James:
Every now and then Buffy gets a great guest star. Susan Ruttan as the hapless social worker is a fine example. It's a fairly skimpy part, but one amply filled out by the Ruttan lady, making Dolores a smug, preening, and irritatingly correct person who hogs every scene she's in.

It's very season six to see Buffy reduced to a gibbering wreck by a smirking lady with a floral print flock and a clipboard.

It's equally interesting to see that Buffy takes her revenge on Dolores by driving her mad. It's a weird situation - we know that Dolores is right, and Buffy really is struggling as Dawn's guardian. But we also know that Dolores is being so unfair, which makes Buffy's childish revenge on her as satisfying as it is unsettling.

Dolores somehow deserves what's coming to her - check the way her working colleagues grudgingly acknowledge her outbursts. She has a giant desk in the middle of the room, and all her colleagues are crammed into the corners, where they sit, hunched up and shooting her the occasional venomous glance. Oh, and she has a pastel cow mug.

Jelena:
This week's action starts with Buffy going through the house throwing out all of Willow's magic stuff to aid in her "recovery." (remember magic = drugs = bad). Buffy finds Spike's lighter, remembers their evening together and pronounces it "bad." Spike turns up, they bicker and flirt and say horrible things to each other. (Remember, Spike = sex = bad).

However just before the entire episode turns into a heavy-handed assault on the idea of going cold turkey, we cut to the geeks. The comedy relief finally arrives as the guys are making an invisibility ray to get into a women-only bikini wax... wow, the minds of greatness.

Invisibity Ray + geeks = accident waiting to happen. The geeks manage to make Buffy invisible and for the rest of the episode we have invisiBuffy taking this whole thing really lightly allowing for some fun and hijinks. Fun until Buffy's life is under threat, that is, and we end on another heavily signposted message. Buffy tells Willow she's glad to be alive. Hooray for Buffy, that's lovely, but somehow I can't really seem to care. In fact, I wonderd when I was going to start caring about anyone other than Spike.

Andy:
Gone would appear to be a rather simple story, Buffy gets turned invisible, Willow works out how, Buffy gets turned back. And, on one level, it is, though it still manages to have one of the funniest fight scenes of this year. On the other hand, it is also rather deft at showing Buffy�s state of mind at the moment, and what a peculiar state of mind it is.

We get to see just what Buffy would get up to without the burden of being held responsible for her actions. Her revenge against the social worker, although amusing, is vindictive and not the sort of thing we would normally expect of her. And her attitude towards Spike appears to make her much worse than him in dealing with their bizarre relationship.

It is also made clear that Warren is not quite as harmless as the other members of the trio, who are quite shocked by his attitude towards Buffy�s impending dissolution. While they are still less than perfect opponents to the Scooby Gang, it's nice to see them get a little bite at last.

In some ways Gone is the start of this season's better storylines and for that, at least, we should really be grateful.