Buffy The Vampire Slayer

"There’s blood everywhere!" Apparently, I read somewhere, the above phrase is one of the most repeated cliché’s in Hollywood movies, along with every shopping bag having a stick of French Bread in it. I don’t know how true that is, but I will blindly decree it so. They don’t actually say that in this episode, but there is, in fact, blood everywhere. And it is all Anyanka’s doing.

Anyanka has been a naughty little Vengeance Demon, yes she has! There are piles and piles of Frat Boy bodies, and Anya is covered in blood. Now I think we’ve all thought about doing this before (or am I just *twitch* insane?), but this is certainly going to land her into some serious poopies with the Scoobies. She is looking very disturbed about what had just transpired (or is she just disturbed for realising her job description has the initials VD?), and she’s washing off and doing the skedaddle thing outta there.

Ladies and Gentlemen - here’s Olaf! Can I just say OLAF IS WAY COOL! How cool is Olaf? WAAAAY COOL! The mere pondering of how WAY COOL Olaf is makes me want to bend at the knee and flex! When I saw just how WAY COOL Olaf is, I nearly soiled myself. Olaf can’t help being WAY COOL, he really must have the WAY COOL gene imbedded into his DNA. Everything he does, and everything he says, surpasses all preconceptions of what "WAY COOL" is, and completely resets the "Way Cool Scale". Want my opinion on Spin-Off Series ideas? (Going to tell you anyway. Shut-up.) I was going for a Clem Spin-Off, but now? Now I want to see a Mutant Enemy Production titled "OLAF - Completely Freaking Cool", in which we are subjected to Olaf being WAY COOL with his zany Random Destruction, crazy Ale-Consumption, and wacky Baby Eating antics! That would be WAY COOL! Olaf was WAY COOL in Season 4’s Triangle, in which he was summoned by a spell gone horribly awry, then spent the remainder of the episode being WAY COOL and drinking beer. How Cool is that? WAY COOL! We know from Triangle that Olaf was Anyanka’s ex-boyfriend, before she turned him into a Troll. Human or Troll - Olaf is just WAY COOL!

Here we see "Aud" (Anya’s original name) and Olaf, in their Sjornjost bunny-infested homestead in 880. Anya is being all housewifey, and Olaf is just being WAY COOL. Aud is worried about the Rannveig the Bar-Chick succumbing to Olaf’s WAY COOLNESS and thrusting her Baltic Load-Bearing hips in Olaf’s direction. And it seems, even as a human in 880, Anya had trouble relating to the people around her.

Hang on! Is that Buffy being all squooshie towards Spike again? Can I hear the Xena-like victory cries of those Spuffy Fanatics out there? Um, no. Its just Spike being Nucking Futs again. "Morphy" appears to be manipulating Mr Futs, telling him what he wants to hear. The "real" Buffy just shows up and tells him to Sod Off out of the Hellmouth High Basement, because it’s sending him Nucking Futs.

Willow gets the scoop. Anya carried out a girl’s wish for vengeance on the Frat House. There’s a Spider Demon on the loose, which attacks our cute little Willow. But - WHOA! Evasive magical manoeuvres cause her to go black-eyed and narky! The Willow of last year’s final shoots through to the surface. Nasty! She shakes it off. Is this what we are to expect whenever Willow uses magic?

Olaf and Rannveig The Baltic Load-Bearing Hipped Floosie, did end up getting their "phreak on" - the consequences of which turned Olaf into a WAY COOL Troll with what was called Thorton’s Curse. Olaf goes on a WAY COOL old-fashioned village rampage of wanton destruction against the "small and toylike" locals. Olaf flips out and is totally sweeeet, wailing on Lutes, and ok, I’ll stop these in-jokes here. Suffice to say it was WAY COOL! D’Hoffryn thought it was WAY COOL, as well. For those who don’t remember, D’Hoffryn is Daddy Vengeance Demon. And he has the best beard ever. D’Hoffryn’s beard blows me away! He has the funkiest facial hair I’ve ever seen on a Demon, outside of Salvador Dali. Being a fan of novelty facial hair, I am tempted to plagiarise D’Hoffryn’s follicular adornments for my own. If I could muster the growing of multiple head horns, I’d do that as well. Anyway, he sees Olaf’s WAY COOL flipping out, and is impressed. He confronts Aud about becoming a Vengeance Demon. This here is the making of Anyanka.

Judge Buffy is the Law. Willow dobs on Anya to Buffy and Xander. Buffy is all for the stabby-stabby, Xander is worried. He still loves Anya. They help psychotic friends, don’t they? They didn’t go all stabby-stabby on Willow, did they! Perhaps not, but she had to with Angel. Finally, after 5 Seasons, Xander’s "kick his ass" line of Becoming Part 2 is aired, and how it wasn’t actually Willow’s message when Buffy was confronting Angel. I thought that was a nice little addition to the scene, it shut Xander up. Xander leaves in a huff to find an alternate way. Buffy grabs a sharp implement with which to go stabby on a certain Vengeance Demon. She has no choice; she is always the one who has to do what needs to be done. Willow, on the other hand, has different ideas. She digs out the Talisman D’Hoffryn gave to her in Season 4’s Something Blue, and gives him a chant. Willow’s gonna go all narky on him.

High Noon at the Frat House. The final showdown between Xander and Anya is cut short when Anya thumps Xander a good one in the face. Buffy and Anya go loggerheads in a good old-fashioned scrag-fight! Anya, in her demon form, can seriously kick some ass! She’s bitchslapping Buffy all over the place! But shlopp! Buffy’s sword finds a place in Anya’s chest.

We are treated to a Once More With Feeling flashback, in which Anya belts out a song called "Mrs". Now, listening to the lyrics, I can see how it was appropriate to the episode. But am I the only one that felt that it was completely out of place here? I really think it should have been placed earlier in the episode somewhere; I found it very distracting here.

We know Anya is not dead. A sword through the chest does little to stop a Vengeance Demon, as we found out in Older And Far Away, when the same happened to Halfrek. But, SHAZAAM! D’Hoffryn and his enchanted beard appear impressively in a flash of special effects. He was sent there by Willow. Anya takes a stand, and wants to reverse her whole massacre, at the price her own life. The life and soul of a Vengeance Demon. D’Hoffryn accepts her sacrifice, and destroys Halfrek, Anya’s only remaining friend. Never go for the kill when you can go for the pain.

Now, there was a lot of speculation on Halfrek’s character, since Older And Far Away, where she referred to Spike as "William". Kali Rocha, who plays Halfrek, also played Cecily in Fool For Love, the object of William The Poet’s swooning affections. Were Halfrek and Cecily linked? Apparently not. As it stands, the "William?" line in Older And Far Away seems to only be an in-joke among cast and writers. Oh, well

Before this episode originally aired, there was much talk of the revealing of Anya’s BunnyPhobia. Many fans were disappointed that this aspect of Anya’s life was not divulged. We see bunnies all over her Sjornjost cottage that she shared with Olaf The WAY COOL, but apart from that, there was no other mention. It remains a mystery. Or does it?

Anya bred bunnies way back then in 880. She said she would "give the excess to the townspeople exchanging them not for goods and services, but for goodwill and the sense of accomplishment". The townspeople didn’t get along with Anya much - her personality clashed with everyone, it seems, but Olaf. When Rannveig The Baltic Load-Bearing Hipped Floosie got jiggy with Olaf, Anya had lost the only person with which she could relate to. Then she turned to vengeance, lured by the irresistible charisma of D’Hoffryn’s beard. She was not Olaf’s "Aud" - she was Anyanka. She wasn’t this person she had thought herself as, she became D’Hoffryn’s instrument of vengeance.

Aud was the most honest person Anya has been. The most human. When she became Anyanka, there was no human anymore; there was no place for humanity. She forgot what it was to be human, and developed a hatred and fear of it, thus making her a kick-ass Vengeance Demon. It became so that Anya was never human in her own mind, and when she became human in Season 3, the realisation was fear, self-hatred, and complete loss of her own identity channelled through the use of bitter sarcasm. She was faced with her humanity again, so she had to cling onto something else, and create a new identity for herself. This is where Xander steps in, and we see the Anya of Season 4, 5, and most of 6, learning to be human, as if she never was - not becoming human again. That, of course, fell apart in last Season’s Hell’s Bells, and she immediately latched back onto D’Hoffryn’s awesome beard, and resumed her Vengeance Demony ways.

Anya wasn’t Anyanka anymore, though. She was trying to be Anyanka, with some pretty dismal half-assed results. She doesn’t know who she is, and so, makes a choice to be Anyanka. And slaughterers the Frat Boys as Anyanka. But this isn’t who she is. She doesn’t know who she is anymore.

Xander had turned his back on her. Buffy was trying to kill her. Willow betrayed her. Halfrek, her only remaining friend, was destroyed by D’Hoffryn in his poignant move to expel her from the order of Vengeance Demons. She is faced with herself now, without anyone to cling to. Anya said, "you can’t help me, not even sure wether there’s a me to help". Giving the rabbits away purely for goodwill was the last Selfless act she had considered, before putting her life on the line to reverse her massacre. This, I feel, is the Bunny metaphor. A fear of who she is, once all her fabricated personalities crumble away.

I think there’s a bit more to it than this. I did a touch of research, and found that in Icelandic legend, there was "Aud, the Deep-Minded", who married "Olaf The White". They gave birth to a son named Thorstein (Thorstein/Thorton’s Curse?). But the deadline to this here ramble came too quickly, and I couldn’t look into it anymore than that. So if anyone knows a bit about this, or has theories, drop me a line. I couldn’t be bothered now.

Plus, by now I’m sure you’re all screaming: "For Christ’s Sake, Boffy! Give your mouth a go!"

Boffin’s Episode Checklist:

Body Count Ran out of fingers and toes. Incidents of Buffy looking annoyed 2 Incidents of Xander looking smug 2 Incidents of Dawn Whinage 0 Gratuitous Spike’s Chest Shots 0 Apocalyptic Murmurings 1 Willow getting Narky 3 Olaf being WAY COOL All the friggin’ time. Overly Dramatic Statements 7