Season 3, Episode 11

“Gingerbread”

This episode is a great combination and comparison of historical witch-hunts and modern bans on things that a group of people find “offensive”. While on patrol, Joyce surprises Buffy with a visit in order to have some mother- daughter bonding time. Seriously? In what world is that an appropriate thing to want to share with your daughter? Anyways, after Buffy stakes a vampire, Joyce stumbles upon the dead bodies of two children and has a very big sad. Police arrive and Buffy promises her mother that she will find out who did this and make it right.

At school Buffy and Giles are discussing the crime. Giles says that the symbol points to something involving the occult. Buffy mentions wanting to kill the humans that did this, so once again we see that the Slayer is not allowed to kill humans, but has the desire to.

Hilarity ensues when at lunch, Xander attempts to talk to Oz, but ends up being even more awkward. While at their table, nobody seems to notice how completely weird it is for Buffy’s mom to show up. Why is Joyce at Buffy's school during her lunch?!?! And why is no one pointing out how weird this is?!?! Everyone just says “Hey Mrs. Summers.” Even Buffy is all “Hey Mom.” I’d be yelling at my mom “Why are you here? OMG, did someone die? No? Then get out immediately!”

That night they hold a vigil at City Hall and things are definitely not awkward between Joyce and Giles, seeing how they can’t even make eye contact with each other. The Mayor gets up to make a speech, and am I crazy or does he seem very genuinely disturbed about these murders? No wait; apparently Joyce is the crazy one. In her speech, she talks about how the city needs to stop being silent and start protecting itself against the monsters, witches, and Slayers. Um…no to the last two points.

This got me wondering about whether Sunnydale would be a better town if more people were aware of the demons and vampires, so they could do more things to protect themselves. But I think it goes back to what Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black “The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!” I, personally, would be all for fighting demons and vampires on a daily basis, but most people would rather live in ignorance to the world around them just to go on with their normal lives. That goes for a lot more than just the supernatural things, but I digress.

Now we see- HOLY CRAP! Is that Willow performing Dark magic with Amy and Goth-boy?

Don’t worry, it’s actually just a protection spell. But this goes to another point that this episode makes: misconceptions. A lot of people in society, especially with high-schoolers have preconceived notions about what a person is like based on their looks or activities that they participate it. Just because someone is a witch, doesn’t mean they are practicing Dark magic. The same thing goes for if someone is a Muslim, that doesn’t mean he/she is a terrorist. And in this episode, Goth-boy gets picked on, but did you ever consider that by making fun of his differences you are in fact the one causing his dislike of societal “norms”?

Things are starting to get really bad now, with students lockers being opened and anything that could possibly be considered “occult” confiscated. Buffy runs to Giles as per usual and OMG THEY ARE TAKING THE BOOKS! She tries to talk to him about what’s going on, but Giles can't think straight Buffy, his books are being taken, do you not understand how upsetting that is?!?! Banning books makes me so angry that I can barely think of words to describe it. If you don't want your kid to read a book, DON'T LET THEM. Or how about doing the intelligent thing and actually let them read the book then have a discussion about it. Oh yeah, because people that ban books are idiots.

Later in the evening, through Willow's conversation with her mom and Buffy's conversation with Joyce, we see how instead of parents actually trying to parent their children, they seek to ban "offensive" material and anything else that they don't like. Buffy even makes a comment to Joyce about the "Approved Reading List." Do people not even know how a teenage brain works? Telling them not to read or do something is pretty much having the opposite affect anyway. I think Willow’s mom is the perfect example of what not to do as a parent. She talks about Willow as a “statistic” and instead of treating Willow as an individual, she seeks to classify her as an age group then deem what is and isn’t appropriate for her from there.

Side note: Instead of MOO, couldn’t you guys have just gone with MOTTO? Just sayin’.

Now Angel and Buffy have one of my favorite conversations between them because for once it isn’t about their relationship. It’s an honest conversation about why they do what they do. A lot of it is leading into the series Angel like when he says, "I do know it's important to keep fighting." You aren't going to win, but there are things worth fighting for. This whole thing reminds me of what Harry thinks at the end of Half-Blood Prince, "It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated…”

From a remark Angel made about the children’s parents, Buffy realizes that no one knows anything about the children themselves, just that they were found dead. She goes to tell Giles all of this, as always, and interrupts him yelling at the computer.

You will do what I tell you to do damnit!

After a little bit of research on the COMPUTER, turns out these children are Hansel and Gretel. They show up in a different town every 50 years to persuade a town to kill the “bad girls” aka “witches”. In reality, it’s actually a demon doing this so it can feed on the town going crazy with persecution and ignorance. This episode is just filled with good lessons! Don’t judge people on appearance, the importance of not being ignorant, don’t persecute people based on your own misconstrued notions, be a good parent, bullying is bad, fight evil, read books, and plenty of more. I was never a big fan of this episode until now when I looked deeper at it, which I guess proves exactly what this episode is out to tell us!

Everyone now has reached “ape shit” on the crazy scale. Willow’s mom and Joyce assist in the capture of their daughters in order for them to be BURNED AT THE STAKE. Along with them is also Amy, who is known to be a witch. Giles was also knocked unconscious and when Cordelia wakes him up, she utters her famous line, “I swear, one of these times, you're gonna wake up in a coma."

Oz and AX go to help rescue Willow, Buffy and Amy. They run into a few “witch-hunters”, where Oz says my favorite line of this show, “Just so we're clear, you guys know you're nuts, right?"

Inside, Joyce and Willow’s mom (I call her that because she’s honestly not important enough for me to learn her name) have the girls tied to stakes, surrounded by books, which they in turn set on fire. Is it bad that I'm more upset about the burning of the books than the burning of the “witches”? BTW, Dragula by Rob Zombie is playing in my head during this moment. So, Giles and Cordelia show up. Cordelia puts the fire out and Giles performs a spell that will reveal the demon’s true form. Giles speaks German very well, but whoever wrote it has a very limited grasp of the German language. I think they used Babelfish or something because the pronouns are all wrong, verbs are conjugated wrong, and… you probably don’t care about all of this. But I speak German so I can be annoyed if I want to. So the children turn into this big demon guy, and Buffy stakes him.

Did I get it? Did I get it?

 Followed by Oz and AX dropping in through the ceiling:

We’re here to save you.

We end with Amy, who turned herself into a rat to avoid being burned at the stake now stuck that way...for several seasons. While I don't find it believable that Willow doesn't have enough power to change her back until much later on, I will believe that Willow plain forgets about trying to change her back.

-Kali!

Sarah's Notes
This episode is actually pretty lesson worry and parallel heavy, as Kali has pointed out. So instead of doing some bullet point notes through the episode, I'm just going to focus on some pretty key points and parallels I was able to draw.

- Willow saying "God your mom actually took the time to do that with you?" after learning of Joyce going out slaying with Buffy. I totally get where Willow is coming from and this was honestly my first thought as well. However, this I think is a small hint as to what's the come which is parental neglect causing bad behaviors in children. But obviously this goes horribly wrong since Willow isn't a bad kid, but more on that later.
-Willow's mom goes to the vigil and finds Willow and "Bunny" (lolz)
-Again as Kali pointed out, the ongoing connection between witch-hunts and modern bans on "offensive" material is apparent, but I'm going to discuss further to parallel between witchcraft and homosexuality. This episode starts setting everything in place for connections to be drawn and this parallel continues throughout the series, especially within season 4. The parents believing the murdered children were killed by teenagers "corrupted" by witchcraft can be turned back to concerns about same-sex marriage corrupting our youth by teaching them that Dumbledore is gay and that's okay homosexuality is normal and fine. Teenagers dabbling in  witchcraft being akin to same-sex attractions being a "phase."
-The boy wearing eyeliner is bullied saying that he needs to learn a lesson for practicing witchcraft. Amy tries to stop them by saying "what about me?" and they ignore her. Then Buffy comes and they all leave Goth boy and Amy alone. The obvious reason for this is because Buffy is a badass who no one can take on and win, but I believe another reason is because Buffy isn't a witch so she's not a target. Again, parallel this to out and obvious gays (Goth boy), gays who can pass as straight (Amy), and heterosexuals (Buffy.)
-Buffy sees the symbol on Willow's notebook and asks her about it to which she responds with my favorite line of the episode ("I doodle, you doodle; you do doodle too!") Buffy's first reaction is anger but when they go outside and see everyone's lockers getting opened she listens to Willow about the symbol being harmless and a protection spell for her birthday.
-The sweep is obviously beyond stupid showing us how censorship is hurting everything but one thing I think is funny and worth mentioning is how Xander keeps screaming that he has playboys in his locker. Despite the fact that this is obviously something that should be monitored, instead of that being taken from him they just let it slide and instead take the books Giles needs to help solve the murders and confiscate anything having to do with witchcraft. If we tried censoring everything that could be offensive to someone, EVERYTHING would be censored. Nothing can exist that everyone approves of. And to quote something someone once put on Kayley's tumblr (that I found beyond hilarious): haters gonna hate, owls gonna hooot. Basically this quote wasn't necessary but Kayley's awesome and you should check out her channel. You can never be 100% right to everyone so you just have to know for yourself based off of your own morals and beliefs that what you're doing is right for you.

This episode has gotten into some heavy issues so before I sign off for the day, I shall leave you with some amazingly hysterical quotes; enjoy!
-"Lift a finger against me and you'll have to answer to MOO" -Snyder
-"And I won't be able to stop it because the anti-hell sucking book isn't on the approved reading list"- Buffy
-"No fruit for Buffy"-Buffy
-"We have to save Buffy from Hansel and Gretel" -Giles
-"What're you gonna do, throw a pencil at them?" -Buffy to Willow
-Cordelia: "It doesn't look like a toad" Giles: "no reason it should; it's from inside the toad" Cordelia: "I hate you..."
-"Okay, I think I like the two little ones more than the one big one" -Cordelia