Reviewed by Sanguine

Buffy: No more games.

Spike: Well, that's bloody funny, coming from you. No more games? That's all you've ever done, is play me. You keep playing with the rules, you make up as you like. You know what I am. You've always known. You come to me all the same.

The game playing ended in As You Were, written and directed by Doug Petrie (or now Douglas, judging from the credits). And I, for one, was cheering loudly.

Who inspired the resolution of the Self!Destructive Buffy/Spike "relationship"? Oh, yeah. It was Captain Cardboard to the rescue.

That last point alone provoked the ire of many a Buffy fan. Last time we saw the intrepid Mr. Finn he was getting suck-jobs from two-bit vamp-hos. He then flew off in a helicopter to the wilds of Belize, never to be seen again.

Or so we thought.

Mr. Finn returneth in this week's episode, sporting a very Spike-ish scar. He also brings a wife, a fellow-demon hunter named Sam. Apparently, the family that slays together stays together. Riley's life is fabulous. Adventure. Love. Commitment. It's all good. In fact, his perfect life stands in stark contrast to Buffy's current existence. The Slayer has been reduced to working fast food, shirking her Slayer and sisterly duties to sleep with a semi-evil sex god. Riley catches her at the worst possible time. Oh, yes. If Mr. Finn were so inclined, he could have done some major gloating about the state of his ex's life. But he doesn't. Instead he offers the following bit of wisdom:

"You want me to say that I like seeing you in bed with that idiot [Spike]? Or that blinding orange is your very best colour? Or that the burger smell is appealing? Buffy, none of that means anything. It doesn't touch you."

Gee, Riley's actually right here. He's like a god in a Baroque opera who descends from the heavens in an elaborate machine to provide the mortals with resolution, or better yet, a lieto fine (happy ending). There was no happy ending in As You Were, but, as the title suggests, one relationship hit the reset button. For Buffy and Spike, they hopefully will return to the relationship they shared at the end of Season 5 and the beginning of Season 6. The relationship before sex reared its ugly, but apparently highly pleasurable, head. The relationship in which Buffy treated Spike like a man, instead of an evil thing, and Spike rose to the challenge--beautifully--fighting against Doc, weeping at his beloved's death, keeping his promise to take care of Dawn, fighting the good fight with the Scoobies, and later, serving as confidante and understanding friend to the Slayer.

The parallels between Riley's character and Spike's character have always been striking, but Riley's reappearance with the battle scar through the left eyebrow made their similarities explicit. For both men, their relationship with Buffy was one of unrequited love. Neither responded well to "having her, but not really having her." Riley felt as though Buffy needed more monster in her man, and so he availed himself of the services of local vamp-hos. They really needed him, even if Buffy didn't. Spike, on the other hand, had tried so hard to be a better man for Buffy at the end of Season 5 and beginning of Season 6, never mentioning the deeper feelings he harboured. But then in the musical, he couldn't help but tell the truth: he'd be her willing slave. And Buffy eventually takes him up on the offer. Unfortunately for Spike's moral progress, she consummates the relationship--rewards him--for the worst possible behaviour. After a particularly nasty fight in which she calls him an evil thing, Spike discovers that he can hit back. Maybe the chip is out, he thinks. To test his theory (and to be what Buffy says he is --an evil thing) he tries to bite a girl. No dice. The Troika soon discovers that nothing is wrong with the chip; something is wrong with Buffy. Spike rejoices. Buffy's wrong! He's on the same level as her now. Maybe he could really have a shot at having her, sexually if nothing else. And Spike is right. Buffy is turned on by the violence, and, in a fit of despair, takes what Spike offers her. Spike now knows that he didn't have to change at all to be with Buffy. Just like Cecily and Dru, she didn't want a "good man." She didn't want William. She wanted Spike: sexy, lethal, and dangerous. The Big Bad. So Spike can have his cake (feeling all powerful and vampy and not having to worry about how Buffy will perceive his immoral activities) and eat it too (having lots of great sex with Buffy).

But when Riley returns, Captain Can-Do is obviously a better man than when he left. Sam brings out the best in him: he's confident and has a clear sense of self. And that's the problem with Buffy and Spike's relationship. Buffy is using Spike to escape from her slayer and domestic duties--a message hammered home again and again in this episode, almost ad nauseum. Buffy is behaving immorally, using a man for sex when she knows it means more to him. Spike has become her own personal sex bot. This point is made quite strongly, when, after feeling sad about Riley's newfound happiness with Sam, she escapes to Spike's crypt. In a scene that echoes Spike's interactions with his Buffybot in last year's Intervention (and eerily, Warren's interaction with Katrina in Dead Things), she commands him, "Tell me you love me."

Spike's face softens. "I love you. You know I do."

"Tell me you want me."

"I always want you. In point of fact . . ."

"Shut up."

Buffy takes what she needs, and cuts Spike off when he begins to tell her things that aren't in her carefully controlled script. He has become her willing slave . . . but only where the sex is concerned. In other areas of his life, Spike has become less concerned about what Buffy thinks. And that's a big problem. Because Spike, as a soulless vampire, might know the difference between right and wrong, but he doesn't care. At the end of Season 5 and Season 6, he kept himself on track by asking the question, "What would Buffy do?" But Buffy is so screwed up, so morally ambivalent, that Spike no longer knows the answer to that question. Worse yet, he doesn't know if she cares what he does. He's like an unruly child whose parent is too permissive (and an interesting comparison can be made here between Spike's moral turpitude in this episode and Dawn's stealing). Spike needs someone to give him clear rules and boundaries and, as he astutely observes, Buffy is "playing with the rules."

But no more.

Spike does something spectacularly stupid. He has become the Doctor (an ironic choice of name, considering Doc killed his beloved at the end of last season), a supplier of potentially lethal demon eggs to the highest bidder. This would appear to be a fairly recent development, as Buffy and Spike enjoyed Invisible!Sex on his bed as recently as Gone, and Spike has been storing the eggs by said bed. Nevertheless, it is a completely immoral act, without any discernable noble purpose (he wasn't, apparently, going to hand over the cash to Buffy to get her out of her financial bind). Riley provides an accurate description of Spike as Big Bad as he responds to Buffy's claim that it's "just Spike." "Right," Riley replies, "Deadly, amoral, opportunistic. Or have you forgotten?"

Buffy has forgotten, or at the very least she's been ignoring Spike's moral imperfection. And she's given Spike no reason to be anything else. She's told him again and again that he is worthless and evil . . . and so he behaves accordingly. You reap what you sow.

And Spike is about to find out that his actions do have consequences. This time, Buffy is serious. Being with Big!Bad Spike doesn't make her a bad person, but it does cause a serious conflict of interest. As the Slayer she's supposed to prevent demon eggs from hatching. But what if her boyfriend is supplying said eggs and doesn't lose a wink of sleep over his immoral, and potentially deadly, actions? That's a big old icky moral quagmire. So Buffy does the right thing. She chooses to stop being wrong, encouraging Spike's (and her own) basest impulses. The final scene was pure brilliance. Like Crush, a door closed in Spike's face, but hopefully, like last year, another door will open.

Buffy, looking more self-possessed than I've seen her since her return from the dead, tells Spike it's over. Spike doesn't believe her: he's heard it all before and she still keeps coming back. But this time, Buffy's serious. She tells him, "I'm using you. I can't love you. I'm just being weak and selfish." Her choice of words here is interesting. The phrase "I can't love you," is incredibly multivalent. She doesn't say "I don't love you," but, "I can't love you," which can mean either: "I'm not able to love you," or, "I can't allow myself to love you," or even perhaps, "Right now, I'm incapable of loving anyone." Perhaps all three interpretations are true (and other interpretations are, of course, possible. It was a wonderfully "open" line).

Spike starts to get it. She's serious this time. Really serious. A small quaver creeps into his voice. He knows he's losing her, and he knows it's because of the way he's behaving. She might have suppressed her essential morality for a while, but now she remembers who she is. And she sees him clearly, sees the way he's been behaving. And she doesn't know if he's capable of anything else, if he ever will understand, on a visceral level, why certain actions are wrong. But sadly, Spike seems happy with their relationship. "Really not complaining here," he responds to her admission that she's using him. He doesn't care on what terms Buffy will have him, as long as she will. And that is a very serious problem. Spike doesn't think he deserves anything better because, as Buffy has repeatedly told him, he's just an "evil thing."

"And it's killing me," Buffy continues her train of thought. Her relationship with Spike is so unhealthy that it's killing anything good inside. With him, she's become an abusive bitch, treating him in the worst possible way. Her relationship with him was fostered out of self-loathing, a desire to completely annihilate the person she once was, sleeping with that which she should hate. And as such, it could never last, unless every part of her that was the "old" Buffy died.

Spike's expression softens at this revelation. He doesn't quite understand the repercussions of her words, or maybe he does. He looks puzzled, almost quizzical, and slightly hurt.

"I have to be strong about this. I'm sorry . . . William."

Spike knows he's lost her. But she's treated him like a man. And that means . . .

Everything.

Buffy walks into the light. She's got the fire back.