Welcome to Rewatching Buffy, the part of the blog where I rewatch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each Tuesday evening, you’re invited to join me as I attempt to rediscover what made me love this show so many years ago.

Lies My Parents Told Me

• New York City, 1977…
• It’s the night that Spike killed Nikki Wood, Vampire Slayer.
• Little Robin Wood watches the fight from behind a bench in Central Park.
• Nikki nearly stakes Spike, but he catches it and tells her there’s no sense in the dance ending now.
• Just before he jumps off a bridge and flees, he tells Nikki he loves her coat.
• Nikki tells Robin that she’s taking him to her Watcher while she goes after the vampire…
• The mission is what matters.
• In an alley, Buffy, Spike, and Robin fight a trio of vampires.
• Spike beheads the one he’s fighting, then saves Robin by staking the one he was fighting.
• Robin can’t stand the fact that Spike just saved him… and as Spike walks away, we see that he’s gripping his stake so tight that he’s drawing blood from his hand.
• At school the next day, Buffy reports that things are still normal since they sealed the Hellmouth.
• Robin says that watching her fight reminds him of his mother.
• Giles storms in, hating the new library at the high school, and meets Robin for the first time.
• Giles unhappily reports that seers in the coven he’s in contact with are certain that the First Evil continues to gather its forces.
• He also informs Buffy that his trip dealt in part with his concerns regarding Spike and her decision to have his chip removed.
• Giles has brought back some kind of magical stone that will enter Spike’s brain and help him figure out what the First’s trigger is and how to break its control over him.
• We flash back to Spike’s final days as a human… when he was just William the Bloody (named so for his bloody awful poetry).
• William was quite the mama’s boy.
• And she sings to him the song that we recognize as the First’s trigger, turning present day Spike into a psychotic killer.
• The stone then works its way out of Spike’s head and he’s calm again.
• Willow gets a call from Fred and needs to make a quick trip to LA (as seen in last week’s Angel).
• Spike refuses to deal with the issue of his mother and the song, which means the trigger may still be active.
• In another flashback, William has just been turned into a vampire and he has brought Drucilla home to meet mummy.
• Dru isn’t thrilled with the idea of turning mom into a vampire, but William insists on turning her… saving her from the sickness that’s killing her.
• Buffy decides to release Spike from the chains and Giles is pretty unhappy about it.
• Robin convinces Giles to help him take out Spike before the First can decide to use him against the good guys.
• He fills Giles in on the Watcher who raised him and Giles figures out that he’s Nikki Wood’s son and that Spike killed her.
• Giles isn’t on board at first, knowing that Robin’s fight is only about revenge.
• But… for the greater good…
• Robin just needs Buffy occupied for a few hours.
• Giles takes her patrolling in a nearby cemetery.
• He wants to make sure she knows how to make the hard decisions while they work on the basics.
• While they’re out, Robin offers to keep an eye on Spike at his place.
• He leads Spike to a detached garage where there are crosses hanging literally everywhere.
• On his computer, he pulls up “Early One Morning,” ready to trigger Spike’s madness and have a good excuse to fight him.
• Robin reveals that he’s been looking for Spike for a long time… ever since he killed his mother.
• “I don’t want to kill you, Spike. I want to kill the monster who took my mother away from me.”
• In another flashback, William returns to his home to find his mother has risen as a vampire.
• But she isn’t really his mother anymore… no more than he is the same William he was before rising as a demon.
• No, his mother has been replaced by the demon that took over her body.
• The horrible things she says to William are what have driven Spike to the horrible things he does when triggered.
• In the present, Robin is beating the crap out of Spike…
• And Buffy is beating the crap out of a vampire, but Giles doesn’t want her to stake him yet.
• Giles talks to her about how she’s changed in the last couple of years.
• The Slayer she is now would have allowed Dawn to be killed to save the world because she understands the sacrifices necessary.
• In the past, Spike chooses to stake his mother, telling her he’s sorry.
• Then Spike wakes up in the present, having said he was sorry aloud here, too…
• Only he wasn’t talking to Robin.
• “I don’t give a piss about your mum. She was a Slayer. I was a vampire. That’s the way the game is played.”
• Spike begins to win the fight without actually doing much to hurt Robin… at first.
• He drops the kind of truth bombs that only Spike can drop…
• Robin complains that he took her away, that she was his whole world.
• But Spike knows that, as a Slayer, there was no way Nikki felt the same way about Robin.
• There was no way she could… she was the Slayer.
• Spike plays the song again… no effect.
• He thanks Robin for curing him… deactivating his trigger.
• He wants him to know that he’s no longer under anyone’s control.
• That way, when Spike kills him, he’ll know it was just Spike, then he moves in for the kill.
• Buffy realizes that Giles is clearly distracting her and she stakes the vampire she’s been fighting.
• She gets to Robin’s as Spike is walking out.
• Spike gave him a pass on account of the fact he killed his mother.
• But he tells Buffy that if Robin so much as looks at him funny, he’ll kill him.
• Buffy then tells Robin that she’ll let Spike do it, too.
• She tells him she’s fighting a war and doesn’t have time for vendettas.
• The mission is what matters.
• Back at the house, Giles confronts Buffy, assuming Wood succeeded.
• She delivers the news that Spike is still alive.
• Giles tells her that it changes nothing… that she needs to learn…
• But she cuts him off.
• “I think you’ve taught me everything I need to know.”
• Then she closes the door on him.
• Body count: Vampires – 3