not to incriminate Buffy in any way, and each tries to justify their usefulness to her without making it sound like she actually needs help. In the training room, Buffy is blindfolded and her fighting skills are tested against one of the council members. She breaks a rib of her opponent and Quentin abandons that test. Upon returning home, Buffy finds Glory in her living room. During this confrontation, Glory openly threatens to kill all of Buffy's friends and family and force Buffy to watch her do so. Visibly disturbed by this, Buffy takes Dawn and Joyce to Spike for protection. Although Spike initially protests the sudden increase of "manly responsibilities", he agrees to look after them; after a moment's awkwardness, Joyce and Spike discover their shared addiction to Passions and sit down to watch it together. On her way to the shop to meet with the council for a comprehensive review of her plans and strategies, three well-armed men wearing medieval fighting gear attack Buffy. Buffy takes them out and discovers from the last conscious one that they are the Knights of Byzantium and are in town to destroy the Key. They consider her their enemy because she protects the Key. Buffy returns to the shop and informs Travers that she is not going to deal with the review anymore. She now knows that she holds power against both Glory and the Council because they both need something from her: Glory needs to know where the Key is, and the Council needs her to make their jobs meaningful. She delivers an authoritative speech justifying the participation of each of her friends, and demands that Giles be reinstated as her Watcher, receiving retroactive pay from the month of his dismissal. She finally instructs the Council to give her the information that she needs. Quentin reluctantly agrees to her terms. He then informs Buffy that Glory is not a demon – she is a god. Reception Noel Murray of The A.V. Club wrote that Checkpoint was a "highly entertaining episode" with "narrative and thematic significance," adding, "The real fight that Buffy has been staging for five years now may not be between good and evil, but between hidebound traditionalism and ingenious innovation, and between elitism and democratization... What better symbol for the degraded state of The Old Ways than a mad god in stylish clothes, sucking the brains of postmen and