Summary
Ripper and Ethan? We’re here for it. Buffy as a baroness? Not so much. Cory and Laine tend to agree on a lot of points, but ultimately our ratings end up being the furthest apart they’ve ever been! What side do you come down on?
Thanks for listening to our discussion on Season 2, Episode 6: Halloween
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Music
Music for this episode is “Digging a Grave,” by Shadows from the Underground, and is used under license from Magnatune.
Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast 
It’s really interesting to hear about the writer being fired. It could possibly be for the reasons you speculate, Cory, or something else that pushed up against Joss’s personal understanding of Xander or other characters. They used the episode, so I can’t think of a straightforward reason why they would dismiss the writer immediately after.
That said, as you both noted, the gender dynamics in this episode w/r/t Buffy and Angel were pretty egregiously terrible. This is something I notice at different spots throughout the show, and I hate it. Young girls are not idiots just because they’re not Buffy or Willow specifically. They are not idiots for caring about what people think of them or for wanting to be popular and not having the burden of saving the world. Women in 1775 cared about the (varied, because they were actual people and not a hive mind) things they did often because it would help them survive in society where their rights were curtailed. Angel’s rant about the women he grew up with was so ridiculous. It also implies Angel was some kind of prize of a human, somehow above the women he was around, and we know he wasn’t.
And Buffy’s turning into the woman from the past only fed into that because it was such a caricature. Doesn’t feminism have to do with women being people, or something?
Things I liked from the episode: Willow and Buffy’s interactions when trying to get the watcher diary. I know it’s silly, but I love it. Also everything with Giles and Ethan, and that one scene where Willow surprises Giles and his index cards go flying.
I like Laine’s comment about Willow being the leader and being confident, and I much prefer that to the idea that her confidence in this episode is somehow tied to showing more skin.
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