Review
Rob
She's back - with Drac. Hollywood can always count on the Count to set pulses racing, and Buffy's fifth season premiere is certainly no exception to the rule. After a slightly lacklustre year of military hi-jinks, Marti Noxon brings the magic back in more ways than one with a fine supernatural tale. It's hilarious too.
Great to see most of the cast, particularly Nicholas Brendon, on top form. The scenes where he develops a taste for bugs are as delightful as they are gross. Sadly, however,Spike gets little more than a cameo, and Dawn even less than that. Surely, after four years, Michelle Trachtenberg deserves better?
James
Great as Buffy is, I'm sure they're trying to save money on clothes. How else can you explain the cast being dressed in an assortment of charity shop cast-offs?
Why else would Riley wear a peacock blue sack? It is also the only reasonable explanation for Buffy's extraordinary pastel pink leatherette trousers (a fashion crime that looks bad enough on Buffy, but on the stunt ladies looks positively bulbous).
Kim
Dracula. King of Darkness. Evildoer and blood-sucking nasty.
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. King of MDF. Decor-doer and rag-rolling presenter.
Now, I'm not sure which of them is more scary... but I'm sure you get my point. Even though this episode is unarguably fantastic, bits of me were itching to add 'in a nice shade of mauve' to every sentence he lisped.
It's really great seeing Buffy acknowlege its roots in classic gothic horror too - and it makes a fine point about how knowing we've become these days. Who doesn't know how to kill a vamp these days? And we know they always come back, Misery style...
