Halloween

Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season: 2
Episode: 6

So it begins. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One episode down, quite a few to go. Easily one of my favorite live action shows growing up, I used to watch Buffy religiously. If it was on, or new, I was generally watching it, especially in the later seasons. Tonight's episode however, is one of the earlier ones that I missed, until the wonders of dvd made it available to me.

Halloween, the episode, almost feels a bit odd or out of place given how the entire show revolves around vampires, demons, werewolves, witches and the like. Despite this possible hamper, the show manages to make this episode work really well in how they approached it. Our villain makes his first of several appearances through the shows run, and with quite a bang.

Taking place on Halloween night itself, the episode follows Buffy and the early version of the Scooby gang as they are forced to 'volunteer' as supervisors to groups of kids who are trick or treating. What they don't realize, however, is that their costumes were bought at a store run by a warlock named Ethan Rayne. This man, who plays a role in Giles' past, decides to cause some chaos by turning everyone who bought his costumes into the creature they were wearing. This makes for some rather fun results as Willow turns into a ghost, Xander into a soldier, and Buffy into a simpering noble woman. It's rather fun to see the roles reversed as Buffy is kept rather helpless for once, while Xander finally gets a chance to shine as a hero. Or at least until Angel arrives and lends a hand with things.

There's not really a whole lot that I can think of to note as far as continuity goes. Xander's soldier persona will come in handy down the road for future seasons, and Ethan Rayne will also be back again. Aside from this, the episode largely nudges forward other story lines that start evolving in this season.

While this episode is a lot of fun, and quite funny at times, I do recall enjoying the later Halloween themed episodes a fair bit more. All in all, that doesn't change how enjoyable this one is, on its own.

3 1/2 /5