The third season of Buffy opened with the established status quo tilted to a jaunty angle. Following the finale of the previous season which saw her committing her suddenly evil vampire boyfriend's soul to Hell, the young Ms Summers took a break from Sunnydale, running away from home to work as a waitress at another small town's diner. As the Scooby Gang try (and fail) to deal with vampires on their own in her absence, Buffy finds her past harder to escape than she thought when a couple of bloodsucker-worshippers show up during her nightshift. Then one of them goes missing, and it all seems to connect to the shady owner of a shelter for wayward teens. Anne has some good laughs like Cordelia and Xander's relationship being consumated after a slaying but the main monster Ken is absolutely horrifying. A demon wearing the face of a human being (literally stuck onto his own), his true Freddy Krueger-esque visage is as haunting as his plan to kidnap kids and keep them in another dimension.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
