WORD. Ah Joyce - they don't have nearly enough of her on the show IMO, but when they let her rip, it's grand. You can see where Buffy gets a lot of her personality traits.

I kept meaning to do a meta on Joyce in School Hard, because I noticed even on feminist LJ's in this fandom, the total focus is on Spike and Dru in this ep - and I loved them from the minute they appeared onscreen, but this was the ep in which Joyce first saw her daughter in action, trusted Buffy to handle things (and told Snyder to shut up because they needed to listen to Buffy) then beans Spike with the axe (they could get away with "Get the hell away from my daughter" on a show marketed to teenagers back then? Nifty.)

I actually thought that Joyce would then realize who Buffy was and then she would become more involved in the story and so forth. So I was a little disappointed that didn't happen (yet) but it fits Joyce's pattern of denial (which IMO actually has nothing to do with the Hellmouth and existed long before they got to SD.)