Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments. \u00a0Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.<\/span><\/p>\n WARNING: Some people have mentioned they\u2019re watching along with me, and that\u2019s awesome, but I\u2019ve seen the entire series already and I\u2019ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So\u2026 you know, take that under consideration, if you\u2019re a person who can\u2019t enjoy something if you know future details about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oooh, boy. Whoo. Whoo doggies. This is it. Another of my very favorite Buffy episodes, because besides the potential baby eating, it’s totally light and cute and fluffy without sacrificing the overall arc. This is a great episode before the season gets darker.<\/p>\n This episode also ties in pretty heavily with my theory of\u00a0#2<\/strong>. I know a lot of people are squicked by this, so I’ll mark out that passage like this:<\/p>\n #2 Squick Alert<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n followed by text. Then you know to scroll until you see:<\/p>\n Squick threat has passed<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n and we all go home happy. This isn’t a permanent feature, but I’ll utilize it in episodes that I feel are heavily\u00a0#2<\/strong> related.<\/p>\n So, let’s do this, because I’m so ready for awkward teen Snyder.<\/p>\n In the Sunnydale cemetery, Giles and Buffy are very serious about something:<\/p>\n Giles: “‘And on that tragic day, and era came to its inevitable end.’ That’s all there is. Are you ready?”<\/p>\n Buffy: “Hit me.”<\/p>\n Giles: “Which of the following best expresses the theme of the passage? ‘A: violence breeds violence, B: all things must end,’ c\u2013'”<\/p>\n Buffy: “B! I’m going with B. We haven’t had a B in forever.”<\/p>\n Giles: “This is the S.A.T.s, Buffy, not connect-the-dots. Please pay attention.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Giles, in addition to his Watcher duties, is also helping Buffy study for a standardized test. Honestly, it would probably be easier to assume she’s going to die before she could finish college, anyway. I mean, she doesn’t, but they don’t know that. Most Slayers beef it before they’re eighteen or something anyway, according to THE EPISODE JENNY DOES NOT SPEAK OF that will be later in this season.<\/p>\n Giles tells Buffy that the S.A.T.s are a rite of passage, and Buffy wonders why she can’t pick tribal mutilation instead, which I’m calling #17<\/b>, for the “cheap laughs” part. A vampire attacks, and Buffy kills it with a No. 2 pencil, which breaks in the process. When Giles hands her another and makes her get back to studying, she complains that they’re the only people working late at night.<\/p>\n Come on, B. This is Sunnydale.<\/p>\n Mr. Trick is in The Mayor’s office, helping The Mayor do some nefarious thing. A demon needs a tribute, and Mr. Trick knows someone who’s worked in Sunnydale before and who can help The Mayor with this project. Also, we get more proof of The Mayor’s creepy evil when he opens a cabinet and reveals a bunch of spoooooooooopy shit:<\/p>\n After the opening credits, Oz offers to help Buffy with S.A.T. prep, since he’s taken it before. Willow is quick to point out to anyone who will listen that Oz is the highest scoring student who’s ever failed to graduate, which I\u00a0love<\/em>. Willow, book smart and very concerned with her scholastic achievement, is proud of Oz, even though she would probably not deal well with similar circumstances at all. This show is so, so good to characters who aren’t good at school. I wasn’t good at school (tremble before my graduating 1.2 grade point average), so that’s probably what I like about it.<\/p>\n Everyone is complaining about having to take the test, except for Cordelia:<\/p>\n Cordelia: “Actually, I’m\u00a0looking forward to it. I do well on standardized tests. What? I can’t have layers?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are so many of my favorite Buffy lines in this. Probably because it was written by Jane Espenson. She’s written or co-written some of my favorite episodes and, coincidentally, some very\u00a0#2<\/strong>\u00a0subtext-heavy episodes, which makes me wonder if we don’t share some views on the subject (especially considering that she created my other favorite May\/December ship in the Once Upon A Time<\/em> episode “Skin Deep”).\u00a0But she also treats female characters pretty well (provided I’m remembering all of her episodes correctly), which not every writer on this show does.<\/p>\n Anyway, Buffy tells everyone that she can’t study for the test that night, because her mom has her basically on lockdown due to the running away thing. Which is like, good job, Joyce. Maybe Buffy feels that her mom is being overprotective, but it’s better than just not being around at all ever.<\/p>\n The teens go into the cafeteria and find Snyder handing out boxes of candy bars that everyone has to sell for the band. Which, what the eff, guys? When I was in band, we had to sell our own candy. And it wasn’t even like there were that many of us. Sunnydale is a way larger school than the high school I went to, so they definitely have more than thirty people in the band. My school should have made everyone help out. That’s just my bitter band kid opinion.<\/p>\n Xander: “Yeah, those tall fuzzy hats ain’t cheap, huh?”<\/p>\n Oz: “But they go with everything.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Every line of this episode is pure gold.<\/p>\n At home, Buffy tries to sell candy bars to her mom, who’s like, what would I do with forty candy bars? Then Buffy asks why she can’t have a driver’s license. Joyce reminds her that she failed so bad on the written test she wasn’t allowed to take the road test. Buffy protests that it was a year ago, but Joyce makes it clear that the reason she doesn’t want Buffy driving is because Buffy ran away.<\/p>\n Buffy says she has to go do Slayer stuff with Giles, and for the first time, Joyce finds it suspicious.<\/p>\n Joyce: “Honey, don’t you think Mr. Giles is monopolizing an awful lot of your time?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hey, this would have been an excellent thing to notice back in season one, when your teen daughter began this unusually close relationship with an adult male authority figure, but\u00a0#3<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0#8<\/strong>, am I right?<\/p>\n Giles has Buffy doing some ridiculous exercise where she’s blindfolded and has to hit him with a ball, which she does. That’s enough training for her, and she can’t patrol either, because her mom wants her home.<\/p>\n You liar, Buffy.<\/p>\n So, now that she’s playing both of them, Buffy takes off to find Angel. In a scene that I assume was typed in\u00a0BOLD ALL-CAPS<\/strong>, she finds him doing tai chi. Glistening, muscular, shirtless tai chi:<\/p>\n (#30<\/b>)\u00a0Wait, why is he sweating? He’s a vampire. I mean, they never covered “do vampires sweat”, but it seems like they wouldn’t.<\/p>\n Buffy ain’t complaining, though:<\/p>\n But Angel is still weak from the hell thing, so Buffy helps him inside. Also, he’s out of breath again. So.\u00a0#20<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Angel asks Buffy how Scott is, and\u00a0she doesn’t tell Angel that she’s single again. She brought him blood, but he doesn’t eat it in front of her. He tells her that he worries about her slaying, and they both decide that once Angel is healed, it would be better if they’re not around each other. I agree, because I hate Angel.<\/p>\n Buffy comes home and tells her mother that Giles made her stay late, and then oh snap, Giles comes around the corner and she is caught. They’re both mad at her for lying to them, and for lying to Willow and making them all worry. Also, Joyce and Giles are stress eating the candy bars like popcorn.<\/p>\n Buffy won’t tell them where she was, but they assume it was The Bronze. She tells them that she wouldn’t have to sneak around if they weren’t being so unreasonable, and that she doesn’t need to be treated like a child. Things get heated between Joyce and Buffy, so Giles steps in with some very un-Giles-like language:<\/p>\n Giles: “All right, come on, let’s not…freak out.”<\/p>\n Buffy: “Freak out?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Giles tells her to go to bed, and she leaves, thinking all the adults she knows are against her, probably. That was the kind of shit I thought when I was her age. Giles and Joyce then go back to chowing on the candy bars.<\/p>\n Cut to a factory, where the candy is being packaged. A worker on the assembly line tries to sneak a bite, when our old friend Ethan Rayne stops him and tells him that eating the candy is a super bad idea.<\/p>\n The next day, in study hall (in the science lab, aka the only classroom in any show or movie made for teens for some reason), the students are wondering where Giles is, because it’s his turn to do “watch the kids” duty. \u00a0Cordelia complains to Buffy about how mean Giles is for making her pay library fines, while behind them Xander and Willow play footsie. Like, come on guys. That’s bullshit. But the important part is that we find out that people in town are buying scads of chocolate bars.<\/p>\n Like Snyder, for example. He’s eating one of them as he complains to another teacher:<\/p>\n Snyder: “The big pinhead librarian didn’t show up, and I don’t want to do it. You do it.”<\/p>\n Teacher: “All right, fine. I’ll do it.”<\/p>\n Snyder: “Everybody expects me to do everything around here because I’m the principal. It’s not fair.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, people are acting kind of weird. Like the teacher who comes in and tells the kids to pretend to read until Snyder leaves, and then they can all go home.<\/p>\n Buffy goes to Giles’s house, apparently expecting him to be dead or something. He’s just there looking at his records, and Joyce is there sitting on the couch. They were discussing Buffy’s complaints of over-scheduling. Joyce says she and Giles still have a lot to work out, and readily hands over her keys so Buffy can drive home. Even though Giles and Joyce are both acting deeply weird, Buffy seizes the chance to drive her mother’s car and runs out. When she leaves, Joyce asks Giles if he thinks Buffy suspected anything. Then out come the cigarettes and booze.<\/p>\n That night, Buffy decides to drive herself and Willow to The Bronze. Buffy is\u00a0not<\/em> a good driver. I’m really happy that she didn’t get her license in this series. Also, that they never really made a huge deal about the fact that she didn’t. Everybody acts like teenagers need to drive right when they turn sixteen, but damned if some of them aren’t ready. I wasn’t. I had like four accidents the first year I drove. It’s nice to see this strong, capable demon fighter unable to do something most people consider a basic skill.<\/p>\n Back at Giles’s house, this is happening:<\/p>\n I am almost one hundred percent certain that in this episode, they were meant to be smoking weed, but it didn’t get past standards who whatever department says “No, don’t do that on TV.” The reason I say this is not because I’m a huge pothead, but because they’re listening to Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses,” which you do not listen to and smoke\u00a0cigarettes.<\/em><\/p>\n If you’ve never heard the song and are thinking, “I don’t know Jenny, a lot of people like a lot of music without being high,” then listen to this pretentious fucking song.<\/a>\u00a0And if you can’t listen to it, here is a selection of lyrics, and you can tell me if you could listen to this without some kind of pharmaceutical intervention:<\/p>\n And you see a girl’s brown body dancing through the turquoise The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell So as you can plainly see, this is a song you listen to in the bathtub while you’re high. I know this, because I have done it more than once.<\/p>\n Water is optional.<\/p>\n Joyce says she’s bored, and that they should go to The Bronze. But Giles is like, no, nothing’s going to be happening there. Cut to The Bronze, where\u00a0the crowd is very much middle aged.<\/p>\n Buffy: “Let’s do the Time Warp again.”<\/p>\n Willow: “Maybe there’s a reunion in town, or a Billy Joel tour or something.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He is always with us.<\/p>\n They spot Ms. Barton, the teacher who let them out of study hall earlier. She’s staggering around with a blue solo cup in her hand, and she is waaaaaaasted.<\/p>\n Buffy: “Ms. Barton?”<\/p>\n Ms. Barton: “Buffy. Whoa.”<\/p>\n Willow: “Are you okay, Ms. Barton?”<\/p>\n Ms. Barton: “Oh, I’m cool, Willow. Willow. That’s a tree. You’re a tree! Are there any nachos in here, little tree?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As Buffy and Willow continue to survey the scene with disgust, Principal Snyder drops in:<\/p>\n Snyder comes back and brags about a commendation he got from The Mayor, and proudly announces that they shook hands twice. Which I feel supports my theory of\u00a0#28<\/strong>. Snyder doesn’t sound like he’s well connected or has any idea what’s happening in town if he thinks it’s a big deal to shake The Mayor’s hand. If he’s so starstruck by whatever The Mayor tells him, he might actually think he’s doing the right thing by making Buffy’s life difficult.<\/p>\n Anyway, Buffy believes she’s seen this behavior before:<\/p>\n Buffy: “They’re acting like a bunch of us.”<\/p>\n Willow: “I don’t act like this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At the evil candy factory, Mr. Trick is admiring the ingenuity of his plan, and kills a worker he suspects of “sampling”. When Ethan ask him how he knew the guy was eating the product, Mr. Trick is like, I didn’t, but now nobody else will. He also makes a comment about it being almost feeding time.<\/p>\n Back at The Bronze, Buffy, Willow, and Oz are still trying to figure out what the hell is going on.<\/p>\n Oz: “They’re teenagers. That’s a sobering mirror to look into, huh?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then Snyder comes up and tells Oz that he likes his hair.<\/p>\n Then they notice that a lot of people are eating the candy bars. They leave The Bronze and Snyder tags along with them and says a line that was so funny the first time I saw it, before I knew it was a horrible, ableist term, so I won’t share it here.<\/p>\n Willow: “It’ll be okay when we get to Giles.”<\/p>\n Oz: “Of course. I mean, even if he is sixteen, he’s still Giles, right? He’s probably a pretty together guy.”<\/p>\n Willow: “Yeah. Well…”<\/p>\n Oz: “What?”<\/p>\n Buffy: “Giles at sixteen? Less together guy, more bad-magic-hates-the-world-ticking-time-bomb guy.<\/p>\n Oz: “Well, then I guess your mom’s in a lot of trouble.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Speak of the devils, but there’s Giles and Joyce, wandering around town. Joyce talks about how she feels like getting married and having a kid was all a dream. She sees a coat in a shop window and says it’s “very Juice Newton”, at which point Giles proves Oz right. He breaks the store window to steal the coat.<\/p>\n Back in the car, Snyder suggests they go do donuts on the football field. Another driver, distracted as he tries to open a candy bar, t-bones Buffy at an intersection, and we cut to commercial.<\/p>\n Now, because what he did wasn’t already bad enough, Giles beats up a police officer and steals his gun. Then he and Joyce get frisky on top of a police car.<\/p>\n #2 Squick Alert<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n So, let’s talk about this whole thing, shall we? Teen!Joyce doesn’t act\u00a0exactly<\/em> like Buffy, which I really like. I think that was the road a less imaginative writer would have taken. But she’s not wholly unlike Buffy, either. She makes pop culture references, and her speech patterns could easily be Buffy’s. She’s like Buffy, but she’s not Buffy,\u00a0and Giles, being Teen!Giles and stripped of his inhibitions, is attracted to her, and that’s okay because they’re both adults. Teen!adults.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, you could make the argument that adult Giles has a thing for Joyce, and now stripped of inhibitions he’s acting on that attraction, but they’ve never appeared to like each other at all, even in a fun will-they-won’t-they kind of way. This show is not subtle about that kind of thing; if Giles and Joyce dug each other, it would have been telegraphed broadly. It wasn’t as though at this point the audience was going, “Ooh, when will they hook up,” especially considering the fact that it wasn’t long ago that Jenny Calendar died (and I think fans would have collectively lost it if Giles had moved on in season three.)<\/p>\n Anyway, the fact that Giles is attracted to Joyce when she’s similar to Buffy supports\u00a0#2<\/strong>, in my amateur opinion.<\/p>\n Squick threat has passed.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n So, Joyce’s car is now wrecked, but that’s the least of Buffy’s worries. She just put two and two together that if everyone is acting like teens without any responsibilities or cares, the vampires should be out eating them all. Since they’re not, there has to be a reason.<\/p>\n Oz: “Something’s happening. Someplace that’s else.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When someone snags Snyder’s candy, they realize that some monster has, to paraphrase Willow, used candy for evil. Snyder doesn’t know who was in charge of ordering the candy; the school board just sent it to the school. Snyder makes an aside implying the school board is scary somehow, but again, he’s not connected, or at least, not as connected as he pretends to be. But Snyder does know where the warehouse is. Buffy sends Willow and Oz to research the curse and takes Snyder to investigate the candy.<\/p>\n Cut to the warehouse. Buffy pulls up and marches with conviction toward the evil candy factory, only to be frozen in her tracks by horror untold:<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/The-Mayor-creepy-cabinet.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAnd her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea
\nAnd when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body
\nCarving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind<\/p>\n
\nAnd you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter<\/p>\n
\nAnd you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
\nWith tales of brave Ulysses, how his naked ears were tortured
\nBy the sirens sweetly singing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>He refers to Buffy and Willow as “gang”, says The Bronze is “fun city” and mentions how wasted Ms. Barton is. Then Willow watches in horror as her pediatrician does a shirtless stage dive.<\/p>\n