This summary is the intellectual property of Loey

Is it possible for life at Wolfram & Hart to get any loonier? I mean, you've got office parties with giant wicker effigies, a division responsible for helping people sacrifice their pets, and a vampire ghost walking through the furniture. Could this be a crazier place?

The answer to that would be an emphatic "yes." Thanks to a mysterious box that has been mailed to Spike, he suddenly becomes corporeal again, and the whole place goes haywire. Phones ring endlessly. Computers go down. Employees start attacking each other. The White Room - big kitty and all - turns into a howling abyss of nothingness.

And it's all because of the newly touchy-feely Spike. Or rather, the fact that he sacrificed himself, thus becoming a champion, then came back as a ghost, then got his body back. Now there are two solid, ensouled hero vampires in the world, and it's thrown that whole Shanshu prophecy for a loop.

Wesley is taking a leave of absence, so the guys seek the help of Sirk, that snooty Watcher (is there any other kind?) who is on the W&H payroll. He tells them that they need to find the Cup of Perpetual Torment, which is conveniently located in a buried opera house in Nevada. The pre-destined vampire will drink from it, suffer horribly, then regain his humanity and have his slate of evil deeds wiped clean.

Naturally, this becomes a game of one-upmanship between Angel and Spike. They race to the site of the opera house, while the episode regularly flashes back to their bad old days as partners in crime, when Angelus was Spike's mentor in evildoing, and then started boffing Drusilla right under his nose, just to show him who was boss.

It's this rivalry that plays out in the present day, as the two former "buddies" fight ruthlessly for the right to be the real hero. Their between-punches argument runs the gamut, from debating which one truly deserves the cosmic reward to pushing each other's buttons about the Buffy thing.

Finally, Spike makes it to the cup first, and Angel asks him, in all seriousness, if he's really doing this because it's the right thing, or just because he wants to take something from Angel. "Bit of both," Spike admits casually, then drinks from the cup.

It's Mountain Dew.

Realizing they've been had, they go back to the office. Things have gotten so bad there, Gunn has actually tried to strangle Eve, accusing her of being behind all the scary things that have been happening.

Wait, that's not bad, is it? Somebody probably should strangle her.

Anyway, the Senior Partners miraculously step in and put a temporary stop to the madness. There's time - but not much - to find the now-missing Sirk and figure things out. Gunn apologizes to Eve, then listens to Angel brood about the fact that Spike got to the MacGuffin before he did. "He wanted it more," Angel opines. "What if it means that I'm not the one?"

Meanwhile, Eve goes home. Her decorating scheme tends toward the Aleister Crowley school of design, with occult symbols all over the walls. She disrobes while talking to an unseen individual, revealing that they were the ones who ripped up the universe, catching the Senior Partners off guard. Apparently, the plan was for Spike to kill Angel, but Eve reports the second-best thing, which is that they made punching bags out of each other.

We finally see who she's talking to as she climbs into bed. It's Lindsey McDonald, former W&H lawyer who teamed up with Angel once back in Season 2, then disappeared. He was never a really good guy, but there seemed to be hope for him.

Guess not.

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