Thanks for pimping this and I should have read this earlier. This is really strong and does get at what I think the episode is "about." Violence begets violence -- and it's hard to know where that all stops. I love the description of the episode's ending as "Shakespearean comedy" -- everyone is happy, and Buffy's surrogate father gets himself a partner Buffy likes, but who is *still* going to 'betray' Buffy (depending on how you read Jenny's not saying what little she knows), and who is then going to die.

I am really glad you shared your personal story here -- it must have been difficult but I appreciate it.

You know, I think that when it comes to Buffy-Joyce stories, this and "Dead Man's Party" are in a similar category -- in that both episodes have an intruder come into the Buffy-Joyce dynamic to shake it up. In DMP, it's Pat who comes in and who eventually has to be slain. What makes that episode interesting is how quickly Pat is literally demonized (or, you know, made a zombie queen, I guess) so that the woman who threatens the Joyce-Buffy bond can be removed. And on the one hand, that says something real -- Pat was "the bad guy" in that she encouraged Joyce's fears about Buffy to blossom and in her condescension pushed Buffy away. But she was also the only friend her mother had. I'm not a woman and I never had an abusive stepfather and I can't really speak from experience what Ted was like. But it's scary to have the only person in your life (a mother) have someone else they can rely on and feels like a threat. It's hard to know when those threats are to one's parent, and when they are threats to 'you'.