I’m doing this episode a great disservice by pointing out that I watched it two months ago and completely failed to write a follow-up review. Certainly nothing to do with the episode- other stuff got in the way as it has a tendency to do from time to time. It’s a fun episode- one which has its good points, its clever points and a couple of could-have-been-better points-and certainly not deserving of my disrespect.

It starts with a simple premise- Principal Snyder gets the students of Sunnydale High to sell chocolate bars to raise funds for the school band, but there’s something in the bars which makes adults act like irresponsible teenagers. So far so good- but if ‘Band Candy’ has a flaw, it’s that the episode is clearly driven by cool concepts rather than concern for such things as motivation. For its first half, the episode thoroughly enjoys itself with character comedy, a bit of slapstick (Giles being hit by Buffy’s bounce ball) and a nice satire of the baby boom generation and its obsession with recapturing teenage hedonism rather than growing middle-aged gracefully. Then, after about twenty-five minutes, it’s as if somebody realised that all this hilarious irresponsibility has to have a point, so we find out that Ethan Rayne and Mr Trick are behind it all- but that’s not everything. The purpose of all this mayhem is to distract the adult population of Sunnydale so that a gang of vampires can abduct the city’s newborn babies to feed the demon Lurconis- not a bad concept in itself, but one which doesn’t get enough attention paid to it, so the sense of threat never really rings true. Played properly, the idea could have been genuinely dark and disturbing, but here it feels tacked-on rather than a real part of the story.

But again, I’m being harsh. There’s a great deal of the series’ hallmark character comedy here, a lot of it based on seeing the adult characters in their teenage personae; Giles becomes the violent and unstable Ripper again, while Snyder turns into an irritating hanger-on, and Joyce regresses to a girl who isn’t half as cool as she thinks she is and is happy to let Giles take the lead. It’s a nice touch that two of the main authority figures in Buffy’s life were followers in their teenage years and it complements their adult characters- you can believe that Snyder is the way he is because he was unpopular in his teens, and similarly Joyce the organised, composed mother was really quite insipid and far less rebellious than she thought she was. Character moments are perhaps fewer in number and mainly based on the Xander-Willow liaison- the cute but meaningful leg-rubbing and thumb-stroking are good touches, in that what they’re going through is something furtive and unspoken which nobody can know about. David Boreanaz’s appearance borders on the contractual, although the shots of him doing his tai-chi bare-chested are practically pornographic- there’s nothing here about Buffy and Angel’s relationship, and the following scenes where Buffy gets caught out lying about her whereabouts are undermined by Giles and Joyce being under the influence of the chocolate bars.

So all in all, it’s an episode which sets out to be fun first, and certainly is. In the circumstances, it tries to cram a lot in and does most of it well, but by letting the fun lead the drama it misses out on the full potential of the menace.