After watching the first half of Season Seven, I have come to realize even more just how weak Season Six was. Where the previous year sort of meandered around, this season has really hit the ground running: The First is pissed off and looking to open the Hellmouth. The feeling of high tension and imminent danger was established fairly early, after a couple of silly episodes with an invisible Willow and a magical varsity jacket that is, but it hasn’t really let up since.

I liked the fact that Giles was taking some time working on Willow’s rehab; it seemed like a fair way to deal with her murderous actions. Although I have to admit to being a little confused as to why people keep saying that Willow killed “people” – by my count, didn’t she just kill Warren? It looked like she caused a lot of damage at the police station, but I thought the show made a deliberate point of not showing that anyone else had been gravely injured – did I miss something? Even if it was just Warren, was Willow or anyone else wanted in connection with the death? I guess Sunnydale sees so many people die and disappear all the time that they’ve gotten used to it, but I would think that enough cops got a good look at Evil Willow so that she would have some ’splaining to do with the law on her return to town. It’s a minor quibble, but still…

I liked the Anya-centric episode “Selfless,” as it was nice to see how the gang viewed Anya since she returned to her vengeance demon ways. I kind of wondered after the end of Season Six if she was going to be written out of the show. I mean, I like her character and all, I just wondered if it made sense for her to still be around – she had no ties left to Sunnydale after she and Xander were done and The Magic Box was completely destroyed, so why would she need to stick around? Maybe she just liked being close to the Hellmouth? Maybe some part of her wanted to stay close to Xander? Either way, I was glad that she hung in there, and that she got a whole episode serving her back story and her return to evil. And while I understand Buffy’s point on why she had to kill Anya, I felt like Xander had a good counterargument, in that Buffy seemed to make exceptions to her “kill all evil creatures” policy when the evil thing was someone she had recently slept with. (Like Spike, but I’ll get to him in a second.) I also thought it was weird how quickly Buffy and Anya were able to move past the whole fighting-to-the-death thing, and it seemed weird that D’Hoffryn would go after Anya in the very next episode, after they had seemed to be all square.

Now, seeing Spike with his soul was not at all the revelation I thought it was going to be. I was expecting him to be a full on good guy, part of the Scoobies, and maybe even be a “normal” boyfriend for Buffy. But nope. As it turns out, if you don’t use your soul for a couple of centuries, it starts to lose it’s polish. There’s something they don’t teach you in health class. Even though I haven’t been the biggest fan of Spike lately, I thought seeing him wander the halls of the new school’s basement utterly insane was pretty jarring, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy. That said, once he started killing people, it seemed pretty irresponsible of Buffy to not to stake him. Sure, she needed to keep him around and alive to try to figure out what The First wanted with him. But come on, the guy was seriously dangerous, and it’s not like The First would have spilled his (“hers?” “its?”) secrets to a guy she was torturing just for fun.

It was fun to see Jonathan and Andrew back, though I was bummed to see poor Jonathan get killed. He was never that into the whole supervillain thing, and I guess that’s why he ended up getting stabbed in the back. Or in the front. And again, the Scoobies were pretty harsh to Andrew for committing murder under the influence of The First, while being far more forgiving of Spike for doing the same thing.

I really like The First as a Big Bad, and the way they tied his (I’m going with “his” until someone tells me it should be something else) plan into Buffy’s second resurrection was a nice addition. But I have to admit that I don’t totally get how that happened – if the Slayer line now ends with Faith, why would Buffy dying and coming back throw off the whole lineage thing? Maybe it’ll be explained later on, but for now I just don’t get the exact logic behind it, if there is any. Still, watching The First assume the spectre of so many departed people makes for a really spooky feel, and the fact that he is seemingly unkillable makes for one hell (mouth! sorry, bad joke) of a challenge for our favorite Slayer. “Conversations With Dead People” really showed just how dirty The First was going to play, and it made for one of the show’s more unsettling, disturbing, and really great episodes. And even though the ancient vampire was defeated in a matter of a couple of episodes, I really enjoyed his and Buffy’s fight scenes; it felt like it had been a while since the show had a really good drag ‘em out, Buffy vs. Vampire punch-and-kick fest.

A few other random questions, some of which probably shouldn’t be answered in the comments, since I’m so close to the end and want to avoid any spoilers as I finish the show. Is Giles dead, and is he really The First? At the very end of “Sleeper,” we see a guy behind him swinging an axe at him. Next time we see the guy, he’s in Sunnydale, with his head still firmly attached to his body, and without an explanation as to how he escaped this attack. I’m really, REALLY hoping he’s not dead, because it would be a seriously massive shame for such a major character to receive such an unceremonious and off-camera death. Not to mention that it wouldn’t make much sense, given his actions in helping Buffy once he got into town. And what’s up with David Palmer’s brother? We have yet another Sunnydale High principal with sinister motives? Is he also The First? And why did the Watcher’s Council drag it’s feet so much in responding to the war that had been declared against it? From what the potential Slayers were saying, it seemed to me (and I could be wrong here) that a lot of the girls’ Watchers revealed themselves to their girls, and began training with them. Which, I would think, they would have only done knowing about the crisis that was going on, so what took them so long in getting the girls together to a safe location? I’m guessing that question will never be answered, and it will just be chalked up to the Watchers being arrogant and bureaucratic and slow, and Giles has even said as much. I just found it odd that some of the girls knew about their Watchers before they were “called.”

So I only have 11 episodes to go, and I’m both excited to see how the show ends and dreading the day when I won’t have new Buffy to watch. But I’m really enjoying the fast pacing of this season, and I’m hoping that they can keep it up for the remainder of the series.