3.11 Gingerbread

[Clare]

3.11 Gingerbread - Episode #045
After two young children are found dead, Sunnydale's adults rally against the occult.

Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.

[cyclica]

I gave gingerbread a 6.

I liked the concept of parents turning against their children, it was scary, as was the moment in joyce's speech when she talks of a town overrun by the monsters and slayers. And there were plenty of funny moments, like 'its from inside the toad', 'were here to rescue you' and 'I don't know about you, but I'm gonna go trade my cow in for some beans.'

I found it interesting that amy was treated as part of the scoobies in this episode, being told all about what happened on buffy's latest patrol. If she knows about slayers and vampires, why is it she never ever helps out in the library? At least she got turned into a rat, that'll teach her not to help out.

This was the only episode to show willow's home life. Incidentally, I found it a strange coincidence that her mother would be named sheila. Like buffy, my mother is named joyce... and her sister, my aunt, is named sheila.

[cyclica]

^ I'm sorry, but I don't have a whole lot to add after my last review.

I liked the setup that it might be willow who was behind the killings, obviously willow is no murderer but with the symbol on the children also being the one she used during a spell, the evidence pointed to her. I also enjoyed buffy intimidating a bunch of jocks, just by looking at them, not needing to say anything. And buffy's reaction to the 'moo' acronym was pretty funny.

The mayor was pretty dull in his cameo appearance, he was just acting like an actual mayor. I would have liked to have seen what his thoughts on the subject really were.

Upon rewatching I still enjoy this episode as much as before, maybe even a little more. I'm bumping this one up to a low 7.

Nitpicks-

- It's pretty hard to beleive that seemingly the whole town would now know about the supernatural, many of them even seeing a giant demon for themselves, yet they will presumably all go back to pretending everything's fine.
- Token angel scene, pleh.
- When buffy and giles go to her house to confront 'moo', joyce walks over to buffy and chloroforms her. Should we assume joyce just carries chloroform around with her all the time, just in case she might need it?
- Buffy is tied at the stake, with ropes she can easily break out of. Why doesn't she?
- When hansel and gretel turn into the giant demon, the townspeople all see it, and run away screaming. Joyce even says 'Oh my god' and looks at it... except you can see it standing in the background behind her, and she's looking the wrong way.

[partcynic]

3x11 “Gingerbread”

Episode Rating = 4

A respectable mid-season edition, “Gingerbread” is one of those eps that tends to get lost in the S3 shuffle. However, unlike ignored pieces such as “Homecoming” or “Anne”, there’s more justification for this one taking a back seat, with its interesting plot and excellent theme being host to major believability issues and a couple of uncharacteristic writing slips. Still, “Gingerbread” remains an enjoyable and entertaining episode provided you don’t think too much about it, and slots into its parent season without impeding its flow.

What I Liked about “Gingerbread”:

- While its success is debatable, I thought it was appropriate for the show to do a story about Buffy, Joyce and slaying. The early triviality with which Joyce treated patrolling was humorous, and it was sweet to see her misguided attempt at bonding with her daughter. I laughed at the way she cheered Buffy on (and then recognised the vampire as a man from the bank), and the juxtaposition between that light-heartedness and her subsequent discovery of the murdered children was effective.

- The plot is structured well, and there’s some nice early mystery regarding what happened to the kids (especially when we’re shown Willow, Amy and Michael casting a spell using the symbol that was on the bodies). Joyce’s upset is very believable, and it’s unnerving when the prospect of ritual sacrifice is brought up. I also liked how Giles undercut Buffy’s hyper-interest in the case, and wondered if her aggressiveness was a by-product of her mother’s involvement.

- It’s cool to see Amy again, and a neat follow-up to her brief mention in “The Wish”. Having these kinds of recurring minor characters makes the school feel more alive and real, and her appearance was (obviously) congruent with the plot.

- Xander is the best he’s been in a while, being sympathetic and quite funny. I could understand his awkward overcompensation regarding Oz and Willow, and I was grateful to see Buffy point out that he’d earned some of the frosty treatment he’d been given.

- Sheila Rosenberg didn’t make a positive impression on me, but it was interesting to get a brief glimpse at Willow’s family life (or lack thereof). It was sad how Sheila was incapable of understanding or empathising with her daughter beyond quoting statistics and developmental averages, and it goes a way to showing the audience the source of some of Willow’s neuroses. In addition, there was some decent humour there, with Willow’s quip about her mother not caring about her curricular or extra-curricular activities being darkly amusing. Not everything worked (Sheila calling Buffy ‘Bunny’ was funny and acknowledged the comparative oddness of her name, but her failure to notice a major haircut Willow got five months prior was over the top), but it was acceptable for a one episode window.

- The metaphor and theme are very well executed. I loved the reveal that the children were actually evil, and the mob mentality the townsfolk adopted was an accurate reflection of what often happens in reality.

- Overall, S3 isn’t too kind to Cordelia after her break-up with Xander (go through every ep between “Amends” and “Choices” and see how many of her appearances are of the ‘emerge for thirty seconds to say something nasty to Xander, then vanish’ variety), but she’s given appropriate focus here. At the start, she’s more of a background figure, but her prominence gradually increases and her trip to the Summers home is based on a legitimate reason. Her dialogue is as excellent as ever, with specific highlights being Giles “wak[ing] up in a coma”; “let’s be clear - the brain damage happened before I hit you”; the toad stone; her observations about Giles’ past when he uses her hairclip to pick the lock; and the pleasure she takes in blasting people with the fire hose.

- This was a Jane Espenson episode, so it’s no surprise that its jokes were witty. Besides the scenes with Cordelia and Giles, there was lots of smile-worthy moments, such as Joyce and Giles meeting at city hall, Willow’s comments about doodling, Xander worrying about his Playboys, Snyder’s glee at tormenting the students and “I love the smell of desperate librarian in the morning”, MOO, “[Amy] couldn’t do us first!?”, the demon’s abrupt death, and Xander and Oz crashing through the ceiling. The comedy kept the episode moving nicely, and was a welcome counterpoint to some of the problems with the main plot.

- The final scene is pretty cute, and ends the story on an amusing note after the overdone stuff earlier on (though I wonder how Buffy and Willow were able to find the Amy-rat. They were definitely lucky she didn’t get squished by the hysterical crowd).

What I Disliked about “Gingerbread”:

- The opening was hard to get into, and the episode made the big mistake of portraying the ‘dead children’ scenario and assuming the audience would find it more horrifying/upsetting than anything shown before. While I’m hardly pro child death, I didn’t feel any emotion beyond my typical response to the series’ anonymous victims, and subsequently had a hard time understanding the characters’ extreme reactions (well, Joyce’s was fine. No-one should have to stumble onto a murder scene). The story admittedly tried to deal with this in the first half of the Buffy/Angel conversation, and while I concede that children’s presumed innocence/naïveté makes their deaths more upsetting, I would prefer that the episode show us exactly why this is so horrible (in comparison with all of the other nasty things that have happened in Sunnydale), instead of making an early assumption and running with it.

- One of the key tenets of writing a successful sci-fi or fantasy story is knowing your universe’s limits, and avoiding placing unnecessary stress on its weaker parts. One of “Buffy”’s issues has always been the implausibility of the townsfolk’s cluelessness regarding the supernatural, and it’s popped up several times during the course of the show’s run. However, none of these occurrences have been as problematic as this episode’s final act, which features blatant reveals of spellcasting and demonic transformation in front of a huge crowd. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to be able to rationalise that away, and it’s ludicrous that everyone promptly forgets all about it.

- I would have liked more information on the demon’s ‘hold’ over Sunnydale’s populace. It had obviously pulled the adults into some kind of magical thrall (which Giles’ spell then negated), but I’m wondering why none of the main characters were bewitched. I can buy that the demon may have left Willow and Buffy alone (as they were among its targets), but why weren’t Giles, Xander, Cordelia et al out baying for blood? From the demon’s point of view, wouldn’t the maximum number of vigilantes equal the maximum amount of carnage and suffering for its pleasure?

- Since the Mayor wasn’t affected by the magic (his talk at the vigil is standard politician fluff, and he’s not involved with anything else), was he happy with his base of operations being swarmed and made host to an execution session? Or was he not concerned when realising that Buffy was one of the intended victims?

- In addition, I’d like to know how the thrall worked. Was it instantaneous upon seeing the kids, or did it occur slowly? Joyce’s behaviour seems natural in her first post-discovery scenes, but she quickly loses all sense of logic and reason come her city hall speech (and interesting that she lumps Slayers in with monsters). Was that the real Joyce we were hearing, or one twisted by the demon’s power?

- The ‘burning at the stake’ scenes were just dumb. Besides the big issue with the supernatural being exposed, they were off tonally, and had a camp/silly vibe that didn’t gel with the prior, ultra-grave material. In addition, Giles should have lost a significant number of books in the fire, and it would have been good for this to cause problems in a future episode.

- Why would the demon consistently appear as the same pair of dead children? Since it evidently wasn’t bothering to hypnotise everyone, that means anyone could have done a little thinking or research and had the same queries Buffy did (about the kids’ names/ parents etc). Granted, its prior appearances all occurred before the advent of the internet and mass communication/media devices, but you’d think that changing appearance each time would be an extra safeguard against being discovered.

- I really dislike Sarah Michelle Gellar’s delivery on her “Did I get it?” lines after offing the monster. It‘s so shrill and squeaky that it hurts my ears.

Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?

My feelings on “Gingerbread” have remained consistent. I think the episode has a respectable plot, interesting theme and a worthy exploration of parent/child dynamics between Joyce/Buffy and Sheila/Willow, but shoots itself in the foot with its stupid climax (prior to Dawn’s arrival, it’s one of the hardest things to believe in the series) and reliance on telling the audience why its triggering event is traumatic, instead of showing it. These factors combine to stunt “Gingerbread” at below-average quality, and while I enjoy watching it, it’s too flawed to attain a score higher than four out of ten.

[cyclica]

Jan 23, 2010 12:24:02 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- It’s cool to see Amy again, and a neat follow-up to her brief mention in “The Wish”. Having these kinds of recurring minor characters makes the school feel more alive and real, and her appearance was (obviously) congruent with the plot.

Agreed. Everytime I see recurring characters like larry, harmony or jonathan (in the first 3 years anyway) it always makes me smile, no matter how much or little relevance they have to the plot.

Jan 23, 2010 12:24:02 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- The opening was hard to get into, and the episode made the big mistake of portraying the ‘dead children’ scenario and assuming the audience would find it more horrifying/upsetting than anything shown before. While I’m hardly pro child death, I didn’t feel any emotion beyond my typical response to the series’ anonymous victims, and subsequently had a hard time understanding the characters’ extreme reactions (well, Joyce’s was fine. No-one should have to stumble onto a murder scene). The story admittedly tried to deal with this in the first half of the Buffy/Angel conversation, and while I concede that children’s presumed innocence/naïveté makes their deaths more upsetting, I would prefer that the episode show us exactly why this is so horrible (in comparison with all of the other nasty things that have happened in Sunnydale), instead of making an early assumption and running with it.

Again I agree.

IMO, they could easily have made the death of the children more upsetting and have more of an imotional impact, if they had put more focus on the possible perpetrators of the crime, such as the cult members who sacrifice children. Knowing there are monsters and even people out there who are willing to kill innocent children like that would be a more beleivable cause for the townspeople's fear, but instead they blame all supernatural things as a whole, and the cultists are just glossed over.

Jan 23, 2010 12:24:02 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- I would have liked more information on the demon’s ‘hold’ over Sunnydale’s populace. It had obviously pulled the adults into some kind of magical thrall (which Giles’ spell then negated), but I’m wondering why none of the main characters were bewitched. I can buy that the demon may have left Willow and Buffy alone (as they were among its targets), but why weren’t Giles, Xander, Cordelia et al out baying for blood? From the demon’s point of view, wouldn’t the maximum number of vigilantes equal the maximum amount of carnage and suffering for its pleasure?

I assume the scooby gang were immune because they know all about the supernatural already.

Jan 23, 2010 12:24:02 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- In addition, I’d like to know how the thrall worked. Was it instantaneous upon seeing the kids, or did it occur slowly? Joyce’s behaviour seems natural in her first post-discovery scenes, but she quickly loses all sense of logic and reason come her city hall speech (and interesting that she lumps Slayers in with monsters). Was that the real Joyce we were hearing, or one twisted by the demon’s power?

I beleive it was a slow-acting spell, like you said. They were as much manipulated and tricked into their actions as they were under a spell.