Previously on Buffy: Buffy used Spike to "feel something," but finally managed to overwhelm even her depressed, oblivious self with the ickiness and so she dumped him. Anya and Xander were going to get married. But they didn't. Not a single viewer was surprised. Anya went back to her old job. Spike tried to force-feed Buffy a sausage, but she wasn't in the mood for pork. Warren shot Tara (I typed "Dawn" there first; must've been wishful thinking). Willow flayed and cried. Spike got a soul. Ash got very confused, not having watched the show for months and months.

Ash: Wait? All this happened last episode? Buffy and Spike were doing it again? How'd they put this much in the premiere?
Ace: No, no. All this happened last season. They're catching us up.
Ash: Damn, how long are these previously things?
Ace: Should be over soon.

Willow recovered with Giles in England. Halfrek told Anya that "something's rising" and she didn't mean the ratings. Principal Wood opened the new Sunnydale High and gave Buffy a job. Buffy found crazy Spike in the basement. Buffy said she'd "get back to" him.

Ace: Or not so soon.
Ash: Can I go read my new issue of Linux Journal now?
Ace: No. Hush.

Thumping electronic music plays and we see a nightclub in "Frankfurt, Germany." Another one of our mysterious running girls is, um, running through a skyway above the nightclub. This girl, referred to hereafter as Pinky, has a punked-out biker look: pink 'n' black hair, leather coat, studded belt, and knee-high black boots. Her look (especially the pink hair) reminded many of our posters of how Jennifer Garner was kitted out in the very first episode of Alias, which in turn seemed to me (and others) to be a nod to Franka Potente in the German movie Run, Lola, Run. I must admit to not knowing much about either source. I missed Run, Lola, Run out of sheer laziness, and Alias because of extreme prejudice against Jennifer Garner, whose duck-lipped, peanut-shaped head has copiously bugged me ever since her first appearance on Felicity. Like last week, two figures in black cloaks with hoods chase this girl. Pinky executes a graceful leap off a balcony and exits the building, climbing down a wall. At the bottom she enters the nightclub, but is quickly pushed back through the doorway into an empty corridor by one of the robed figures. Pinky fights both robed figures, but they prevail and stab her with a curved knife. She appears to be dead, but then intones in a deep voice, as her head turns towards the camera, "From beneath you it devours."