After getting every inch of herself kicked by Caleb in her first two confrontations with him, Buffy takes a decidedly different tack when she confronts him for the third time in Touched. When she comes to the vineyard, alone (after her night with Spike), she makes no effort to fight Caleb, instead, she simply avoids his punches and kicks, and gets him to reveal the location of the scythe.

Now, granted, Buffy will eventually use violence and a weapon (the aforementioned scythe) to destroy Caleb, but one has to wonder if Joss Whedon was trying to make a point in the having Buffy react passively to Caleb’s assault, and, in so doing, succeed where she had failed so miserably before. The show received some measure of criticism for the fact that, when all was said and done, Buffy — no matter how bright and sensitive a woman she was — invariably resorted to violence when it came to defeating “evil”.

I would not be at all surprised if the scene at the vineyard in which Buffy outwits Caleb and retrieves the scythe without the use of violent force was a tacit reply to those who criticised the shows “violent solutions to problems” formula.