Guest Starring: 
     
 Anthony Stewart Head: 
 (Giles) 
   
 DB Woodside: 
 (Robin Wood) 
   
 Ashanti: 
 (Lissa) 
   
 Tom Lenk: 
 (Andrew) 
   
 Iyari Limon: 
 (Kennedy) 
   
 Sarah Hagan: 
 (Amanda) 
   
 Kristy Wu: 
 (Chao-Ahn) 
   
 Danny Strong: 
 (Jonathan) 
   
 KD Albert: 
 (Nikki Wood) 
   
 
 
  14. First Date.  
   
  Buffy, Xander and Willow all go on dates while Giles frets about the coming battle against The First.  
   
  Great quotes:  
   
 
Xander's date doesn't quite work out as he was expecting...
  • Xander gives Lissa advice on rope selection as a pick up line: “Depends on what you need it for. Something like functional around the house, or, you know, recreational. By which I mean for example boating, or mountain climbing. Not for tying someone up for sexy funky fun.”
  • Buffy on the hellmouth: “It’s a bidet of evil.”
  • Buffy is unsure if Robin Wood is attracted to her, is giving her a promotion or trying to kill her, Willow: “You’ll have to dress for the ambiguity.”
  • Xander: “Willow, gay me up! I’m undressing Scott Bakula right now.”
 
  Fantastic moments:  
   
 
  • The episode’s best scene is when Buffy opens her feelings up to Willow while both of them sit in the Summers’ house. Buffy talks about her possible feelings for Robin Wood and rather absent-mindedly rambles on about her love life before getting into a number of cross-purposed conversations. Xander then storms in eager to tell them all about his date, only for Willow to tell him about Buffy’s first.
  • Anya insists that Xander’s date is only a plan to get her jealous, Buffy consoles her that it isn’t working. Anya retorts: “Are you nuts? Of course it’s working, observe my bitter ranting! Hear the shrill edge of hysteria in my voice!”
  • So Robin Wood is a hard-case vampire hunter whose mother was a slayer? Cool.
 
  Duff Bits:  
   
 
  • We finally get an explanation for what happened to Giles, but no one really cares now do they?
  • The new slayer is an Asian girl called Chow-Ann, cue tonnes of lame comedy including lots of confusing double-entendres.
  • The Scoobies try to record The First using a wire. What is this, a bad Hollywood cop film?
  • How did the Scoobies know where to go in order to save Xander. Speaking of which, the whole ‘text message code’ is extremely unlikely.
 
  Dean's comments:  
   
 
Willow and Kenedy are getting closer.
‘First Date’ suffers in a microcosm from the same problems that the entire seventh season suffers. With so much plot to include and so many characters to fit in, there is very little space left for decent development of anything, character motivations being the most glaring deficiency. Is Robin Wood evil or not? Are Buffy’s feelings for Spike clouding her judgement or not? Does Giles have ulterior motives regarding Spike? How did Willow and Kennedy become inseparable so quickly? All these developments seem to have happened far too quickly without giving the audience a chance to step back and take everything in. I guess the episode is one final chance for the characters to be silly before the big battle starts, Giles rather unconvincingly says that it’s “... time to get serious” at the end. Thankfully the episode’s finale hints at a future conflict between Robin Wood and Spike, and not just which of them she fancies more. His mother was a slayer, and what is it that Spike used to do again?
 
   
 4/10 
 
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