It's not surprising that many teen flicks from my adolescence feature actors who also appear on Buffy. Actors who auditioned for parts on Buffy would be auditioning for other high school roles as well. But I don't think I've ever noticed a larger critical mass of Buffy actors, both recurring characters and guest stars, in a single project outside of the show than I did when I rewatched Can't Hardly Wait.

Of course, Seth Green plays a main character in both the film and the series, but also keep a look out for Amber Benson, who appears only briefly. (She had a slightly larger part that was cut in editing.)

Paige Moss, who played Veruca in season four, also has a couple quick scenes, which makes all the points of Willow's love triangles present and accounted for.

The rest of the double-dippers include:

Clea DuVall
(Jana/Marcie from "Out of Sight, Out of Mind")



Channon Roe
(Jock #1/Jack O'Toole from "The Zeppo")



Christopher Wiehl
(Horny Guy/Owen from "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date")



Eric Balfour
(Hippie Guy/Jesse from "Welcome to the Hellmouth" & "The Harvest")



John Patrick White
(Tassel Guy/Pete from "Beauty and the Beasts")



Nicole Bilderback
(Ready to Have Sex Girl/Cordette from "The Wish")

Nicole Bilderback was also in Bring It On, another teen movie from my adolescence with a (much smaller) contingent of Buffy alums. Also, looking up how Bilderback was credited on Buffy unexpectedly resolved an issue for me. In an episode of Angel (I think it's "Rm w/a Vu"), Angel tells Doyle that people called Cordy's high-school clique "The Cordettes," which always made me scowl because I thought Jane Espenson had just made up that really lame name for no apparent reason. I don't remember any character on Buffy referring to Cordelia and her lackeys as such, but apparently the writers did. We just didn't know about it because we weren't reading the scripts. It doesn't make me love the line from Angel, but it makes me scowl a lot less.

Thanks to the folks over at Whedonesque for the link! My blog has actually migrated, so if you'd like to leave a comment you can do so over here.

Of all the relationships on Buffy, Willow and Tara's feels the most separated from the goings-on of the other Scoobies. That separation is partly forced because their relationship is a lesbian one and thus not quite socially acceptable, especially on network television. Willow and Tara are much less physically affectionate in comparison to the show's other significant relationships, and at the beginning of their relationship their intimacy has to be portrayed through metaphor. In the context of the show, Willow does not openly date Tara at first because she is coming out to herself and worries about her friends' reactions. But Willow and Tara also remain conscious of and even maintain a separate space for their relationship to occupy. Because of the "behind closed doors" nature of their relationship, a close look at door imagery, of which there is quite a bit, is warranted and indeed rewarded. Doors, doorways, and entryways help to illustrate the progression of Willow and Tara's relationship and its integration into the "mainstream" of the show.

Of course, each character opens a door at some point, and theoretically everyone has to go through doors all the time to get from room to room and place to place. But doors are interesting. Doors are obviously associated with entry and exit, but often those entrances and exits relate to more than just the physical space. The ideas, people, and values that space represents are being embraced or dismissed as well. Who can open particular doors or pass through doorways into certain spaces indicates ownership, privilege, and power. Doors also provide isolation or privacy, and in the Buffyverse doors and doorways can effectively protect against vampires who cannot cross some thresholds without an invitation.

Doorways and entryways are also liminal spaces or places of transition. Obviously, people go from outside to inside or from one space to another through doorways, but entryways differ somewhat. They are part of a space but at the same time disconnected and, in fact, almost purgatorial: one only lingers in an entryway until accepted into the rest of the building where meaningful interactions take place. Liminal spaces often play a significant role in portraying queer relationships. Because same-sex relationships have been considered socially deviant, they oftentimes can only safely exist in liminal spaces, like a darkened alley or a bathroom stall. But restricting queer characters to liminal spaces ensures that their "threatening" sexuality does not come in contact with "moral," heterosexual spaces like marriage, the home, and the nuclear family. The confinement also implies that they do not or cannot belong in those places.

Images of doors, entryways, and doorways feature prominently throughout Willow and Tara's relationship, but Tara in particular has a lot of such imagery associated with her starting from her first appearance in "Hush." Indeed, Tara choosing to delve into the Scoobies' world of vampires, demons, and monsters is marked by a door. As Tara leaves her dorm room to find Willow so that they can do a spell together, she opens the door and looks back hesitantly at her room before shutting the door behind her. She has a definite moment of exiting one world and entering another. Because Tara is an outsider to the group, her space exists outside of the Scoobies' domain. And unlike Giles and Xander's apartments or Spike's crypt, Tara's room never becomes a place where the Scoobies hang out or even a place they visit sometimes. Because of that separation, Tara's room becomes a place where Willow may explore her sexuality and transition to a gay identity. Or perhaps that relationship is actually inverse: because Tara is queer she must inhabit separate space, which makes her an outsider. Because doors are such an important part of demarcating space, the majority of door imagery related to Tara reveals the limitations of how she may and what space she may occupy as a queer outsider.

Tara's role for much of season four is allowing Willow access to her room – access to queer space – quite literally opening her door so that their relationship may foster. Tara first opens her door to Willow in “The I in Team” when she drops by to ask if Tara wants to hang out after Buffy blows her off to patrol with Riley. Willow had been in Tara's room before to do magic together in "A New Man," but that scene begins with Willow already inside the room. Thus, this little moment of Willow asking if she can enter Tara's room seems more significant than her simply inquiring if Tara wants to "do something." Their body language also suggests something more: Willow is visibly nervous and hopeful, and Tara's smile is on the warmer side of friendly as she lets Willow into her room. Combined with the door closing, leaving the audience outside the room, I'm inclined to believe that this episode marks when Willow and Tara's relationship becomes more than just a friendship. This scene perhaps represents Willow's coming out to herself, choosing to enter Tara's room in a more significant way than before.

The following episode “Goodbye Iowa” contains a similar scene in which a very smiley Willow comes to Tara's room for help with a spell. They talk about the "spells" they did after the door closed in "The I in Team," and Tara says that she has been thinking about "that last spell [they] did all day," which overtly hints at the romantic nature of Willow and Tara's relationship for the first time. If "The I in Team" represents their first actually sexual (and not just magical) encounter, then "Goodbye Iowa" is their processing of that event. While Willow seems excited by their newly forming relationship, she has yet to fully embrace it because she still needs to knock and be let into Tara's room.

"New Moon Rising" obviously marks an important turning point for Willow and Tara when Willow doubly asserts her queer identity by choosing Tara over Oz and revealing to Buffy that she has been romantically involved with a woman. The first time Willow comes to Tara's room during the episode, Tara opens her door and invites Willow inside. When Willow visits a second time to tell Tara that she has chosen to be with her and not Oz, she steps into the room without a clear invitation. After making that choice and thereby establishing her queer identity, Willow has freer access to Tara's (queer) space and no longer has to pause in the liminal space of the doorway. Indeed, the next time Willow enters Tara's room in “Family” she opens the door without knocking.

While she must open doors to queer spaces for Willow, Tara must be escorted out of liminal spaces and into familiar ones as her and Willow's implied lesbian relationship becomes more explicit. Of course, Willow has to introduce Tara to her friends and their personal spaces, but Tara seemingly doesn't have the agency to enter even public Scooby spaces by herself. When Willow takes Tara to The Bronze in "Who Are You?" Tara had never been to the club before, which implies that she couldn't go there unaccompanied by Willow. Similarly, in “Family” Willow thinks that she hears Tara outside the Magic Box and opens the front door, suggesting that Tara could not have opened the door herself. In "The Real Me,” Tara even has to leave a space that had been familiar to her when the Scoobies begin to occupy it in a meaningful way. Tara says she comes to the Magic Box a lot, and only she knew the dead shopkeeper's name. But as Willow and Buffy investigate the murder scene and Giles begins to contemplate buying the store, Tara leaves the shop and joins Dawn outside, saying that it's "Best non-Scoobies like [them] stay out of the way."

In "Family," Tara finally enters a Scooby space by herself and, not coincidentally, finally feels embraced as part of the group in a way that she hadn't before. As the Scoobies help Buffy move out of her dorm room, Tara makes a joke that no one understands and then walks out the door, which emphasizes her feeling like an outsider despite very obviously wanting to be part of the group. Later in the episode when she walks into the Magic Box with Willow and sees her brother, she fears that his presence might jeopardize her ability to occupy that space, because her family could reveal her misguided belief that she is a demon. Even her personal space becomes compromised when she walks into her dorm room and finds her father inspecting her belongings. Feeling potentially excluded from the group, and indeed even from Sunnydale, Tara is pushed to liminal spaces and must perform her demon-hiding spell from a doorway in the magic shop. While that spell endangers the Scoobies by blinding them to demons, it also creates an opportunity for Tara to help them without any assistance from Willow. And Tara enters a Scooby space by herself for the first time when she walks into the Magic Box and warns Buffy about the Lei-Ach demon about to attack her.

Tara's incorporation into the Scoobies becomes conflated with the group's acceptance of Willow's new queer identity and their relationship. When Willow and Tara visit Giles' apartment in "Primeval” the morning after Willow outs their relationship, Giles must open his front door for them. Where they could barge into Giles' apartment in “Who Are You?” as an anonymous couple, after their relationship has been revealed they no longer have that power and privilege. As the Scoobies' create a place in the gang for Tara during the course of “Family,” they also must resolve their lingering uncertainty about Willow and Tara's relationship. Toward the beginning of the episode, Buffy and Xander are quick to say “it's cool” that Willow is now “Swingin' with the ['lesbian'] lifestyle,” but they also express a sense of alienation, worrying that they won't fit in at Tara's birthday party. And while they think Tara is "nice," “real nice,” “super nice,” they say that they “don't necessarily get her” because they don't understand “Half of what she says.” All they really seem to know about Tara is that she likes Willow, that she is a lesbian, which seemingly hinders their ability to communicate with her. By accepting Tara they also accept her sexuality and relationship with Willow, even though they may not understand it. Willow and Tara dancing together at The Bronze at the end of the episode, their first public display of couplehood, underscores that their relationship has also been newly acknowledged.

Tara does become more integrated into the Scoobies to the point that in “Bargaining” she helps a physically and emotionally exhausted Willow enter the Magic Box – where Willow once had to escort her into places the Scoobies frequent, Tara now helps Willow enter those same spaces. But unfortunately because Tara doesn't receive much character development outside of her relationship with Willow, her acceptance as a Scooby remains tied to her being in that relationship. Therefore, her persistent lingering in doorways seems appropriate, emphasizing her tenuous place in the Scooby gang.

As their relationship begins to strain, Tara is forced out of Scooby spaces and back into liminal spaces. She realizes that Willow has cast a spell to make her forget a disagreement while standing in the doorway to Dawn's room in "Once More With Feeling." Similarly in "Tabula Rasa," Tara stands in the entryway of the Summers' house when she snaps at Willow to hurry getting dressed. At the end of that episode Tara leaves Willow because of her abusive overuse of magic, walking out the front door of the Summers' house. When Tara returns to the house in “Smashed” and "Wrecked," she distances herself from the house's more personal spaces, remaining in the hallway when Dawn goes into Buffy and Willow's rooms to look for them. Her leaving the Magic Box in "Dead Things" also evidences her return to the fringe of the Scooby circle. She also only enters the Summers' house by invitation: Dawn asks Tara to keep her company in “Smashed” and Buffy invites her to her birthday party in “Older and Far Away.” In "Normal Again" Tara can enter the Summers' house without invitation and without knocking, seemingly because she is there to see Willow, which suggests that they could reconcile. When they do finally reunite in "Entropy," Tara can leave Willow's doorway and enter the bedroom as she verbally renegotiates her place in their relationship.

In the context of Willow and Tara's relationship, doors often represent both barriers that they must hurdle to connect with each other and safeguards that isolate their prohibited sexuality. In "Hush," Tara finds herself being chased by the Gentlemen as she goes to look for Willow, so she pushes through double doors into stairwells and knocks on dorm room doors as she tries to escape. The audience is misled into thinking that Tara is knocking on Willow's door, but when the door opens she is faced with a Gentleman holding a freshly harvested heart instead. As Tara runs away from the demon, Willow walks out of her room and they collide. But instead of retreating back into Willow's room, they run through more doors, downstairs, through more doors, and ultimately lock themselves in the laundry room. They then join hands and combine their magic to move a soda machine and barricade the door. In light of the later metaphor of magic representing lesbian sex, that bit of magic can be understood as their first sexual encounter, which takes place in a laundry room behind a locked door. It's almost as if Tara couldn't find Willow's door, they couldn't hide in Willow's room because the forbidden nature of their relationship precluded them from such personal and intimate spaces. They had to retreat through many doors and spaces until they reached the liminal space of the laundry room where they could engage in prohibited sexuality behind a locked, barricaded door. Interestingly, Willow and Tara are never shown alone together in the dorm room that Buffy and Willow share. Willow's room cannot be an intimate space for them as Tara's room is, until "The Real Me" when Willow has a single room and no longer lives with Buffy, making her room an assured queer space.

After running into Faith at The Bronze in "Who Are You?" Willow and Tara return to Tara's room and close the door behind them, which feels like a retreat of sorts. They had held hands at the club, and almost as punishment for being physically affectionate in public, they had been outed and ridiculed by Faith. The closing door coupled with Willow closing the curtain on the window emphasizes the isolation needed to perform the "Passage to the Nether Realm" spell, a thinly veiled metaphor for lesbian sex and the most graphic "sex" scene between the two women ever shown on the series.

Willow and Tara's passages through doorways in "Tabula Rasa" are intriguingly reminiscent of their interactions in "Hush" and readily comparable because they newly discover their attraction to each other after losing their memories. Due to some not unconvincing circumstances – and the fact that no one ever thinks that two women could be dating – Willow falsely assumes that Xander is her boyfriend. Much like "Hush," Willow and Tara have to descend into the sewers before their mutual attraction first surfaces. Then as they run away from a vampire, they hide behind walls and in drains until Willow pushes Tara out of harm's way and they almost kiss. Willow needs to experience a physical attraction to Tara to realize she's "kinda gay" though she never seems very attracted to "Alex." Even with blank slates, heterosexuality is still presumed and more acceptable. While Giles and Anya can explore their falsely assumed heterosexual relationship above ground in a familiar setting, Willow and Tara must again submit to a labyrinthine journey into impersonal space to discover their genuine attraction, even though they have come out and been together for almost two years. However, had Willow and Tara kissed, they would have done so in front of Xander and Dawn, and it would have been an actual display of lesbian sexuality rather than sexuality coded as a "spell." The similarities between "Hush" and "Tabula Rasa" suggest their relationship may not have become more socially acceptable over the intermediary two years, but their insistence at being out and their friends' support has allowed more freedom of expression.

In "New Moon Rising" contrasting door imagery related to Tara and Oz also delineates a difference in power and privilege between gay and straight relationships. The episode begins with Tara attending her first Scooby meeting in Giles' apartment, where of course Willow had to escort her. When Oz first returns, he stands in Giles' entryway having entered the apartment without knocking. His ability to walk into the Scoobies' personal space without permission underscores his privilege and perhaps even his status as a more socially acceptable partner for Willow. Later in the episode, he opens Willow's door when Tara knocks, which again emphasizes Oz's privilege, in this case to occupy Willow's personal space and even grant others access to it. The action also asserts Willow and Buffy's room as a heterosexual space that Tara cannot enter. In fact, there's a sense throughout the episode of Oz forcing Tara out of places, reclaiming them as heterosexual space and making her retreat. When Oz returns at the beginning of the episode, obviously wanting to regain his place in Willow's life and by extension the group, Tara "has to" leave Giles' apartment. Oz prevents Tara from entering Willow's bedroom, even though she had performed a spell with Willow and Giles there in "Where the Wild Things Are," and Oz literally chases Tara at one point in the episode when he becomes a werewolf.

Despite being forcibly segregated to an extent, Willow and Tara also maintain separate space for their relationship. Willow takes her time in introducing Tara to her other friends because she “kind of like[s] having something that's just, you know, [hers].” In "Restless," she says that she "never worr[ies] here," marking Tara's room as a safe space separate from the rest of her world. Similarly, in "After Life" Tara encourages Willow to be honest about her concerns as they get ready for bed, saying "This is the room where you don't have to be brave." Then as Willow expresses her worries about Buffy, she closes their door before she really starts opening up. After something that looks like Buffy violently wakes them, they peer into Buffy's bedroom without stepping inside and then return their room, closing the door behind them, before discussing the strange occurrence. They maintain a separate space in which they may converse meaningfully. And just as Willow and Tara need to be invited into Scooby spaces at times, Buffy must knock on Tara's door and wait for Willow to let her inside when she comes to check on Tara in "Superstar."

Because of Buffy and her mother's (and later Dawn's) positively portrayed relationship with each other, the Summers' house comes to represent the ideal nuclear family on Buffy. Therefore, Willow and Tara's presence in the house as an openly gay couple demonstrates how their relationship is becoming intermingled with more traditional ideas of relationships and family. Season five begins with the Scoobies having a day on the beach in "Buffy vs. Dracula," and Willow and Tara's relationship seems to have been acknowledged by the group, which Xander confirms when he tells Willow that "Everybody knows." But not quite everybody seems to know. Later in the episode Joyce tells Willow and Tara that when older women date they sometimes "feel like giving up on men altogether," causing Willow and Tara to exchange surreptitious little glances. They stand in the entryway during this conversation with Joyce, emphasizing that they are, at the moment at least, confined to a liminal space because Joyce doesn't know about, and thus has not accepted their relationship. The following episode "The Real Me" indicates that Joyce has become aware that they are a couple, and when Willow and Tara next come to the Summers' house in "Checkpoint" they can occupy the living room. After Buffy passes away, leaving Dawn without a guardian, Willow and Tara move into Buffy's house to take care of her. They demonstrate their newfound comfort in domesticity by moving through doorways in the house and even sharing a kiss in the hallway. In Joyce and Buffy's absence, not only can their relationship exist alongside the traditional nuclear family, they have redefined it.

Doors receive a lot of attention on Buffy. If someone were to take the time to note all the characters' interactions with doors, Tara might not stand out in comparison. But because of Willow's appreciation of her relationship with Tara as "something that's just [hers]" coupled with its socially taboo nature, Willow and Tara's association with doors seems more significant. The doors that the show runners choose, and sometimes are forced, to use also reveal the restrictions of portraying a lesbian relationship on network television at that time. Few lesbian relationships on network TV compare to Willow and Tara in regards to its duration and the amount of screen time they receive. And though instances of "lesbian" sexuality have become more common and less coded since 2002, the number of significant, recurring lesbian characters has not increased. If a network show were to tackle a long-running lesbian relationship not intended to titillate men or garner sweeps ratings, I wonder if it would still have to develop behind all those doors.

— List of Every Single Time Willow/Tara Are in a Doorway Ever

You know, for someone who was constantly changing her clothes because of all the make-up sex she was having in this episode, Tara is surprisingly coiffed and accessorized here. Normally, I didn't care for the hair-oh-no-they-di'n'ts and jewelry they tried on Tara, but I think she looks adorable with these pigtails and simple, dangly earrings. I don't even mind the flower necklace. I'm thankful that she gets to look dignified right before she... Sniffle! Well, you know what happens.

Oh, Willow. She went through a rocky seven years, transforming from a shy, awkward outcast into a powerful witch recovering from her villainous actions triggered by the death of her beloved. I didn't love all of the phases and trials she went through over the years (Sob! Tara! Sob!), and more than once I found myself desperately yearning to like Willow again. But I was always ready to take her back whenever she redeemed herself.

Sure, there were nerdy female characters before Willow, and plenty since, but she somehow became the ideal embodiment of the archetype. "The Willow character" has become shorthand amongst my friends to describe tech-savvy, nerdy female characters who seem like someone you could know in real life and would totally have a crush on. But Willow will always be my favorite awkwardly babbling, werewolf-dating, academic insecurity-having, rebellious banana-eating, crazy birthday cake shirt-wearing, misogynist asshole-flaying, "That was nifty!"-exclaiming, Jewish, lesbian(?) witch.

Despite their many differences, I always think of Anya and Tara as kindred spirits in a way. Both of them were always outsiders, never quite managing to break into Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles' tight knit circle, and they both had to overcome being characterized as just "the girlfriends."

While both characters remained underdeveloped and underused for a regrettably sizable portion of their time on Buffy, Anya received somewhat better treatment than Tara. She appears in "The Wish" and "Doppelgangland," and therefore has a bit of history on the show, before exhibiting any interest in Xander. In addition to that romantic entanglement, Anya develops a relationship with Giles through working at the Magic Box. She has relationships with people outside the Scooby gang, namely Halfrek and D'Hoffryn, that receive actual screen time on the show, so that when she and Xander break up Anya is shown without other Scoobies around. She also still owns the Magic Box after the break up, which the Scoobies visit at times.

But even though Anya had a few more opportunities to be more than just "the girlfriend," she very much felt like little more than an easy replacement and near copy of Cordelia for almost three seasons. The writers were content with her being just the "Thousand-year-old capitalist ex-demon with rabbit phobia" who tactlessly said what she thought in a strange speech pattern. Like Tara, I don't think that Anya really came into her own as a character until her romantic relationship with a Scooby ended, and the writers had to think of something to do with her.

In contrast to Anya, Tara's clear purpose from her first appearance is to form a relationship with Willow. Despite the sincere effort of a couple of writers to create a friendship between her and Buffy, Tara's relationship with Willow is really the only significant one, i.e. with one of the four core characters, that she has. When Willow and Tara break up, she is shown only with other Scoobies around, never by herself or with a character who isn't part of the main cast. During the break-up, Tara has to meet characters who aren't Willow in places like the Summers' house or Buffy's work to interact with them— none of them come to places that are familiar to her, such as the university or her dorm room. Tara's friends outside the Scooby gang (the people at The Bronze in "Family" and the girl who busses her on the cheek in "Normal Again") don't have names, not to mention any dialogue.

With some perspective gained in the years since Buffy's ending, I have come to appreciate Amber Benson and Emma Caulfield's performances more and more. My affection for their characters sneaked up on me the first time I viewed the series. I was surprised when I saw "Tabula Rasa" and "Hell's Bells" to realize how much I'd come to care for Tara and Anya. They are interesting characters played by these talented women, and they deserved better than what they received.

"Witch" is probably my favorite episode of season one. Yes, I like it even more than "Prophecy Girl" even though it isn't nearly as substantive. I'm surprised that Dana Reston, the screenwriter of this episode, didn't write any more episodes of Buffy. Like most of the episodes of season one "Witch" isn't strong on plot, but it makes up for it with Sarah Michelle Gellar's drunken giddiness and an abundance of quippy dialogue.

Just a taste of the delicious quotability:

"I laugh in the face of danger. And then I hide until it goes away."

"There's a veritable cornucopia of, of fiends and devils and, and ghouls to engage.... Pardon me for finding the glass half full."

"Okay, into battle I go. Would you ask her out for me?"

"Pretty much like we're goin' out."
"Except without the hugging or kissing or her knowing about it."

"Why should someone want to harm Cordelia?"
"Maybe because they met her? ...Did I say that?"

"Someone doesn't like cheerleading?"
"Or likes it too much."
"Amy!"
"Amy."
"So, you guys are leaning towards Amy?"

"Well, I know that I'll miss the intellectual thrill of spelling out words with my arms."
"Ooh, these grapes are sour!"

I also love that Cordelia has to turn her back to the cheerleading tryouts because she is so disgusted by how good Amber is. It's a great character moment. There's also a couple of lines in this episode that I find hysterical, but sometimes people give me a weird eye when I laugh at them. I love Willow's explanation that Amber (Grove not Benson) got detention for, "Regular smoking. With a cigarette, not, like, being smoky," because, well, could you imagine that phone call to her parents in the other instance? "Yes, Mrs. Grove, this is Principal Flutie. Amber is being held after school today for detention because she was emitting smoke in the hallways. I don't know how you do things at home, but I have very strong feelings about students spontaneously combusting in my school." The directions for the spell that say, "Heat ingredients and apply to witch," also crack me up because, well, come on. "Heat ingredients and apply to witch." It's funny. It's like she's a carpet stain or something.

The only part of the plot that really bothers me is Cordelia going blind. First, Buffy should have realized Cordelia was losing her sight when she saw the outfit Cordy was wearing. Shiny floral patterned green shirt tied at the waist with pinstripe pants? Second, would that driving instructor really make his student, who had flunked the test three times, drive when she says that she doesn't feel like it? Not a smart move on his part. Third, Cordelia's failing vision would not have impeded her ability to step on the accelerator or the brake so that dramatic crazy driving that leads to Buffy saving Cordy from being hit by a truck sequence feels really implausible. But those white contacts Charisma Carpenter wears when Cordy's blind always creep me out.

I think "Witch" is the episode when I really start to like Buffy as a character. The show as a whole piqued my interest with "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest," but those episodes didn't have any moments when I really fell in love with the particular characters, with the exception of Xander whom I love when he says, "The only thing I can think is that you're building a really little fence." The opening scene of this episode when Buffy asks Giles, "You don't like the color?" made me fall in love with Buffy, and her loopy cheerfulness and slightly off-key rendition of "Macho Man" are delightful to watch. Even this early in the series, it's refreshing to see Buffy so angst-free and chipper.

The relationships between the main characters really solidify as well. The love triangle between Buffy, Xander, and Willow becomes sparklingly clear just in case you weren't paying attention during the first two episodes. Willow and Xander become Buffy's "Slayerettes," a name I dislike more than "the Scoobies" but only slightly more. The ill effects of the blood stone vengeance spell compel Buffy to trust Giles, and Giles reveals how protective he already feels toward her. Their exchange "Did we find?" "We found," also underscores an intimacy that they've formed. Buffy both resists and desires a relationship with her mother, who is caring but flawed. Joyce comes across as less new agey, and despite the whole hiding the fact that she's a Slayer thing, Buffy is surprisingly candid with her mother. I probably would never say to my mom, "Mom, I've accepted that you've had sex. I am not ready to know that you had Farrah hair."

While witchcraft itself straddles the line between good and evil throughout the series, the first bonafide witch depicted on the series is most definitely evil. Poor naive Willow has no idea that she's looking into her future when Amy's mom strangles Xander and then assaults her. The witchy effects could have used some help here. The swirly lights that finally take care of Amy's mom aren't bad (remember, the special effects budget was whatever loose change Joss Whedon could find in the seats of his car at this point), but some of the practical effects could have been better. The cauldron looks like it's boiling green tempera paint and Anthony Stewart Head looks pretty silly when he winces at immersing his hands in his magical brew and it doesn't do anything at all. They couldn't have made it bubble a little more or smoke or something? Not regular smoking, like with a cigarette, but actually being smoky.

Of course, the wonderful Elizabeth Anne Allen makes her first appearance as Amy. It's amazing to me that Amy, who feels like such a part of the Buffyverse, only appears in eight episodes. As a human, that is. Given that Allen really only plays Amy for about five minutes in this episode, I was a little surprised when she pops up again in "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered." And then another season goes by and she appears in "Gingerbread." ...I really wish she could have been around more often.

Jane Espenson and I have a complex relationship. On the one hand, she wrote "Band Candy," "Earshot," and "Superstar." On the other hand, there's "Doublemeat Palace."

And "Triangle" joins "Him" on the Just Godawful list. I mean, this episode offends me.

"Triangle" attempts to soften Anya around the edges a little, but in order to make Anya sympathetic, Willow has to act like a callous shrew. Granted, Willow is not at her most likable during the first part of season five, but I find her behavior in this episode wildly uncharacteristic. She has expressed antagonism toward Anya in the past but never to this extent. And stealing ingredients from Giles? First, I have a very hard time believing Willow would do that, and second, I think that Anya would have had ample time to observe whether Giles occasionally lets Willow use inventory for free, so their argument over the ingredients seems contrived.

Emma Caulfield and Alyson Hannigan are — or at least were — good friends, and it’s obvious that they are having a lot of fun working together. And while both of them do some nice comedic acting, Willow and Anya’s bickering wears thin very quickly. But I do actually kind of like the suggested root of Willow and Anya's antagonism toward each other, namely that Willow fears Anya might hurt Xander and Anya feels a little threatened by Xander and Willow's history. That final argument about Xander does drag on a bit, but it feels like more old-school Buffy with a potentially sentimental moment undercut by the fact that Willow and Anya are yelling at each other and just as they reach an understanding a troll breaks down a door. However, if the writers were going to reach back to season three for the Willow/Xander stuff, couldn't they have pulled out some "Doppelgangland" baggage too? I mean, Willow does punch Anya for using her and joining forces with her evil alter ego to try to kill people in that episode.

I also cringe at Olaf's ultimatum to Xander. In an episode when, for the first time ever, Xander feels like he has to choose sides between his best friend and his girlfriend, he's actually asked to pick between the two women? Boring, obvious, and derivative.

While Willow and Anya's quibbling annoys instead of amuses, the episode's failure is only compounded by Buffy's "I have to keep Anya and Xander together because my needy, insecure boyfriend just left me" subplot. Sarah Michelle Gellar is a pretty decent actress most of the time, but she cannot funny cry or fake laugh. Her attempts here to weep humorously are agonizing, killing any entertainment potential that story might have contained. And though I didn’t really take offense at first, subsequent viewings have made me increasingly offended by this subplot's conclusion. Buffy blubbers about seeing Xander and Anya "good and alive and together" while completely ignoring Willow and Tara, who are also good and alive and together and standing right next to them. I know that Buffy has focused on Xander and Anya throughout the episode because she thought that they might be breaking up. But seeing as though their relationship was never in real jeopardy, her not recognizing Willow and Tara’s good, alive togetherness suggests that Buffy (and the show) doesn’t see the same sex couple as a real couple.

Spike trying to prove himself to Buffy is the only consistently amusing piece of this episode that's trying really hard to be a hour-long sitcom. I love his hopeful approach to Buffy when she arrives at The Bronze and his inability to understand why not feeding off accident victims doesn't win him any points with her. "What does it take?" And Anya does get some good lines when she is taunting Olaf. "Your roar is less than full-throated!"

I have trouble laughing at Olaf's dialogue that suggests the devouring of infants and raping of women. I'm just too much of a humorless feminist, I guess. The gratuitous destruction does not enamor me of this episode either. As I said before, excessive wreckage makes me twitchy.

I do like that Tara interacts with members of the group who aren’t Willow on more of an individual basis. She has two whole scenes alone with Buffy, and I always smile when Xander amends his "two favorite girls" comment to include Tara. But Willow and Tara's dynamic frustrates me. Tara's "I said 'quirky'" bit nicely hints at intimacy, but Buffy and Xander get more play from Tara and Willow respectively than the women give each other. Their "reunion" at The Bronze feels particularly awkward. Sure, Willow didn't know that Tara was worried about her, but she barely acknowledges Tara when she arrives with Buffy. So Tara is left staring at her girlfriend as if she wants to say something or to touch her but cannot because she has been inexplicably forbidden. It's ridiculous and uncomfortable and wouldn't have happened if they were a straight couple.

To compensate for Willow and Tara's lack of touching, Espenson includes two "Willow is gay" comments. The "Hello, gay now" statement annoys me because it oversimplifies gay identity, which the show never dealt with very well when Willow first came out. Also I hope that Willow wouldn’t break up Xander and Anya because, you know, she is committed to her relationship with Tara and learned from past experiences. I know that Espenson is going for a joke, but like most of Willow’s remarks in this episode the "gay now" comment comes across as too glib and facile. The second "Willow is gay" comment delivered by Anya puzzles me a bit. I like Alyson Hannigan’s nod and accompanying "Yep, it’s really true because they keep having me say it" look, but I can’t decipher the meaning of Xander’s reaction. He looks almost depressed by her confirmation of her gayness. Maybe it’s just the broken hand.

As a retrospective nitpick, how is it that Xander is hit repeatedly with Olaf's hammer and suffers only the broken hand while Buffy uses the hammer to pummel Glory in "The Gift"? Also, the blond curl sticking out from the nun's veil in the teaser looks absolutely ridiculous. If they really wanted to go for that extremely pointless mislead, the costume department should have used a postulant's wimple (think Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music), which doesn't cover as much of the head as the veil does. And Buffy looks like an idiot when she hastily throws away her stake after killing the vampire in the nunnery. The nun just saw a man turn to dust and explode and Buffy thinks a piece of wood is incriminating?

Unlike "Him" I cannot entirely dismiss this story concept, which could have been entertaining if the bickering had been characterized differently and no one had made SMG try to funny cry. Oh, wait. They made that episode already.

Of course some episodes of Buffy are lackluster. "Beer Bad," "Spiral," and much of season seven are equal parts ridiculous and dull. But few episodes, in my opinion, are as embarrassingly, insultingly awful as "Him." If not for its last nine or so minutes, I would easily call it the worst episode of Buffy ever.

First, the writers are ripping themselves off. "Him" is an obvious retread of season two's delightful "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" in which Xander accidentally casts a spell on himself that causes all the women in Sunnydale to love him...to DEATH. (I know that sentence sounds like a crib from a Lifetime promo, but I couldn't resist.) Why does "Him" fail where "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" succeeds? Because the latter is not an exercise in the complete humiliation of every female character on a supposedly feminist show.

In "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" it becomes clear pretty fast that the females are acting strangely due to Xander's botched spell. Xander acts quickly to reverse its effects, and he doesn't take advantage of any of the girls who throw themselves at him. Giles chastises him for his foolish use of magic, and the women's escalating emotions for Xander threaten his well-being. As for the effects of the spell on the women, it causes them to be sexually assertive toward Xander, but none of their initial come-ons make me feel embarrassed for them. And the later mob scenes are so over-the-top that I know they would never happen without the spell.

In contrast, when watching "Him" I wasn't certain a spell caused Dawn's behavior until Buffy starts to hit on RJ, which doesn't happen until halfway into the episode. Sure, Dawn pushing that guy down a flight of stairs is creepy, but I wouldn't put it past her even when she's spell-free. I experience physical discomfort watching Dawn's attempts to win RJ, humiliating herself in front of him and his friends. The petty backstabbing and catfights between girls competing for him is nauseating, but none of it is behavior I haven't seen before on other shows and in movies as representative of how women might actually behave. Despite the girls' degradation, RJ doesn't suffer any ill effects from wearing the enchanted jacket. Because he doesn't seem to know about the enchantment, he doesn't have to learn a lesson about exploiting young women. Both Buffy and Principal Wood give him small lectures but to little effect, and having his jacket taken away by Spike and Xander hardly seems like much of a punishment.

Another important distinction between the two episodes is that "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered" provides character and story development for two main characters. Xander gets to show he's really a good guy when he refuses Buffy, and he and Cordelia become an official item when Cordy calls her friends out on being sheep and decides that she doesn't care what they think about who she dates. "Him" doesn't further story or reveal anything new about any of the main characters, though it does prove that Dawn really would win Miss Teen Angst Sunnydale.

I wouldn't give this episode a second viewing if it weren't for the nine minutes following Willow and Anya falling under RJ's spell. I love the shot of Willow and Anya reacting to the love spell because of Alyson Hannigan's wistful expression that morphs into confusion tinged with disgust at lusting after a guy. Much of the following dialogue is very quotable and excellently performed by Hannigan, Emma Caulfield, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Buffy: "Willow, you're a gay woman."
Willow: (So?)
Buffy: "And he isn't."
Willow: "This isn't about his physical presence. It's about his heart."
Anya: "His physical presence has a penis!"
Willow: "I can work around it!"
...
Anya: "Well, you're gonna have to do better than that—I'd kill for him."
Willow: (scoffs) "You'd kill for a chocolate bar."
Buffy: "No. Yes! Kill for him. I'm the slayer. Slayer means kill. Oh, I'll kill the principal."
Anya: "Ooh, that is hard to top."
Willow: "Yeah, well, I have skills. I can prove my love with magic."
Anya: "Yeah, right. What're you gonna do? Use magic to make him into a girl?"
(Willow's eyes widen with realization and delight.)
Anya: "Damn!"

The wonderful comedic acting continues with the montage and split-screen of the women doing their things to win RJ's heart, with the exception of Dawn who has to spoil the fun by wallowing on the railroad tracks. Willow and Xander have a fun exchange after he stops Willow's spell ("Will, honey, RJ's a guy." "I know. 'S why I'm doing my spell, 'cause, you know, he doesn't have to be."), which leads to some excellent physical comedy by SMG and James Marsters as Spike tries to take the rocket launcher away from Buffy. I also enjoy Dawn's line about Buffy having "sex that's rough," and Spike and Xander wrestling RJ's jacket off of him and running away. The writers hadn't managed to churn out that amount of continuous comedy for a while, and they don't for the rest of the season. (This moment comes earlier in the episode, but I also like Willow commiserating with Xander that "she is right there with him" feeling disturbed at finding Dawn attractive. It's one of the show's more subtle "Willow is gay" moments.)

This episode includes a lot of callbacks to previous episodes. Dawn wears Buffy's cheerleading outfit from "Witch," Buffy tries to use the rocket launcher from "Innocence," and Xander references the events of the above-mentioned ripped-off episode "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered."

I really like the music in this episode. UPN seems to have made Buffy's music supervisor use songs that people might have actually heard of instead of the California alterna-rock of the first five seasons. I applaud the show for trying to use music from lesser-known, local bands, but sometimes they tended to be indistinguishable from each other. "Him" features a song by The Shins, a song by Coldplay, and a couple from The Breeders, who are playing at the Bronze. The Breeders are one of my favorite bands and I was happy to see them on the show, but their music seems an odd choice for dancing tunes. I also really like the Charlie's Angels-ish music that plays over the split-screen montage. Kudos to Robert Duncan if he composed that score.

Despite this episode's solid comedy and trendy indie music soundtrack, I feel bothered and bewildered (but not bewitched) that the writers thought this story had a place on Buffy. I do not tune in to a show about a young woman with super powers who kills vampires to watch women bicker pettily about a boy and then be saved by two men.

I wouldn't call "Who Are You?" one of my favorite Buffy episodes, but it's definitely a season-four highlight even though it leads to an appearance of sanctimonious and downright unlikable Buffy in "Sanctuary." I love the dynamic between Faith and Buffy, and even though you know they're stunt doubles, there's just something viscerally appealing about watching these two characters fight. Eliza Dushku tries to play all coy at "Oh, people thought Faith and Buffy had this deep down love for one another, I'm not sure why," but how can we not think that when she's saying lines like, "Let's have another go at it. See who lands on top," so dirty-like.

But as much as I like this episode, I’m always slightly annoyed by the TV conceit that a character’s closest friends and family wouldn’t realize that a body switch happened. Or short of that, that they wouldn't at least realize something was wrong. Especially when Faith is being about as discreet as a foghorn in some scenes. At least Tara notices. I really like Amber Benson’s performance in this episode. I love her delivery of "She was kind of mean," and her small, pained smile after Faith teases her about stuttering breaks my heart every time. But I don't like how Tara confronts Willow about being kept a secret from her friends. I wish Joss had found a less passive-aggressive way to get to the "I am, you know...Yours." But otherwise, Tara is very endearing here and it’s nice that she gets to be the intuitive one, even though it's at the expense of making Joyce, Willow, Riley, and Spike look like idiots. Well, I don't really care that Spike looks like an idiot. Or Riley either, actually. But note to Riley: if your girlfriend starts coming on to you sexually in a completely different way than she has before, even if you can't figure out that her soul has been mystically swapped with that of a self-loathing psychopath, maybe you shouldn't have sex with her. Try talking about it next time.

This episode is obviously a showcase for Sarah Michelle Gellar's fantastic mimicking skills that she puts to use again in seasons five and six with her portrayal of the Buffy-bot. At times in this episode I think she goes a little over-the-top with the physical mannerisms, but they're not too distracting. Her delivery is spot-on, and she even takes a stab at saying "about" the way Eliza Dushku does. (Is that a Boston accent? I've always been curious. It sounds almost Canadian to me.) But SMG doesn’t wear leather pants quite as well as Eliza does. Sorry, Sarah.

Yes, Eliza’s performance doesn’t stand out as much as SMG’s, but to be fair Buffy doesn’t have as many obvious mannerisms as Faith does. Buffy puts her hands on her hips a lot when she is speechifying and crosses her arms for various reasons, but that’s all I can think of offhand. Faith is a psychologically traumatized murderer while Buffy is a pretty average college student: these actors can play Faith a little more heightened where Buffy should be more subdued. Buffy also spends half of this episode tied up or semi-conscious, which means that Eliza doesn’t have as much obviously Buffy dialogue as SMG has Faith dialogue. The only time I felt like Eliza really wasn't Buffy was when she threatens to kill one of the Council's goons. I think Eliza rocks Buffy's conversation with Giles, giving especially the “What’s a stevedore?” line a perfect SMG-style delivery.

Ah, the "Passage to the Nether Realm" spell (snigger!), also known as the big flaming O. (OK, but why a "flaming" O? There isn’t any fire. I think it's more of a sparkly O.) I admit that when I first saw this episode I didn’t quite realize the sexual connotation of the spell. I remember thinking, "Huh. That spell is a lot of work. Look how sweaty they are." I was 16 and very naive. Now that I’m, um, more informed, I’m amazed that they got away with it, especially in combination with Faith's pretty sexually explicit conversation with Spike. The spell could have been really hokey, but Joss manages to make it sexy, even though both actors have all their clothes on and are only touching hands. Hmm, a metaphorical lesbian sex scene directed by a man that eroticizes hands? Not bad, Joss. You might even argue that because it's not a literal sex scene Joss could actually show more, i.e. Willow "comes" in a more graphic way than I usually see on network TV.

Though "This Year's Girl" and Angel episodes "Five by Five" and "Sanctuary" don't quite measure up to "Who Are You?" I like Faith's post-coma arc because it leads to the Faith of "Orpheus," the Faith who is trying to make amends. Also, her reappearance in season seven of Buffy was a small bit of happiness in an incredibly boring season.

See, Amber, you claim that you're not looking down Alyson's dress, but if you're not staring at her boobs then what are you looking at?

Buffy was all about the season finales with its season premieres often turning out a little lackluster. Not so in the case of "When She Was Bad," which is not only far from lackluster but is one of the best episodes of the series, in my opinion, and one of my favorites.

Season one was...cute. Forgive me my condescension, but "cute" is the best adjective I can muster. Had I watched the original broadcast of Buffy I'm fairly certain that I might have caught some of the episodes, but I would not have been inspired to fandom. The first season feels like auditions for the rest of the series or maybe like a really long pilot presentation. Visually, the show needs the season to find its rhythm, and Sarah Michelle Gellar seems to need time settling into her role. Watching "Welcome to the Hellmouth" in retrospect, SMG's dramatic abilities are evident, but she doesn't seem quite comfortable with all of the comedic demands of the script. In other words, SMG does well telling Giles to prepare her but doesn't manage to sell me a copy of The Watchtower.

All of this is to say that for me Buffy finally arrives, if you will, with season two, and "When She Was Bad" really kicks it up a notch. I can almost hear the "BAM!" as the opening credits begin to roll. The episode showcases Buffy's new look, which frankly suits her better, and cockier attitude that first surfaced during "Prophecy Girl." The stuntwork is also noticeably more intricate and intense, with a good couple of minutes devoted solely to showcasing how bad-ass Buffy is. I always enjoy gratuitous displays of Slayer strength. This episode is also the first of the series that really deals with inner demons more than actual ones. For the most part, season one is more about camp, monsters, and witty repartee rather than complex emotions and relationships until the very end of the season takes a turn for the serious. This episode lets viewers know that "Prophecy Girl" was not a fluke. I think it was pretty brave of Whedon & Co. to make their heroine act like a total bitca for an episode and not give her an easy out like being possessed by a hyena. I also love that the writers found a very simple way for Buffy to destroy Angel, Xander, and Willow in one fell swoop.

Side note: Admittedly, I think that Buffy acts like a bitca later in the series – indeed for the bulk of season seven – but the difference between that later peevishness and this episode is that the writers admit that she's being mean. I feel like Buffy often gets a pass on bad behavior later in the series just because she's the Slayer. Buffy's indifferent and abrupt attitude in "When She Was Bad" has a definite though not immediately apparent cause and remedy, which makes it interesting rather than tiring.

I'm not sure I completely buy Cordelia feeling any compulsion to offer Buffy advice about her campaigning for Bitch of the Year, but I do really like that scene. "Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it." Also, Charisma Carpenter sounds like she has a cold in this episode.

Though perhaps not the coolest musical guest (cough, Aimee Mann, cough), Cibo Matto's music is used to the greatest effect of all the guest performers. The sexy beats, eerie backing vocals, and cryptic lyrics of "Sugar Water" perfectly fit Buffy's "sexy dance" with Xander. Cibo Matto also gets the best name drop ever: "Cibo Matto can clog dance?"

Angel's lines sound like they were cribbed from a Firefly protoscript ("And that bothers me more than I'd like." "Why are you ridin' me?" "Happy to oblige.") and David Boreanaz delivers them like he's auditioning for Mal. Can you imagine if Captain Forehead had been Captain Tightpants?

The only part that I do not like is the after-school special music of wholesome reconciliation that plays when Xander and Willow let Buffy know that she's off the hook at the end of the episode. But Xander looks so cute when he's teasing Buffy about grinding her enemy into talcum powder with a sledgehammer.

Ahh! Look at teeny tiny Danny Strong on the end there. He's so little!

But Ganya or death, baby!

I wonder if that's Alyson Hannigan's stand-in on the far right there. She's really pretty.

Or perhaps the better question is what was the rationale behind Nick Brendon's striped pants? And why is Alyson Hannigan shoved into the background in almost all of the photos?

All of them are trying for the mysterious, sexy pout that American mags seem to like, but none of them are entirely succeeding.

With the sign in the background declaring who rocks harder.

No, no, I'm kidding. I have nothing against Iyari Limon just...you know, Willow's other girlfriend. Yuck. I don't even like to say her name.