A Frost Monster Who Eats Diamonds

Episode 6.9: Smashed. Original Airdate 11.20.01

[IMDB's summary sucked so Z wrote her own]. While Willow finds an old magic buddy with the newly de-rat-fied Amy, Buffy seeks companionship of a Spike-shaped variety.

Daniel's Thoughts:

• I really don’t remember this episode that much.
• Interesting, a non-magical mugging
• Buffy can still kick their asses….just not stake them
• Damn, Spike, stop it.
• Did they just reference Jessica Fletcher as a go-to pop culture detective reference?

• “I’m the only one here for you, pet. You’ve got no one else.”  Yep, nothing abusive about that relationship.  If he hits you, he just likes you.
•  ‘Revele.’  Wow, so that’s all Willow has to do to get a spell for basically anything they need help with ever?  How convenient.  I guess she can use that for the rest of the episodes for all things. [Yeahhhhhh  that's a pretty convenient never-again-used deus ex machina - Z]
• Hey, Amy!
• Andrew’s Mission: Impossible parody is dated.
• Oh right, the freeze machine. More DC than Buffy.  The nerds are so a way for the comic book geek writers to fulfill certain weird fantasies.  It just doesn’t fit in this universe.
• ..With my freezeray, I will stop…
• Elizabeth Anne Allen is really good at acting like a rat.
• Poor rat Amy had no concept of time.
• "1. Larry’s gay. 2 Larry’s dead…"
• It must be weird to for Buffy to see Willow living in her dead mom's room. (And still probably not paying rent or contributing to the house in any way.)
• "How have you been?" "Rat, you?" "Dead." "Oh."
• I hate that trope where someone has something important to say, gets interrupted, and then never says the thing.  Like the other person wouldn’t be curious.
• I miss Giles.
• Also, where are Anya and Xander? (Ok, and Dawn?)
• Buffy: “Please stop.” YES, PLEASE STOP.  YES, PLEASE STOP.  MAYBE IF I WISH IT HARD ENOUGH THE PLOT LINE WILL GO  DIFFERENTLY THIS TIME.
• So Spike thinks his chip is gone so naturally he’s going to hunt a human.  YES, HE HAS CHANGED.
• I just don’t know how anyone can root for Spuffy.
• Hey, there’s Dawn and Tara.  I’m glad Tara still sees Dawn.
• Willow’s got a mac!

• “Is this that thing I do that you were commenting on?”  Anya’s awesome.
• Andrew meets Spike…and a new love is born.
• Doesn’t Spike have super vampire hearing? He’s only like 5 feet away.
• I kinda dig Willow’s jacket.  That’s new.  Willow wearing something I like. Must be the drugs magic.
• Andrew, you can’t have seen every episode of Doctor Who, since a lot of eps are lost and you're not old enough to have seen them live. See? I can nerd, too.
• This night out is so awkward.  And everything is so 90s from the music to the clothes…to the boys’ hairstyles.
• “There’s no such thing as a frost monster who eats diamonds”
• He’s only hitting you because he likes you, Buffy  This is gross.
• Everything Willow and Amy are doing….it’s just so dumb.
• Ew, Spuffy sex…that literally brought down the house….I’m so over this ep.

Zelda's Thoughts:

• Aw, Buffy is quipping. "I always wanted a pony." // "Come on, rush me. It'll be funny."
• Aw dang, they're not even vamps. How weird and random.
• "Remind me not to help you." // "More often?"
• Amy's back! Her hair looks good. All nicely highlighted, just how rats wear it these days. And those perfectly manicured brows.
• "We should probably just Get The Freeze Ray out of here now."
• Aw Amy. "I felt like I was in that cage for weeks."
• Buffy and Willow. So stilted. So non communicate-y. 
• And it kills me, Buffy was about to tell Willow about kissing Spike, and then Amy appears.
• Oh mannnnnnnnnnn Tom and Nicole. Tom hasn't even gone all couch-jumping yet for our Sunnydale children.
• I can't call shenanigans on Sunnydale having a museum, because even my one-horse town had like one or two tiny museums. None with fancy steal-able diamonds, but still.
• Okay, but this shot is cheekbone city.

• Oh Spike. Two steps forward, five miles back. This is why you need your own internal morality, not just What Will Make The Object of My Affection Happy Today? As soon as he thinks his chip is broken, he goes out looking for a human meal.
• I love that Tara isn't severing ties with the other Scoobies, even if she broke up with Willow. "You know that I will always be there for you, right?" really makes it clear how much she's become one of Dawn's surrogate moms.
• Aw man, the Scoobies are all congratulatory of Willow for using her tech fu instead of witch fu, and then NOPE she's still using magic.
• Good for Anya, using her words. The Scoobies need to use their words more.
• Wow and Willow's in such freaking denial about why Tara left her, and her own culpability. You'd think, after Tabula Rasa, she'd be a bit more aware, but nope.
• In character continuity, completely suppressing her heartbreak is something we've seen from Willow before - y'all remember Brave Litle Drunk Dancing Toaster Willow after Oz left?
• Oh I forgot Spike visited the Trio.

This whole sequence is delightful and yet somehow we didn't quote it.
Probably because Warren is the worst.

• "Dudes, I think that's Spike." Oh Andrew.
• Okay, so at this point in the narrative, the Scoobies still don't know the Trio are behind Life Serial. Spike's come to Warren because he remembers him from robot days of yore.
• Amy's wearing a fluffy pink sweater, but we can neither confirm nor deny that this sweater previously belonged to Willow.
• At least Warren's scanning of the chip doesn't involve a really fake-looking opening of Spike's skull.
• I should see Red Dwarf. My sister liked it.
• Hey, did you guys know (yeah, you probably knew) that Adam Busch (Warren) was in last week's episode of Danny Strong's Empire? True story.
• Hey, remember when it was a thing that clothing had like foil woven into it so everything glittered? Both Dawn and Tara are sparkling like Twilight vampires here.
• I feel like Amy didn't have this level of power back when she turned into a rat. Like, the rat thing was the biggest trick in her arsenal at that point. Now with a snap of her fingers she can fetch a lesbian to flirt with Willow. It bothers me a bit, because while I think it's a great idea to bring Amy back, the writers have made her pretty malleable to their storytelling purposes (like, HOW does she know about Rack in the next episode? It doesn't really make sense. And then the only times they bring her back are to show the junkie Willow is trying not to be, overworking their metaphor. And then when they bring her back in S7 ... it's just such a lot of whatever)
• "Responsible people are always so concerned with being good all the time, that when they finally get a taste of being bad, they can't get enough. It's like all ... kablooey." Because it hasn't been about being "good" for Willow, it's been about power and control, feeling like reality is hers to shape to her will. But because she still thinks of herself as Reliable Dog Geyser Person, she doesn't see how any of her actions, no matter how irresponsible, could be bad. She's a "good" person. Good people don't do bad things.
• Aw a payphone. The last payphone left in America.
• Oh look, Spike owns another shirt! A purple shirt!
• Sigh. And thus begins the You Came Back Wrong campaign. Please stop making Buffy feel even worse about her resurrection than she already does.
• This whole Bronze sequence is just ... Willow and Amy are being so irresponsible and awful to these innocent people they don't even know. Stop, Willow. Stop, Amy. Stop what you're doing. People are not your toys.
• Time for house-breaking sexytimes!

• As Joss said in the commentary of ... some episode (I wanna say Wild at Heart?), "Au revoir, Monsier Metaphor!"
• It is pretty surprising to see such explicit sexual movements on a show originally aimed at teens.

Favorite Lines:

Daniel: "Oh, for crying out loud. This is bizarre. You're all, 'la la la!' with, with the magic, and the not talking, like everything's normal, when we all know that Tara up and left you and now everyone's scared to say anything to you. Except me. Is this that thing I do that you were commenting - " - Anya
Zelda: "We should probably just get the freeze ray out of here now." - Warren

Arc/Continuity Stuff:

• Recurring: Amy the Rat AND Amy the Witch, The Trio, Tara
• Shoutout to Dead Gay Larry, Snyder, the Mayor Snake
• Spike's chip doesn't work when he hits Buffy now.

Stats:

Anya's Hair - loose waves, very blonde

Dead Humans - 0

Dead Undeads - 0

Dead Flashbacks - 0

Buffy Breaks a Door - 0

Buffy Breaks a House - 1

Evil Reveal - 0

Unevil Reveal - 0

Shenanigans Called - 0

Apocalypse Called - 0