2.2 Some Assembly Required

Plot Synopsis (Hide)

While Buffy is waiting in the graveyard for a new vampire to rise, Angel joins her. He rather unsubtly raises the subject of Xander, obviously still smarting from the "sexy dance" incident (see When She Was Bad) and they end up arguing. When Angel walks away, Buffy marches after him, her dramatic gesture somewhat spoiled by the fact that she then falls into an open grave. Beside the grave, they find a girls' bracelet, on which Angel detects the scent of blood, and a set of tracks showing that the body has been dragged away.

Next morning, in the library, Buffy and Xander catch Giles practising how he might ask Jenny Calendar to go out with him. He is rather intrigued at the thought of grave-robbing - not your usual run-of-the mill Hellmouth type of activity. Meanwhile, Willow is checking out her opposition for the school science fair, in the form of Chris, who always comes first to her second. His friend Eric seems less interested in science than in taking photos of pretty girls.

A school name written on the bracelet helps the gang to identify the stolen body as one of three girls who recently died in a car crash, and they decide they should find out if the other bodies are missing as well. In the cemetery that evening, while Giles and Xander dig under cover of darkness, Buffy and Willow sit nearby sipping coffee and eating doughnuts. Willow tells Buffy a bit more about Chris, and how his brother, Daryl, a huge football star, had been killed in a rock-climbing accident.

On her way home from cheerleading practise that evening, Cordelia becomes aware of someone following her, and runs off down an alleyway to hide in a rubbish skip. When she thinks the coast is clear, she lifts the lid, and finds Angel waiting for her, looking rather surprised at her choice of hang-out. As her helps her to climb out, she reaches back to un-snag her skirt from something, and finds it is a human hand.

When the grave-robbing party arrive back at the library, having found another grave with a vacancy, Angel and Cordelia are waiting for them. They found more body parts in the skip, and it appears that the missing girls have been found - except that there weren't enough parts to go around. Since the remains were dumped near the school, and the dissection expertly performed, the best science fair students seem likely suspects, so a locker search is suggested. In Chris's locker, several anatomy texts and dissection guides were found, and in Eric's, a pin-up girl made from bits of photographs of many other girls.

In a lab somewhere, we see Chris and Eric working on joining various body parts together, but they don't have a head yet, and need to attach one soon before the rest of the body spoils. Eric has been developing photographs, and hangs some of them up to dry - including shots of Buffy, Willow and Cordelia.

Later that day, Giles makes an abortive attempt to ask Jenny out, but he gets rather flustered, and she has to dash off to class before he is able to make himself clear. Before she leaves, she says that if what he has to say is important, he can tell her at the evening football game. Since they are both going, she offers to pick him up, and suggests they get something to eat first. Giles agrees and walks away looking rather pleased at the success of his efforts!

Back in the lab, the need for a head is getting urgent, and Eric suggests using a live girl. Chris is aghast at the thought, turning towards a figure in the shadows and saying that he will not kill. The figure moves forwards, and we see Chris's supposedly dead brother Daryl, his face discoloured and sewn together in pieces, clearly a walking corpse. Daryl reminds Chris that he had promised him he wouldn't have to be alone, and begs his younger brother to help him. Eventually, reluctantly, Chris nods. Eric shows Daryl the photographs, and he chooses Cordelia.

Before the game, Cordelia is getting ready for the cheerleading, when she sees Chris coming towards her. As she turns to speak to him, Eric sneaks up behind, puts a bag over her head and drags her away. Meanwhile, Buffy has been to Chris's house, where she found a photo of Cordelia's head glued to the top of an anatomy diagram of a woman's body. Realising Cordy is in danger, she dashes off and arrives in time to rescue her from Eric, although he manages to escape.

Hearing the music that announces the start of the cheerleading, Cordelia gets her priorities straight, in her own mind at least, and although shaken, she grabs her pom-poms and rushes off to join the rest of the squad. Left behind in the locker room, Buffy hears a noise and realises she is not alone. Chris walks towards her, and she tells him she knows what he is trying to do, but that there is still time to stop - he hasn't hurt anyone yet. Chris, torn between loyalty to his brother and revulsion at what he and Eric had planned, lets enough information slip for Buffy to realise the full story - that the girl he and Eric are making is for the resurrected Daryl.

At the game, Giles and Jenny arrive together, while Daryl watches the football from under the stands, looking pensive until he spots Cordelia among the cheerleaders. When she takes a break to get a cup of water, he grabs her from behind and carries her off. When Buffy and Chris arrive, they find the abandoned pom-poms by the water cooler, and no sign of Cordelia. Realising Daryl and Eric are continuing with the plan together, Buffy persuades Chris to tell her where to find them. She then sends Chris to go and find the others, while she goes in pursuit.

In the lab, Cordelia is tied to a trolley next to the sheet-covered body destined to become Daryl's girlfriend. Just as Eric is about to make the first incision, the vanguard of the cavalry arrives in the form of Buffy. Kicking Eric aside, she faces Daryl, and when she finds him immune to reasoning, tries violence instead. As they fight, lots of the lab equipment goes flying, including several petrol cans and Bunsen burners. The lab begins to burn around them.

Xander is the next to arrive and after trying to release Cordelia from the trolley, without success, he wheels her through the flames to safety. Giles and Willow drag the unconscious Eric out of the lab, while Jenny helps to untie Cordelia. Daryl throws Buffy to the ground, and as she lies there dazed, he picks up a chair and is about to crush her when his brother runs in to the room and yells for him to stop. As Daryl lowers the chair, he notices that the body of his intended is surrounded by the fire, and he leaps across the flames to reach her. Chris tries to go to his brother, but Buffy realises that it is too late and holds him back, as the fire engulfs the entwined bodies of Daryl and his "bride".

Unusual Weaponry

Fighting in the graveyard, Buffy stakes a vampire with the handle of a spade he was attacking her with.

Pop Culture References

The episode name refers to a standard phrase used by furniture shops and catalogues, which indicates that the goods are flat-packed and need to be assembled into some sort of three-dimensional gubbins by the customer at home. Usually with two missing screws, and a strangely shaped piece of metal which doesn't appear anywhere in the instructions.

Buffy: "If you wouldn't mind a little Gene and Roger"
Referring to two film critics, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, as she offers her opinion on Giles's pick-up line practice.

Buffy: "You just say, 'Hey, I got a thing, you maybe have a thing, maybe we could have a thing.'"
Giles: "Oh, thank you Cyrano"
Reference to Cyrano de Bergerac, a play by Edmond Rostand, in which the titular hero helps a handsome but less articulate friend to woo a woman he himself was in love with. Giles is suggesting, rather sarcastically, that Buffy's idea of a pick-up line is somewhat less than poetic.

Xander: That whole stork thing is a smoke-screen
Xander is referring to an old-fashioned explanation parents would give very young children in response to the age old 'where do babies come from' question. Akin to finding them in the cabbage patch.

Buffy: Sorry to interrupt, Willow, but it's the Bat Signal.
Doesn't really need an explanation, does it? Oh, go on then...
In the Batman comics, when danger threatened Gotham City, a huge spotlight would be used to project the image of a bat against the moon, to let the hero know he was needed. I must admit, I always wondered what they would do if there was danger in the daytime??

What We Learn

• Angel is 241 years old.
• A tomato is a fruit.

Nitpicks

• Why go to all the bother of finding several dead girls bodies and then doing a mix-and-match? Wouldn't it be far simpler to find one body and re-animate the whole thing? They already know it would work, as they've been through that process with Daryl, and they'd have been far less likely to get found out.