Anya comes to; screaming in pain, she pulls the sword out of her chest. She pants and tells Buffy that she should know better -- "it takes a lot more to kill a vengeance demon." Buffy says, "I'm just getting started." I think she did forget that she couldn't kill Anya with a sword, or else she just figures this will be a gradual hack job. Poor Buffy. She's such a strange mixture of cold and goofy this season, and I didn't much care for her demeanor in the living room scene with Willow and Xander, but still, being obliged to hack apart someone I know as part of my higher calling is just impossible for me to get my mind around. We have a replay of the earlier fight scene, except that this time Anya has the sword and Buffy only Slayer quickness as her defense. She knocks Anya down, grabs the weapon, and prepares to deliver another impaling, but is tackled and knocked down by Xander. Everyone scrambles to their feet, and Anya yells, "Stop trying to save me, Xander!" Ooops -- they shouldn't have bothered getting up, because D'Hoffryn chooses this moment to teleport into the room, accompanied by lightning that knocks everyone back down again. D'Hoffryn tells them to continue and then, as Buffy, Xander, and Anya stare at him from the floor, he wanders over to look into the room full of corpses. "Oh, breathtaking," he celebrates. "It's like somebody slaughtered an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog." Ha! Oh, I mean, "how cruel." Well, no, actually, I mean that that's the kind of irreverent and dark humor this show has been missing for years. Don't tell me Cruella D'Willow was dark. She wasn't dark -- she was dorky and humorless. Dark is making jokes at dead frat boys' expense. Dark is the cheery, fatherly Mayor knowing factually that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Dark is the malicious joy in mayhem enjoyed by some of the villains in past seasons, and the way the viewer could too easily be sucked in to feel that dark joy.