15 Best Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes
8. Band Candy (Season 3, Episode 6)
"I'm your watcher, so you do what I tell you. Now, sod off."
A strong contender for funniest Buffy episode of all time, Band Candy is pure, unadulterated joy. Frequent troublemaker Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs) is back in town, this time teamed up with villainous vampire Mr Trick (K. Todd Freeman) so the Mayor (Harry Groening) can go through with an evil ritual whilst the town is preoccupied.
Giving the townspeople candy that makes them regress to their teenage selves, order is lost in Sunnydale and real-life teenagers Buffy, Xander, Willow and Oz have to figure out how to stop the madness.
This is all good stuff, with a lot of humour to counteract the weirdness of the plot, but it's not until you get to see a young Giles and Joyce that things really get interesting. Watching normal Giles act like younger Giles is pure comedy through and through, allowing fans to see what the watcher was like in his earlier days, and seeing the parallels between Buffy and her mother is inspired.
It may end in pretty typical Monster of the Week fashion, but everything leading up to that is wonderfully spotless.