Buffy and Joyce are eating chez Summers. Buffy thanks her mom for dinner and rises to go on patrol. Her mom is curious why she has to go out early, and Buffy explains that, for vamps, "dark equals dinner bell." Joyce muses that the house will be "so quiet" without Buffy after she goes back to school. Actually, if she's allowing Buffy and Riley to stay there together and they're continuing their, umm, "frequency" of last season, you'd think Joyce would be desperate for a little quiet. Buffy wants to make dinner together a regular thing and Joyce nods. Buffy leaves, saying patrolling is "a total drag."

Buffy, in snappy red leather pants, is kicking a random vampire's ass, and it doesn't look a bit like it's a "total drag." As she and the vampire fight, we see a cheesy special-effects mist coalesce, and then a close-up of a pale guy with closely set eyes. Buffy stakes the vamp and rises, looking satisfied. As she stalks off through the cemetery, a voice behind her says, "Very impressive hunt." Buffy turns and explains to the man, a long-haired guy in a cape wearing about a kilo of white pancake make-up, that for her, it's "just another day on the job." She waggles her fingers at the vamp, challenging him, but he self-importantly intones, "We are not going to fight." The guy has some sort of on-again, off-again accent, but mostly I'm distracted by the too-obvious hollows the make-up department has created on his face by smearing charcoal powder from under his cheekbones down to his jaw line. The hell? Buffy asks who he is, and he replies, "I assumed you knew. I ahm Drahcuuula." Buffy looks surprised and replies, "Get out!" That made me giggle.