If ‘Reptile Boy’ is memorable for all the wrong reasons, ‘Halloween’ has all the right reasons on its side. Following on from BBC2’s enforced abandonment of Buffy after the previous episode, my abiding memory of watching this one for the first time was seeing the unedited Sunday evening repeat. With a stroke of genius and imagination which must have seen somebody summarily dismissed from the Scheduling Department, Season 2 was resumed around Halloween 1999, which made it all the more enjoyable. There’s a fantastic sense of play about this episode, which fits in with the general theme, but it’s also a really good episode from a character point of view, as the series takes stock of the characters and starts sending them in new directions. The Spike and Dru plot gets turned up a notch- in retrospect it’s refreshing to see Spike at a point where he actually thought he could kill Buffy- and the introduction of Ethan gives a new spin on Giles’s past. And Sarah Michelle Gellar is really, really good.

To start witht he last point, it’s as if playing Buffy-as-18th-century-lady helped SMG define Buffy better; the Slayer here is quick-witted and strong-willed, and the Valley Girl inside Our Heroine is played up for effect. Buffy’s role as a leader is emphasised in the first half, particularly her run-in with Larry, so that when she becomes helpless it’s all the more effective- and we also get the nice visual gag of Buffy fainting when Willow asks what they should do. By way of symmetry, Xander goes from well-intentioned wimp when he tries to face Larry down over his comments about Buffy (Larry being in denial at this point, obviously) into full-on Rambo mode. Willow dresses as a ghost and, well, becomes a ghost, but underneath she also dresses like Buffy and ultimately becomes the one who gets Giles involved and gets things sorted; we also have the nice slow build-up of the Oz romance, although it’s clear that Willow’s future hadn’t been mapped out very far at this stage. Crop top and short skirt Willow may be nice, and it’s a crucial moment in the character’s development, of being comfortable with her physicality, but it turned out to be a dead end for the character- once Willow went from nerd to superwitch, the wardrobe pretty much followed.

It’s an important episode for Giles, too, as the arrival of Ethan points to his connection with something more sinister than previously suspected. It’s clear from their scene together that they were once on the same path, but took different turnings- Giles towards learning and respectability, Ethan towards chaos and darkness. The timing is right for the character; apart from his on-off romance, Giles is pretty much the same character he was in the first episode, so adding this layer to a character who was starting to be played as much for comedy as anything else works well. I have to say that Ethan himself as a character never really worked for me; there’s too much of the token British guest star about him, but the important thing here is his relationship with Giles and what it adds to the mix. Spike’s role is simply to revel in the chaos Ethan creates and take advantage of it - it’s clear that they haven’t colluded- and Drusilla only really gets one scene where she gets to be as daffy as ever. But the important thing is that we don’t forget about them; having been out of sight for a few episodes, it’s time we were reminded of their presence.

And finally, it’s good to see the show playing with the idea of Halloween- well, it was bound to happen eventually, and it’s to Buffy’s credit that they do something original with the idea. It must have been tempting to have every Halloween as a monsterfest, but instead they take the brave step of making it a non-event in the undead calendar. Of course Ethan’s plans make it otherwise, but it’s originality like this which made the show special. Similarly, the vampire in the teaser sequence recording Buffy’s fighting technique-and Spike’s subsequent analysis of the footage- show that this is the series which brought vampires into the 1990s. So it’s a return to form, sharp writing and good performances all round.