Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Every Season 1 Episode Ranked
9. The Puppet Show
The Puppet Show is another of Buffy's early monster-of-the-week titles that finds the series grappling with an identity crisis. Whether it's meant to be funny, scary, or oddly tragic is never entirely clear, but it's hard to argue with the episode's memorability.
Taking place during the school's talent show, the episode tracks the gang as they hunt for a deadly demon, only to inadvertently team-up with an animated puppet that's possessed by the soul of a vengeful demon hunter.
The initial mystery of who or what the demon is entertaining and actually quite tense, but once the puppet reveal is finished the episode loses all sense of its own tone or meaning. It's silly and knows it, offering up some brief laughs, but overall The Puppet Show is still far too odd for its own good.