Coffee shop. The Date of Humiliation continues. "And you still hafta like see her every day?" inquires Ashanti. Ah, yes. No dating strategy is more effective than whinging to your new flame about your old one. No wonder Xander always ends up nearly eaten or tortured on a big wheel thing. Maybe it's his own freakin' fault for being such a crap date. Ashanti is glad that Anya and Xander didn't marry each other, if only because things turned out well for her. Xander has a moment of clarity as he realizes, "I should have taken you on a nicer date than this." Ashanti coyly suggests that she has something "fun" in mind. Poor Xander.

At the restaurant, Buffy and Wood scrutinize the menu. "This place is nice," offers Buffy. She quickly adds, "How the hell did you do that?" in a very "how the hell did you do that?" tone. Wood chuckles and says that he's "had a little practice." "So you're freelance," surmises Buffy. Buffy is gazing across the table at Wood with huge awestruck eyes, which I kinda don't get considering that over the years she's seen many, many civilians successfully take on vamps. Buffy's next questions establish that Wood was aware of her status as the Slayer, and their mutual presence at SHS is not in any way random. Wood says with striking conviction that they're "headed for something big, really big and I need to be here when it happens. I wanna help." What does Buffy get out of this moving message? A fear that he "didn't hire [her] for [her] counseling skills." Wood's response, a hearty chuckle, endears me to him forever. "They're…valuable too," he finishes lamely. Buffy wants to know why Wood didn't come clean with all of this information a little earlier. He replies that he wasn't sure if he was ready to "jump into this fight." Hmm. Sounds suspicious. He's so adamant about needing to be in Sunnydale when everything goes down, but he wasn't sure that he was ready to take part in the fight? I'm catching a faint whiff of fish here.

Buffy's not done with the interrogation, though. "How do you know about Slayers?" Well, it's simple. His mother was a Slayer, and his father smelt of elderberries. Buffy is floored because, well, slaying vamps is a tough enough gig already, and adding a tiny, mewling infant that is completely dependent on you to the mix can't improve things. However, at least when the kid won't get to sleep in the middle of the night and is howling his fool head off, you can go out and kill something to work off a bit of stress. Wood doesn't remember much of dear old Mum, though, because she died when he was four. She was killed. By a VAMPIRE! Whoa. Never saw that one coming. Except for the whole expectation I have that most Slayers would die that way. For those who haven't seen the episode, it's very clear at this point that Wood's mother is the Slayer Spike killed on the subway in New York City in the 1970s, but I don't think Buffy makes the connection. If she bothered at all to do the math, I think she would've, but that might take brain power away from her musings on The Importance Of Being Spike. Wood explains that he "went through this whole avenging son phase" a while back, but he never located the vamp who did the deed. I'll be interested to see how they have Wood figure out that Spike is that vamp. I mean, that subway train we saw during "Fool For Love" looked pretty deserted, and it's not likely that details of the murder scene were written up in either The Post or The Watcher's Weekly. Okay. Exposition over. Except for one more little tidbit about Wood not inheriting any Slayer powers. All the secret agenda items having been covered, Buffy and Wood settle in for the date part of their date.