Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Gingerbread

The Good;
Host of good stuff, the hysteria, the fiery climax, the mislead with Willow, Amy! The Buffy/Joyce scenes are superb, great to meet Will's mum. Love the Mayor's very careful tiptoeing around MOO and Principle Snyder is a joy to behold

The Bad;
A tv cliche but surely the police would take longer than 5 minutes to get a statement from Joyce and Buffy and wouldn't leave them hanging around the crime scene. Also the demon at the end with the stake through it's throat is very obviously a perspective gag.

Best line;
Joyce; "Oh my god it's mister Sanderson from the bank!" just pipping Willow's; "You do doodle"

Shot; no but Giles is intimidated by a security guard with a gun

Tied up; Willow, Amy and Buffy

Knocked out; Buffy and Giles by Joyce using chloroform. Cordy asks how many times Giles has been knocked out, I figure it must be a dozen or more. Love her line about 'waking up in a coma' although it's rather ironic given the events of 'You're Welcome'.

Women good/men bad; in this case it's the women who lead the crusade/lynch-mob

Kinky dinky; Giles and Joyce are at least talking to one another now but still awkward. Willow implores the dark forces to 'fill her with their black naughtiness' which one day they will. Xander has Playboys in his locker which is suprisingly classy porn considering what we know about him. As I recall it was actually the story of the little Dutch boy with his fist in the dyke but that's probably too kinky even for Joss. Giles logs into the 'Frisky watchers chatroom' which I'm sure someone launched at some time

Calling Captain Subtext;
The not so subtle implication is a rant against those who wish to censor Buffy or criticize it for it's occult features. But really it's against bigotry and mob rule anywhere. Ironically I remember this ep being censored on the BBC at the point where Buffy stakes the demon at the end.
. Buffy seems unaware that 'dyke' is another word for dam which makes her expression when Angel refers to having "a finger in the dyke" all the more hilarious.

Guantanamo Bay;
SDH has it's civil liberties suspended, Snyder glorying in his power

Questions and observations;
This ep marks the beginning of Cordy's eventual reintegration into the Scooby gang as she helps Giles save Buff&co and Oz and Xander reconcile. The first appearance of rat Amy. Someone should tell Michael that the New Romantic era is over. When Joyce and Buffy have their talk at SDH they're standing under a poster saying 'Blood required again'. You rather wonder that no one has thought to form a vigiliante group to counter the Hellmouth evil before? Joyce refers to 'neck rupture', presumably the authorities term for vampire killings. Snyder misquotes Apocalypse Now which he will appear in a parody of at the end of season 4. Once again Buffy's status as the Slayer seems common knowledge to judge by the boys reaction to her at the school. Willow claims that she's sacrificed the local goats, one day she will sacrifice Bambi.
So lovely that Joyce comes along to Buffy's Slaying patrol. You have to agree with Snyder that it's rather weird for Giles to have such a wide selection of books dedicated to the supernatural in the library. It's a great turnaround that Joyce the parent relies on Buffy the child to console her from the evils she's seen. She has a point that Sunnydale isn't getting any better, they're not running out of vampires. But as 'The Wish' and 'Dopplegangland' prove Buffy&co make a huge difference.
One wonders what Dawn makes of all this? Love Giles struggling with the computer, can't he call the Council for help?
Angel and Buffy's talk is interesting especially in light of his crisis of faith in season 2 of his own show. No Faith which is a shame, love to see where she would stand in all of this. Xander and Oz in the air ducts speaks of every cliche in every action film ever. A hint of Amy's true colours as Buffy observes "She couldn't do us first". Lovely fanfic called 'The Mayoress' based on this one where The Mayor falls in love with Joyce and gives up evil to marry her and become Buffy, Faith and Dawn's stepfather.
8/10 again, very good but not truly great

Despite being an overall great show Buffy has had some really bad episodes over the years. Sometimes they're uninspired, sometimes they're overly melodramatic, and sometimes they're just all-around bad.



This is definitely the latter. This episode was so terrible that it actually turned me off Buffy for almost a decade. It was the first episode I watched when it first aired and due to the overall horrible nature of this show alone I dismissed Buffy entirely until 2006 when, in the wake of how great Joss' Firefly was, I finally decided to re-evaluate the show and found that it was actually really great.



Essentially the biggest problem is that it's built around a message more than it is around a plot. In trying to push that forward it's incredibly heavy-handed and rarely interesting. It also suffers rather strongly from the affliction of introducing new characters without any explanation and pretending that they've been there all along (Amy and the other, male, witch). For Willow's mother it serves the plot and makes sense (she's an inattentive mother... even if that seems a tad out-of-character given Willow's nature), but in the case of Amy she just happens to be sitting there at lunch without any prior mention.



Things proceed in a linear and predictable manner until a quick, pointless ending is reached more to end the show than to reach any sort of real conclusion.



Many episodes of Buffy fail because they try too hard to function as an analogy for some sort of mythic ideal of what it's like to be a teenager. When they push to serve their narrow-minded ends in delivering a message the story and characters suffer.



Since nothing plot-centric happens in this episode it is very, very missable and I strongly advise everyone to skip it. Who knows, maybe if I hadn't seen it all those years ago I'd have been enjoying Buffy for a lot longer.

Gingerbread was a great episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer because it blends Folk and Fairy Tales into the stories so well. Buffy was out patroling when her mom shows up with a snack for her, but she just might be the snack for vampires! Joyce finds two dead children in the park, and they start influencing her which eventually leads to a witch hunt. The town goes crazy, and they try to burn Amy, Buffy and Willow at the stakes. Amy turns into a rat and gets away, but Buffy and Willow are rescued by the rest of the Gang and Giles unmasks the true form of the creature responsible.

After Joyce decides to bond with Buffy during her patrol, she discovers two dead children with witch symbols on their arms. She then forms a vigil and a group of protesters that plan to burn all the witches at the stake. However, is it their option, or are they being possessed?



I liked this episode. It was a little twisted with the dead kids, but I liked it nonetheless. It was very entertaining and I remember the scene where Buffy and Willow are about to be burned. I didn't remember that it was in this episode or what happened though. I liked it though. Hehe, poor Amy is a witch. Cool episode.

There are some good parts of this episode and some other mediocre parts. I like how the parents are given something to do in this episode and it kind of explains away why they are never really around or concerned with the actions of their children or the mysterious deaths that occur in town. The whole Salem witch trial thing is played out pretty well and I love the whole Amy as a rat storyline that continues throughout the show, even though she has a way of appearing and disappearing at convenience. I also like to see Oz and Xander working together again after the whole Willow and Xander thing that I am so happy has ended. I like how they storm in at the end to save the day even though it's a little too late. Overall a good episode.

Gingerbread-Picking the wrong night for mother-daughter bonding, Joyce discovers the bodies of two children in the park, apparently sacrificed in an occult ritual. Deeply disturbed by what she has seen, Joyce rallies the adults of Sunnydale, convincing them to rid the town of all magical and occult influences. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that Buffy, Willow, and Amy are themselves considered a part of the occult threat to Sunnydale.



"Gingerbread" is one of those bizarre episode of Buffy, despite a weak plot, has some of the finest dialoge ever delievered in any series. There are one-liners and clever mix-mashing of words you can't help but repeat them. Lines that stick out in my mind are:



Principal Snyder: "You'll have to answer to M.O.O."



Buffy: "M.O.O.? Did that sentence just make the kinda sense I'm not in on?"



it's also hilarious when Buffy makes a comment about Oz being a guy of a few word and Xander repsonds by saying he is saying more with not saying much this time and that "it's more of a verbal non-verbal."



Then there's Willow's mini-tongue twister:



Willow: "It's a doodle, I do doodle, you too, you do doodle, too."



Then there's Buffy making fun of her mom about her terrible acronym. Also, Cordelia smacking an unconscious Giles and blurting out "You know one of these days your gonna wake up in a coma." To which Giles repeats what she just said in an ironic tone. There are just too many hilarious scenes to name, so whats so bad about it? Well, it's because of Hansul and Gretel, that's who!



Jane Espenson spent so much time creating such a fine script that the dialogue overshadows the plot, which was sub-par even to begin with. While it's true that most fairytales are originally much darker in folklore, the series' first time around with that concept is lackluster and will find better success a year later (Hush, anyone!). The Hansel and Gretal/demon plot just isn't executed well. It's starts out as a tragedic story with the 2 kids dieing then when they turn out to be evil and using mind control to get the adults of Sunnydale to kill witches, etc. it just doesn't cut it.



Again, there are some great moments like Amy turning her self into a rat, finally getting to meet Willow's mom, Giles almost blowing he and Joyce's secret, and Buffy impaling the demon with large wooden pole and hilariously delievering the line, "Did I get it?" All and All, "Gingerbread" is an uneven episode with a boring plot yet it's outrageously funny scenes and dialogue make it very entertaining.

Throughout its seven seasons on air, Buffy was regularly used as a huge example of immoral television by the conservative Christian group Parents Television Council for its apparent promotion of homosexuality, witchcraft and violence. Being such a socially aware show, it was unsurprising Buffy would eventually tackle these attacks in an episode, with Gingerbread playing as a parody for misguided people who blame entertainment as the source of all evil. Unfortunately, the episode isn't a complete success.



The group of Mothers Opposed to the Occult (MOO) were both the best and worst parts of the story. Mostly played for laughs, MOO should have been a terrifying force to be reckoned with, but end up little more than "stupid humans", who are generally seen as morons. I also thought the inclusion of Joyce in MOO shouldn't have happened, since it completely gives away that the women are under a demon's control. We know Joyce could never turn into a crazy witch-burning nutjob over night, so it was pretty clear other forces were at work.



Although, I liked the inclusion of Hansel and Gretel in the storyline, and the revelation that all fairytales have some basis in fact. Most fairytales are pretty depressing and violent, so it makes sense that in the Buffyverse they were all originally inspired by some twisted event in history. Plus, the demon behind the whole thing had an awesome death scene, made hilarious with Sarah Michelle Gellar's panicked delivery of "did I get it!!??"



The episode also marks the first appearance of rat-ified Amy, who turns herself into a critter to escape the wrath of MOO. Always one of my favorite supporting characters, it was neat to see her back, especially as such a key player in the story.



Whilst an entertaining and mystery-centric episode, Gingerbread probably would have worked better if it was played more as a horror piece than as a comedy, and maybe if the members of MOO weren't just being manipulated by a demon, but instead just uneducated humans...



Director: James Whitmore Jr

Teleplay: Jane Espenson

Story: Thania St John, Jane Espenson

Rating: C

This episode had the hairs on my arms standing up, it was so creepy when they were about to burn Amy, Willow, and Buffy.



The beginning where Joyce came and joined Buffy on her patrol was freaky. This entire episode was more about the adults being tricked then about vamps so it was interesting. Joyce getting involved in Buffy's slaying activities was very un-nerving. Joyce is really just starting to accept the whole slayer gig in this season and she has had her share of small opinions about it in the past, but here she gets deeply involved and her true feelings are revealed.



I loved the school locker search. Xander was great then. Everyone's locker is getting raided for witchy stuff and Xander was worried about his playboys, it was classic Xander. And Giles looked like he wanted to axe murder Synder when his books were being removed from the library.



I loved the Buffy/Joyce storyline too. You really haven't seen the two of them together a lot and it was great to see them together. And Willow's mom was so scary, Wil should be glad that woman doesn't pay a lot of attention to her.



Great episode and even more interesting with the Fairytale story going for it.

Favorite Quotes:

Willow: You've seen what we can do! Another step and you will all feel my power!

Buffy: (quietly) What are you going to do, float a pencil at them? This wasn't among my favorites in the Buffyverse, but it had its moments. I love how the show ties evil into fairytales, in this ep and later on in season 4 'Hush.'

This is a pivotal episode for Amy, who is going to be a rat for a long time to come, lol. It was truly chilling how quickly the parents turned on their kids. Willows Mother never seemed to want to have anything to do with her until this happened, sad for Willow. Nice tie-in to the Salem Witch trials too.

Brilliant, the mum's of Sunnydale burning their own children at the stake, it's fantastic. Yet again the writers aren't afraid to break the boundaries.



Willow, Buffy and Amy need rescuing so Xander, Oz and Giles take up the challenge. What happened to Angel? Surely he would have been a useful person to have on the rescue mission.



Amy turns herself into a rat to avoid burning, now she is stuck like that. I wonder if she was counting on Willow changing her back any time soon.



Hansel and Gretel cause trouble for the witches, they really are mean kids, I feel sorry for the witch who lived in the gingerbread house now.

Well, I'm not still shaking, because it's been quite a while since I first watched this episode, but it always gets me again. It's just one of those episodes...



It was shocking how the adults reacted to the existents of magic and monsters - those demon really did a number on them... I think this episode was also very necessary, because so far there wasn't so much involvement of the parents (apart from Joyce) and I always found it a little strange how the kids could act out and lead that secret life without their parents even noticing. So, this episode showed some kind of "what if" and after that, I was more than glad that not more parents know about demons and else...!!!



Also, Amy turning herself into a rat - great! We don't get to see so much of the actress, but the character will stay with the gang till season 6, very funny!!

So this is such a random, but funny episode. Basically two kids are found in Sunnydale and Giles thinks that it was a sacrifice killing. This prompts an outcry from people all over Sunnydale to be opposed to the occult. This includes Willow, Amy and somehow Buffy. Turns of the two kids are really a demon that feeds on the fear of a group. The funny part of this is some of the lines. Like Willow’s mom noticing months later that she cut her hair. Others:



Buffy: "Hey, is Willow around?"

Xander: "How can I convince you people that it's over? You assume because I'm here, she's here. That I somehow mysteriously know where she is."

Buffy: "Those her books?"

Xander: "Yeah. She's in the bathroom."



Giles: They're confiscating my books.

Buffy: Giles, we need those books.

Giles: Believe me, I tried to tell that to the nice man with the big gun.

A fun episode for Joyce as she gets to turn on Buffy. The scenes with the dead children's "ghosts" visiting Joyce and telling her she has to "hurt the bad people" are genuinely creepy. As is the moment when Buffy's mom chloroforms her from behind.



We get another visit with Amy, the teenaged witch, before we have to hate her. And of course, we'll revisit poor transformed Amy now and again before her real return in season 6.



There are some good individual scenes (Armin Shimmerman as Principal Snyder: you can practically see his rapture during the school locker raid); the scenes between Willow and her mother ("I don't want you hanging around with that BUNNY Summers again."); the Xander-Oz rescue attempt is amusing and the short scene of Giles/Cordelia preparing a potion in his car.



For some reason though, all of these elements just don't gel into compelling viewing.

While I thought I had my mind more or less made up on every episode in the "Buffy" run before I started writing these reviews, viewing "Gingerbread" anew really changed my mind about it. It's certainly one of the episodes I watch least. But I realized upon revisiting it that it's not because it's a flawed episode. In fact, it's perfect. Even at its most creepy the writing stays funny. Cordelia and Willow have some great lines. Buffy is more likable than usual. The wild goose chase through the air vents that writer Jane Espenson sends Oz and Xander on isn't just hysterical but it's an important bonding moment for the characters after Willow and Xander's infidelity.



But it's still hard to watch. No one can hurt a teenager more than their parents, and watching Joyce turn on Buffy is immensely disturbing. The construction of the episode, and the way that Kristine Sutherland gradually builds Joyce's normal clueless-but-well-meaning attitude into murderous fascism, cuts to the bone. Even more unsettling are the interactions between Alyson Hannigan and Jordan Baker as Willow's mom (her only appearance in the entire series). The broader implications of Sheila Rosenberg's brief appearance here are huge, and very sad. Only a magic spell, apparently, can make Willow's parents pay her any attention at all. This is unbelievably telling. If you're a Freudian, you can chalk almost all of Willow's character traits right back to here. She's constantly seeking approval because her parents are incapable of giving it to her. Watching Season Six again with this in mind is almost more than a sympathetic soul can bear.



But let's not get overly mired in psychology and the big picture. What we have in "Gingerbread" is typical Season Three "Buffy" at its very best. The guest cast is fantastic, especially the reptilian Armin Shimerman and the always welcome Elizabeth Anne Allen as Amy. The way that the mayor is incorporated into the episode is clever as well. He's not involved in the evildoing at all this week, but he's still an opportunistic politician. Mayor Wilkins really fits into the overall framework of the show in a way that future Big Bads really failed to do. To this point the series seem to switch off doing episodes based on classic horror stories and episodes that tackled modern teen issues. This one very cleverly uses both. Tying the episode's monster into both the Hansel & Gretel myth and the Salem witch trials is a smart way of tying "Buffy" in with more weathered mythology. It also subtly makes a point about the episode's underlying theme. The kind of dangerous, hysterical groupthink that endangers Sunnydale in "Gingerbread" can happen anywhere at any time.



If you've seen it before and were just too creeped out to deal, you should definitely give "Gingerbread" another shot. Try if you can to look past the incredibly disturbing scenes where Joyce and Sheila kidnap Buffy and Willow and listen instead to the crackling dialogue (I would be remiss if I did not pay tribute to Hannigan's remarkably delivered "I do doodle" line) and admire the way the parents' behavior grows from reasonable concern to dangerous mob action in seemingly organic fashion. It's this last device that "Gingerbread" almost does too well. Unlike almost every other "Buffy" episode, the danger in this episode isn't too fantastical to fear coming to your own hometown. It doesn't always take a demon to cause ordinary people to violently overreact to things they don't understand and can't control. I was interested in the occult in high school too. Would I have been called to the principal's office for having D&D manuals and fantasy novels in my locker? What about "Buffy" posters?

Don't get me wrong, this was a good Buffy episode. However, I myself practice Wicca & Witchcraft, so this episode made me feel very frightened and disturbed.

I felt so sorry for Willow when her mother found out...that's how my grandmother would act if she found out. I get that the demon was controlling the minds of the adults, but that didn't make it any less difficult to watch for me.

Still, I did enjoy it. And Buffy had a great line - "What are you gonna do, throw a pencil at them?" That amused me, everything was ok in the end (other then Rat Amy) and life goes on.

Another excellent Buffy episode.

The best thing about this episode was that it was a little darker than most of the season. Also it’s a different laidback episode that doesn’t have much to do with the season. I like the feeling and loved the fairy tail idea.



The episode begins with Buffy on patrol and her mother follows her. While Buffy slays, Joyce finds the bodies of two little kids with a symbol on their hands.



Joyce freaks out and calls everyone she knows and they call are their friends. They want to make an end to all those witches and slayers in their town.



We also get to see Willow’s mom, Sheyla. A dumb mom that completely ignores her daughter. We also see Amy back and meet the boy-witch Michael. They do a spell together and use the symbol on the kids. But the symbol turns out to be for protection.



All the parents get out of control and irritating by burning Giles’ books and opening lockers. They begin to take kids out of the house, Amy, Willow and later Joyce does the same to Buffy. The little dead kids are there and they are making the parents do all those things.



When the three girls are put on stakes to be burned like witches were. Giles and Cordy come to the rescue and Giles uses a spell to bring out the real face iof the kids and it turns out to be a big creepy monster who feeds out of people destroying each other. The monster is soon killed by Buffy’s stake through it’;s throat ‘Did I get it, did I get it?’.



The episode had many smart comments, and smart lines like ‘Everything is falling into place, ofcourse that place is no where near this place’.

Also the fairy tale storyline was very well done and well constructed.



The episode still missed something, but I don’t quite know what.



Besides all those things, Xander and oz working together was a must. Also Angel’s little speech to Buffy was great.



All in all, ‘Gingerbread’ was another excellent episode but for some strange reason, not that memorable.

As a lesson in how not to parent, this episode is a winner. As a political analogy, it’s even better. It starts with Joyce joining Buffy on a patrol (complete with sandwiches and a flask) in an attempt to parent her daughter but, as she discovers the corpses of two children, the roles are reversed as Buffy ends up comforting her mom: “I’m sorry you had to see this. It’ll be alright, I promise”.



We’ve never seen her before, but suddenly, Willow’s mum is also big on the over-parenting. She goes from not noticing her daughter has had her hair cut – 5 months ago, to taking an active (if negative) interest in all of Willow’s activities and behaviour, to the extent of co-founding the concerned action group MOO with Joyce. Maybe BAA would have been a better acronym. The episode explores what happens when well-meaning people try to do something to better their society but end up getting it horribly wrong.



Joyce starts out standing up for Sunnydale: “Silence is this town’s disease”, and ends up leading a literal witch-hunt. The emotive crime of child-murder so touches the town’s collective consciousness (with a little bit of spell-casting by the big bad demon) that mob-rule starts to take over. Buffy asks Angel why it is that the death of a pre-pubescent is more affecting than say, the vampirisation of the bank manager she killed a couple of days previously (Angel says it has to do with innocence), but I think her real question should have been: Why do the vamps continue to attack the Slayer? She’s taken out The Three, the Order of Taraka, several trained assassins, a Judge, a Master and two centuries-old English vampires; surely one so recently dead and inexperienced as Mr Sanderson should leave well alone. Joyce has already answered Buffy’s question about the death of children and inadvertently pointed out the truth early on when she says “Anybody who could do this must be a monster”.



But neither she, nor any other Sunnydale citizens finds out the children’s names, who their parents were, where they went to school or any other details, because the kids are mere symbols of peoples’ fear of lost innocence. The children themselves don’t matter especially as the community is over-run by remorse and need to act on their feelings and start a campaign, rather than try to comfort the non-existent bereaved. Even Buffy is hit by it (and it’s never really explained why the demon spell works on some people and not others) when she asks Giles if he could “find me a loophole in that slayers don’t kill people thing”. Hmm – what about the Zookeeper in The Pack?



When the gang discover the truth about the kids – that they are a demon manifestation, Giles hits the nail on the head when he says: “Some demons thrive by fostering hate and persecution. Not by destroying men, but by watching them destroy each other. They feed us our darkest fears and turn peaceful communities into vigilantes”. Call me cynical, but isn’t this how politicians behave when they play the race card or stir up bad feelings? Accordingly, we see the Mayor pull out all the political pretences when making his speech. “Never Again”, indeed. His worthless words are made even more meaningless by what we know of his evil background.



Apart from Buffy’s silly duck/dyke thing, the scene between her and Angel is illuminating. As I’ve said previously, Series 3 is about Buffy accepting her role as the Slayer and she asks whether Sunnydale is actually a better place with her in it; well we know the answer to that from The Wish. Buffy may be sans plans and can only react to whichever evil rises this week, but heck, we’ve seen what planning can do. Badges and vigils aren’t going to stop the killing. No wonder Sunnydale is rife with Bad Stuff when the reaction to it is to make placards! Happy meals on legs, as Spike so accurately put it.



Angel’s speech more or less explains why this episode was made: “It’s important to keep fighting. We never win. Not completely. We never will. That’s not why we fight. We do it because there are things worth fighting for.” One may say: What’s the point of Joss et al writing their liberal stuff day in day out when you consider the terrible things wrecked on the world every day by rightwing people, but Gingerbread answers that:- because there are things worth fighting for. Civil liberties, anti-censorship, freedom of speech, unexpurgated access to knowledge which allows people to make up their own minds rather than having views presented to them by the ruling consensus.



When the police take away all of Giles occult books, Joyce tells Buffy that MOO “just wants to weed out the offensive material”. Buffy points out that they may need them next time she has to save the world, meaning: if we ban all books deemed offensive then where do we get our knowledge? (Book burning is of course a staple of the ‘Christian’ right and also of Nazi Germany). Similarly, Snyder’s glee at the searching of the lockers and “no pathetic whining about students rights” shows how the establishment uses horrible events as an excuse to crack down on anything they find disagreeable or objectionable. Considering this episode was broadcast in January 1999, it accurately and scarily predicts the fallout from the events of 11th September 2001: the anti-Muslim witchhunts and the excuse for eroding civil liberties. It also foretells events in Britain where anti-paedophile mobs, in their stupid fury tried to burn down a suspected child abuser’s home and in one case attacked a paediatrician. People, against a Bad Thing, trying to do the right thing, but being so terribly mistaken.



Furthermore, I can’t help but think of the backlash against goth culture and heavy metal music which took place after the Columbine massacre. People chose the easiest target, rather than searching their souls for the reasons the shootings happened. Banning the occult books is as fruitless as banning Marilyn Mansun. This episode is commenting generally on censorship, but perhaps more specifically on the ‘Christian’ right who wanted Buffy banned due to its occult references.



The major fake-out with Amy, Willow and never seen before or since boy-witch Michael doing a spell using the same symbol that was seen on the dead children’s hands fulfils two purposes – firstly, to show that the symbol has been etched by the demon to mislead the public into a witch-hunt (personally if I were the demon, I’d’ve manifested as different children each time in order to fool the populace even more. Maybe it didn’t know about the internet) and secondly, to explain the way panic works. Cordelia tells Buffy: “Everyone knows that witches killed those kids, and Amy is a witch…if you’re gonna hang with freaks and losers, expect badness”. This is scarily like: If you’re not our friend, you’re our enemy. There is no room for shades of grey in the land of mob rule.



The demon may be playing on people’s deepest dread, but it also plays on children’s fears – that their parents will turn against them, not accept who they are and try to harm them. Make-up wearing Michael has a father who beats him up (a metaphor for parents despising children who are gay?), Buffy’s mom says: “I wanted a normal, happy daughter. Instead I got a Slayer”. In the last episode, we found out that Xander’s parents are drunks; in this we discover that Willow’s parents don’t pay her any attention and that she can’t do anything to shock or rebel – they’ve got their psych babble down pat. Even Joyce, an improvement on the S2 version, shows her intentions early on in the episode during her speech: “Too long we've been plagued by unnatural evils. This isn't our town anymore. It belongs to the monsters and, and the witches and the Slayers”. This could be put down to a slip of the tongue, but it seems to be a pretty Freudian slip; showing her discomfort with Buffy’s rôle in life. I wonder if the Mayor knows who Joyce’s daughter is?



The horrible irony is that MOO formed after children were killed (everyone’s worst nightmare), yet here they are willing to kill their own offspring (every child’s worst nightmare). Joyce says “You earned this. You toyed with unnatural forces. What kind of a mother would I be if I didn't punish you?”, the episode’s subtext being that parents who try to cast out demons from their ‘un-natural’ children are worse than the demons themselves. Interesting that the two dead children are supposed to be Hansel and Gretel – the received idea about fairytales is that they too are about our darkest fears. I’m still pretty scared of Rumpelstiltskin.



The episode, whilst extremely serious and political is nevertheless very funny:- from Xander worrying about the soft porn in his locker and on learning that fairytales are true, wants some magic beans, to Cordelia slapping Giles out of his concussion (“I swear one of these days you’re going to wake up in a coma) and once again saving the day with a hose full of water, to Snyder foreshadowing his Kurtz role in Restless by paraphrasing Apocalypse Now quotes, to Giles shouting at the computer, to Willow’s fabulous "A doodle. I do doodle. You too. You do doodle, too." (try saying that 10 times whilst full of black satanic naughty evil), to Buffy’s screeching “Did I get it? Did I get it?” after impaling the demon on her giant stake and then considering getting “a wheel-thingy” for Amy-rat, to Oz and Xander forgetting their differences in order to team up to try and rescue the girls, crashing through the ceiling rather too late: “We’re here to save you”.



Finally, pedantically, much has been said about MOO starting a witch burning inside City Hall, but what I want to know is: How come Amy’s hair was shoulder length when she rodented herself, yet long when she was de-ratted 3 years later?

This type of episode is the type I normally don't go for. (You know, where those in authority refuse to see what's really going on)but in this case, it really works. This episode is a nailbiter from the get go. From the time Joyce finds the bodies of the two kids all the way to the end. The one aspect of this episode that grates me is Willow's Mother...or Psycho-mom from Hell as I call her. This is also the infamous episode where Amy turns herself into a rat. I thought that was pretty funny, actually. I love the fact that Oz and Xander try to be the heroes, but show up after Buffy's allready taken care of everything.

This episode is exactly what "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" is. It is a fine episode to get started in, because you don't need to know exactly what's going on in the characters lives. However, if you are watching the series straight through, it is just that much better.

The episode has a begining, middle and end. It takes a crazy twist of the classic "Hansel and Gretal" fairy tale, making Hansel and Gretal the bad guys. Well, it turns out they're just one huge hideous demon pretending to be children, but you get my point.

Also, this is the episode where Amy turns into a rat! This storyline continues until the sixth season, with only the odd line contributing to it every season. A wonderful joke for viewers from the begining that won't ostricize newcomers to the show.

Well, enough about Amy, all in all, this is a classic episode of Buffy, and since the series gets a 10/10, this episode has to get a 10/10 as well.