I have to balance the other review here claiming this episode is skippable. On watching Season 7 again I find I'd forgotten just how good it is. This episode is wonderful and ultimately pretty heart-wrenching, not to mention very funny as well.
The experience Dawn goes through is the major point of the episode, and is not to be missed - the stuff with the other potentials is just the background to that - the club that Dawn secretly wants to belong to, as a way to get closer to her sister, or just to belong to her peer group.
Besides, the potential slayers are not all bad, Vi (Felicia Day) in particular is very funny in this episode during the Spike training scene and in the demon bar.
This episode also contains one of Anya's funniest lines ever, when Dawn realizes that Buffy would have to die before a new slayer is chosen: "Yes, it's a lot like being the Pope, in that way. Except you don't have to be some old Catholic!" And the Xander/Andrew interaction is all-time-great. "I'll PAY you to talk about Star Wars!"
If anything, the only weakness is that Buffy's "speechifying" (which will become a running joke in later episodes) is already getting quite tiresome at this point. But even this turns out to have a season-arc significance - Buffy is having to become unpopular, separate from the group, because she's got to step up to being the leader in a much more obvious way than previously.
Also, the moment where Willow glares at Andrew as he messes around with the snakeskin - the whole point of that is that he shouldn't be doing it, not to mention talking about people shedding their skin, in front of Willow! Just pointing this out because I've noticed many times how people imply that the writers of TV shows are making a mistake, when clearly it's the *fictional character* that is making the mistake.
And one more thing - about Spike's chip and whether it can still hurt Spike, this is actually covered in the very next episode.
The experience Dawn goes through is the major point of the episode, and is not to be missed - the stuff with the other potentials is just the background to that - the club that Dawn secretly wants to belong to, as a way to get closer to her sister, or just to belong to her peer group.
Besides, the potential slayers are not all bad, Vi (Felicia Day) in particular is very funny in this episode during the Spike training scene and in the demon bar.
This episode also contains one of Anya's funniest lines ever, when Dawn realizes that Buffy would have to die before a new slayer is chosen: "Yes, it's a lot like being the Pope, in that way. Except you don't have to be some old Catholic!" And the Xander/Andrew interaction is all-time-great. "I'll PAY you to talk about Star Wars!"
If anything, the only weakness is that Buffy's "speechifying" (which will become a running joke in later episodes) is already getting quite tiresome at this point. But even this turns out to have a season-arc significance - Buffy is having to become unpopular, separate from the group, because she's got to step up to being the leader in a much more obvious way than previously.
Also, the moment where Willow glares at Andrew as he messes around with the snakeskin - the whole point of that is that he shouldn't be doing it, not to mention talking about people shedding their skin, in front of Willow! Just pointing this out because I've noticed many times how people imply that the writers of TV shows are making a mistake, when clearly it's the *fictional character* that is making the mistake.
And one more thing - about Spike's chip and whether it can still hurt Spike, this is actually covered in the very next episode.