Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S7/E06 Him

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Welcome to the Hellmouth, where even outerwear isn't safe.

The Scoobie girls fall for Dawn's classmate RJ, thanks to his magical letterman jacket.

Buffy: You shredded my outfit.
Dawn: I'll buy you a new one.
Buffy: That's not the point. I don't want a new cheerleading outfit.
Xander: Now, now, let's not be hasty...

  • An Axe to Grind: Buffy vs. the demon that D'Hoffryn sent to kill Anya.
  • Bare Your Midriff: Dawn, the Pushy Queen of Slut Town.
  • Blatant Lies: Anya claiming she wrote an epic poem for BJ, when actually she robbed several banks to get him money.
  • Buffy-Speak: Soul-having. Rant Girl. No more with the talky.
    • Xander re Spike: "Crazy-Basement-Guy is better than Stalking-Buffy-Guy."
  • Breather Episode
  • Call Back
    • Dawn asks Buffy if she loves Spike, just as Tara did in "Dead Things". This time Buffy is able to answer the question -- no, but she does have feelings for him.
    • Dawn fears she can't compete with her cooler, more assertive, and sexually-experienced sister, just as teenaged Buffy once worried about losing Angel to girls like Cordelia or Faith.
    • Xander walking in on Buffy straddling RJ is like when he came across the Buffybot straddling Spike in "Intervention".
    • Spike turning the angel statuettes so they couldn't face him, like Drusilla bandaging the eyes of her dolls.
    • Spike moving in with Xander, and Lance living in his mother's basement and working dead-end jobs, is a call back to Xander in Season 4.
    • Willow trying to sort out a relationship problem by immediately resorting to magic.
  • Cat Fight: Dawn and another of RJ's paramours get into a hair-pulling contest outside the Bronze.
  • Chekhovs's Bazooka: The rocket launcher Buffy used to dust The Judge is used again to try and kill Wood.
    • Also the cheerleader outfit that Buffy last wore in Season One ("The Wish").
  • Coincidental Broadcast: Quickly turned off by Anya when the radio starts talking about the masked gunman who held up a number of businesses--
  • Continuity Nod
    • Buffy follows up on her insistence that Spike move out of the Sunnydale High basement, making him room with a reluctant Xander.
    • Buffy startles when Spike touches her unexpectedly; his attempted rape still leaves its scars.
    • Buffy's poor driving skills in her mother's SUV, as seen in "Band Candy".
    • Buffy insisting everyone but her is affected by the spell, as she did in "Somthing Blue".
    • Dawn brings up Buffy's taste for rough sex -- according to a deleted line on the shooting script, she found this out from Anya who would have got the information during her drinking session with Spike in "Entropy".
    • Xander identifying the effects of a love spell is due to his experiences in "Something Blue" and "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" -- the latter also showed how the spell can affect a person's sense of right and wrong, with the affected girls all trying to murder Xander as shown in the flashback.
  • Dawson Casting: Thad Luckinbill, who portrays RJ is actually TEN years older than Michelle Trachtenberg and two years older than Sarah Michelle Gellar.
  • Department of Redundancy Department

Willow: Damn love spell. I have tried every anti-love spell spell I could find.
Anya: Even if you find the right one, the guy would probably just do an anti-anti-love spell spell... spell. (Willow looks confused)

Anya: His physical form has a penis!
Willow: I can work around that.

Xander: Good times...

  • Funny Background Event: Buffy trying to kill Wood with a rocket launcher, and Spike stopping her, is turned into a Crowning Moment of Funny due to taking place entirely in the background while Wood remains oblivious.
  • Gender Bender: Willow's solution to RJ is to turn him into a girl, thus eliminating her competition so she can him...err, her all to herself. It's the less extreme of the bids for his attention.
  • Hot for Teacher

RJ: (after Buffy's "Shut Up" Kiss) You're like a teacher.
Buffy: Not really. (sweetly) But, I mean, does it bother you?
RJ: (smiling) Not so much.

RJ: I think I hear what you're saying.

Xander: Dawn? What's wrong? Is this... Did that guy in the jacket--
Dawn: I don't even want to hear his name anymore!
Xander: I just called him "that guy in the jacket".
Dawn: That's what I used to call him in my head before I knew his real name!

Dawn: Last night, you said you weren't helping Spike out of pity. What is it [if not that]?
Buffy: It's a good question. (sips her drink through a straw)
Dawn: Is sitting there drinking soda some kind of a Zen non-answer?

Xander: I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it didn't fit.

Buffy: (to Slut!Dawn) Where do I start with the bad? First, you told me you were going to the library. Second, you do not go out on a date without informing me first. Third, Anna Nicole Smith thinks you look tacky.

Lori: I'll never let you have him, bitch. R.J. is mine. I mean it! Stay away from him!
Buffy: (to Dawn) Well, at least someone agrees you shouldn't be dating this guy.

Buffy: You've been out of the basement for half an hour, and you've already stopped talking to invisible people.
Spike: Bollocks.
Buffy: OK, so there was that one episode in the car...