Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Band Candy

"I don't like this. They could have heart attacks!"

I've been looking forward to this: Jane Espenson is here at last! And her first script is comedy gold- witty, full of fun, and getting us to see characters in hilarious yet plausible new ways. It's odd that Faith isn't in this at all, though.

I love the way that the first few minutes focus on Buffy's responsibilities and the pressures being put on her by her adult authority figures, a very stark contrast to what comes later. She has SATs to prepare for, which will determine whether or not she gets into college. She has slaying duties, as ever. There's time with her mother to fit in. Oh, and Angel, who's becoming more lucid, which is starting to lead to awkwardness. It's all go. Oh, and Snyder expects her (any everyone) to sell this "band candy stuff".

Are American high schools really like this? Are kids regularly conscripted into doing stuff for school activities they haven't even signed up for? I'm curious about this. Is "band candy" a traditional phrase that people would know? Oh, and what about driving? We hear that Buffy hasn't even taken her test, but she drives her mother's car! Is this not highly illegal? Also, that car is massive.

It all sounds a lot of pressure, which culminates in her being found out by her mother and Giles when she uses them as alibis against each other. This seems to lead to the two of them ganging up to schedule all her free time into structured activities, tiger mother style. Except all is not as it seems, courtesy of the ever uber-cool Trick, the returning Ethan Rayne and the ever more interesting Mayor, who seems to have achieved his position by making some very dark deals which would traditionally require some very long spoons.

The tables are now turned, as the chocolate bars magically turn all the adults into particularly immature teenagers. The fact that they are considerably less mature than actual teenagers leads me to suspect a bit of a subtext here. Are we perhaps being told that, actually, kids today are more responsible than their parents' generation, perhaps with an added flavour of how the baby boomer generation has not exactly looked after the world all that well on its watch? Probably not, on balance. The differences are mainly portrayed in terms of popular culture and, yes, the younger Giles is just the sort of person who would pause the conversation with a girl he was trying to impress just to hear an Eric Clapton guitar solo.

It's a bit difficult to square this rebellious Ripper with his notably estuarised speech with what we were previously told about his past (actually quite the goody-goody until going off the rails at uni) but it fits. But Joyce is much funnier as a teenage girl although the most hilarious of these sequences have to belong to Snyder. All three actors are great here. Interesting, though, that Snyder has gradually changed from a sinister, threatening figure with comic elements to an outright figure of fun during the early episodes of the season.

Buffy's interaction with the "teenage" Joyce and Giles is hilarious, especially the bit with the handcuffs. And of course the closing moments where we learn that Joyce and Giles did, in fact, do it on the bonnet of a police car, are glorious. Yes, the conclusion may be a bit quick, and the demon rather easily dispatched, but I for one am glad Espenson decided to give more screen time to the funny stuff than the mechanical plotty blah-blah.