80: BTVS S5E1 “Buffy vs Dracula”

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[00:00:58] Do you know why you cannot resist? Do you know why you cannot resist? Because you're famous? Because you do not want to. My friends are here. They will not find us. We are alone. There is so much I have to teach you. Your history, your power, what your body is capable of.

[00:01:36] I don't need to know. I don't need to know. You long to. And you will have eternity to discover yourself.

[00:02:07] Hello, Scoobies. Welcome to Still Slaying, a Buffyverse podcast. I'm Penny. And I'm Mark. For this episode, we're going to be discussing Season 5, Episode 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, titled Buffy vs. Dracula. Dracula or Dracula. I gotta get that right. By Marty Noxon and Rebecca Kirshner and directed by David Solomon.

[00:02:34] This episode originally aired on September 26, 2000 to an audience of 3.9 million households. And some of the translated alternative titles in other languages for this episode were The Vampire's Bite in Italian and simply Dracula in Japanese. Not too entertaining. So, welcome back, Mark, to Still Slaying.

[00:03:03] This is your second or third time on Still Slaying, I think? Third, I believe. Some of you might also know Mark from many, many other podcasts that he is on. He runs a network called Pirate Corps Entertainment. And two weeks ago, or no, last week, we had Becky on as a guest. And Becky is part of the Pirate Corps family. And what's on tonight is her podcast. Mark, how are things going over at Pirate Corps? Pretty fun.

[00:03:32] We wrapped up a bunch of stuff. Still stuff in the fire to do. We finished up Daredevil Born Again. We just released Punisher's One Last Kill for Panels to Pixels podcast. Adrenaline Cinema podcast. We're revving up for the comeback of Vampire List Out, which is Interview with the Vampires Season 3. And we're looking forward to that.

[00:03:58] So, Lara and Billy with an IE actually did a little recap and pretty much promotion for that. They had a great discussion about that. We'll talk about that within this episode of Buffy too, by the way. Absolutely. And on top of that, I was doing Kaiju Cast, which is Monarch Season 3, Legacy of Monsters, with my friend Dimitri. And we were doing that.

[00:04:27] That was something I just launched. It was a collaborative podcast with Podcastica. So, if you guys need to go listen to it, go back, go to Podcastica or House Podcastica, listen to it there. Or just go search for Kaiju Cast Podcast and you'll be able to find it. I'm doing that a lot more. We'll put a link to Pirate Corps in the show notes so people can find you easily if they want to do that.

[00:04:52] I imagine there's a lot of overlap between Buffy fans and Interview with the Vampire fans. I'm assuming so because, obviously, it's all goth, all vampires. Yeah. And also camp. A lot of camp. Where were you in September of 2000, Mark, when this aired? September of 2000, I just had moved up to Dutchess County, New York with my family, my parents, and my sister for the first time.

[00:05:21] We all moved up here to be with family. And I was still keeping up with Buffy at that time, too. So, we just got a satellite in the house. That's where we were. It sucked. You couldn't get cable. But we were still able to get to WB and watch it. And I did watch it that night. It came on. So, thankfully, I got to watch it when it premiered that night. And the first thing I thought was, okay, what kind of Dracula are we going to get? Are we going to get, like, the Marvel Comics-style Dracula?

[00:05:51] Or are we going to get the Bram Stoker-style Dracula and it's going to be a little bit more dark? And I went in it with open mind and typical Buffy fashion. I enjoyed it because it kind of didn't make a mockery of it, but also was true to the Stoker idea of how Dracula is portrayed.

[00:06:19] They do mention Vlad the Impaler, too, within the episode, which I did enjoy because that is the legacy of where Stoker got Dracula form. So, I was looking forward to it because the last season ended off where they combined their powers to destroy Adam, as we all know. And you've already discussed this.

[00:06:44] And the group and Buffy at that point, where it's like their job was done. But the way we start off here was pretty much where we left off, but during the summer. It was like kind of their summer break. So, we get the harrowing issues of what happened from the ending of the previous season and then this starting off anew.

[00:07:13] And I really enjoyed that because it's like starting fresh almost again. It's like, oh, it's a new season, so we're going to start with a new story. Yeah. So, that's how it felt for me. Sometimes I miss the old network TV formula. You know, I watch a lot of what's called prestige TV.

[00:07:33] And those types of shows, you know, your House of the Dragon, your Rings of Power, your For All Mankind, tend to be incredibly serialized. And there's a lot of like big cliffhanger endings at the end of one season and then they pick right up with the action at the beginning of the next season.

[00:07:55] Whereas the network shows of the past tended to be very complete at the end of a season and then start fresh at the beginning of every season. And I like both styles and I like to mix which types of shows I watch and not always watch all the same kinds of things. And there is something nice about starting with almost a complete clean slate every season of like, you know, the same characters and the things that happened in the past happened.

[00:08:20] But you can kind of pick the show up brand new if you are a new watcher. Whereas like I would never say to someone like, oh, you want to watch Game of Thrones? Just start with season three. Like that's not, you have to start at the beginning with those kinds of shows. With Buffy, you could pick up in any season pretty much. And in fact, I did when I originally watched it. I didn't watch the first season until years later. I picked up in season two.

[00:08:50] Interesting. So, yeah, September 2000, I was in law school, my third year of law school. I was living in the West Village or no, the East Village. And I was super busy, but I always made time for Buffy. And my roommate at the time was also a Buffy fan. So it became a little bit of a Tuesday night, like dinner, Buffy angel ritual for us, which was a nice little pattern.

[00:09:19] They were back to back from what I remember, too. They were literally, you had Buffy and then you had Angel come 9 p.m. And I think it was Buffy at 8 and then 9 was Angel. Yeah. And Angel was the like later, darker show, which is hilarious to think about now. That 9 was considered like late night or whatever. So let's go back to the fall of 2000 and see what was going on in the world.

[00:09:51] The number one song in the U.S. was music by Madonna at that time. And the number one song in the U.K. Against All Odds by Mariah Carey featuring Westlife. Best-selling books, The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy, which is fiction. And I never read it. Me either.

[00:10:18] Plus Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose, I believe. And that's a nonfiction title. The U.S. Box Office. One, The Watcher 2. Oh, The Watcher. Sorry. Number one was The Watcher. Number two was Nurse Betty. And then three, Bring It On, which I'm a fan of, which is so funny, too.

[00:10:48] Because my niece, Allison Kirkman, actually was a cheerleader. And I kept referencing that. She goes, how do you know that movie? Well, Eliza Dushku is in it. And I had to go watch it because of that. And you had another vampire affiliate, Kirsten Dunst, who was in what? The original interview with the vampire. So I had to watch it. Buffy alums were in that movie, too, on the cheer squad.

[00:11:18] I saw Bring It On in the theater. I remember distinctly going with a group of friends to see it. And them being like, I can't believe we're seeing a cheerleading movie. And me being like, this is the most excited I've been for a movie in a really long time. We covered Bring It On on this podcast in, I cannot tell you what episode number, but I'm sure it would not be hard to find it. So if you want to listen to that, please go back.

[00:11:43] Nurse Betty, I'm surprised it was number two at the box office because I often feel like I'm the only person who has seen that movie. Like whenever I bring it up, people are like, I've never even heard of that. And I think it's brilliant and highly underrated. Yeah, it's an odd movie. Yeah, it's a weird one. It's what I would consider black comedy. And Renee Zellweger, Greg Kinnear, I don't remember who else. It's just, it's brilliant.

[00:12:13] Look it up. It's great. In the news that week, on September 25th, American basketball player Vince Carter stole the ball and jumped over seven foot two inch Frederick Weiss at the 2000 Summer Olympics, known in France to this day as Le Dunk de la Mort, the dunk of death. Very appropriate for a vampire podcast. On the 26th, anti-globalization protests in Prague involving approximately 20,000 protesters turned violent during the IMF and World Bank summits.

[00:12:43] Oh yeah, there was a lot of World Bank and IMF protesting going on in the late 90s, early 2000s. On the 27th, corruption charges against our good friend Netanyahu, at the time he was the former Israeli prime minister, were formally dropped as the Israeli attorney general stated he had no grounds to prosecute.

[00:13:04] And on September 28th, 2000, the FDA announced the acceptance of marketing of new drug. Wow, that's a word and a half. Milfopristone. Milfopristone. Yeah. Oh, Milfopristone. All right. That would be some weird name at the time if you know the acronym that a lot of men use for stupid things regarding older women.

[00:13:35] Are you 40, uh, 46, uh, a prescription drug that was the first alternative to surgical abortion approved in the U.S.? Hmm. In the news a lot lately because they are trying to outlaw it at the moment. Correct. Yeah, which stinks. Uh, it's taking away women's rights, which I do not like.

[00:13:59] Uh, on September 30th, 2000, at least 12 Palestinians were killed and hundreds were more, more were wounded on the third day of fighting set off by the visit of a right-wing Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon, to a mosque in Jerusalem's old city, uh, during the incident known as the second, uh, intifada. Intifada.

[00:14:28] I think I could say it in Tifada. Okay. Yeah. It's amazing to me how it's been 26 years and all of this news is still incredibly relevant to what's going on today in the world. Still goes on. Except maybe the basketball player jumping over a seven foot person. That's not necessarily relevant at the moment. Still cool, but not super relevant.

[00:14:56] So let's get into our main discussion. And I think we should start with just talking about Dracula. Dracula. The myth, the legend, the history. I did a quick search on IMDB for other depictions of Dracula in movies and TV, and it came up with 45 titles that had Dracula in the title. Oh, just that alone. I was like, okay, there's, this is a huge history.

[00:15:24] That's way too much for me to like, no, everything about it. But my personal sort of favorite Dracula movie is the 1992 Gary Oldman Dracula with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. I know a lot of people make fun of, make fun of the acting in that movie, Winona and Keanu specifically. But I saw it in the theater. I loved it. I still love it. I think it holds up.

[00:15:51] I think it's a great version of the Dracula myth. How about you? Do you have a favorite Dracula? Dracula? I'm torn. There are so many out there. You have Hammer films. You have the original Bela Lugosi, which I did cover on Adrenaline Cinema. We did another version that just came out not too long ago, within the past year, year and a half. There was two, actually two versions that came out at the same time.

[00:16:17] And both were titled Nosferatu, which basically is the Stoker story, but different because when it was originally filmed, the original Nosferatu was literally a work of fiction. And it was copyright laws back then because Stoker's estate was going to try to sue and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm full between. I love the Gary Oldman one, just like you feel. I had seen it in the theaters.

[00:16:46] It was something I was looking for, but a lot of people felt that Keanu Reeves' performance was terrible. But yes, the overdramatic acting was necessary. You know, you had so many people in there that were famous. You had Gary Oldman. You had Keanu Reeves. You had Winona Ryder, who at that time was the biggest thing at the time in Hollywood with her name, you know, because of Heathers and everything else that she's done before.

[00:17:17] Then you've got Mr. Silence of the Lambs himself. Oh, that's right. I forgot. Was he Helsing? Van Helsing? Yes, he was Van Helsing. Anthony Hopkins was in it as well. And another one from... Terry Elwes was in it as well. He just makes an appearance as well. So I loved it. There was a bunch of other people I know that loved it.

[00:17:47] They put it on a high tier of Dracula. I'm always torn between because I did cover the Lugosi and that was the first rendition of the name Dracula of movies. And then there are others, Peter Cushing's version and Hammer films. It's hard, but I usually have to go with the Gary Oldman and the Bella Lugosi one as tied for first. Yeah, they're great. I love this depiction of Dracula as well.

[00:18:14] I think it fits really nicely into the Buffy universe that he is a little younger looking. He is kind of sexy, but also like a little campy and ridiculous. There's something like wonderful about that. At one point, Buffy says that he's been Euro trashed. And that reminded me of when Euro trash was a thing that people said. That it doesn't seem to be part of like common vernacular anymore.

[00:18:43] But around the late 90s and early 2000s, Euro trash was a description that we all used for certain people. And it just referred to this sort of... It was slightly before metrosexual became a thing.

[00:18:57] Euro trash was this descriptor for a group of people who were sort of, I don't know, a little bit pretentiously over European, usually well-dressed, clubber type people who were sort of faux sophisticated. It's not a very nice thing to say about a person. It's derogatory.

[00:19:24] Hearing it 25, 26 years later, it's just funny now. It's a funny word, but it is derogatory. But it's kind of the hipster way of somebody regarding somebody and people like me, a Gen Xer, who... I didn't even know what a hipster was until somebody mentioned it to me. And I was like, well, okay, I call them drippy hippies. But it's kind of the trend or the popular of what it is.

[00:19:53] And honestly, they're just being who they are. In my opinion. But yeah, it was definitely derogatory in a sense. Euro trash. But it kind of came out funny within the episode itself and the way that Buffy describes how she took care of him. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:11] And in very typical Buffyverse fashion, they approach Dracula in this meta way where they fully acknowledge that there have been Dracula movies and that he's a legend. And in fact, when Buffy first meets him, she's like, are you sure? Because, you know, I've met a lot of pimply vampires who call themselves Lestat.

[00:20:35] Like, the constant pop culture references are part of what made Buffy at the time such a groundbreaking show. Because it was so fun to recognize them and partake in them. And, you know, if you're going to have Dracula in a TV show, you either have to go fully grounded, like approach it like he's never been depicted before, like it's a new story and be serious. Or you got to go full camp.

[00:21:04] There's really no middle ground. And Buffy, of course, always, when in doubt, goes camp. And I am really a fan of camp, as everybody who listens to this podcast knows. Well, the show is grounded in camp. Yeah. Yeah, it plays with it. It constantly dances on this line between ridiculous and serious, which I think is an art form.

[00:21:30] Mark alluded to this earlier, but the Nosferatu original movie was meant to be, when they first started developing it, a Dracula movie. But they couldn't get the rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula from his widow. And so they just basically came up with a different name and wrote the same story. They called him Count Orlok or Morlok, something like that. Morlok. Yeah.

[00:21:55] And created Nosferatu, which was a groundbreaking German expressionist film and did very well and has gone on to be quite famous and a cult classic and was recently remade with Willem Dafoe. What I did like about the episode, too, is if you notice, too, they do make mention of Xander referencing Frankenstein, too. Yeah. Mind you, what did we have the year before, the season before? Who were we dealing with? Oh, the Frankenstein monster, Adam. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:22:25] Very much a Frankenstein reference. That's true. I didn't put that together, but that's really funny. Yeah. So when Buffy first meets Dracula, they have this great moment, and I'll play the clip. Very impressive, Hunt. Such power. That was no Hunt. That was just another day on the job. Care to step up for some overtime? We're not going to fight.

[00:22:54] Do you know what a Slayer is? Do you? Who are you? I apologize. I assumed you knew. I'm Dracula. Get out. Just waiting for that line. Get out.

[00:23:19] I enjoy that get out so much because people don't say that anymore, but it's so funny. Yeah. And, you know, it leads really well into, like, later when they're at Giles' apartment talking about Dracula, the, like, fanning that they all have about him. Right? They're like, he was sexy, and he did hypnoize, and he was, you know, he turned into a bat. How could he do that? That's so cool. Like, how could you not?

[00:23:47] Even if your whole life surrounds hating vampires, killing vampires, hunting vampires, slaying vampires, like, a famous vampire is still a celebrity. And in Buffy's world, there aren't a lot of those. Like, there's basically her and Dracula. Who else is there? I guess Angel is a little bit of a vampire celebrity in that universe. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:10] Well, Angel, in a sense, like, well, for the people in the know, not to the general populace, I would say. Yeah. Exactly. But, yeah, Dracula is famous outside of the Slayer, like, circle. And I would have been excited to meet him, too. And then, you know, we get all the great Dracula mainstays, right? He disappears into a mist. He turns into a bat.

[00:24:36] That it's implied that he turns into that wolf, although they don't actually show it. It's either he controls the wolf or he is the wolf. Unclear. He's able to hypnotize Xander in, like, one second. Oh, he's weak at mine. Yeah. I have a question.

[00:24:57] So, throughout the episode, a couple of different times, he says things to Buffy that are reminiscent of or direct quotes from the first Slayer from Restless. Like, he says, you don't know who you are, what's to come.

[00:25:17] And the first time I watched the episode, I thought that meant that this question, who you are, what's to come, was like an intrinsic question in the universe of vampires about Buffy and that he knew something deep and important about her. He certainly implies that he's like, do you know what a Slayer is? Like, all that stuff. Yes. But now, I think it's because he has really basic mind-reading abilities and he just picks up on what's on the surface of Buffy's mind.

[00:25:47] And when he says that, it's because she was thinking about it. And that he's just very good at presenting himself as deep and knowledgeable, but he's actually not. It's like what Spike says. It's just a bunch of showy gypsy tricks. Again, I have to feel the need to say the word gypsy is not okay. Like, we all recognize that they should not be calling people that, but putting that aside because it's an old show.

[00:26:17] Yes. There is also, the way he brings about Buffy is very interesting because literally if you look and dissect the episode as anybody like us would, is we see this as Buffy as being very vulnerable. She, it's the first time we've seen her vulnerable in a long time.

[00:26:44] And we're at the very end of the last season where the combination of power, the Scooby gang and everything else, she's at a vulnerable point. In the very beginning, we see her getting out of bed from Riley in the middle of the night just to go on patrolling. It's a dire need within her, the darkness that Dracula actually explains.

[00:27:07] And then kind of wraps up at the very end of the episode too with Giles and his way because throughout the episode, Giles is prepping to leave to go back to England, thinking and stating to Willow that she has not made a lodger before her. But through this episode was a whole vulnerability of her reassessing herself after the last, you know,

[00:27:32] the season ender of last year or the year before and how she perceives herself. All her self-doubt within the episode is what is being revolved around. That's why she is able to be manipulated. That's why, well, Xander is just a given. But the thing is, is that Dracula feeds on that. Plus there's the insecurities of not just her, but of Riley with her and her relationship with Riley at this point.

[00:28:01] And then everybody else within the group. She battled that. She harnessed the power of everything and there's a bit of uncertainty within her. So she's doubting herself, but the instinct to patrol and hunt from the original Slayer that was embodied into her to some degree, along with everybody else, kind of put questions in her. Am I still worthy?

[00:28:29] Am I still viable to this role as Slayer? Or, which she is, but she still wants to be. And it's always been a thing of Buffy. It's like, I don't want to be the Slayer, but I want to do the girly things. I want to be a regular person at times, but I know I have this deep, dark, you know, responsibility in the world to get rid of vampires or the evil at hand.

[00:28:56] And highlight this in the, in the opening scene at the beach where Buffy is frolicking in the waves with her boyfriend, having a good time, just being exactly who you think a 18 or 19 year old teenage girl should be. Right. She's having fun with her friends. They're throwing a football around. She throws like a girl, whatever.

[00:29:19] And then the use of magic or maybe it wasn't Willow. Maybe it was because Dracula has arrived in town, brings this storm, like a very dramatic storm and darkness. And it's just a reminder that no matter how much Buffy wants to be a regular girl frolicking in the sunlight, that darkness is always right under the surface. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:48] And it was a cute moments in it, you know, Xander and his ability to light the fire, of course, typically showing his inability of being the wacky person he is. And it doesn't have the culinary finesse of a caveman. Yeah. This episode had some absolutely fantastic Xander humor. This was a super highlight for Nicholas Brendan's comedic talents. Yes. I liked the little comment that Buffy mentions in it. And Willow says, Willow, check you out. Which foo? Yeah.

[00:30:18] Which foo? That beach outing looked really fun. I was like, I want to go hang out at the beach with the Scoobies. Like, that seems like a really nice time. That's so Cal. It's Cal. That's Southern California. It's best. I've been there a bunch of times. And it's nice to go to those beaches. Somebody who came from New York. I live in New York. I lived in New York City for the first 28 years of my life. And you had to be aware at the beach.

[00:30:47] Because syringes, glass. Yeah. Some people will look at it and be like, what's wrong? Are you looking for jellyfish? Because that's the only thing bad out here. I was like, no, I'm looking for it. Oh, no. There's nothing like that here. Yeah. Clean beaches are a luxury in certain places in the U.S. I also like that the beach scene really nicely set up that Tara, Anya, and Riley are fully integrated in the gang now. Yes.

[00:31:17] Like, they clearly all hang out as a group often. And they're all really comfortable with each other. Which is, you know, clearly time has passed since the end of season four. And these relationships have progressed. Like, Buffy and Riley are sleeping together in Buffy's house with her mother. Like, that's totally fine. And, you know, Anya and Tara are completely comfortable with the group. You notice Tara's not stuttering anymore. Yes.

[00:31:44] Like, she's really comfortable in her own skin. And they're all just bantering around. It's lovely. It's a nice way to start the season. It's like, this is where we are. We pick up with our heroes and everything's, they're happy. And things are going well. And even Buffy's, like, midnight hunt is very efficient. She goes out. She runs. She catches a vampire. She stakes him. She goes back to bed. And she's smiling. And she's happy.

[00:32:14] And she's cuddled up with Riley. And it's like, when we pick back up with our heroes at the beginning of season five, like, this is where we are. Like, everything is smooth. It's a lot like the episode of Angel we covered last week, where we pick up with our heroes. And they're this, like, well-oiled machine, happy in their teamwork. And the same with Buffy's group. They're like, everybody's good. We're all happy. I love that it's summer, though.

[00:32:40] And, like, in almost every scene, Buffy's wearing, like, leather pants and sometimes also a leather jacket. I'm like, I'm sorry. But summer in Southern California is hot. Yes. I know she's a superhero and all. But, like, that would be a sweaty disaster. Yes. Putting that aside. But I'm very susceptible to heat stroke. So, for me, when I see somebody dressed in overly warm clothes, it's like a neon sign. I'm like, oh, no.

[00:33:10] They're going to overheat. But anyway. So, Buffy meets Dracula when she's just having a regular patrol in the graveyard. And I love that then Willow and Xander just, like, dorkily, with no caution whatsoever, so confident, strolling through the graveyard to meet up with Buffy. Xander's got an iced something that he's drinking. And they're so casual about it. And she's like, I'm pretty sure that's Dracula.

[00:33:40] Here, I have a clip from it. Nice. Look who's got a bad case of dark prince envy. I have no interest in you. Leave us. No, we're not going to leave you. And where'd you get that accent? Sesame Street? One, two, three. Three victims. Xander. I'm pretty sure that's Dracula. Hey, sorry, man.

[00:34:09] I was just joking around. This is not the time. I will see you soon. I love the bat. The bat is so funny. Yeah, it's so funny, though. I just love how it's like the references of everything.

[00:34:39] You know, it's like you get the Dracula from Sesame Street that Xander drops on. I love that. That's like, like you said, Nicholas Brandon, like hit it with his comedic styles within this, with his certain moments. There are moments that make it perfectly when he plays the Renfield to Dracula points. And like with the bug eating and master. And then he kind of corrects himself when they were trying to organize getting the information for us. Oh, wait. I have it. I have it.

[00:35:10] Well, I think we have Dracula factoids. Lucky that's enough to fight the dark master. Bader. And then again. He just kind of looked right through you. Didn't you feel it, Buffy? No. No, I didn't. See? Buffy didn't feel it. I think you're drawing a lot of crazy conclusions about the unholy prince. Bader.

[00:35:42] That master. Bader joke is a very favorite one among Buffy fans. It comes up all the time. People joke about it constantly. And I think it is so funny and it doesn't work unless you're really watching the episode. Like it doesn't make sense why he would do that. But in the episode, of course, he says master and they all look at him like, what are you talking about? And he corrects with Bader.

[00:36:09] And then again, with Dark Prince, Bader is so funny. I don't know who thought of that, but it is so funny to add Bader to Dark Prince. It's like, that doesn't work, but okay, Xander. They got a real comedic screenwriter at that point. The funny and interesting, it's more interesting than it is funny. The two people that are succumbing to Dracula's thrall or his influence.

[00:36:38] The two people are Buffy and Xander at this point. And those two are the prime people that they have to deal with. The only other person that got enthralled with something was Giles at the very end with the three sisters. And he just did not want to stop. Yeah. He's like, no, no, I'm fine. I have to go back in front of my shoe. I love that. And then when Riley's like, at least you weren't making time with the Dracu babes, like Giles here.

[00:37:07] And Giles is like, oh, he's so embarrassed. But also Joyce. Joyce falls for Dracula and invites him over for coffee, leading to this hilarious scene. He seemed so nice and normal. A little pale. A good Sunnydale rule of thumb. Avoid white-skinned men in capes. I'm not like this. I don't invite strange men over for coffee. It's just... When you girls are older, you'll understand. It's hard to date.

[00:37:36] Sometimes you just feel like giving up on men altogether. I know that that joke is played for the fact that Tara and Willow are a gay couple, right? Like, they clearly have given up on men altogether or are not interested in men. And Joyce doesn't know about it. That was the one thing. But she does find out, I believe, in a couple of episodes or something, something comes up and then she puts two and two together, Joyce. Which is so pretty cool.

[00:38:06] You know, I don't know if your listeners are following this for the first time or watching it for the 17th time. But, you know, we eventually do get that come out. But I'm sure Joyce in the time later on goes, oh, I feel so bad about saying that in front of the girls. That was dumb.

[00:38:28] I have never identified more with Joyce in my life because my trials and tribulations of dating have been well documented on this podcast before. But I have at times given a chance to a man who was probably outwardly as ridiculous a choice as Dracula would have been. Like, just because I've been like, I don't know, maybe this guy? Like, whatever.

[00:38:55] And then been like, whoops, I invited a vampire into my life. It happens. Dating is hard. I just, I don't know, I love Joyce. I love any moment that we get to spend time with Joyce. I also, you know, I always look at the fashion on the show and was reminded that they love to dress Joyce in these, like, muted, soft pastels and knits.

[00:39:20] To contrast her with the harshness and sort of clear, strong colors. There's, Buffy often wears a lot of, like, more brights or darks. Whereas, and she wears, like, she wears, there's at least two pairs of leather pants in this episode. The red ones and the iconic pink ones. God, I love those pink leather pants. But Buffy's clothes are younger, but they're also edgier.

[00:39:48] And Joyce's clothes are always very, like, soft and tailored. There's often, like, round collars and knits and things that just in general. And Joyce's hair is very soft, right? It's like these bouncy, soft sort of shapeless curls that just depicts everything about Joyce as, like, this place of nurturing, soft, mature, womanly, motherly. But also, like, there's a classiness to her.

[00:40:18] She's very beautiful, but, like, in an unassuming way. It's, I think the costume design on this show in general is really fantastic at aligning costumes with characters. They've got, Willow and Tara are always wearing something with, like, a little bit of sparkly. There's always embroidery or these broomstick skirts. There's always, like, elements of, like, leaves or flowers or stars or moons that remind you constantly that they're magical.

[00:40:46] And then Xander, in the opening scene, the first Dracula scene, Xander in that Hawaiian shirt is just the most Xander outfit in the whole world. For him to be wandering around in a Hawaiian shirt is just, like, it's just perfect Xander. And that shirt had sparkles, too, which I thought was fantastic. Also, this season five. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:09] No, I was going to say, with Xander, with Nicholas Brennan, that comes from a movie that he had done, Beach Party Massacre. Oh, yeah. And he wore a lot of that at that time. So it's kind of a good reference to that. I also love how, at one point, we see Buffy get bit by Dracula. Of course, we will go into that a little bit more.

[00:41:35] But she covers it with a scarf, which comes, what, two years before she takes up another character in a movie that has a Scooby gang. That's true. She wears the Daphne scarf. Yep. So that's a good point of reference. It's like a foreshadowing of her career, of what's going to happen to her in the movies. Season five, Buffy, is also the absolute peak of Sarah Michelle Gellar's hair.

[00:42:04] She has the bounciest, goldenest, like, gentle waves hair. Like, her hair in season four was also excellent. But, like, in season five, she really does constantly look like a shampoo commercial. And I tried so hard in the early 2000s to have that hair. I do not naturally have that hair.

[00:42:30] I had to go through many, many hours in a salon chair to get that hair that would last for about three hours. And then it would be over. But it's definitely aspirational, beautiful hair. Around, about a year later was when Legally Blonde came out.

[00:42:47] And I remember seeing a featurette about how long it took them to figure out the exact precise shade of blonde for Reese Witherspoon's hair in the movie that was, like, the most aspirational, perfect blonde hair. And I remember thinking at the time, like, you just, like, look at Sarah Michelle Gellar. That's perfect. It's like California blonde, like, excellent hair. Like, it's just, like, the most beautiful version of blonde hair I've ever seen.

[00:43:18] I, obviously, I have hair envy. I think. I mean, Sarah Michelle Gellar is an absolutely beautiful woman. But one of her great beauties is definitely that bouncy gold hair that she has. I agree. Actually, it's pretty funny at one point when I had super long hair and it went past my shoulders back in the early 90s. And Penny's thinking I've never seen Mark with hair. Yeah. I'm bald. But I shaved my head purposely because you start losing it after a certain age.

[00:43:46] But I think at, like, 21, 22, when I was playing in heavy metal bands back in the day, my hair was nice and had that. Because I had very blonde hair. It was sandy blonde. And it had that bounce at times. It was great for onstage and looking that great. But, you know, I definitely have envy on that for any woman or male. Man, I could do that. And she definitely had it at that time.

[00:44:10] And I think I would attribute this to her with the height of Buffy at that point where they were utilizing her and she was in magazines. So I'm sure the hairstylists on the set were like, we got to make her glorified like she is in the magazines. Because I believe at this time it was like back then they were doing an article, whether it be an interview on TV or ET at that time or even in the magazines.

[00:44:38] Because I remember reading, like, interviews with her in early days when Buffy first started and how she got her start. She was everywhere. Where Buffy was, even though, like, at 3.9 million in 2026, that is huge ratings for a TV show. In the early 2000s, that was WB ratings. Good ratings on the WB. But if she had been on, like, NBC, ABC, CBS, that would have been middle, like, poor ratings.

[00:45:06] But in the pop culture zeitgeist, the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sarah Michelle Gellar were very popular in, like, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Magazine. And all these pop culture outlets, like you're saying, Entertainment Tonight. And she was everywhere. And I mean, I loved it at the time.

[00:45:32] I loved that, like, the thing I loved was also, like, every time I looked at a newsstand, there it was. Like, it was either her or Allison Hannigan or David Boreanaz, like, on the cover of something. And it felt good to be like, my favorite thing is other people's favorite thing. But, yeah, season five, I think, in a lot of ways is the best Buffy season. There are arguments to be made for season two and season three as well. But for me, it's my favorite.

[00:46:02] It has some of my all-time favorite episodes. But I also think it is when the show is at its peak of chugging along on all the different levels. The acting is great. The writing is great. The costumes look great. The sets look great. The action is great. There's some great episodes. The overarching, like, story that we're going to get by the end of the season is great. Like, it all works really well. Yeah. Yeah. And the episode ends off with a twist of, we don't know. Oh, big twist at the end.

[00:46:31] And it's something that catapults. And it kind of changes the timeline. If you think about it. It changes the whole trajectory of the show. We'll talk more about that at the end when we get into spoilers in The Watcher's Diaries. It's funny. We were talking about this earlier. But, like, season openers are just different now. It's just you couldn't have had, like, a mostly standalone episode with just little hints about the coming season on most shows these days.

[00:46:59] Because, you know, this was a 22-episode season. So you had time to have these, like, sort of standalone episodes or experimental episodes or silly episodes. When you have a six, eight episode season, it's plot, plot, plot, plot, plot. You don't have time to have diversions. You don't have time to do, like, silly side quests.

[00:47:19] And as much as I love the current era we're in of prestige TV with these, like, tightly scripted, like, high-level shows with high concept and intricate plots, I do kind of miss being able to have silly diversions, like a one-off where Buffy fights Dracula. Like, that's just silly. Yeah. Like, the X-Files used to do that just the same. Just the same way.

[00:47:43] Yeah, just, like, silly extra episodes that had no bearing on the overall plot but, like, just fun. Supernatural is another one. They had a lot of one-off episodes that are just classic. So Dracula's big thing, the whole reason he's in Sunnydale, he's heard of Buffy and he wants to turn her. He wants Buffy, he wants to seduce Buffy and he wants to turn her into a vampire.

[00:48:12] And the route he's taking is you have a darkness in you that nobody else can understand. And these are themes that we have seen a lot in Buffy, especially in season four.

[00:48:26] So the episode Fear itself, which is a classic for a lot of reasons, when Buffy's in that haunted house, the haunted frat house, and she's separated from the Scoobies, the thing that the evil is taunting her with is you're alone, you'll always be alone. And this comes up time and time again, that the Slayer, like, at the very end of season two when she's fighting Angelus and he's like, no friends, no weapons, what's left? And she's like, me.

[00:48:54] Buffy is that Buffy feels utterly alone sometimes as the Slayer. As much as she has and leans on Giles and her friends and her mother and different boyfriends over the years, at the end of the day, she is the Slayer and she's the only one.

[00:49:16] And one of the reasons that Faith's betrayal hurts her so badly is because for once she thought she found somebody else who she could actually really share that with and who would be able to understand what it's like to be a Slayer. And I think that for a short time, they did have that for each other. And then, of course, Faith becomes evil and all that stuff happens. And the loneliness that Buffy feels comes up over and over again in this show.

[00:49:45] It's an ongoing theme. We've seen it before and we will see it again in the future. And then this theme of, like, your power comes from darkness. The Slayer power comes from darkness. And also, you don't fully understand it is the two things that Dracula is preying on with her. And they're very effective ways to get into Buffy's head because they are true.

[00:50:09] And a lot of times when somebody is being tempted with darkness or preyed on by an experienced predator, that person is very good at sussing out your vulnerabilities. And we talked about this in K-pop Demon Hunters, that shame is the window that Guima uses to get into people and turn them evil.

[00:50:35] And for Buffy, it's this, I don't fully understand where my power comes from and I'm a little bit afraid of it. And I'm alone in it. Is a portal that somebody like Dracula can use to get in there. Now, of course, at the end of the day, Buffy rejects it and she wins. But there is a little bit of time in this episode where you're like, oh, no, Buffy's fallen for this guy.

[00:50:58] And he is clearly evil, but, like, also kind of making a good point that, like, she needs somebody to help guide her to understand her own power better. It's a really subtle and interesting problem that she faces. Like, she is alone and not alone. And she is darkness but also lightness. I think it's what makes the character so enduring is that she's not all one thing or another thing.

[00:51:27] She's a combination of things that shouldn't work together like caramel and salt. But they do work together. Yeah, she's very similar to what Marvel Comics came out with years ago back in the 70s called Blade. Yeah. And we talked about Blade a couple weeks ago. And there are a lot of similarities between Buffy and Blade. This, like, darkness and also desire to do good that their power comes from the thing that they hate and that they want to kill.

[00:51:57] It's really, it's an interesting similarity. Yeah. Man, I gotta say, revisiting Blade for the podcast, I was really surprised by how well that movie holds up. I did not expect it to be as good as it was. The effects from the original Blade itself weren't that great towards the end, but they were at the beginning of... But they did what they had to, but the story itself holds up.

[00:52:23] And the acting in it and how they were able to portray a lot of the now. Like I said, to me, honestly, it was the effects that really didn't age well. Yeah, the effects are pretty dated. It was the thing to go to. The thing to go to back then and still is one of those. That's where Marvel was able to finally do a Marvel film at one point. And I talk about that a lot. Before that, all we had was Howard the Duck in the major theater.

[00:52:52] I saw Howard the Duck right when it came out. I saw it in the theater. And it's not great. It's not a great movie. No, it's not. But over the years, I have come to appreciate it more. I think that whoever was behind it didn't fully understand that character. That was George Lucas. Oh, well. No, it's just not a great movie.

[00:53:22] I do hope they bring him back. I enjoyed when the character shows up in the What If animated series. And I was thrilled. I was like, yeah, this is a good use of Howard the Duck. I don't think he should have his own movie. But having him as like a minor side character in other Marvel movies. Like, yes, please. He was a minor part in other Guardians of the Galaxy, a couple others. He makes a few moments at the very end. Seth Green voices him for those moments.

[00:53:52] He is being seen. And you have to really look for it, everybody. He is in Endgame at the final battle. Oh, he is? And I've seen Endgame like seven times. I've got to now look for that. You've got to really, really look for it. And people running and everything. And you'll see him with a big gun or something. Or running with everybody else. He's one of those side characters. Very much with what... Marvel used to do at one point. But we got a really cool special.

[00:54:21] Which had one of my favorite dark characters. For that, you know, since we're in a Buffyverse kind of story. And we talk about werewolves, vampires, whatnot. We did get werewolf by night. We got Swamp Thing. Not Swamp Thing. That's a DC character. Sorry, Mark. Mark, you're doing it wrong. You're getting it backwards. Your dyslexia is there. Man Thing. Man Thing shows up. And I've been waiting and wanting Man Thing for years.

[00:54:51] And we get that out of that. So those are side characters that we do get. Just like what we get out of Buffy with the crew and eventually become... Like the Scooby game became part of the story at certain points. That's how Marvel's been doing with their side certain characters. Kind of like with Punisher. Punisher became a standalone for Netflix.

[00:55:15] And then eventually became part of the Defenders and the... What would I say? Yeah, the regular Daredevil part of the series. So, you know, these characters that are minor, which would be the Scooby game, became major players and part of the whole gang, as it were. So, Marvel's getting there slowly, but they have like...

[00:55:41] You know, you don't want over 100 people in one movie that you have to concentrate on. Otherwise, you're going to be distracted. I know. It's going to be hard to watch Doomsday when it comes out. There's like so many people in Doomsday. Oh, yes. I'm looking forward to it, but... I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also like, is it going to be just like a parade? Like, look at all the heroes. We'll see. Endgame got a little bit like that at the end, but it worked. Endgame worked really well when it kind of shouldn't have. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:56:10] So, I do think that side characters... This is such a tangent, but we love tangents on this podcast. I do think that there's a lot of side characters in the Buffyverse that with the right writer could be their own main character. I mean, there's... Oh, like Jonathan. Yeah. Or like Willow could have a whole... Like, you could follow Willow and go down a whole witchy storyline and it'd be really entertaining and fun.

[00:56:37] Like, I feel like if they brought Willow back and made a Willow series, people would watch it. Oh. Oh, I think so, too. Or a one-off between... And because people, a lot of people miss, and it's Amber Benson who plays Tara, they could do a whole side portion of, like, a different story arc on a different season. But unfortunately, they're a lot older. They would have to de-age them to do that. But I'm sure they'd be willing to do that.

[00:57:06] I always wanted a Watchers Council spinoff. Same here. I thought that would have been really great. Or to see the origins of Giles when he came in. And after he got into the dirty, dirty of Black Magic and going into the Watchers. Oh, yeah. Ripper Giles. Ripper Giles back then. That would have been fun to watch. Yeah. There's so many avenues where spinoffs could go. And the comics have done a lot of exploring in that area. Yes. Or where...

[00:57:36] What about Cordy? You know, Cordy could... Oh, yeah. Because she was prevalent in Buffyverse before she went to going to Angel. But where's that story arc of her when she leaves Sunnydale to go to California? And what were her experiences in between then? I'm sure she encountered vamps or whatever within the California Hollywood spotlight area before she met Angel at that... What was it?

[00:58:05] A dinner function or a bar? Some party. Yeah. Yeah, it was a party that they went to. A Hollywood party. So, I said this earlier, but this is an absolutely fantastic episode for Xander. He gets to really showcase his comedic talents so well. And I thought I would just play this. Okay. Let's do it.

[00:58:34] No poofing. Come on, puffy shirt. Pucker on up because you can kiss your pale last good... Yes, master. No, that's not... You will be my emissary. My eyes and ears in daylight. Your emissary. Serve me well. You will be rewarded. I will make you an immortal. A child of darkness that feeds on life itself.

[00:59:04] On blood. Blood. Yes, yes. I will serve you your excellent spookiness. Or master. I'll just stick with master. You are strange and off-putting. Go now. But master, how can I find... Brilliant. What an exit. Guy's a genius. Yes. He he he. He he. He he.

[00:59:34] He he. The giggles, man. That is so clever and funny of a performance from Nicholas Brendan. I... I cannot get enough of... When he's funny, he's so funny. When... Yeah. When Xander is being... Possessive of the women on the show, I can't stand him. But when he is allowed to be this person, he's delightful. And it... Yeah. It kind of makes you forgive him for the bad behavior.

[01:00:03] Because he's so funny when he's funny. It's when he gets objectifying of the women. It really bothers me at times. And when he just becomes goofy upon himself. And sometimes making fun of himself at times. In this episode, we did get more between his jealousy. And there was jealousy between Riley and Buffy. Oh, yeah. To Buffy regarding Dracula. And then there was another one with Anya and...

[01:00:32] And with Xander at one point when they're walking back. And him prying going, oh, she goes, well, we hung out a few times. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, he goes, well, just open your blouse a little bit to show your cleavage. And it attracted him. And it was that one moment. And there's this one line. It's like, because it establishes more of their relationship, too. Where they were going to go... He goes, oh, I thought you were going to come to my place.

[01:00:59] She goes, it's White's night or whatever. And she goes, you know how the bleach makes me nauseous? And he goes, well, I guess Dracula is more... Of a dark guy. Darksman, yeah. Yeah, Darksman. Yeah, the jealousy...

[01:01:20] In that particular conversation, his jealousy of her fangirling over Dracula didn't annoy me too much. Because she was being kind of like, oh, that was also a little... Like, I would have been annoyed in his place. But Riley... Riley's ongoing insecurity about his relationship with Buffy... Yes. You know, it was a lot in season four. We talked about it a lot in season four.

[01:01:50] And it was annoying. And in my head, I remembered that it mostly went away in season five. But I'm wrong. It doesn't. No. It's still there. It's big. It's huge still. And he takes this huge thing that's happening. Dracula's in town. And he has managed to bite Buffy. And he makes it about himself. He's like, oh, I guess I shouldn't take it personally. It's like, dude.

[01:02:18] Dude, get over yourself for a second. And then also, when she's... Buffy is like, we're not going to fight Dracula until we have more information. And Riley's like, yes, I am. Like, he just... He cannot stand being the sidekick. He wants to be the boyfriend that saves the day. And he wants to show his macho bravado in it. And it's a downfall for the character.

[01:02:46] Because the character was somebody who lifted Buffy up when she needed it. To make her feel like a pretty girl that wants to do all those pretty girl things. And being admired for her. But the stigma of her being a slayer is still prevalent into his insecurities. Right. He's jealous. And him losing all the power as super soldier boy. And now he can't... Yeah.

[01:03:16] And he's like, it's all his insecurities. Like, I want to be there fighting alongside of her like we did at one point where it worked. Now I can't do that anymore. I feel stripped. I feel my manhood was stripped away from me in front of her. Yeah. And it's echoed a little bit with Giles being like, Buffy doesn't need me anymore. So I'm just going to leave? Like... Yes. He... And he's keeping it a secret. That is baby behavior. I'm sorry.

[01:03:41] That is pouting like man baby behavior to be like, Buffy doesn't rely on me like she used to. I'm going to leave, but I'm not going to tell anyone until the last minute. Like, I... And then he tells you... And he changes... He changes his mind though at the very end because she comes to him. Because she does still need him. And she basically tells him, and you can see it on his face going, I made the wrong decision in doing this. I can't leave her.

[01:04:08] And it's kind of that parental feeling that he has towards her where he has to still be there. Because she has mentioned it before, calling him father, calling him dad points in the show in the past seasons. And she... And the father-daughter relationship is not subtle. No. Not at all. Remember when Professor Walsh was like, I think she lacks a strong male role model. And Giles is like, you did not say that to me. He's intimidated by that.

[01:04:38] And yeah, exactly. He was like, you're... Wow. You're challenging my presence in her life. And you don't know who I am. At that time, she didn't know who he was though. No at all. And he's like, she called me an absent male role model. And as a viewer, I was like, no, she didn't. But he sees it through the lens of his own... I mean, we're all human. We all have... His own insecurity. Yeah. We all have insecurities. But I mean, I'm glad Giles isn't leaving.

[01:05:06] But I'm frustrated that he was even thinking about it without talking to Buffy about it first. Like, that seems really childish to me. And I expect more from him because he is a grown-up. It was like him running away from the situation. I like when the show does this where they give us different versions of the same emotion in the different characters.

[01:05:31] So Riley is jealous not just of Buffy having a connection with Dracula, but also of Buffy being powerful. He's jealous of that. Giles is feeling pushed aside and irrelevant. And that's a little bit like jealousy. And then Xander is like a little jealous of Anya being all like goo-goo-ga-ga over Dracula. And it's just like different versions on the same spectrum of insecurity and feeling undervalued.

[01:05:59] It's what all of them are feeling is undervalued. And I think it's a very human emotion. And it's interesting to see how it plays out in different personalities and different relationships. Xander's influence of what Dracula had done to him refers to getting funny syphilis, which occurred in the episode Pangs. And I decided to refuse to be everybody's monkey. And he kind of referenced that again over. It's like, nope, nope, no more butt monkey.

[01:06:25] I never get tired of the quippy way that the lines are delivered. In addition to them being like witty, funny references to things and callbacks to earlier episodes of the show, the banter between the characters is really fun. So I'm just going to play this. Where is he? Where's the creep that turned me into a spider-eating man bitch? He's gone. Damn it. You know what? I'm sick of this crap.

[01:06:54] I'm sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm finished being everybody's butt monkey. Oh, I didn't clip the part where Buffy goes, check, no more butt monkey. Which I just think is really adorable and hilarious. Xander, like I keep saying it, it's just a great episode for him. He's so funny in this episode. There's a lot of funny quips. There's also this one.

[01:07:24] How do you like my darkness now? Buffy. You okay? Yeah. Chock full of free will. And Dracula? You're all trashed. Chock full of free will is really great.

[01:07:53] I have said that and I don't think I knew where it came from. Like I've described myself as chock full of free will at different times. And then when I was watching the episode, I was like, oh, that's where I got that. And then I was like, of course, that's where I got that. Because I'm like a Buffy super fan and I've watched the show like a million times. It happens to me a lot where I'm watching the show and I realize like, oh, yeah, I picked up that phrase and used it. Oh, yep. I've used that phrase before.

[01:08:19] It's amazing how influential the show is and how beautifully delivered some of the silly dialogue is. It's really stellar. It's fantastic. The one thing we didn't tap upon, you mentioned it shortly and it's about Spike. And Spike still has a little bit of a jealousy about it. But I love how he has that conversation with Riley when Riley wants to go after him. Yeah.

[01:08:43] And it's a little bit of a challenging point between Riley and Spike because Riley is like, I could take you out. Blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh, I wouldn't wait for it. But Spike's attitude about Dracula, you mentioned it before how it's like, oh, it's a bunch of whatever magic. And he goes, he ruined it for the rest of us. They know how. That mirror trick, everything. He goes, the bugger owes me 11 pounds for one thing.

[01:09:14] It's just like, it's like, and he goes, oh, and he thinks it's because they were rivals. And he's like, he's back in Sunnydale because of him. It's like typical Spike of like, oh, it's about me. And then it's not. Riley has to break it down. It's like, no, I see it from Buffy. It's not you. Yeah. I think it's, we were talking about people feeling pushed aside or undervalued.

[01:09:38] And in a way, Spike is the same because after losing his powers because of the chip or losing his ability to hunt because of the chip. And he's sort of sidelined from the vampire universe. And he is feeling useless and pointless at a lot of points. And he still has plenty of bravado, but there's some insecurity under there. And he's like, yay, I'm relevant again. Dracula's in town for me. And it's just very disappointing that he's not.

[01:10:07] We don't get more of Spike in this episode. And I, you know, I always want more Spike than we get. Like, just bring on the Spike. Way more Spike. Always want more Spike. Like, there's two important scenes that happen at the end. In one of them, Buffy goes to Giles and reveals to him that she has been hunting at night, not just patrolling, and that she's scared of it.

[01:10:36] You haven't been my watcher for a while. I haven't been training. And I haven't really needed to come to you for help. I agree. And then this whole thing with Dracula. It made me face up to some stuff.

[01:11:03] Ever since we did that spell where we called on the first slayer, I've been going out a lot. Every night. Patrolling? Hunting. That's what Dracula called it. And he was right. He understood my power better than I do. He saw darkness in it.

[01:11:35] I need to know more. About where I come from. About the other slayers. I mean, maybe, maybe if I can learn to control this thing, I could be stronger. I could be better. But I'm scared. I know it's gonna be hard. And I can't do it without you. I need your help.

[01:12:08] I need you to be my watcher again. The look on Giles' face is so, he's so moved and touched and relieved by this admission from Buffy that he is still useful to her in some way. It's amazing to me that he ever thought he wasn't. Like, even though she hadn't been training or whatever. Like, they still have all the Scooby meetings at his house. They still rely on him for knowledge and wisdom.

[01:12:36] And even though she doesn't come to him the same way she used to, like, it wasn't that long ago that he was completely integral to the Adam solution. Like, I don't know. But I am glad that they had this conversation and that he is staying in Sunnydale and that Buffy came to this realization that she needed to not deal with this on her own. And I think it's very easy to paste that onto the real world.

[01:13:03] And it's when people realize they need to start therapy. And they're like, oh, I've been just trying to deal with this on my own. And, like, I've been coping with it, with, like, self-medicating. Like, the hunting is basically the equivalent of, like, a person with depression and anxiety, like, drinking too much. And being like, you know, that's not actually a great way to solve this darkness inside me. Maybe I need to get counsel from somebody who has training and wisdom.

[01:13:32] And so Buffy is essentially starting therapy with Giles in a metaphoric manner. And I approve. I think it's great. And, you know, in the Buffyverse, there's going to be violence and weapons. But, like, it's therapy. And then, of course, we get the big stinger at the end. Now, if you have not watched the show before, we don't want to spoil it for you.

[01:13:58] Although there is a discussion going on right now amongst the people who do this podcast about whether or not we should keep trying to put spoilers in the Watcher's Diary section. So we'll talk about that in the Watcher's Diary section. And we'll talk about that in the Watcher section. But just for now, Mark, do you remember what you thought the first time you saw this scene? Buffy? If you're going out, why don't you take your sister?

[01:14:29] Do you remember what it was like? I remember, I was like, wait, where did this come from? There was never any reference towards a sister. You never saw the sister throughout all the seasons. You always saw anything that referred to the father. It was always Buffy and her father at times. How vague that was. But I'm like, why would they omit a sister and bring this into it all the time? Where did this happen?

[01:14:58] When did this come into play? And then the first thing I thought is like, after it had ended, and I did because I had Tevo at the time, I did a rewatch. And I'm like, and I'm thinking to myself, so you're talking, this is 2000. So there's no Google to the point where you can Google this and discuss this unless you're on AOL Instant Messenger at that time, which I had a bunch of friends on. And there were a few people, I think an ex-girlfriend.

[01:15:27] And I, at the time, were still talking together because she got into the show because of me and started watching. And that was like her whole thing was a Buffy. And she goes, well, where did this come from? I said, I don't know. This is a whole new show. This is a whole new world. They might be giving us, I don't know. It could be a dream. It could be a dream sequence. It could be an alternate reality. Who knows? And then that's how I was. I was trying to figure it out.

[01:15:56] I was like, where do you look to find this? Fans were angry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember people being like, do they expect us to forget that she never had a sister before this? And I was just like, did they just cousin Oliver us? Like, what is happening? The show didn't need a new character. Why would they bring a sister out of nowhere?

[01:16:23] I do remember thinking, wow, that new actor sure looks like she could really be Buffy's sister. Like, from a casting only perspective, I was like, dead on. Yeah. Like, that is, that girl looks a lot like both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Christine Sutherland. Like, excellent casting. But yeah, I was like, are we supposed to believe she's been living with the dad this whole time? Like.

[01:16:54] Yeah, it was confusing. It was so strange at the time. And I remember going, where did this come from? Yeah. What? Yeah. What? Um, we will definitely talk more about that in Watchers Diaries. Um, one other thing I just wanted to mention, new season, new credits. But the opening credits have a lot of the best scenes from season four mixed in with the imagery.

[01:17:20] And Mark Blukas is part of the named cast in the opening credits, full-time member of the cast now. So, you know, uh, that's exciting. I don't know. Just that he's there. It's cool. Expanding the show a little bit. Um, and that's it. That's what I got. How about you? Not much more for me. I think I've gone through all my notes. And I've references. Oh, awesome.

[01:17:44] Well, with that, I think it is time for us to get into some pop culture references. Mark, want to read our first one there? Just Call Me the Computer Whisperer. So this is a reference to the novel The Horse Whisperer by the first-time novelist Nicholas Evans. And it was turned into a somewhat successful film by Robert Redford in 1998.

[01:18:08] The title refers to a method of breaking horses by being gentle and listening to their body language. That movie made me cry, like, an embarrassing amount. Hmm. Uh, Xander says, after meeting Dracula, and where'd you get that accent? Sesame Street?

[01:18:28] Sesame Street is an incredibly successful children's television show famous for such things as teaching children to count with the character of Count von Count, a Dracula-esque Muppet with a Romanian accent. And I would add a pathological need to count things. Yes. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Next up, Puffy. And you're sure this isn't just some fanboy thing?

[01:18:57] Because I fought more than a pimply overweight vamp that called them. Um, so, Lestat. So, Lestat is the good-looking, charismatic main character of Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. The first book of the series, Interview with a Vampire, was made into a movie in 1994 with a blonde Tom Cruise as the vampire Lestat. And Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dahnstein. Yeah.

[01:19:25] And it is now a very successful and excellent television show on the AMC network, which we talked about earlier. Uh, Xander says, I wonder if he knows Frankenstein. Frankenstein, or more correctly, Frankenstein's monster, is another classic monster. Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1797 to 1851 and published in 1818, is about a brilliant scientist named Victor Frankenstein who builds a man from scratch and brings it to life.

[01:19:54] And if you have not seen the Guillermo del Toro interpretation of the Frankenstein story that was out last year, I highly recommend it. It is an excellent version of this classic novel. I also recommend just reading the novel. It's great. And it's not long. It's a short read. It's a really fast read. Yeah. Yeah, it's like about 100 and whatever change pages.

[01:20:17] Actually, we, I did cover that on Adrenaline Cinema podcast and, uh, we kind of dissected it a lot too. Um, there's the actor, uh, something Lord is from Euphoria is in it, plays the monster. Yeah, Jacob Elordi, yeah. Yeah, Jacob Elordi. There you go there. And Oscar Isaac as, uh, Frankenstein. It's great. It got a lot of love at the Oscars and it deserved it.

[01:20:46] Yeah, there was moments in it that I really, really do enjoy. The rest of it, as in comparison to the Shelley novel, is kind of skeptical, but, you know, it's, it's different than the De Niro version that, uh, we all know. Kenneth Brown and I had done years ago, which I was a huge fan of. Yeah. Okay. Continuing on.

[01:21:07] Buffy says the title killer sounds like she paints, uh, clowns, a reference to the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, known as the killer clown who took the hobby of painting clowns during his time in prison. Yeah. As if clowns weren't creepy enough. Yes.

[01:21:26] The episode includes many aspects from the mythology featured in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, such as Dracula traveling in a casket full of soil, his shape-shifting and hypnotic abilities. Xander eating insects, similarly to Dracula's servant Renfield and the three brides of Dracula. Yeah. And of course, as Spike says, he has to have his lovely soil to sleep in. Yeah. Special dirt, huh?

[01:21:54] Um, moving on to a little bit of trivia. All right. In Australia, the episode was shown as the season four finale cliffhanger. Viewers had to wait three months to find out who the new sister was. Oh, that would have been diabolical. Yeah. That's interesting because they're the way they break up seasons, I guess it's different in certain areas of the world.

[01:22:20] And this is probably something out of what the WDB had done at that time. Yeah. Yeah. They are different. That is diabolical at that point because it's, you know, because even as I watch it on my Apple TV or if I throw in a Blu-ray or something, it's still season four, season five, episode one. Yeah. Yeah. To wait three months after that would have been brutal.

[01:22:49] And that was before you could like VPN into Netflix in another country and get stuff that wasn't available. Dracula trying to convince Buffy in this exchange was cut from the episode due to length. He said, I know intimately what it is to be different, human, but not quite, of the world, but still an outsider. You see, we understand each other. Both of us are born of darkness, masters in the art of death. And Buffy says, no, hold it. Enough with the darkness.

[01:23:18] I'm born of joy, pal. That's cool. I'm sure there's a deleted scene in the Blu-ray and the DVD box sets, everybody. So those are things that are available that if you are a true Buffy fan, you will actually have those. I still have my Buffy box sets, oddly enough. I have, yeah, I have all the DVDs. Although I lent season one and two to someone I have no idea who, and I don't have them anymore.

[01:23:47] So I'll have to repurchase those, I guess. You should be able to find them. You're going to have to find them used online through Amazon or something, unfortunately. Or you splurge for the Blu-ray box set. The writers originally intended Buffy to defeat Dracula in this way. Buffy arms herself with a lit torch when Giles and Riley burst into the room. Dracula sends Buffy one final look full of pain and fury. What a shame.

[01:24:17] You would have been a great, you know. And he jumps out of the window, changes himself into a wolf, and lopes into the dark woods? Or leaps into the dark woods, I would say. I'm glad that they did it the way they did. Because the whole thing where she stakes him and then he reconstitutes and she's like, I'm standing right here, is so funny. I've seen all your movies. Three times. He does it three times.

[01:24:47] And it's kind of the Paul Rubin scene in the movie where he goes, And he comes back. Oh, very kind of reference to that and how goofy and corny the show can be at times. But it's got that same element of like, okay. But from my understanding, what I do remember of the series, because I haven't done my rewatch of the whole series yet again, I don't think this is the last we've seen of Mr. Dracula. Yeah.

[01:25:16] So the vampire who was going to show Buffy a darker side of herself was originally envisioned as just another vampire who happened to ride a horse and was all cool. This was said by writer Marty Noxon. And she kept saying, Dracula, Dracula. And JW was like, why not Dracula? Nobody owns Dracula anymore. He's in the public domain. And thus this great episode was born. Oh, and Emma Caulfield is added to the opening credits beginning with this episode as a regular.

[01:25:46] That's exciting because we love Anya. And our final piece of trivia is that Sarah Michelle Gellar's husband, Freddie Prince Jr., was originally going to play Dracula. And I'm kind of sad that that didn't happen. So it's time for me to ask you a very important question, Mark. Are you ready? Sure. Does it still slay? It still slays me in a sense that I love it for the fact of the comedic efforts from it,

[01:26:13] from Nicholas Brendan and the bunch of quips and having Dracula in there, because that was something that everybody always fantasized. It's like, oh, you got Buffy. Who's the most famous vampire out in the world? Who put vampires out on the map? Dracula. Obviously, this is something because you want to go back to it. But obviously, like you said, with how witty and comically they were able to do this with the character

[01:26:43] and not make him himself perfectly comical, but to utilize him in a serious fashion and everybody around him as being comical, like Xander and even Buffy herself with talking and regarding it, or how Giles is with the story plots of Dracula involved within it. I really did enjoy it. I still, it still holds up for me.

[01:27:08] For some though, a lot of the fans find this not so pleasant. I know, I don't really understand fans who don't like this episode. Again, I go back to the whole, there were 22 episodes in a season. Not every episode had to deliver important long-term plot points. And this one does because it introduces Buffy's new training regimen and Dawn.

[01:27:35] But I don't understand the hate for this episode. I think it's funny and light and a great season opener. I think introducing Dracula is great because there's got to be lots of people who are like, I wonder what would happen if Buffy fought Dracula. And it's well crafted. It's well acted. The timing, the jokes are good. Like, I don't understand the hate at all. I think it slays completely. Awesome. Yeah, I was wondering what you were thinking.

[01:28:05] It kind of falls on the same premise too. It's like, what would happen if Buffy met Blade? Because he's considered a vampire. There was always the joke, and if you ever see the memes, there's one of Blade going after the Twilight kid. Oh, that's funny. Same thing with Buffy. You know, with the crossbow, ready to shoot them and stuff like that. But, you know, I think a lot of the fans were not more.

[01:28:32] They were kind of feeling that they showed too much vulnerability within certain characters. Especially with Giles leaving. They were probably like, oh no, how could this happen? Oh no. The goofiness of the episode probably was, from what I heard, is like, oh, it just became too comedic in the middle of it. And, you know, why are there, it's all these jokes. And then, of course, that Ender, which was a... That's true. A lot of people hated that.

[01:29:01] They were like, it's jumping the shark. Later on, you'll find out as they continue the coverage of Buffy the Empire Slayer on this podcast, you'll find out why it was relevant. And yeah, where it's going to go. Where it's going to go. We have a little bit of news, and that is that Dynamite has announced an Angel comic series launching this August after the Buffy reboot was canceled.

[01:29:29] While the TV version of the cult vampire franchise is still in limbo following the cancellation of the Chloe Zhao-directed revival series titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer New Sunnydale, Dynamite Entertainment is expanding its comic adaptation to include an Angel series following its recent announcement of an upcoming Buffy sequel series. So back in April, Dynamite Entertainment announced a follow-up series chronicling Buffy's adventures beyond the original series finale in 2003.

[01:29:58] Through the medium of comic books, the new series Kelly Thompson and Stephen Byrne-led series is set to launch on July 27th. So basically, they originally had something that lasted. Actually, if you purchase the DVDs and Blu-rays, and even if you get it on Apple TV+, or Apple TV, or iTunes, as it were,

[01:30:23] they actually have the animated comic versions at the very end as a continuation, as a follow-up season. I remember when that happened, too, because I was going to the comic shop and I saw that. I had it in my hands. I didn't buy it. And then later on, they put it into a trade paperback. So if you can, go purchase that and go from there. This week, Dynamite confirmed a spin-off focus on Angel. And that's in the works after announcing the character,

[01:30:52] originally portrayed by David Boreanaz, would appear in Buffy's new comic book series or outing. So you're going to see more of Angel. That's pretty cool. That's going to be awesome. And with that, Mark, are you a little bit thirsty at all? Yeah. Head over to the bronze and have a Bloomin' Onion and some beer? Sure. Bronze things. Things of bronze.

[01:31:22] So we have a quick note from Kara, who is really sad that she couldn't be here to cover the episode, that her favorite quote in the episode is Dracula to Xander. You are strange and off-putting. Go now. This got quoted at my little brother for years after this episode aired. I may have to start that up again. That's cool. You are strange and off-putting. And this is from Becky. So such a great episode.

[01:31:51] Anya and Spike sharing their knowledge and encounters with Dracula. Crying emoji. Willow. Or laughing crying emoji, I should say. Willow and Tara's face when Joyce is talking about swearing off men altogether. Another laughing crying emoji face. Xander once again being used by a big bad of the episode. And man, did Nicholas Brendan nail it in all the scenes. Yes, I agree. Giles with the three sisters was great. And I love him trying to brush over it.

[01:32:20] And Riley called him out. I love it. Which is funny, too. I love Buffy standing on her own and not succumbing to the Dracula's charms. Quote unquote. And oh my god, the hilarity of him coming back after being staked. You think I haven't seen your movies? And I'm standing right here. So funny and classic Buffy Giles face when Buffy told him she still needs him.

[01:32:49] Little sad emoji on there. Lastly, hey, Dawn. Stuff is about to get so good. But P.S. Anyone else notice the sparkles on Xander's Hawaiian shirt? I love this. That's why he was saying. Yeah, well, maybe he was hanging out with one of the Twilight kids and it kind of rubbed off. And we heard from Piot. Not a voicemail this time. Piot, send us more voicemails.

[01:33:17] But he did say, you're a trash Dracula with a big laughing emoji. Great standalone episode. So keep the feedback coming, you guys. We really love it. And with that, that is the end of the main section of the podcast. Stay tuned for the Watchers Diaries at the end if you want to hear a little spoiler talk. If you'd like to join the conversation, you can find all our contact information at podcast.com. And in the show notes for each episode. Also at podcast.com.

[01:33:46] You'll find links to our social media pages and all our other shows. What have you been watching, reading, or listening to lately? I've been reading a lot of, actually, tech books, unfortunately. But lately, I've been watching The Boys. I'm going to do a follow-up with Panels to Pixels and cover that with Steve Brown.

[01:34:11] But we've also been doing, we're planning on this with our friend Dodie doing Good Omen. So I watched that recently. So that was another good watch. It was ending, a season three ending. It's kind of like a mini movie. So I got to watch that. Then there's Spider Noir that just came out on Amazon Prime or Prime Video, which I'm looking forward to. It's got Nicolas Cage in it.

[01:34:34] And a very interesting version of Spider-Man from, like, the 30s, which I really like. And anything else would be comic book related, actually. I just reread a lot of comics. I was watching Godzilla. I was reading Godzilla through trade paper. The fact that I got recently. Godzilla conquers the Marvel Universe. So that's pretty cool. We just finished season five of We, as if I was part of it.

[01:35:04] I just finished watching season five of For All Mankind. This is a show that I think is really underrated. It is so good. And they really nailed the landing on season five finale. I thought they did a great job. Also, Hacks just finished its series, the whole series. And that finale had me, like, laughing, crying, like, all the emotions. Really fantastically well-written and performed show. I highly recommend it if you are at all interested in stand-up comedy.

[01:35:33] It's really great. And I also just want to plug, again, Mark's whole collection of podcasts that he has over on Pirate Corps Entertainment. We will link in the show notes to Pirate Corps and the upcoming return of the Vampcast, which I think a lot of people will enjoy. And if you are liking what we're doing, we would love it if you would take a minute to give us a rating. Five stars is the best one.

[01:36:03] Please give us five stars. A review or at least like, follow, subscribe, share with your friends, whatever it is. And next time, we will be covering Angel Season 2, Episode 2, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? Thanks, everyone. And? I've lived in Sunnydale a couple of years now. Know what I've never noticed before? Uh, a castle? A big honking castle.

[01:36:34] It is kind of amazing that they didn't realize that was there. That's pretty funny. Yep. It's kind of a meta reference to the fact that we're always like, and Sunnydale has a college no one knew about before this? And Sunnydale has a different college that no one knew about before this? Like the way that Sunnydale expands and contracts for like whatever the purpose is of the story. All right, that is the end of the non-spoiler section. So if you want to avoid spoilers, you should stop listening right now.

[01:37:03] Okay, it's time for The Watcher's Diaries. It's too bad we can't sneak a look at The Watcher's Diaries and read up on Angel. I'm sure it's full of fun facts to know and tell. Yeah. It's too bad. That stuff is private. Also, Giles keeps them in his office in his personal files. Most importantly, it would be wrong. Let's talk about Dawn.

[01:37:32] So the introduction of Dawn in this tiny little end scene here where they beautifully show a long-term sister relationship in their response to Joyce, where they're like, Mom! Mom! In perfect unison with like their body language is the same. Their vocal inflection is the same. It is so fantastic. And it made it so hard to be like, where did Dawn come from out of nowhere?

[01:37:59] Because you were like, it seems like such a lived-in relationship immediately. It's beautiful. At first, when the scene starts, you think it's a break-in. Yeah. Like, what are you doing in here? It's like, who are you? Hey, who are you? What are you doing in here? And you're thinking, oh, it's a demon. Oh, it's this. And then you see a little girl at that point. And then Joyce's voice comes up. And it's like, wait, wait, what?

[01:38:29] Sister? What? Yeah. And Michelle Trachtenberg actually worked with Sarah Michelle Geller back in soap days. So they were very much aware of one another before she got this job, supposedly. And a year after Michelle's passing, which was last year, I knew somebody who was a producer that was friends with her.

[01:38:56] And it was such a sad moment because it was like two days or three days after they found out. And he goes, I just talked to her last week. And it was so sad. But the fact is, yes, way too young. And it shows right away the chemistry, too, with the way they reacted.

[01:39:19] It might have been just like a small scene and the way they look at each other and the way they voice it. So like, OK, it's right there. You already know. It's like, OK, this is a setup. But it's a setup for how long? A lot of fans at that point, speculation. I'm sure there were tons of back in the day when you had all those boards online where people could just post and then go back and post again.

[01:39:47] They were probably on those message boards that were available to everybody, probably for Buffy. People were angry. Yeah, they hated it. They're like, what is this? And they're like, oh, they'll fix it in another two episodes. And now it didn't get fixed. It became a staple, a long running staple after that. And I it's funny. At first I was skeptical. I was like, what are they doing? This is so weird. Like this came out of nowhere.

[01:40:15] But I have come to really love Dawn and the Dawn storyline. I mean, also it leads to Glory, who is my favorite Buffy villain ever. And I think that they did a lovely thing this season. And they talk about this in the DVD extras.

[01:40:34] That what they wanted to do was switch Buffy's primary love interest from being a romantic boyfriend type love interest to her sister. And that's why they also are going to write Riley off the show. Is to change the focus of Buffy from being about dating. And as a feminist, I love it when a female's female characters main storyline is not about her relationship to a romantic guy.

[01:41:04] Yeah. Yeah. A dude. Yeah. But as any romantic partner, honestly, it's there's a long, long, long, long, long tradition of narrative fiction written for women being about romance. And this idea that is very deep in our culture that women exist to pair bond and then have babies. And that is their entire reason for living in the world.

[01:41:27] And when fiction is all about a woman's romantic life, it just reinforces this message that that's the most important thing that women will ever want. And I see this all the time. We're back to the dating is hard theme that in men in the world who are like. Like men who will go up to a woman they don't even know and be like, you know, men don't like it when you have a pierced nose. And the women are like, who asked you?

[01:41:51] And this idea that like women exist in order to attract men and that that's their highest purpose. And that's the thing they're most focused on. Men being like, it's not attractive when you have a career that's more high powered than mine. And women being like, leave me alone. It's because our popular culture reinforces this idea that women will throw their career aside for a romantic relationship. Women want a man in their light, even if he sucks, that that's more important than being alone.

[01:42:21] And it was important to me when this came out. And I was at the beginning of my career. I was very focused on that. Also, I have a younger sister. And at the time, the summer after this season, she lived with me and we were super close. And her well-being and her future were super important to me.

[01:42:43] So this whole storyline meant so much to me that Buffy's focus in life stopped being about romance and even stopped being about her, like the outward success of her career. And started being about her fulfillment and her family and her female relationships. And I love it. And I am no longer having any patience for people who are like, the Dawn storyline is stupid. Because I think it was brilliant.

[01:43:14] I loved the Dawn story. The only issue I had, and I hate saying it, she was so whiny all the time. She was kind of whiny in the beginning. And the first season, it was all about and then the crying. And it took literally two seasons for her to come out of that to show strength and to challenge Buffy at one point. And that's what I really did like about Dawn at that point.

[01:43:41] It was like, you're no longer this thing anymore. Your mom is gone. And Buffy's focus is to be motherly to her, sisterly, and loving and caring for her and making sure she's doing well. Same thing with Willow at a point because the story shifts after that. Spoilerily. Willow goes tough on the deep end as well.

[01:44:11] And she has to prove that. But then, not only do you get the whole thing with, and I know you're focusing in on the whole, not a romantic, but a loving nature towards family and for other women and sisterhood, as I would like to call it. And coming together and then focus and not being, what do they call it? A Bechtel test?

[01:44:39] Oh yeah, the Bechtel test. Yeah. A Bechtel test. Best. And they had those moments later on after this between Willow and Tara and Nan, as well as with Dawn and Buffy and Joyce. So you've had those moments after this. So it didn't focus in around because once Riley was gone and before we get anything else later on with another fanged person,

[01:45:06] we do get all these moments where it is, but they also had it with Willow and Xander as a brother and sister thing. Yeah. And that's actually good and reflective because it wasn't more objectifying Willow or anything or Xander objectifying. It's like him showing loving and tenderness at a crucial point in the show. So I don't know who took it out of...

[01:45:34] It was like... J.W.'s ass took their foot and shoved it up there to make it work and write it right. But, you know, that's how he was at times when he wrote at certain points. He did that also in Firefly and a few others where it's like there's like a point of objectation. You know, there's certain shows and movies that he does come through. But it was just very trifle.

[01:46:02] The issues I have with him have never been about the quality of his writing. Right? No, no. The thing about J.W. that's so tragic is that he apparently treats people horribly on set. Because if he wasn't as talented of a writer, nobody would care that he's a jerk. They'd just be like, fine, don't work with him. He sucks. He sucks. The tragedy is that he's a good writer and people don't want to work with him because he's a jerk.

[01:46:29] And that's sad because we're not going to get another, probably for, I don't know, ever, another J.W. helmed project. And that's sad because he did put out some really interesting, good shows and movies. But, you know, he's a jerk. Again, if he wasn't talented, it would be like he's a jerk, write him off. But that's what's sad about it. It is sad. Yeah, that along with like Bryan Singer and a whole bunch of others that we liked back in the day. Yeah.

[01:46:57] I mean, again, same with like Harvey Weinstein, right? Like he's a horrible, reprehensible monster, right? But his production company put out some absolutely phenomenal films. And he wouldn't have, A, gotten away with his bad behavior as long as he did if his production company wasn't putting out great films, right? There's a lot of people who were willing to look the other way because their careers were being helped by him. But also like money people, power people are like, well, he's doing good work. I guess it's worth it.

[01:47:27] I don't think it is. But that is the way some people think. And again, if he wasn't good at his job, he wouldn't have been able to do what he did. And the same thing with Josh Whedon. He wouldn't have gotten away with abusing people if the material wasn't good. Sure. You know, there are lots of untalented people out there who are abusers who don't get away with it the same way or at the same level. Same Bill Cosby.

[01:47:51] It's because Bill Cosby was Bill Cosby that he was able to get away with the stuff he was getting away with and that people were willing to cover it up for him. Because he was also like, you know, the number one rated TV show in America for years and years and years. I think this season of Buffy might be one of my favorites because I think it is maybe the most feminist. Because we also get Glory as the villain who is this kick-ass, badass woman.

[01:48:17] And she's a bad guy, but she's an entertaining, powerful woman. Oh my God. She's so entertaining. So entertaining. The actress herself is amazing. It's beautiful. But I just love how they try to make her all girly girl. But in the same process, it would be so ugly to hear her talk.

[01:48:43] And the way she talks to her minions and anybody else. Or even like Don in her grasp. And then the alternative two to her is the brother. And how his fear of her or his pain of having to deal with her in that world. And how people kind of cater and love for him.

[01:49:12] It's like the complete opposites of whatever they could be. But they're the same, at certain points, same person. But it's so funny too. Because that's the other person we were talking about in the beginning who was in... What was it? She was in Bring It On. Right. Bring It On. Bring It On. Yep. Yep. It's the one that Spanx got stolen by the brother. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to Glory.

[01:49:41] I think we meet her around episode four maybe of this season. Next episode of Buffy is the one where they tease us about who Dawn is. Right? Yes. It's called The Real Me. And we don't learn the secret of who Dawn is for several episodes. Yes. We will get there. Almost half the season, I think. Yeah. It's a big mystery for a long time. And then they tease it out by when other people find out. Right? Like first Buffy knows and she tells Giles.

[01:50:10] And then eventually Joyce knows. And then later she tells like Willow and Xander and Anya and Tara. And then after that is when Dawn finds out. It's a long drawn out process of that secret being revealed. Yeah. And I am so ready for it. So excited about what's coming this season. Yep. My favorite episode of the entire series is in season five. It's called Checkpoint.

[01:50:40] And I can't wait to get to it. It's so good. So, so, so, so, so good. But there's other great episodes. And of course we have the very, very well-known, famous, critically acclaimed, lauded episode, The Body, coming in season five as well. Oh, I forgot. I gotta brace myself for that one. It's funny too because I think it's season six. But they, yeah, it's 24 episodes in a season.

[01:51:06] In comparison to short run shows now that are on Netflix, Amazon Prime and whatnot. And HBO Max sometimes. They're like, they kind of run through it. I forgot this was such a long thing. It was very well-received The Body. I remember that to me. It was a shocker. It was the only time you didn't have anything referenced to vampirism except for one scene. Yeah. They just throw it. Yeah.

[01:51:33] There's like a very poignant scene at the end. Throwaway scene. Yeah. It's, well, when we get to that episode, I'm going to need to be braced for that one. I'll have to bring tissues and all that other stuff so that I'm ready. Yeah. It's a hard one to watch, everybody. Yeah. All right. I think that is the complete end of our show. Thanks for listening, everybody. And until next time, I'm Penny. And I'm Mark.

[01:52:04] Keep playing.

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