Overall Rating: 8.3 Matt: 8.3 Eric: 8.3 Written by: Marti Noxon Directed by : James Whitmore, Jr. Cast : Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris, Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg, Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase, Seth Green as Oz, Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles. Main guest stars : Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers, Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder, Nancy Lenehan as Pat, Jason Hall as Devon. Original broadcast date : October 6, 1998 Buffy has just returned home, and her interaction with her mother is uneasy. She even asks Joyce¹s permission to go find Willow and Xander. Busy hanging an ugly Nigerian mask on the wall, Joyce reluctantly lets her daughter go ­ but not before Buffy comments that the mask seems to want the room to suffer. Buffy stumbles on a stealthy Xander using "Nighthawk" as a walkie-talkie nickname. Shocked by the sight of Buffy, Xander is unable to react as a vampire crashes through a large crate and attacks. Buffy takes on the fiend, and eventually Cordelia, Willow and Oz show up to give a hand. After they¹ve all been thrown to the ground, Buffy finally succeeds in staking the vampire, and gets back up to face her friends, who are staring at her as if they¹d seen a ghost. The next scene sees Buffy and friends walking up the door of Giles apartment, wondering if the Watcher will be angry at her for running away. But an astounded Giles simply invites them inside. As an incredibly elated Giles prepares tea, Buffy finds out from her friends that the charges for murder have been cleared, but that she¹s still expelled from Sunnydale high. Buffy looks forward to putting her summer in L.A. behind her and resuming her normal activities, but when she asks Xander and Willow if they want to go out, she finds out they have other plans and don¹t know how to fit her in their lives again. Willow, though, promises she¹ll make the time, but she later skips her appointment with Buffy. The Slayer¹s return to Sunnydale is made even worse by a very bad meeting with Principal Snyder, who gleefully informs Joyce that he has a "tingling" feeling at the idea of keeping Buffy out of school. As Buffy walks home, alone, after waiting in vain for Willow, she meets Pat, a woman who¹s been morally supporting her mother while she was gone. Inside, Joyce suggests that it might be a good idea to invite Buffy¹s friends over to dinner, and then confesses that she already went ahead with the invitations. A resigned Buffy goes to the basement and climbs on a stool to fetch the company plates on a shelf. As she searches through the junk on the shelf, a dead cat falls off the top, which she and her mother bury in the backyard. That night, in Joyce's room, the eyes of the mask start to glow. There¹s movement in the fresh grave in the backyard, and the dead cat emerges, mewling. As she goes back to sleep, Buffy dreams of Angel once more, and is woken up by the school bell ­ which turns out to be the alarm clock. At breakfast, Joyce presents to Buffy the idea of enrolling in a private girls¹ school. While Buffy protests, her mother opens the kitchen door and the dead cat from the night before runs inside. Giles arrives at the Summers house with a cage and takes the cat to the library to study it. There, after Cordelia and Oz comment on the animal¹s look and smell, the Scoobies decide to throw Buffy a big welcome home party. That night, Buffy is setting the table when Pat arrives. There¹s a second knock on the door, and Buffy answers only to have Devon and the rest of the Dingoes haul their musical instruments inside. At the rather loud and populated party, Buffy is ignored by Willow, whose attention is drawn to the band ­ and her boyfriend guitarist - and by Xander, who¹s busy sucking face with Cordelia. Going to the kitchen, she overhears her mother telling Pat that she¹s not sure that Buffy¹s return made things better. Distraught, Buffy goes up to her room and starts packing, planning to run away again. Willow catches her in the act and angrily accuses Buffy of giving up, saying that she has her own problems and would¹ve liked to have Buffy to confide in during the summer. While all this is going on, an accident victim, a burn victim, and other recently deceased people are brought back to life, seemingly by the glowing Nigerian mask. In the library, Giles discovers that the mask indeed raises the dead, and rushes to his car to go warn the Scoobies at the Summers house. On the way, though, he¹s attacked by some zombies, which slows him down. In Buffy¹s room, Joyce hears her daughter and Willow arguing, and gets quite angry when she learns Buffy was planning on running away again. As she puts pressure on her daughter to decide what she wants, a tearful Buffy runs downstairs, followed by Joyce and Willow, who refuse to let her off the hook so easily. Just then, the music conveniently stops, allowing her mother to make a huge scene in front of the dwindling crowd of partyers. As Buffy tries to justify her running away after Angel¹s death, Xander happily joins in on the verbal abuse, telling Buffy to "stop acting like an idiot". Buffy angrily suggests that he was the one acting like an idiot, using the name "Nighthawk". Just as it looks as if they¹ll come to blows, dead zombies crash the party, attacking people and forcing the Slayer and friends to try and barricade themselves where they can. Willow, Buffy, Xander and Joyce lock themselves in Joyce¹s room, along with Pat, who dies on Joyce¹s bed, only to be instantly reanimated as a zombie. As the gang tries to fend off this latest menace, downstairs, Oz and Cordelia sneak out of the closet they¹ve been hiding in, and stumble upon Giles. He informs them that if a zombie puts on the mask, he becomes the powerful demon the mask represents. Back upstairs, Pat proves Giles right by putting on the mask, hypnotizing Buffy with the mask¹s glare and knocking her down. Pat then attacks Willow, but Buffy tackles the demon, crashing through the window onto the lawn. Pat tries the hypnotic glare again, but Buffy, doing the math, shields her eyes and blinds Pat with a shovel. The demon and the zombies disintegrate. In the house, the gang reunites and makes up. The next day, Giles confronts Principal Snyder about letting Buffy back in school; he even seems to threaten the smaller man with physical violence. Meanwhile at the Expresso Pump, Willow tells Buffy how she¹s been toying with witchcraft all summer. The show ends with the two friends jokingly calling each other names, i.e. "runaway", "witch", "delinquent", "tramp"Š Summary by OttsFiveByFive.