S3E6: Band Candy – Ripper's Cigarette, Chic Joyce, and the Handcuffs Buffy Wishes She Never Saw

<p>Jarrod opens with a confession about a Great Pyrenees named Sebastian who once ate fifty caramel chocolate bars meant for a school fundraiser, which is exactly the right doorway into &quot;Band Candy&quot; — the Jane Espenson episode where Ethan Rayne&#39;s cursed chocolate turns every adult in Sunnydale into a reckless teenager. Alan and Jarrod trace the whole delicious mess: Snyder&#39;s forced candy sale, Giles pulling first a number-two pencil and later a cigarette from behind his ear with matching panache, and the gradual slide as Giles becomes leather-jacketed Ripper and Joyce becomes a bubble-gum-snapping, boot-wearing kid trying to be as cool as he is. They dig into the subtext running under the comedy, that everyone in Buffy&#39;s life has been quietly accusing her of dodging responsibility right before every adult abdicates theirs, and they praise the two performances carrying it: Armin Shimerman playing Snyder as the eternal nerd who finally thinks he&#39;s cool, and Kristine Sutherland letting Joyce become a full, flirty, insecure human being for the first time. Buffy, meanwhile, becomes the only grown-up in town, right up to the mortifying moment she catches her mother and her Watcher making out on a police car — and the handcuffs from Joyce&#39;s purse she begs to never hear about. Along the way: a genuinely fun tangent on Krazy Kat and George Herriman&#39;s shifting love triangle, Trick joining Team Mayor and snapping a worker&#39;s neck to make a point, a giant snake demon named Lurconis fed on stolen babies, and a closing philosophical run on what kind of universe Buffy is building — original goodness versus original violence, why the mythology gets clearer over on Angel, and what it means that a vampire is scared of the Mayor. It ends the way it began, on a fake-out: Buffy sounds like she&#39;s mourning the battle, but she&#39;s really just talking about the math section of the SATs.</p><p>#WhoWatchesTheRewatchers #BuffyRewatch #BandCandy #BuffyS3E6 #BtVSSeason3 #BuffyPodcast #EthanRayne #RipperGiles #JoyceSummers #PrincipalSnyder #MayorWilkins #MrTrick #JaneEspenson #ArminShimerman #KristineSutherland #Lurconis #KrazyKat #TheBronze #GoodVsEvil #SATs #SunnydaleHigh #JossWhedon #ScoobyGang</p>