8/24/08 - 8/31/08 Episode Discussion: Gingerbread

[SpikedBuffy]

Episode title: Gingerbread
Season: three


Discuss season three's episode Gingerbread. What are your favorite parts of this episode? Favorite quotes, characters? What did you least like about this episode?

[sk73]

MOO :)

Always liked this episode. It's a bit different and has many funny moments in all its seriousness (two dead kids etc).
Jane Espenson is one of my favorite writers on the show and she did a great work on this one also.

Just the fact that it is the begining of Amy the Rat make this episode important.

Not sure, but I think this is when we first get to see a bit more of Willow's "extra-curricular activities" and also gets to meet her mother for the first time.
It seems that it is Buffy that have the best connection with the parents of the scoobies. Both Xander or Willow seems to have some problems at home.

I liked that we got to see the whole town to actually wake up and realise that something is not quite right. There sure is some denial otherwise.
Turns out of course that it wasn't really true, but it was still fun to see.
When the magic broke, everything went soon back to the normal denial state again.

Seeing Giles reaction when they confiscate his books is a highlight.
- Giles, we need those books.
- Believe me, I tried telling that to the nice man with the big gun.

The Xander - Oz saving of the day is also great. Just a little bit late...

Snyder - Ah, I love the smell of desperate librarian in the morning.

Buffy's - Did I get it? Did I get it?

And the classic - A doodle. I do doodle. You too. You do doodle too.
Makes me smile everytime!

/SK

[InsaneMystic]

I'm one of those who didn't like it, I consider it a weak point of the season. Found it too disappointing that in the end, it was a demonic spell after all and not "real" witchhunting paranoia (how great would that have been?) and everyone is back to denial afterwards :sigh:

Besides, that text page from the monk's diary... it's so NOT German. Geez, couldn't they have paid someone who actually speaks German a coupla bucks to have a look over it? This looks like they just ran a text word-by-word through a cheap internet translation site (and we all know how they work, right? Think Korean tech manual. ;) )

[Joyce Summers]

I'm one of those who didn't like it, I consider it a weak point of the season. Found it too disappointing that in the end, it was a demonic spell after all and not "real" witchhunting paranoia (how great would that have been?) and everyone is back to denial afterwards

See, I always counted that as a good factor of the episode for several reasons.

1. It allowed normalcy to return at the end of the episode. After all, this was intended as a stand alone and couldn't greatly effect the overall storyline of the show
2. It seemed to directly mirror the 'witch' hysteria in the 1940s/50s here in the US when everyone was going crazy searching for communists. Now the people aren't blamed for the trauma they put one another through, but rather the government for making them so paranoid. An outside influence is blamed- just like the spell in Buffy- and so it's effects are soon forgotten.
3. The 'It's all a spell' reaffirmed the parent/child relationships that were being jeapordized. Yes, Willow's Mother neglects her daughter and doesn't very often listen to her at all, but the spell showed that she would never genuinely wish to hurt Willow which is some comfort to the teen I think. It's the same for Buffy- she seems quite bummed in the burning-at-the-stake scene that her Mom won't listen to her and would rather kill her than have her Slay anymore, but when the demon spell is broke and Joyce is all shocked at what she's done, Buffy regains her fighting spirit and does her whole not-as-good-in-that-costume line. ;)

This, in contrast to InsaneMystic, was one of my favorite episodes of the season and series. But then again it is Jane Espenson and I rarely dislike her work on the show. Plus, you know, it was Joyce centric ;) Hehe.

But I loved Joyce turning up for Mother/Daughter time on patrol- she may make the wrong decisions and okay this was one of them, but she does try so hard, bless her. And those kids were some freaky ass demon children! (And of course, the boy is Bree's son on Desperate Housewives). And Giles got knocked out again! I loved Cordy's line of "One of these days you're going to wake up in a coma"

And oh, my inner Joyles shipper's heart skipped at the Giles/Joyce scene at city hall. The two were so cute around each other. They kept catching one another's eye and smiling and then getting all flustered because they didn't think they should be smiling haha.

But yes, I did think this was a good examination at mass hysteric, how tragedy/wish to prevent tragedy can bring a town together, and how a mother/daughter relationship both can work and how it shouldn't work. I would ramble more but I've got my own daughter to see to right now, haha.

[InsaneMystic]

Ah, once more we'll have to agree to disagree in the end, I guess. :)

1. It allowed normalcy to return at the end of the episode. After all, this was intended as a stand alone and couldn't greatly effect the overall storyline of the show
Well, I guess some topics are, for my taste, better not handled in standalones then. I feel it's a bit too Simpsonesque this way (not to badmouth the Simpsons, lol!)... "let's do the one where they all XYZ!" That worked fine with Xander's love spell in BB&B, but it felt wrong for me with witchhunting paranoia.

2. It seemed to directly mirror the 'witch' hysteria in the 1940s/50s here in the US when everyone was going crazy searching for communists. Now the people aren't blamed for the trauma they put one another through, but rather the government for making them so paranoid. An outside influence is blamed- just like the spell in Buffy- and so it's effects are soon forgotten.
I did get the McCarthy reference, but I would SO have loved to see them take responsibility for what they're doing! Blaming outside influence seems to be the easy way out... Take Angel, e.g - he deals every day with what he did as Angelus, even though he could technically declare himself innocent of all Angelus did due to his soul being absent and the demon being in control.
Even though I personally do not even believe in free will (I hold the determinist conviction everything we do is directly caused by an - admittedly, amazingly complex - combination of factors like genetics and social influences, so there's in the end ever only ONE thing we really can do in any one situation: the one that we actually do), I very firmly think we should bear responsibility for our actions, even if there never was another alternative to what we did. That responsibility gets nixed here by blaming FairytaleGuy's spell and conveniently going down the "Forget anything ever happened" trail afterwards.

3. The 'It's all a spell' reaffirmed the parent/child relationships that were being jeapordized. Yes, Willow's Mother neglects her daughter and doesn't very often listen to her at all, but the spell showed that she would never genuinely wish to hurt Willow which is some comfort to the teen I think. It's the same for Buffy- she seems quite bummed in the burning-at-the-stake scene that her Mom won't listen to her and would rather kill her than have her Slay anymore, but when the demon spell is broke and Joyce is all shocked at what she's done, Buffy regains her fighting spirit and does her whole not-as-good-in-that-costume line. ;)
And there we are again with our most frequent disagreement, JS! :lmao: You know that I, due to my own mother issues and general Joyce dislikeage, wouldn't have had any problem with the show dealing for a LONG time with the aftereffects of "Joyce = evil Mom who tried to kill her daughter". ;)
Actually, if it had been DarklyParanoid!Joyce after all and not some spell, and we had seen Joyce deal with that knowledge... now THAT would have made for a Joyce-centric arc I would have enjoyed, and one which would have made me certainly respect her more, perhaps even *gasp* start to like her!

[OldSwede]

Great discussion, Joyce and InsaneMystic! I see your points, Joyce, but I tend to agree with InsaneMystic that this topic could have made a very interesting arch over several episodes. But then Jane Espenson didn't have much choice; first, I guess she was told to write a stand-alone, and second, there is no free will, so she had to do what she had to do. :-)
There's an interview with her in "Reading the vampire slayer" where she says this was a really difficult episode to write - not the least because the (supposedly) dead children made humour difficult...

[Joyce Summers]

But then Jane Espenson didn't have much choice; first, I guess she was told to write a stand-alone, and second, there is no free will, so she had to do what she had to do. :-)

Exactly. I think it was good way to go and end/conclude the episode considering the restrictions Jane would have had. However if she had had total free reign, yes we could have gone crazy with the different angles this episode could have taken.

[Helga the Viking]

I agree that real witchhunting paranoia would've made a very interesting arc. But b/c I like Joyce I don't believe she'd have been burning her daughter at the stake w/o the help of the spell. Course history shows us plenty of examples of people doing horrendous things to loved ones under the influence of paranoia, propaganda..and just in general! But w/o the spell I could've never gone back to liking Joyce and would've needed to see her bite it in a dark alley. Plus the spell succeeds at putting Sunnydale back to its "normal" state of denial. An enlightened Sunnydale would've drastically changed the fabric of the show. Though perhaps in a good way, b/c who needs an army of annoying slayerettes when you've got MOO? :)

Gingerbread is a pretty good standalone imo. While maybe not a "classic" for me, it did present me with perhaps my favorite line of season 3... from Willow's mom of all people! I just wasn't expecting it and the delivery was perfect.

Willow : Mom, how would you know what I can do? The last time we had a conversation of more than 3 minutes it was about the patriarchal bias on the Mr Roger's show.
Willow's Mom : What with King Friday lording it over all the other puppets.