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Episode 4.14: Goodbye, Iowa | Episode 4.16: Who Are You?
Characters:
| Buffy | Xander | Willow |
| Giles | Spike | Riley |
| Tara |
Overall (5/10)
Buffy:
In this episode we take a detour from the season arc to revisit the Faith character. Personally, I think Faith is a fantastic character and I love her to death. Unfortunately, as she was never a cast member, I don't have a section for her. Also, as a lot of her development goes on in Angel the Series, I don't feel entirely comfortable talking about her character, so I'm going to sidestep that and only talk about Faith as she relates to Buffy's character.
Moving onto Buffy, now, this episode shows her worrying about Riley. However, once he's released, she's not interested in taking on the Initiative. They continue the themes that had been started in The I in Team with Buffy encouraging Riley to explore his individuality and think about his future.
Then she receives news that Faith is awake. She's reluctant to talk to Riley about the full history of Faith, something that will be revisited in New Moon Rising. Buffy's main concern is finding Faith, though, at first, she still gives her the benefit of the doubt. This doesn't last long as Faith quickly states her goal of getting payback on Buffy. Much searching and fighting ensues.
Xander:
Xander wears an ugly sweater. He's still hung up on Faith's use of him last season, though this is used primarily for comedic effect. He doesn't have much to do outside of that.
Willow:
Why is Xander fixing the blaster when Willow has been shown to be the techie one? Oh well. Like most of the other characters, Willow gets largely sidelined for this episode.
As with the others, Giles isn't given much to do.
Spike has one short scene to remind the Scoobies, and the audience, that he hates them and has no real interest in helping them.
We see that the Initiative, like the Scoobies, are going through their own fracturing. Riley is vehement in leaving the Initiative hospital, however, to go back to Buffy. He's still with them, but things aren't looking good for his future with that organization. Riley is still very much in a state of confusion as to who he is and what he wants to do.
Tara has a brief scene helping Willow search for Faith. Willow seems to be filling her in on all the Scooby news.
Faith wakes up.
Faith!
As noted, the arc gets put to the side here to focus on Faith.
This episode maintains the status quo. Unfortunately, there's not much to it. We're reminded of the conflict with Adam. We're given exposition to help remind us of the Faith fiasco. And then there's lots of looking for Faith. This entire episode is primarily build-up to the next episode. As such, it suffers from a sheer lack of anything really happening. It's just moving pieces into place. As such, most characters are ignored and it ends up feeling like an empty prologue to the infinitely better Who Are You? As such, I can't give it much in the way of props.
Special performance award goes to Alyson Hannigan for that hat. Also, am I the only one who noticed the person holding the boom mike in the dissected demon scene? Whoops!
5 out of 10
The final fight between Buffy and Faith. Good set-up for the next episode, and that fight is actually my favorite fight in the series.
Episode 4.14: Goodbye, Iowa | Episode 4.16: Who Are You?
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