aired on: October 23, 2001

written by: David Fury and Jane Espenson

directed by: Nick Marck

Buffy returns from her meeting with Angel, complete with a bucket of fried chicken but everyone is already eating. She sits down anyway but doesn't want to talk about how her visit went. They start discussing what her plans are now that she is alive again. She wants to go back to school but registration is over. Willow and Tara offer to let Buffy audit their classes and she agrees.

The geek trio have acquired a van with their stolen money and filled it with high tech gadget and Andrew has painted a Death Star on the side. They plan to test Buffy to discover her weaknesses.

At school, Buffy attends class with Willow but is totally lost in the discussion. She meets up with Tara for the next class, but while they are standing in the hall, Warren crashes into her and attaches a computer type chip to her jacket before running off. Buffy starts to go to class with Tara but time keeps speeding up for her, causing her to totally miss the class. She tries to follow Tara outside but the time thing keeps getting worse. She is forced under a stone table where she finds the chip on her jacket. The trio cause it to self destruct and time goes back to normal.

Next Xander gets Buffy a job with him at the construction site. The guys give her a hard time until she picks up a very heavy beam and carries it away easily. One of the guys complains to her to slow down because they get paid by the hour and she works too fast. She notices a black van outside but thinks nothing of it. Andrew gets his turn to test Buffy and calls some demons to attack her. She kills them and they melt away but they cause some major damage. None of the construction guys will stand up for her and Xander walks away with her where he is forced to fire her.

With nowhere else to turn, Buffy gets a job helping Anya and Giles at the Magic Box which is not her idea of a fun time to start with. This is Jonathan's turn to harass Buffy and he chants some Latin and sends her into a time loop where is has to get a satisfied customer to break it.

Buffy has to help this one woman who wants a mummy's hand that refuses to leave. She stabs it, cuts off its fingers, is strangled by it, and it strangles the customer before Buffy tries to walk out. She repeats this over and over before getting the bright idea to tell the woman that the one they have is defective but they can special order one and ship it to her. The customer pays for the hand and leaves satisfied, breaking the time loop. Giles congratulates her on her first sale while Anya notices she didn't charge for shipping. They tell her it can just come out of her pay. Buffy takes off her name tag and walks out the door.

After losing two jobs and failing at school, Buffy heads to a dark place to get hammered. This happens to be Spike's crypt. She mentions that Giles is researching the demons and time disturbances and Spike tells her the best way to get information is to go to his demon sources. He offers to go beat some heads and they go to the bar. Buffy grabs a nearly full bottle of alcohol and goes into the back room with Spike where some demons are playing kitten poker. Buffy gets mad at Spike for not beating them up and storms out of the bar. She notices a black van outside and remembers the one that she saw earlier at the construction site.

Scared that Buffy is going to discover them, the trio get Jonathan to use his magic bone. A red demon with wings appears distracting Buffy from the van. She hits it once and it vanishes into a cloud of smoke. She figures that she beat it and goes home. The demon runs back to the van where it changes back to Jonathan. He tells them that he may look impressive but he only had his regular puny strength. They comfort him with the free cable porn that they found.

Back home, Buffy comes out of the bathroom begining to recover from her drunken state. She tells Giles how she is screwing everything in her life up. He offers her a check that will cover all their expenses. She takes the money and tells him that she's glad that he's here to take care of her problems for her. He smiles as she goes to show Dawn but it fades once Buffy leaves the room.