight. He finds a woman standing around outside and the two talk and flirt before going outside to an alleyway. Buffy tries to keep tabs on Spike, but she has a hard time following him through the crowd of people out walking the streets. Spike and the woman kiss against a wall and Spike pauses, looking up to see Buffy approach him and the woman. With a smile, she reminds him that she wants him to do it and he vamps and bites the woman, much to Buffy's pleasure.

Once the woman is dead, Spike realizes with great horror what he just did. He runs off in a blind panic as Buffy morphs into Spike form. Later, Buffy barges in on a sleeping Spike, angrily demanding to know whether he killed the woman she saw him with. He reminds her that can't kill anyone. She asks if it's because of the chip and he corrects her telling her that it's because of his soul and suspects that she's jealous. He doesn't deny talking to other women, but swears they mean nothing to him and reminds her of the seriousness of his efforts to prove his love to her. Though visibly taken aback and moved by his words and emotion, Buffy gets confrontational about Spike killing people and, although he doesn't remember everything, he's confident that he didn't kill anybody.

At Buffy's house, the girls do some research in attempts to find proof that Spike is or is not killing again. They discuss the possibility of Spike killing and Willow discovers that although there haven't been a lot of dead bodies found, there are ten missing people in Sunnydale, mostly young women. Though this proves that what Holden told Buffy is true, Buffy is still not positive that Spike is the culprit. As he gets ready to leave, Spike finds a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and gets flashes of killing the blond woman he met at the Bronze. He tries to leave the apartment, but Xander stands in the way. Spike knocks Xander out, setting off his chip for his efforts and then departs.

Spike arrives at the Bronze, where Aimee Mann is performing. Spike asks around after the young blond woman he was there with then moves upstairs to watch over the crowd. Meanwhile, Xander recovers from Spike's blow and calls Buffy to let her know what happened. A woman hits aggressively on an uninterested Spike, eventually reveals herself to be a vampire he'd sired a few nights before. The two break into a fight which Spike resolves by staking her and dropping her to turn to dust on the dance floor below, briefly distracting the band on stage and the surrounding crowd. Meanwhile, Buffy talks to the doorman at the club she'd followed Spike to the night before, learning that Spike has left there with a different girl every night. At the Bronze, Aimee Mann is heading backstage, telling a bandmate that she "hates playing vampire towns" as Spike phones Buffy cell to tell her he's remembering the bad things he's done recently and asks for her help. She agrees to meet with him at a set location. As Spike tries to leave, the morphing version of Spike shows up and chides the real Spike for deviating from the plan by calling Buffy, but that they can work around it.

Spike leads a hesitant Buffy into a dark basement and tries to show her what he remembers about his victims (several girls he's picked up, plus the owner of the house). Obviously suspicious, Buffy has come wielding a stake. The fake Spike is there as well, but Buffy can't see him. While the real Spike tries to show Buffy where he buried the bodies of those he killed, the fake Spike begins to sing the hypnotizing tune.

Spike vamps and attacks Buffy, cutting into her arm with a broken piece of glass. As the two battle it out, the bodies Spike's recent victims start to rise from the ground beneath them as newly-risen vampires. Buffy struggles with the fledglings while the real Spike gets a pep talk from his morphing version about tasting Buffy's blood. As two vampires hold Buffy still, Spike leans down into the cut on her arm, but he suddenly reawakens all of his memories of killing and he falls to the ground, horrified.

Buffy finishes off the rest of the vampires, including a late elderly vampire, then turns her attention back to Spike. Tearfully, Spike offers his heart for the staking. He's confused, scared, and hurting because of the lives he's taken. Buffy realizes that something has been messing with Spike's head like with Dawn and Willow and that he needs help. Back at her house, Buffy tells the gang about Spike and how she needs to keep Spike close if she intends to get answers they all need.

Meanwhile Giles charges into the room in London and finds the dead girl and the nearly dead man that was with her. The man, Robson, warns Giles that "it" has started and that "they" need to be gathered. From behind, a cloaked figure raises an ax and swings it at Giles's head.

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Tropes featured

• All Girls Want Bad Boys: The girl Spike takes into the alley certainly does.
• Answer Cut: Buffy asking who can watch Spike while Xander is out, to Anya complaining about having been roped in to do so.
• Apologetic Attacker: Buffy says "Sorry, ma'am, but it's my job" before staking an elderly woman vampire.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Anya claims to have snuck into Spike's room to have sex with him, then gets into the role so much she's disappointed when Spike turns her down. "Soulless!Spike would have had me upside down and halfway to Happyland by now."
• Badass Bookworm: The first clue that Robson is a Watcher is when he blocks a Bringer knife with his briefcase, then uses it to knock the Bringer out. He then draws a short sword from a Wall of Weapons, only to be stabbed In the Back by another Bringer.
• Bait-and-Switch: Buffy appears to interrupt Spike's business with the girl in the alley. It turns out to be the First, inciting Spike to attack her.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. The cut to the face Dawn got in the previous episode is still present (although it's clearly not very bad).
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Spike is described by a bouncer as a Billy Idol wannabie.
  Buffy: Actually, Billy Idol stole his look from...never mind.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The first turned Spike into an eponymous Sleeper agent, using a song as a trigger to make him kill.
• Buffy Speak / Shaped Like Itself: Xander says that Spike is a creature of the night, so he's "probably out creaturing."
• But Not Too Bi: There's definite male victims, along with Holden last episode, and it can only be assumed Spike was using the flirt and bite act with them too, but everybody just acknowledges the female victims.
• Call-Back: To "Buffy vs. Dracula", when Spike tasting Buffy's blood breaks the Mind Control being used on him.
• Casual Kink:
  Anya: If I get vamped, I'm gonna bite your ass.
  Xander: (grinning) Wouldn't be the first time.
  • After claiming she's snuck into Spike's bedroom to have sex with him, Anya tries to pass off her stake this way.
• Cliffhanger: The episode ends on a Bringer sneaking up behind Giles and swinging an axe at his neck... Smash Cut to credits.
• Continuity Nod: In "Fool for Love" when Spike tells Buffy his Back Story, he's seen in a flashback to 1977 in a hairstyle and attire similar to Billy Idol, several years before Idol's fame.
• Corner of Woe: When Spike remembers the people he killed, he flees to a corner and huddles there waiting for Buffy to stake him.
• Devoted to You:
  Spike: As daft a notion as "Soulful Spike the Killer" is, it is nothing compared to the idea that another girl could mean anything to me. This chip, they did to me. I couldn't help it. But the soul, I got on my own, for you. So, yeah. I go and pass the time... with someone. But that's all it is is time, 'cause — God, help me, Buffy — it's still all about you.
• Dies Wide Open: Spike's victim from the previous episode.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Spike is frequently compared to a Serial Killer.
• Double Entendre: When Anya objects to being left alone with Spike, Xander mutters that she didn't mind being alone with him before.
• Double Vision: Ensouled!Spike vs. First!William the Bloody.
• Flashback Echo: Spike picks up a packet of cigarettes and remembers the girl giving it to him in "Conversations With Dead People". Later the taste of Buffy's blood causes him to remember killing his previous victims.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The mysterious hooded assassins are shown to be targeting Watchers and their potential Slayers-in-training. Giles is tasked by a dying Robson with gathering these Potentials.
  • Buffy takes Spike into her home, marking the beginning of their season-long reconciliation and healing.
  • The significance of "Early One Morning" as Spike's Trigger Phrase will be shown in "Lies My Parents Told Me".
• Geographic Flexibility: Sunnydale now has more nightclubs than just the Bronze.
• Get It Over With: After realising that he's started killing again, Spike tells Buffy to stake him and make it quick.
• Glasses Pull: Giles does the Glasses Pull of Grief on finding Robson.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: Buffy asks at the door of a nightclub about Spike.
  Bouncer: This guy your boyfriend or something?
  Buffy: (lower lip quivers) No, I-I just... I need to find him, as soon as possible.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Spike wears the Leather Pants of Evil!
• Improvised Weapon: Robson knocks out a Bringer with his briefcase. Spike stakes the Bronze vampire with a bamboo table ornament. Later he tries to slash Buffy with a shard of broken glass. Buffy stakes the basement vampires with the broken handle of the shovel used to bury them.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Xander suggests that Spike might be faking still being inhibited by the chip. Buffy says that if he's faking the Oscar goes to... Cue awkward silence as Spike walks through the door.
• In the Back: Robson and his Potential.
• Ironic Echo: First!Spike says "How could you use a poor maiden so?" after Spike kills the woman in the alley, a line from "Early One Morning".
• It Doesn't Mean Anything:
  Female vampire: So is that all I was to you? A one-bite stand?
• The Killer in Me: Spike is a Manchurian Agent under the control of The First, killing and then having no memory of having done so.
• Made of Plasticine: Buffy uses a shovel’s blunt end to stick 5 vampires through their hearts
• Meaningful Echo
  Spike: (in "Seeing Red") Well, this isn't just about you...as much as you'd like it to be.
  Spike: (in "Sleeper") God, help me, Buffy — it's still all about you.
  • In "Selfless", Spike told Fantasy!Buffy that he could never ask for her help. Here he asks the real Buffy for help, and gets it.
• Missing Time: Spike firmly denies killing anyone, but can't remember what happened with the girl he talked to either.
• Noodle Incident: Downplayed, but the revelation that Billy Idol stole his look from Spike rather the other way around as characters and fans alike had thought since Season Two (and especially since "Fool for Love"'s 1977 flashback). The obvious inference is that the singer and vampire had some kind of encounter during or around 1976 (when Idol joined the punk rock band Chelsea and officially adopted his now-signature hairstyle). But we don't learn any other details about this.
  • Similarly, that Buffy knows this at all implies she learned this either from Spike himself at some point after he joined the Scoobies or from alternate sources since Spike's introduction in Season Two. We don't learn any further details about how and where Buffy acquired the knowledge.
• Oh, Crap! / Rise from Your Grave: Buffy is struggling with a vamped-out Spike when the bodies he buried start bursting out of the ground as vampires.
• Pietà Plagiarism: In a flashback Spike is shown carrying one of his victims this way.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Once Buffy has taken out all the vampires in the basement, Spike readies himself for staking.
• Record Needle Scratch: An updated version with Aimee Mann's electric guitar giving a squeal of protest as she stops playing.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful!: Buffy walks to the head of the line to talk to the nightclub bouncer, who tells her she can go right in. Truth in Television as any nightclub will encourage attractive single women to enter, in order to bring in the guys who will then buy drinks.
• Sheathe Your Sword: When Spike starts talking to an invisible presence in the basement (the First in Spike's form), Buffy tosses aside her stake, realising the Big Bad is behind it all.
• Shirtless Scene: Bedroom!Spike; in fact the bedsheet is barely above the groin at one stage.
• Shovel Strike: Buffy discovers Spike has been killing people and burying them in a basement Serial Killer-style. The victims appear as vampires, so she stakes them with the shovel used to bury them.
• Slip into Something More Comfortable: A woman starts hitting on Spike at the Bronze, despite his strong non-verbal signals that he's not interested. She says, "Maybe I'd better slip into something more comfortable" and morphs into Game Face.
• Something Else Also Rises: When Anya claims she wants sex from Spike, he immediately bunches his blanket around his waist.
• Stop and Go: In-Universe, Aimee Mann and her band are interrupted mid-chorus by Spike dusting a vampire, then pick up where they left off.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Spike catches Anya snooping through his room while trying to find proof that Spike has been killing people. Anya tries to cover up by seducing him.
  "Why else would I be here? I mean, it's not like I'm snooping around looking for proof that you're some sort of wacked-out serial killer."
• Talk to the Fist: Spike knocks out Xander as he's about to list the reasons why he can't leave.
• This Is Something She's Got to Do Herself: Buffy says that if Spike is killing again she has to see it for herself, and stop it. After the events of "Selfless", it's clear that means she's willing to kill Spike.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: Or maybe Billy Idol lookalike's are — either way Sallow-but-Sexy!Spike has no trouble getting a different girl to walk off with him every night.
• Villains Never Lie: Discussed.
  Anya: I used to tell the truth all the time when I was evil.
• Weirdness Censor: For the first time we see it in action — Spike is fighting the female vampire on the catwalk, while Aimee Mann plays for the crowd down below. Spike stakes the vampire and throws her into the crowd where she explodes in a cloud of dust. There's Stunned Silence from a dance-floorful of onlookers for a moment, then Aimee Mann just takes up singing where she left off. Later Aimee is seen walking out of the Bronze griping, "I hate playing vampire towns."
  • This might actually be a case of Fridge Brilliance in that people, especially in this season, are starting to somewhat realize that Sunnydale is a bizarre place to be and that occurrences like this aren't entirely unexpected. At the very least, Aimee Mann has experienced vampires before.
• You're Just Jealous: Spike accuses Buffy of this when she gets on his case about going out at night and chatting up women. The He Is Not My Boyfriend scene implies he might not be entirely wrong.

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