beginning | blinding torment | boils | lies | making me bitter | evil compounds evil | blah blah bity blah

 


 


uh oh. is Willow the naughty one?




oops. looks like it.





 



 

 

 

 


 


 

 

i swear mom, I'll clean my room. 

 

 

 


 

did i get it? did i get it?

season three   >  Gingerbread


This week’s lesson: Fairy tales are real and when people work themselves up into fervors, they can be real assholes.

 

Better think twice about pissing off that wicked witch down the street now, eh?

 

This episode opens on Buffy patrolling and her mother tagging along. Joyce, see, is trying to show her love and support. Personally, I’d prefer gifts. Lots and lots of gifts. And from Buffy’s reaction, I’d guess she’d prefer lots and lots of gifts too. She’s easy that way. Anyway, Buffy and her mum come across two dead kids on the playground. There are symbols drawn on their hands that leads people to assume occult badness. And madness ensues.

 

I doubt your doubt. Everyone know witches killed those kids. Amy is a witch. And Michael is whatever the boy of "witch" is, plus being the poster child for yuck.


Basically the town, a town where people die mysteriously all the time, becomes outraged. People band together to rid the town of mysterious deaths and the library of inappropriate books (and sorry Giles, but some I gotta agree on some of those titles you have there [What, are you a member of MOO, too?! Everything Giles does is perfect. Leave my Giles alone. -SP]). Joyce herself, proving that she cannot keep a secret and therefore does not belong in the Scoobie Gang, goes off in an town meeting about the deaths and weirdness going on, totally cheesing off Buffy in the process. The Mayor himself gets up and makes a rousing speech and its all just beautiful. Until, of course, it descends into madness, as these things are wont to do.

 

Oh my. So fierce. I suppose I should hear you out. Just how is "Blood Rites and Sacrifices"appropriate material for a public school library? The Chess Club branching out?


Joyce creates MOO (Mothers Opposed to the Occult) and starts organizing the banning of occult books from the library, which would be every book in Sunnydale High’s library it seems, and the indoor burning at the stake of not only her daughter (who, as a slayer is just rife with the occult) but also of Sheila Rosenberg’s daughter Willow (due to her being filled with the black naughty evil) and pre-rat Amy.


This is not a good town. How many of us have lost someone who just...disappeared, or got skinned, or suffered "neck rupture"?!


Luckily, the gang comes to the rescue.Giles figures out the whole storybook angle and we'll just copy and paste what he had to say on that subject, mmkay? "There are demons that thrive on fostering persecution and hatred among the mortal animals. Not on destroying men, but on watching them destroy each other. They feed us our darkest fear, and turn peaceful communities into vigilantes." So there you go. [See?! His books are good! And Giles is smart! And hot! And... OK, back to the recap...] Xander and Oz then band together once Willow and Amy's friend the he-witch comes panting in to tell them that he got attacked by his dad and go after Willow. She’s gone by the time they get there, but they stay banded together and head towards city hall to climb through air ducts and stuff in search of their girls.

 

Giles, meanwhile, awakes from being knocked out again, this time by Joyce’s cronies, to Cordelia slapping him. He decides to be useful and practices his recitation to make the demon creating all of this chaos to come forth while Cordelia mixes a magical powder.


Now let's be clear, the brain damage happened before I hit you.


Amy, not happy with being burned at the stake on a pile of books, turns herself into a rat in an attempt to escape. She leaves her other two homies behind. Maybe she was evil before the whole rat thing. And here I just blamed it on bad storytelling. Ha! [Or possibly she was attempting to turn all the children-burning parents into rats and just wasn't skilled enough in magic and it backfired. Oh wait. That couldn't possibly be what happened, since once Amy was de-ratted we found out she was like the most powerful witch ever who was hopped up on Rack crack and make guys dance in cages! Carry on.]

 

Blah blah blah, they arrive at the combined indoor book and people-at-the-stake burning party, Cordy hoses down the flames while Giles recites and the ghosts of the two dead kids, who were bossing everyone around and telling them what to do all this time, combine into one big corporeal ugly demon. It’s not pretty. [And Hansel and Gretel always seemed so sweet before! What with their pushing the little old lady into the fire and all. My illusions are shattered!]

 

The room panics, people run about willy-nilly and Buffy manages to pull her stake out of the pile of books and impale the monster through the throat. And everyone forgets, of course.

 

We end on Willow and Buffy attempting to turn Amy the rat back into Amy the psycho…no, wait, at this point she was still Amy the not-psycho, not-a-crackwhore, non-Rack visiting teen witch, right? Whatever. It doesn’t work. They discuss buying her a wheel. The end.


  

 

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