User reviews

This episode is truly hard to watch. Witch hunts and Satanic panic have always been a truly sensitive topic, and how a TV show goes about covering it is always indicative of the show's overall quality. Without spoiling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer covers the topic damn well and works it into the lore of the show seamlessly. Is it the best episode of the show? No. It is one of the better ones, though. Makes it hard to like some characters.

This is an episode I usually skip because the characters that are made hard to like are truly intolerable here. Which works REALLY well for the episode, but doesn't make for an enjoyable experience.

Gingerbread is an episode penned by Jane Espenson. Espenson has a predilection for structuring her episodes like farce, or a Three's Company episode--the first three acts are really just set-up, and the final act is nothing but payoff. Season four's Pangs follows this same structure, but more gracefully.

Gingerbread is kind of a dull episode for a long stretch. It's about Joyce falling under a spell that causes her to get so carried away with "taking back Sunndydale", ostensibly for the sake of the children, that she paradoxically endorses child murder to accomplish this task. The adult world tends to cast a short shadow over the events of the series, and this episode does raise an intriguing question--what happens when the parents of Sunnydale finally become hip to the supernatural events all around them? It's an interesting question to explore, but for the purposes of Gingerbread, it's just another monster-of-the-week MacGuffin, so in a philosophical sense nothing really progresses; the genie gets put back into the bottle. This leaves you with a sense that the teleplay is just spinning its wheels since there will be no lasting consequences after Buffy inevitably defeats the demon at hand.

I'm also ambivalent about the "Mothers Opposed to the Occult" jokes throughout. On the one hand, MOO is a funny acronym. On the other...what is it trying to say about organizations like MADD? That parents who lost children to drunk driving are just on hysterical witch hunts, trying to find scapegoats? It's an uncomfortable equivalency.

Anyhow. As I said, after the work of setting everything up is done, the last act is nonstop delight. Pound for pound it might be one of the best acts of any Buffy episode from the entire series. There's so much wonderful stuff, from Cordelia's buddy-cop dynamic with Giles, to Xander and Oz ineffectually mounting a rescue mission, to Amy's show of power on the witch-burning pyre, to Buffy's adorable vanquishing of the enormous demon at the end. The writing here is so sharp and specific and motivated and clear and purposeful--emblematic of season three as a whole, and a quality that will never be recaptured with such consistency in any of the seasons that follow.

I'm a huge Buffy fan and I've always enjoyed this episode. I think the demon is scary and different. The humor is great in this episode

This was so stupid. As crazy as this is, for the entire community to lose their minds in such a short time is silly. Also, it seems that no one ever remembers anything. Like the band candy. People died and regressed and on and on. But the next day, after Buffy saves the day, it's like it never happened. Of course the property was destroyed. There are corpses all around. Anyway, Buffy's mother is really sickening in this one and she was willing to kill her daughter. It is far from a good episode for many reasons. It had all the elements of the worst of Nazi Germany. Put it on the trash pile and burn it.

Buffy's mother has decided that the time has come for her to accompany her daughter on patrol to see what being the Slayer really entails. While Buffy is dispatching a vampire Joyce finds the bodies of two young children and is understandably horrified. Buffy promises to get to the bottom of it and asks Giles about a symbol drawn of the children's hands. He fears that they could be dealing with a human foe, possibly some kind of cult involving witchcraft. When Joyce hears she believes something must be done so starts contacting other parents... soon there is a full scale witch hunt under way and anybody involved with the occult is being targeted; Willow and Amy are in real danger as they are witches and Giles has his books confiscated; the very books that might help solve the question of who the dead children are and who harmed them.

This was a rather impressive episode with some surprisingly tense moments; I liked the fact that the most obvious threat came from the parents. Not surprisingly we ultimately discover that they were being influenced but that doesn't make their actions less disturbing. The story provided plenty of great moments; most notably Willow standing up to her mother and Giles giving his opinion of Principal Snyder... not to mention Amy's spell near the end. The cast is on fine form; Alyson Hannigan stands out as Willow takes the central role, it was good to see Kristine Sutherland doing more as Joyce and recurring guest Elizabeth Anne Allen impresses as Amy. The explanation for what happened is well handled. Overall this was another solid episode.

I hate Joyce, one of the worst characters, I hope she dies a painful death!

Classic buffy witch epiosed. Good claasic monster dark epiosed.

After watching the first 45 Buffy episodes , I enjoy the show, not Greatest but not Bad at all, funny characters, solid storylines. But this one Gingerbread is the very first episode that I could have give 10/10 , in the end its a 9/10 but with a better ending it could have, a top 5 Buffy episodes from the first 45 !

Very entertaining, and for once in the show, a sence of reality and credibility, since people seems to finally realise the city is unsafe.