Buffy! - When She Was Bad

Mark here... we are on to Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer!  For this show and season we've decided to challenge ourselves and have a "bloodless" theme for all our recipes. With that in mind, I've made us an appetizer of celery sticks and a cream cheese dip, as well as a mushroom risotto dinner.

So as I "nerdsplained" to Laurel, Buffy seasons tend to follow an arc with the beginning episodes being seemingly one-offs, peppered with some hints of a larger plot, leading up to a major episode mid-season that catapults things towards a final confrontation with a Big Bad.  This episode, as the premiere, was sort of a catch up for anyone who hadn't seen season one.  Season 1's Big Bad was the Master and this episode, "When She Was Bad", shows the gang meeting up after summer vacation.  Buffy is still traumatized by her confrontation with the Master last season.  This leads to some unrealistic bitchiness towards everyone around her as she takes out her anxiety on everyone.  The plot is basically Buffy trying to prevent the resurrection of the Master.  It's a fairly plain episode with some fun scares but nothing too special.  There are some funny lines though.  In the end, Buffy prevents the Master's return and smashes his bones (I think because he was such an old vampire, he had bones - go figure) and then makes up with the gang.

Laurel here...Yeah Buffy is a real bitch in this episode!  I thought that there was going to be some larger reason (like secretly someone was going to kill them all if she didn't get them to hate her)
 but it turns out she was just traumatized by her run-ins with the master.  Also she kept having dreams about him coming back to life and haunting her, which turned out to be relevant because a bunch of vampires were trying to resurrect him.  Mark also nerdsplained to me that it's a slayer thing for dreams to be relevant, although it's not always clear exactly what they mean until it happens.

So side note...I bet we probably talked about this first season, but can we just re-visit how giant Buffy's stunt woman is?  She is way bigger than Buffy (not hard to do I'm sure), wears a terrible wig, and looks to be mid to late 30s.  I get it if they can't do anything about her age or size, there's probably not that many lady stuntwomen out there...but can't they at least get her a decent wig?

My favorite quote this episode was when Buffy is reading the random note from the vampires (they had kidnapped Cordelia) that says "Come to the Bronze (the night club/cafe where all the kids hang out) or we will make a meal of her."  To which Xander responds "They're going to cook her dinner?!?"  Oh Xander.

Mark here...we've decided to start rating our impression of each episode this season, using a "stake" rating system, 1 to 5 stakes (5 being the best). I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere else, so while the graphics are ours, I can't say the idea is.  If someone complains, we may have to replace it with a plastic fangs rating system! But with that in mind we'd give this episode 3 stakes.  Not bad, but not great.