When Buffy returns home to Sunnydale after a spending the summer away, Xander and Willow become concerned with her disturbingly cold and distant behavior.
Meanwhile, Cordelia and Sunnydale High teacher Ms. Calendar are kidnapped and Buffy is convinced that the fight to protect them and the world from the undead is hers alone.
[1] At school, Giles explains to Buffy, Xander and Willow that although they have closed the Hellmouth, the mystical energy still attracts evil forces to the town.
Cordelia runs into the gang, remembering her previous encounters with the supernatural, and promises not to tell anyone Buffy is the slayer.
Meanwhile, the Anointed One and his acolyte Absalom are forcing their vampires to dig up the Master's bones barehanded through consecrated earth.
Buffy returns to the library, where she finds a bloodied Xander, who is upset with her for abandoning her friends and threatens to kill her if anything happens to Willow.
In a rage, Buffy smashes the Master's bones to bits with a sledgehammer to prevent his resurrection, before tearfully collapsing into Angel's arms as he comforts her.
While he praised the opening and closing scenes as well as other smaller moments, he felt that it dealt with the characters' emotions "erratically" and was not positive towards Buffy's attitude and carrying over the Master plotline.
[4] A review from the BBC called "When She Was Bad" "another excellent episode", praising its tying up plot threads from the first season and developing the relationships between characters.
There’s a catharsis at the close when she destroys the Master’s bones which feels earned, but the road to that moment is littered with bumps.