Episode 8: Groundhog Fae
This one starts with a “Cool Hand Luke” homage; Bo’s washing her car at a gas station (sexily, of course) and Lauren gets a little worked up. Dyson wanders by and is also mesmerized, but Hale comes out of the gas station eating some candy and snaps them out of it. Personally, I find it weird that she’s washing a convertible with the top down, but
whatever. They’ve all been trying to track down the Hell Shoes (from last episode), but haven’t succeeded yet … six failures so far. The gas station proprietor and his helper tell Bo to leave the money on the counter. She’s preceded by another customer who takes a candy from a dish on the counter; Bo takes one too. Outside, Dyson and Hale are talking about the upcoming Yule celebration and how Krampus used to show up at people’s houses and beat them. Krampus is a goblin-type dude, kind of the anti-Santa. They leave the gas station and we see the proprietor and his dwarfish assistant feeding the other customer to a car. Hmmm, Krampus himself, maybe?
At home, Kenzi is decorating the Yule tree as Trick tells her how much better Yule is than the bastardized human version, Christmas. It might’ve meant more if he wasn’t wearing 
a Rudolph sweater (Trick: “It’s not Rudolph, it’s Eikthyrnir the stag.”; Kenzi: “He has a red nose … it’s Rudolph.”) Dyson and Lauren come in, followed by Hale, who smooches it up with Kenzi, giving everyone a show. They all vow that they’ll try to make Bo forget her troubles with a kick-ass Yule party. Most importantly, they’ll show Bo that they haven’t forgotten how much she means to them. Immediately belying that, Bo wakes up alone in the car outside (with “Don’t Forget About Me” playing on the radio), wondering why everybody just left her there. She goes inside to find the party in full swing and is harangued by a dude named Choga, who seems to be some kind of Fae that people lick to get high, like those toads on the Simpsons. He also has the annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person; naturally, he came with Vex. Bruce the troll is also there and gets Choga to leave Bo alone.
We see Dyson and Lauren in the bedroom looking inside an old box. Lauren says she found it in the Dark archives, addressed to Bo (in Bo’s own handwriting), so of course she
opened it. Lauren wants to give whatever’s in the box to Bo, but Dyson doesn’t. Bo walks in and they both sit on the box. She asks why they left her in the car, but gets interrupted by Vex, who’s hammered and goes on about losing his hand. He’s wearing Bo’s corset (Vex: “You can’t own possessions!”) and Bo takes off to look for Kenzi, while the others drink some more. Kenzi is a little busy (if you know what I mean) with Hale in her room. Bo is pissed off that the door is locked and goes down to the party and starts venting to the guy from the gas station … yeah, he’s there. He says Yule is the perfect time to confront your fears, then puts on some Groucho glasses and walks away 
laughing. Now I’m sure this is Krampus and I assume the fear Bo has to confront is being abandoned by those around her. Tamsin shows up, seemingly back to normal, and gives Bo a big smooch. Bo asks what it was for, but Tamsin says it doesn’t matter because in two seconds Bo won’t remember any of it anyway. Someone throws a beach ball, breaking a pile of glasses and everything resets; Bo wakes up in the car with “Don’t Forget About Me” on the radio again. I guess that explains the episode title … Bo’s going to keep repeating the same events over and over.
Bo realizes she’s stuck in a repeating time loop right away, but nobody else does. She meets Choga again and Bruce, but neither of them figure out the truth. We see Krampus’s dwarf assistant blending into the wallpaper, then Tamsin grabs Bo and says she knows they’re in a time loop too. Tamsin says she’s been through the loop a bunch of times and
points out what’ll happen around them (a dude calls the girl he’s kissing by the wrong name, a sasquatch woman is fuel-injecting booze and belches like a volcano, and Bo gets hit in the head with the beach ball). Bo’s not eager to go upstairs this time, since she’s still mad at the others for leaving her in the car and Kenzi is too busy with Hale to pay attention to her; Tamsin says the people upstairs are kind of outside the loop anyway. Tamsin also says the only break in the routine was when they kissed before, so maybe that was what changed things. They kiss again, which doesn’t change anything—although Tamsin obviously enjoys it—and the glasses get broken again, restarting the time loop.
This time around, Bruce has disappeared, so Bo decks Choga. She and Tamsin decide to stop worrying and have fun, so Bo arm-wrestles the sasquatch, Tamsin drinks like a fish, 
and they make out in front of everyone. Upstairs, an increasingly hammered Dyson and Lauren are still arguing over whether to tell Bo about the box Lauren found, although they seem to have switched positions; Lauren doesn’t want to tell her now, and Dyson does. Vex says he’ll make the decision after they each make their case to him, and they’re just drunk enough to go along with it. Downstairs, the loop starts again and Bo and Tamsin just sit and talk this time. Tamsin says she left because she needed to spend some time around other Valkyries. Bo sees Krampus’s dwarf pulling one of the guests into the wallpaper and points it out to Tamsin, who’s equally freaked by it.
The loop repeats and Bo and Tamsin try to figure out what the hell’s going on. Bo mentions Bruce disappearing and asks if Tamsin has done anything lately to piss off any wizards. Tamsin says she came straight to the party, only stopping at a gas station for a pack of gum. That’s obviously a clue, but Bo doesn’t pick up on it. They decide to find
Trick, since he knows all about magical bullshit. Upstairs, Dyson and Lauren are presenting their arguments to Vex on why they should be allowed to decide the fate of the box. Dyson says if he hadn’t powered Bo up back in Episode 1, she wouldn’t have survived her initiation. Lauren says she’s the one who taught Bo to curb her hunger and that she wasn’t a monster. (Lauren: “Before she met me, she didn’t know her hole from an ass in the ground.”) They stop arguing and admit that they both feel guilty about letting Bo down so many times. Lauren says she’ll reattach Vex’s severed hand right then and there and Dyson volunteers to be the nurse. Drunken surgery sounds like a really bad idea, but Vex seems to be cool with it.
Bo and Tamsin find Trick passed out in the bathtub and try to tell him what’s going on. 
He’s a bit too wasted to grasp the concept (we see he’s been drinking the Morrigan’s Dark Belch beer, which has 25% alcohol). And before they can explain it, the loop starts again. Bo wonders how Kenzi is doing and we see that she and Hale are stuck in the loop too. Hale’s game seems to get progressively worse until he steals from a book of poetry. Kenzi’s ready to go all the way and whips out a string of rubbers. Hale seems to know they’re in the time loop, since he feels the next reset coming on and says “Kenzi and Hale, take 67.”
We see Bo waking Trick up (for the ninth time), but he’s still too wasted to help. Bo gives him shit for lying to her about the Wanderer and he says he only lied because he was
scared shitless. On the next loop, Bo decides to ask Hale about what’s going on. Tamsin thinks it’s a waste of time, but they soon realize Hale has been looping just like them. He says every year Krampus chooses a few “Yule fools” to repeat the night. When they mention people getting sucked into the wallpaper, Hale says that’s not part of the tradition; Krampus chooses people who are full of regret, so they’ll end up doing something stupid during the repeats.
Downstairs, Krampus’s dwarf is bitching about the decorations to Kenzi. Bo and Tamsin 
confront him and he says they’ll be sorry for disrespecting Yule. He fades into the wallpaper and tries to grab Bo, but Tamsin blocks him and gets sucked inside, which causes the party to break up really quick. Hale witnesses it all and says “Sweet Christmas”, just like Luke Cage used to do. Hale says Krampus is supposed to be harmless and Bo wonders why Hale would put himself through all this crap. She realizes he wanted to bang Kenzi endlessly and says that’s just skeezy, but he insists he was going to tell Kenzi afterward. Unfortunately for him, Kenzi overhears and isn’t happy, but Bo says it doesn’t matter since she’ll forget right away. But the last two party guests break
the glasses one last time and leave. Bo realizes the time loop has stopped and Hale says Krampus must’ve found someone with enough regret to satisfy him. Since Tamsin was the last one taken, I assume that means her. Bo and Hale figure out the gas station was where Krampus affected all of them, so Bo heads back there. Hale gives her a bone-handled knife, saying Krampus isn’t exactly harmless.
Upstairs, Dyson and Lauren are still arguing about the box when Vex points out that even though they both love Bo, they no longer hate each other. They agree and toast each 
other, then prepare for the drunken surgery. At the gas station, Bo finds the candy dish empty and a trail of candies leading into the garage. There’s a hellish red glow coming from under the hood of a car and Bo steels herself to go inside. At home, since there was no reset this time, Kenzi remembers Hale trying to bang her a hundred times and she’s not flattered by it. Hale admits they never actually banged and says he was just trying to get everything perfect. Kenzi points out that a Fae/human pairing is never going to be perfect and gives him one more chance. Sounds like they might actually get it on this time.
At the gas station, Bo goes under the hood of the car and falls into a weird factory. One of the party guests is put through a chopping machine and we see Krampus candies coming out the other end. Bo finds Tamsin on the conveyor belt and Tamsin is strangely happy
to be turned into candy. Bruce the troll wanders by, saying he broke the machine and has to wait to be candy. Bo tells Tamsin she’s a good person no matter what she’s done and jams the conveyor with the knife Hale gave her. She breaks Tamsin free but Krampus’s dwarf shows up and tells them Tamsin belongs to him by the ancient laws of Yule and basically dares Bo to try and take her. Bo does try, but Tamsin is rooted to the floor. Tamsin says she wants to stay and be turned into candy so she can’t hurt anyone else. Bo says she likes Tamsin, but Tamsin confesses that she’s the reason the Wanderer found Bo.
Tamsin says she used to be the best Fae bounty hunter around and the Wanderer offered 
her a shitload of money to find Bo. She could tell just by looking at him that he was pure evil, but she was greedy and figured his quarry probably didn’t exist anyway. He described Bo as someone with eyes both brown and blue, virtuous yet lustful, neither Light nor Dark, yet both. Bo forgives Tamsin for leading the Wanderer to her, but Krampus’s dwarf comes back and says they can’t leave since they ate some of the candy. Then Krampus himself shows up and it’s the old dude from the gas station, which should surprise no one at this point.
Krampus zaps Tamsin, Bruce, and the dwarf (who turns out to be Krampus’s son) away and tells Bo he’s going to make her into candy, since the Darkness in her will serve the
recipe well. He zaps her onto the conveyor and says she’ll be happier this way; no more regrets or guilt about what she’s done … or might do. Krampus says Bo can’t be pure unless she confronts her fears, so she admits that she’s scared shitless of what she might become, or what she might do, especially once the Wanderer gets a hold of her. Krampus zaps her outside the car, where Tamsin is waiting. Bo tells Tamsin she’s scared and Tamsin says she’s got Bo’s back and it’s time to go home.
Bo is woken in the car by Tamsin and wonders if things are repeating again, but Tamsin assures her that everything’s back to normal. Bo wonders if the Wanderer could be her father and Tamsin says he’s evil enough to create a perfect mate for himself, which is 
pretty fucked up when you think about it. Kenzi comes out and says she and Hale banged like crazy. Tamsin leaves, since Dark Fae aren’t allowed into Light Fae parties after midnight, which I guess means Bo can’t go in either since she’s technically Dark now. Kenzi offers to stay outside with her, but Bo tells her to head back inside. Kenzi neatly solves the dilemma of the mysterious box; she found it on Bo’s bed next to a passed out Dyson, and since Lauren left to sober up and do Vex’s hand surgery properly, Kenzi took the box and now gives it to Bo. Bo opens it and finds … a flask full of weird, dark, swirly mist. I guess we’ll see what that’s all about next episode.