YMMV / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S2E6 "Halloween"

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Maybe Willow puts the ghost costume on not just out of shyness but on worrying that her sexier outfit might not be appropriate to wear when chaperoning children.
• Fanfic Fuel: To date the most commonly used theme for Buffy crossover fanfiction is this episode.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Buffy looks great in the costume, with her long dark hair, even if it results in her becoming The Load for the night.
• Fridge Logic: When leaving Ethan's costume shop, we hear Willow open and close the door when she should have just walked through it.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Spike is about to kill Buffy, who is weak due to taking on the personality of a colonial-era proper lady. The comment Spike makes about her and her situation before he makes the attempt sounds a lot like he's about to rape her. Come "Seeing Red"...
  • Willow (and Angel himself) saying that Angel will never fall for Cordelia becomes a bit saddening after Angel and Cordelia DO end up developing feelings for each other on Angel's eponymous spin-off, but their relationship never gets a chance to fully blossom.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Cordelia flirts with Angel this episode, prompting Xander to say that she'll never get between Angel and Buffy. Cordelia and Angel actually fall in love later during his spin-off series, though this could double as a case of HarsherInHindsight. When Aristo!Buffy becomes herself again, she quips at Spike, "Hi honey, I'm home!" The two wind up having a romance in later seasons of Buffy. And then they restart their relationship in a much more healthy, mature, and committed fashion in the canon sequel comics - though as of "season 11", they're still not living together, except for a stint in a supernatural internment camp, where they shared a trailer.
  • The episode has shared similarities with a film both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Seth Green starred in, Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed where the monster costumes become real and Seth Green's character becomes romantically inclined with a woman helped by Sarah Michelle Gellar's character who is trying to practice intimacy.
  • Giles's awkward moment with Willow, where he notes how revealing her costume is, when Season 4 reveals she had a crush on him as a teenager - retroactively adding to the Cringe Comedy.
• Hollywood Homely: Buffy is said to look "trashed" when she shows up for her date with Angel, and Cordelia jokes "it just screams 'street urchin'". Besides one or two bits of straw in her hair, she looks completely fine.
• Values Dissonance: Snyder very obviously man-handles Buffy and forces her over to make her sign up. Already old-fashioned and used to show him as such when it aired, but a school official touching a student so carelessly nowadays could face serious ramifications were the high school not on a Hellmouth.
• The Woobie: Buffy's cursed persona if you think about it. She may be The Load, but in her mind, she's from 1775 and transported into 1997 in the middle of a mad night in Sunnydale. She gets attacked by monsters, vampires and nearly raped by a pirate, and everyone is dismissive of her because she's not the Buffy they know. It's hard not to feel sorry for her when Spike has her at his mercy.

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