Buffy The Vampire Slayer

From a walking, talking puppet to a new principal, Buffy has her work cut out for her in this episode! 411’s Scooby Gang has the full review of The Puppet Show!

Welcome back to Sunnydale!

The first season alone has provided Buffy and her friends with countless monsters to deal with; vampires, witches, demons of all sorts. This week things get even weirder, as Buffy takes on.... a puppet?!

Here’s J.D. Dunn with an episode recap.

Episode 1.09 - "The Puppet Show" - W: Dean Batali, Rob Des Hotel - D: Ellen S. Pressman - Original Airdate: May 5, 1997

Synopsis: Buffy, Willow and Xander are conscripted into the school talentless show. When kids turn up with missing hearts and minds, the gang suspects Morgan and his dummy, Sid. Morgan is reluctant to talk because "Sid" is very protective, but does that make him a killer? Or maybe it’s the creepy new principal? When Buffy is attacked by Sid the Dummy, that narrows things down quite a bit. Buffy and Sid duke it out until they realize they’re actually on the same side. Sid has been cursed into the body of a dummy by a demon he’s hunting. Unfortunately for the demon, he took a cancerous brain and needs a new one — one from a really smart person…like a librarian. Thankfully, Buffy and crew arrive on the scene to save the Watcher before he loses his head.

Introduces: Principal Snyder, Buffy’s school foil who blames cheerleader immolation on liberalism.

Thanks J.D.! I’m up for the review this week, so let’s get to it!

The first season of the show is in the home stretch, and Joss and his fellow writers are getting things down to a science. This episode features a lot of great Scooby Gang interaction that would pave the way for similar episodes in the future. It has a storyline that keeps you guessing until the very end, an interesting newcomer in Sid the Dummy (who sadly wouldn’t return, except in the Chaos Bleeds video game) and the introduction of one of the most sadistic evildoers ever to haunt the streets of Sunnydale... Principal Snyder!

Let’s talk about Sid. A surprisingly interesting character and short of Jenny Calender, probably the most memorable of the ones the first season rolled out (omitting evildoers like the Master and Darla). He had a very interesting backstory which probably could have used some further exploration. He was a dummy, of course, so that visual gag would probably have been a pain to pull off regularly and the audience might eventually have a tough time taking him seriously (not that he was played ultra serious). Still, his appearance is probably one of the best ‘single episode’ guest shots the series ever produced.

This episode also illustrates how well BTVS can handle what other shows might turn into a convoluted plot. For the majority of the hour the viewer really doesn’t know who the bad guy is, and the plot employs a lot of bait and switch moments to keep the audience guessing, but somehow it never gets tiresome.

As for Snyder, at certain points in this episode we are led to believe he might be the ‘demon’ that is stealing organs, but he turns out to be an evil of a far longer lasting sort. The replacement for Principal Flutie (and eventually revealed to be a stooge for the shady Mayor of Sunnydale), Snyder makes every student long for the days of the touchy feely Flutie. Snyder hates kids, plain and simple, and he rejects Flutie’s ‘caring, sharing’ method of principal-ing as ‘wooly headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten’. Well, hard to argue with that! The near physical pain that Snyder’s mere presence elicits in his ‘victims’ is classic and he’ll be a constant source of ire for the Scoobs for seasons to come.

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http://www.411mania.com/movies/dvd_reviews/67076/The-Watcher-Diaries-01.16.08:-The-Puppet-Show---Buffy-Episode-Nine.htm