Helpless

Buffy find hers in a weakened position. Suddenly her power has been drained. She is nearly killed, saved only by the clumsiness of her assailant. It turns out that she is eighteen and must go through a rite of passage. She must face off against a vampire's vampire as a girl with no special gifts. She must use her guile and intelligence rather than brute strength. Why this is necessary is barely explained. Gile becomes a villain to her for a while and must redeem himself for his participation in the ruse. This is well crafted. I think the worst part of this is not the monster, but the men she encounters like the guy she tries to pull away who is assaulting Cordelia.

Just because Buffy is a vampire slayer does not mean she has no other threats to deal with. There are different hellish creatures to stop from terrorizing the human population of Sunnydale. But this is already season three, and it is now past the equator, so "Helpless" comes up with something special. No, it does not introduce a new demon or a new monster, and it does not set up another apocalyptic event. It is about vampires again, only there is something very refreshing at work.

Being the slayer means secretly having extraordinary physical abilities. Buffy has them, but something is wrong this time. This time she doesn't have them for some reason. That reason will be clarified. It is one thing to be a regular human being under the attack of a demonic creature. It is bad enough. At least, it comes out of the blue and, hopefully, might end quickly enough. Buffy, on the other hand, is now in a situation where she has to go and fight a creature way stronger than any human without the special strength she usually needs and uses because she has been somehow drained of that strength. So, she knows what is in store for her, she knows what danger is waiting for her. To make things worse, someone close to her is being used as hostage and bait. It isn't just her own life Buffy is concerned with here.

What is a superhero without their superpower? Only the person they are. Buffy may be just a fragile human girl right now, but she is a caring person, and she is resourceful. These characteristics are hers. And what she goes through in this episode can make one like her and worry about here even more. That's what heroes do. They keep going no matter what. That is why their stories are so impactful and inspirational.

Buffy finds that she is losing her powers - she no longer has the strength to defeat the vampires. She talks to Angel, wondering if he will still love her if she reverts to shallow pre-slayer Buffy, He admits that he saw her before she was called to be a slayer and admits he loved her when he saw her. Later it is revealed that Giles is putting Buffy in a trance and injecting her with natural compounds meant to reduce her strength to that of a normal girl. It's all part of a test that the watcher's council gives all slayers on their 18th birthday to see if they can defeat a vampire using only their cunning. Complications ensue.

This whole test is a way to control the slayer; by putting her in an impossible situation (helpless and locked in with a rabid vampire) so that they are basically condemning her to death. This way another girl who is still under 18 and impressionable will be chosen to become the new slayer- and the council will be able to control her more easily. The council guy saying to Giles that this is the way things have been done for centuries is sickening, because it highlights how many girls will have been killed needlessly so that the council feels more in control of the slayer's powers. All of this is my conjecture, but I feel it is reasonable conjecture.

Just one more thing - the insane vampire Zachary explains his plan is to sire Buffy and when I first watched the episode I wondered why vampires never seem to want to do that. Then it occurred to me how insanely stupid of an idea it was and there's a reason vampires want to kill slayers not sire them.

He'd have created a vampire with double the strength and durability of him. What did he think - Buffy would be his partner in crime as a vampire? She'd kill him first chance she got and then presumably go to sire Giles.