No Place Like Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"No Place Like Home" is episode 5 of season 5 of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode aired on October 24, 2000, on The WB.

Two months in the past, a group of Monks are attack at a monastery by an unknown creature. They say that they must protect "the key". In the present, Buffy kills a vampire and meets a Nightwatchman who picks up a glowing orb and hands it to Buffy believing it is hers.

Buffy makes breakfast for her mom, who is still getting headaches and seeing doctors to figure out what's wrong. Buffy is concerned for her, but Joyce just says she is fine. Buffy and Dawn then go to see Giles on the opening day of the magic shop.

Buffy goes to pick up Joyce's prescription from the hospital and runs into Ben and the Nightwatchman, who is now delusional. He tells Buffy 'they' will come for her family. This convinces Buffy that something supernatural is making her mom sick.

Glory breaks down a door and captures a Monk in Sunnydale. She tortures him hoping to get information about the key and she sucks out the energy of a security guard through his head.

Buffy decides to perform a spell called Tirer la Couverture to see other spells and find out what is effecting her mom, but she sees no spells around Joyce. However, Dawn's image begins to flash in family pictures, and Buffy goes to Dawn's room and sees Dawn herself disappearing and flashing. Buffy is shocked and believes that Dawn is not her sister and is what is hurting her mom. Buffy shoves Dawn into a wall and tells her to "stay away from my mother."

Buffy then goes to abandoned building to investigate the orb, now identified as the Dagon Orb, which wards off evil. There she runs into Glory and they fight. Buffy see the Monk and saves him by jumping out a window. Glory in her irritation stomps and accidentally brings the building down on top of her, allowing Buffy and the Monk to escape.

The dying Monk explains that key is not the orb, but Dawn. He says the Monks created Dawn and all memories of her. Dawn doesn't know she is a key. He says she must be protected or the world will be destroyed.

Vox, ranked the episode it at #83 of all 144 episodes on their "Worst to Best" list, saying the episode highlights the fifth season's "central theme[s] of families both blood and chosen" as in this episode Buffy learns that her sister Dawn is a magical key.^[1]

The show got a Neilson rating of 4.1/6, which translates to over 4.1 million viewers when it first aired on October 24, 2000.^[2]

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• "No Place Like Home" at IMDb