Willow and Kennedy kiss and Willow suddenly transforms into Warren. Amy created a spell on Willow by making her unwittingly choose her own punishment. Willow finally has to deal with the loss of Tara and her feelings for Kennedy. The Initiative give Buffy a choice as to what to do with Spike’s chip when it begins to malfunction. Giles takes the Potentials on a retreat, and the Scoobies are stunned when they discover that Giles may be dead, and that the First may have taken his place.
| Airdate: | 4 February 2003 |
| Writer: | Drew Z. Greenberg |
| Director: | David Solomon |
| Cast: |
Buffy: "Have fun delivering the tea."
Willow: "Ok, not when you make it sound all dirty like that."
Behind the Scenes Trivia
David’s finger
David Solomon broke his finger whilst shooting the episode The Killer in Me (which he was directing) and had to be taken to hospital for the day.
Giles catches up
The following lines were cut from the episode The Killer in Me:
Giles: “Well, thank goodness I needn’t worry myself with the idea of bad things happening in my absence. You getting shot, for example. Or throwing everyone in the basement and trying to kill them. Or Willow turning evil…”
Dawn: “Oooh, don’t forget, Anya turned evil too.”
No potentials
Drew Z. Greenberg and David Solomon say in their DVD commentary for The Killer in Me that the reason there are no potential Slayers (apart from Kennedy) in the episode is because their budget wouldn’t stretch to allow for the extra actors.
Touchy Feely
Anthony Stewart Head (Giles) is well known for using props whilst acting (such as cleaning his glasses or eating an apple) so it must have been hard for him not to be able to touch anything when he arrived back in Sunnydale in season seven (he couldn’t touch anything to make us think he may be the First). In an interview with the BBC, he said:
“The rules were slightly vague about what you could and couldn’t do. I was constantly asking, ‘Can I do this or not?’ What was patently clear was that I couldn’t touch any props, to everyone’s great joy, because I have a tendency to use props a lot. Part of the way I work is to try to bring some of the outside world in to the scene, rather than just play the scene off the page. You have a life and the scene happens to be part of that, and so, quite often, I’d involve something, so everyone thought it was very funny that I was stuck not being able to use props. It proved a challenge because I had to make sense of it - why would Giles come in and not touch anybody, not hug anybody, not involve himself like the usual thing? I was basically playing stuff had become so important and so serious and so fast with the First, and I was suddenly saddled with the responsibility of bringing all these girls in and finding them all over the world without the Watcher’s Council. I internalised it all and was in my own little world of seriousness, trying to deal with everything, and had shut down and wasn’t allowing myself to be friendly.”
Cast and Crew Trivia
Elizabeth Anne Allen
Elizabeth Anne Allen played Amy Madison.. She played Carri in Green Sails and Pam Boyd in Bull (which also starred Christopher Wiehl who played Owen in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date and Elisabeth Rohm, who played Kate in Angel). Elizabeth has also been in Bill the Intern, High Tide, Renegade, Silk Stalkings, Baywatch and Doogie Howser MD.
Iyari Limon
Iyari Limon, who played the potential Slayer Kennedy, was born in 1978 in Guadalajara, Mexico, but soon moved to South California. She speaks both English and Spanish. Iyari played Cindy for three episodes of Undressed. She is also sometimes credited as Lyrri Perez-Limon or Yari Limon. Iyari appeared in twelve episodes of Buffy in season seven.
Megalyn Echikunwoke
Megalyn Echikunwoke, who played the college Wiccan group leader in The Killer in Me, played Claudia Gibson in For the People and Nicole Palmer in 24. She’s also been in ER, Boston Public, Malibu, CA, Smart Guy and The Steve Harvey Show.
Rif Hutton
Rif Hutton, who played the shopkeeper who sells Willow/Warren the gun in The Killer in Me, has also been in Quality Time, Halfway Decent, Seinfeld, Children of the Corn III (in which Nicholas Brendon also appeared) and Star Trek: Generations. He did voices for Shrek and played Lt. Commander Alan Mattoni in JAG and Dr. Ron Welch in Doogie Howser, M.D.
Character Trivia
Kennedy
Kennedy was a forthright and spoilt potential Slayer who fell for Willow. She arrived in Sunnydale with Giles in Bring on the Night. Kennedy helped Willow when Amy’s spell turned her into Warren in The Killer in Me and the two became a couple. She became a Slayer along with the rest of the potentials and survived the massive fight against the Turok-Han army in Chosen.
Continuity
Behavioural Modification Chip
During season four, the Government captured Spike and implanted a Behavioural Modification Chip in his head in The Initiative. It rendered him incapable of attacking humans without intense neurological pain, though he could attack demons. Spike first realised he had it when he couldn’t bite Willow. He later made a deal with Adam in season four to have the chip removed but the demon refused to when Spike messed up his plans. In season five’s Out of My Mind, Spike made another attempt to remove the chip by forcing an Initiative surgeon to remove it. The surgeon pretended to but left the device in Spike’s head. The chip was finally removed in The Killer in Me when it began to malfunction.
College wiccans
There’s a Wicca group on UC Sunnydale campus which Willow looks into joining in Wild at Heart. She meets Tara there in Hush, and they bond over the fact that their fellow Wiccans aren’t interested in spells. Amy Madison joins the group in season seven, seen in The Killer in Me when Willow goes to the group for help.
Crazy like a… florist
On a few occasions (in both Buffy and Angel), a personality disorder test is mentioned and one of the questions to determine one’s sanity is if the subject ever wanted to be a florist. Additionally, whether you like shrubs or not seems to help determine your career aptitude, while a flower shop is a cover for the government conspiracy for which Riley Finn works.
Answering questions on their career aptitude tests during career week at school:
Xander: “Is murder always a crime?”
Buffy: “Do I like shrubs?”
Xander: “That’s between you and your god.”
Buffy: “(to Willow) What’d you put?”
Willow: “I came down on the side of shrubs.” - What’s My Line? (Part One)
Buffy: “The Watcher Council shrink is heavy into tests. He’s got tests for everything, T.A.T.s, Rorschach, associative logic. He even has that test to see if you’re crazy that asks if you ever hear voices or you ever wanted to be a florist.”
Willow: “Ooo, I used to want… Wait. Florist means crazy, right? I never wanted to do that.” - Doppelgängland
Buffy (on phone): “No, no, Finn is his last name. Yeah. Well, did he used to work there and then he got transferred Oh, is this actually a flower shop, or is this one of those things where I’m supposed to play along to show that I know it’s really secret ops? Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Oh, OK, right. Well, if some guy named Finn shows up to buy flowers — Yeah. Thanks.” (hangs up, turns to Spike) “Wrong number. Or a giant government conspiracy, one or the — Spike?” - The Killer in Me
Fred: “Don’t y’all think this is some kind of government conspiracy? ‘Cause my friend, Levon, says the government’s always taking kids and experimentin’ on ‘em. Did anybody else have to take a personality disorder test recently? They ask you about politics and your bowel movements and if you want to be a florist…“ - Angel, ‘Spin The Bottle’.
Government conspiracy
In The Killer in Me, Buffy tries to contact Riley and the Government about Spike’s malfunctioning chip. She last did this in season five’s Out of My Mind, by picking up Riley’s phone and hoping the Initiative would be listening. In The Killer in Me, she gets through to a flower shop, but it turns out that The Man is indeed listening.
Hostile Seventeen
Hostile Seventeen was the Initiative’s code name given to Spike after they captured him in the episode The Initiative. Interestingly, Riley told Buffy in A New Man that he had captured or killed seventeen ‘Hostile Sub-Terrestrials’ (or HSTs, the Initiative name given to demons).
In Where the Wild Things Are, Spike goes to a party held by the Initiative boys. Xander calls out, “Hey! What a surprise! hostile 17! Can I get you a drink Hostile 17?”
In Goodbye, Iowa, Riley recognises Spike as Hostile 17. Spike attempts to fake an accent to disguise himself but gives up.
In The Killer in Me, when Buffy has Spike’s chip removed, the Initiative soldier calls Spike Hostile 17. In Lessons, Adam refers to Spike as “Number 17″.
More crayons
In The Killer in Me, Willow reminds Xander of his famous yellow crayon speech from Grave: “There are other stories from kindergarten. Non yellow crayon stories in which you don’t come out in such a good light.”
Salvage
At some point during the episode The Killer in Me, Dawn receives a phone call from Angelus that was made in the Angel episode ‘Salvage‘ (when he wants to find out if Buffy is after him in L.A - she’s not but Faith is). This event is never mentioned in Buffy.
Shoot again
When Willow becomes Warren in The Killer in Me, she re-enacts the shooting scene from season six’s Seeing Red, when Warren killed Tara and shot at Buffy.
Statement mojo
Sheila Rosenberg, Willow’s mother, is mentioned by Willow in The Killer in Me (”My mom was all proud like I was making some political statement. Then the statement mojo wore off and I was just gay. She hardly ever even met Tara”). We met Sheila only once in the episode Gingerbread.
Wanna-blessed-bes
Willow goes to the UC Sunnydale coven for help when she is turned into Warren in The Killer in Me. This seems a strange choice as she said about them previously, “… just a bunch of wanna-blessed-be’s. You know, nowadays every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister to the Dark Ones.” The coven was where Willow first met Tara in Hush.
You can’t see me
Willow says in The Killer in Me, “Remember the wacky “I can’t see you, you can’t see me” spell?” This occurred in the episode Same Time, Same Place.
Music Trivia
Mythology Trivia
Vision Quest
Giles took Buffy on a sacred ‘Vision Quest’ after the death of her mother, in order for the Slayer to find the answers to some of her many questions about herself (Intervention). Giles drove Buffy to the desert, where he performed a traditional dance using a magic gourd to transfer his power over Buffy to a guide, who led the Slayer away on her own. Buffy encountered the First Slayer who told her that death was her gift, a piece of information that led to Buffy sacrificing herself in The Gift.
Giles took the potential Slayers on a vision quest in the episode The Killer in Me, which was less of a sacred quest and more of a camping trip. There are references to the first vision quest in that episode, including Giles’s line, “apparently, someone told them that the vision quest consists of me driving them to the desert, doing the hokey pokey until a spooky Rasta-mama Slayer arrives and speaks to them in riddles”.
References
Galaxy Quest
After Kennedy is teleported by Amy in The Killer in Me, she says, “That was a hell of a thing.” This line was said in the film Galaxy Quest after the Tony Shalhoub character was moved through space.
Ghostbusters
In The Killer in Me, Spike says, “Who you gonna call?” then “God that phrase is never going to be usable again, is it?” This is a reference to the 1984 movie Ghostbusters which featured the catchy theme “Who you gonna call?”. Harris Yulin, who played Quentin Travers, appeared in Ghostbusters II.
Gone with the Wind
The epic 1939 movie Gone with the Wind starring Clark Gable and Vivian Lee is referenced a couple of times in Buffy. In Tabula Rasa, Spike says to Buffy, “we kissed, you and me all Gone with the Wind, with the rising music and the rising… music”. In The Killer in Me, Kennedy refers to the movie when she tells Willow how she first knew she was gay: “It was Gone with the Wind. I saw that, and I knew I wanted to sweep Scarlet off her feet.”
Coincidentally, the O’Hara plantation in the movie is called “Tara”.
Moulin Rouge
In The Killer in Me, Kennedy says to Willow, “I dig the way you always turn off the Moulin Rouge DVD at chapter 32 so it has a happy ending.” She’s referencing the 2001 “musical” movie Moulin Rouge, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor.
Robert Parker
In The Killer in Me, Kennedy mentions the novelist Robert Parker when she talks to Willow about her likes. Parker’s books include Crimson Joy, Mortal Stakes, Valediction and Pale Kings and Princes.
Smashing Pumpkins
The episode title Killer in Me is a line from the Smashing Pumpkins track, ‘Disarm’: “the killer in you is a killer in me”.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
In The Killer in Me, Andrew mentions he’s getting a copy of comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Xander reveals his a fan too. The comic is published by America’s Best Comics. It was made into a movie in 2003.
Goofs
Seen at 16.50 minutes:
Andrew reaches out and puts his hand on Willow/Warren, but in the next shot, we see him just reaching out.
Seen at 20.04 minutes:
The Initiative site was supposedly filled with concrete and salted over in season four (said in Primeval), so how do Buffy and Spike get to the caverns?
Seen at 30.38 minutes:
When Amy talks to Kennedy and reveals she’s behind the spell, her necklace is longer than it was in previous scenes.
Seen at 31.38 minutes:
Surely Willow/Warren got the gun a little too quickly? How easy is it to buy a gun in Sunnydale?
Quotes
Giles: "You think I'm evil if I bring a group of girls on a camping trip and don't touch them?"
Willow: "Well, I remember trying to dig up stuff back then, but, you know, turns out, when a secret government agency studies vampires and puts chips in their brains that keep them from hurting people, they don't really build websites."
Buffy: "Have fun delivering the tea."
Willow: "Ok, not when you make it sound all dirty like that."