Okay, previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: We had the episode "Doppelgangland," famous mostly for Willow's line vis a vis Vamp!Willow: "I think I'm kinda gay." (At least one source suggests that this, and not Seth Green leaving, was the main impetus for picking Willow over Xander as The Character Who Turns Gay. But that's later.)
Buffy and Angel went to a movie. Because this episode takes place before the concept of the internet as a place where people can find information about boring humdrum stuff like movies (as opposed to stuff like demonic rituals and sewer blueprints), they didn't realize it was an erotic film until after they started watching it. Buffy is clearly uncomfortable, and who wouldn't be? I mean, the last time she and Angel got pelvic (the show's words, not mine), it ended with corpses. And angst. And a rocket launcher. Angel proves that he's got his emotions under control by kissing Buffy without vamping out. But really, this scene goes nowhere, just as pretty much every Buffy/Angel scene between "Amends" and "The Prom."
I think one of the reasons I was down on Season 3 the first time I saw it was because a) there wasn't a lot of Spike, and b) the Buffy/Angel thing is circling the drain very very slowly. They spend a lot of time breaking Bangel up.
Anyway Faith interrupts their smoochies, reveals that she's back on active duty (after being kidnapped; that's a forgiving Council, there), and hauls Buffy out on patrol. She explicitly tells Angel, "Don't worry, big guy. [I'm] just keeping her warm for you." (One of the writers has said that most of the Fuffy subtext was, and I'm paraphrasing here, the result of nobody telling Eliza Dushku to stop. Eliza's take on it is at 10:30 in this video.)
So they're patrolling and run into a "demonic"-looking demon who is willing to sell the Books of Ascension. He tells the Slayers that the Mayor really wouldn't want them getting their hands on the books. Naturally Faith runs back to the Mayor and tells him about the demon. He gives her milk and tells her to go kill the demon.
Buffy reports to Wesley, by which I mean she really reports to Giles and the Scoobies, but Wesley's there anyway doing "Executive Producer" stuff, and no, I'm not explaining that joke. Cordy comes in to proposition Wes. It's worth pointing out that Willow gets the first reaction shot, and that joke I will explain: guess who Alyson Hannigan's husband is and where they met.
While they're talking, Faith barges in on the demon's home and kills him and takes the books. There's this great little bit where the demon turns on a light-switch that isn't in an intuitively obvious place; Faith takes note of it, and so should the audience.
Afterwards, Faith has blood on her hands, again, and goes to Angel's place. At first it appears that this is a sincere attempt at redemption, but then she starts putting the moves on him. She's evidently under orders from the Mayor to sleep with a guy who is several times her age. So... great father figure, that guy. Well, Angel is under the assumption that any sex will cause him to lose his soul... and there's the whole "trying to make the Buffy thing work" too. So he spurns her advances, but not before Buffy sees them. Faith reports back to the Mayor at her new digs, and he cheerfully announces that if they can't steal Angel's soul the easy way, they'll just have to do it the most painful way imaginable.
Wes sends Buffy and Faith (back) to the demon's house (because Xander bought the information for $28. Wow). Faith is not playing it cool at all, and she goes right for the hidden light switch. Buffy's expression doesn't exactly change when she sees this, so I can't tell what we're supposed to assume she made of this.
Meanwhile, the Mayor has summoned a soul-stealer to deal with his little Angel problem. I'll talk more about this later, but I think the existence of this guy is a wee bit of a problem. Speaking of Angel problems, Buffy is unnerved by the whole "saw Faith putting the moves on Angel" thing and, at Willow's prompting, goes to talk to him.
(Something that we don't know about until later happens here.)
(It appears that) Faith gets to Angel first. She pretends to apologize before throwing some blood on him to start the soul-stealing ritual. One big lightshow later, Angelus is back. Naturally, he starts fighting Faith, because he's down 0-2 on the Slayer Killing Contest with Spike. Faith gets under his skin by taunting him about his relationship with Buffy. She certainly appears to get the upper hand (but, well, there's reason to believe Angel is pulling his punches) and tells him he's going to meet the new boss.
Buffy reports back to the library and tells them that Angel and Faith are both missing. The Scoobies minus Buffy go off to the Hall of Records to dig up dirt on the Mayor.
Angelus meets the Mayor and have an evil-off. The vampire tries to kill the Mayor, but it doesn't work because of the whole "impervious" thing. Angel is suitably cowed and decides to go rid the Mayor of his Buffy problem. The Mayor seems to think that killing Buffy will call a replacement Slayer (it won't; cf. Season Six; Faith is the "true" Slayer). On the way to capture Buffy, Angel gets to punch out Xander.
Angel and Faith spring their trap, and Buffy gets chained up (amazingly, this episode was not written by Marti Noxon). I'll gloss over the "Buffy gets knocked out by one punch from Angel" thing because, well, you'll see. In the Hall of Records, the Scoobies learn that Mayor Richard Wilkins III is also Mayor Richard Wilkins II and Mayor Richard Wilkins I. So apparently he was immortal for a long time before he became invincible. Xander shows up and tells them that Angelus has returned.
Back at the mansion, Faith lords over the whole "I stole your boyfriend" thing. And then she says, "If you're a screamer, feel free." So there's that. Faith delivers a motive rant: "Everyone always asks 'Who couldn't you be more like Buffy?' but did anyone ever ask why you couldn't act more like me?" (By the way, basically the same thing gets used in the Giles/Ethan subtext.) Faith lets slip that the Ascension will happen on Graduation Day. And then Angel reveals that, nope, haha, he's not evil.
Faith throws Angel at the incoming Scoobies, and they get distracted by him - y'know, because after Willow's talk with Buffy about communicating with people who are important to her, Buffy doesn't bother telling the Scoobies that she and Angel worked things out ahead of time. Faith and Buffy end up with knives at each others' throats, but Buffy can't bring herself to kill Faith, yet. So this happens, and then Faith runs away.
We learn that the soul-stealer just performed a little light-show rather than steal Angel's soul because he owed Giles a favor. Xander whines that Angel punched his face. Buffy tells him it was only an act, but she doesn't sound convinced herself; she's harboring doubts that Angel's attraction to Faith was entirely staged. After Harry Groener corpses (Faith's enormous grin after the "miniature golf" line was unscripted), Buffy and Angel have a conversation in a scene that starts on a close-up of the manacles and includes a line from Angel about not wanting to go that far. Again, if this were a Marti Noxon script, I would be reading so much subtext into that. Roll credits.
The resolution is a bit crap, really. We're expected to believe that a) the soul-removal guy who owes Giles a favor just happens to be the same soul-removal guy the Mayor calls on, and b) in retrospect, the Angel team magically forgot about him when it came time to actually remove Angel's soul again (although that gave us a wonderful Owl Creek Bridge episode - A4.10, "Awakening"). And you would think an organization like Wolfram & Hart would have at least as good contacts as the Mayor does, and they never send one of these guys after Angel...
We're meant to believe that there's an entire spell for removing souls from people for no reason. Remember, neither Faith nor the Mayor gives a rat's where the soul ends up (q.v. "Awakening" et seq). They just want to turn the only vampire with a soul in history evil, and lo and behold there just happens to be a spell to do that. What, did Darla never bother tracking this guy down?
But this never comes up again. I don't get bent out of shape when random monsters of the week never show up again, but come on, this guy can instantly turn Buffy's most powerful ally against her, and this is all we hear from him? Whug.
As I said, this is the One Where Faith Steal's Buffy's Boyfriend, and as I also said, she'll do a better job of it next time around. We get to see Evil Faith, and we get Faith's Motive Rant, and we get Angelus-except-not. The episode is gimmicky, and doesn't take itself seriously enough.
5 out of 10.
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