Season 4, Episode 4

Written by David Fury

Directed by Tucker Gates

Original Airdate: 25 October 1999

Willow "Where's supportive boyfriend guy?"
Oz "Oh, he's picking up your dry-cleaning..."

REGULAR CAST

• Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

• Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris

• Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg

• Seth Green as Daniel "Oz" Osbourne

• Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

GUEST CAST

• Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

• Marc Blucas as Riley Finn

• Emma Caulfield as Anya Jenkins

• Adam Kaufman as Parker Abrams

• Lindsay Crouse as Professor Maggie Walsh

CO-STARRING

• Marc Rose as Josh

• Sulo Williams as Chaz

• Aldis Hodge as Masked Teen

• Walter Emanuel Jones as Edward

• Adam Bitterman as Gachnar

• Michele Nordin as Rachel

• Adam Grimes as Lobster Boy

• Darris Love as Hallmate

• Larissa Reynolds as Present Girl

SYNOPSIS

• While carving jack-o'-lanterns in Xander's basement for Halloween, the gang discusses their plans for Halloween while Buffy continues to mope over her situation with Parker. They decide to go to the Alpha-Delta house for a Halloween party. Buffy leaves early and on her way home, a kid jumps out at her wearing a demon mask, and she hits him without thinking. The next day, at school, Buffy and Oz both express their concerns for Willow about her magic. Buffy spots Parker and immediately runs away because she doesn't want to face him. Willow follows and tells her to get over him and have fun at the party that night, but Buffy thinks that Giles will want her to do some patrolling. When Buffy goes to visit Giles however, he's wearing a sombrero and is in an incredibly cheerful Halloween mood. He discourages her from patrolling that night and encourages her to go party.
  
  At the Fraternity, boys are getting ready for the party, and one guy finds a symbol in an old book to paint on the floor of the party room. Anya goes to see Xander again, and again wants to know where their relationship is going. He agrees that they're somewhat dating and invites her to the Halloween party that night. Buffy visits Professor Walsh and asks for the assignments, but Buffy is met with less than kind reception from the strict teacher. Riley however, gives her the assignment and then tells her to have fun on Halloween. Oz and Xander carry the equipment for a sound system to the Frat house and Oz installs it, while some of the guys paint the symbol on the ground. Oz cuts his hand and some of his blood spills onto the symbol making it come alive and turning a fake spider lying on it into a real one.
  
  Joyce sews one of Buffy's old Halloween costumes, Little Red Riding Hood. They then talk about how things used to be with her Dad around and her mother's current social life. Buffy waits outside the party for her friends, and Xander shows up dressed as James Bond. They run into Willow, who's dressed as Joan of Arc, and Oz, who's going as God. At the party, a guy leads a blindfolded girl to stick her hand into a bowl and tells her the grapes inside are eyeballs. When she takes the blindfold off, they really are eyeballs. Everything at the party goes crazy as people run in all directions screaming, some ending up mutilated and injured in various ways. The gang starts to make their way through the maze, but they encounter several Halloween obstacles, including fake cobwebs and skeletons that jump out at them. Then they really start to get scared as a spider crawls on Willow, real blood is found on the floor and a group of bats fly down from the ceiling.
  
  Anya arrives at the party, dressed as a big rabbit, but she can't get in because there's no front door. As she walks around to the front, she sees a girl screaming at a window, and then the window disappears from the house. Inside, and unable to get out of the house, Buffy tells the gang to find a way out and get help. They find Chaz, one of the Frat guys, in a closet saying that it's alive. A skeleton attacks Buffy from behind with a knife, but she destroys it and it becomes fake again. Buffy and Willow fight over Buffy giving orders and then over Willow wanting to do a guidance spell that will lead the way. Anya goes to Giles for help and they start looking for a way to help.
  
  Xander tries to talk to Buffy and the gang, but he finds that he's invisible to them all as they completely ignore him. Willow and Oz, who go off on their own to find a way out, find stairs and head up. As they're walking, Oz starts to change into a werewolf and scratches Willow before running away from her. Xander approaches a mirror, and along with his reflection, a once-fake head on the table behind him says that he can see him too. Oz sits in a bathtub, praying that he isn't going to change while Willow conjures her spell. The spell however gets out of control and she screams for help. Buffy, hearing Willow's cries tries to get to her, but instead falls into the basement where the dead start coming up from the ground and grabbing at her.
  
  Meanwhile, Giles and Anya are unable to find a way in, so Giles pulls out a chainsaw and cuts a door into the house. In their frenzied attempts to escape their fears that have somehow come true, all the gang runs into the attic and things seem back to normal. From a book, they determine that the sign on the floor is the Mark of Gachnar and then Giles and Anya then break into the room. Before Giles can tell her that destroying the symbol will call Gachnar forth, Buffy destroys it. The very ugly demon is called forth, but it turns out he's incredibly tiny in size and after a laugh, Buffy just squashes him with her shoe. At Giles' place, they eat candy and Giles discovers his mistake. The small picture of Gachnar in the book had the subheading "Actual size."

TRIVIA

• The title of this episode comes from American President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural address, on March 4th, 1933. He said, "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper… Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

CONTINUITY

• Willow claims to be proficient now in Wicca basics such as levitations, charms, and glamours. In this episode, she calls upon Aradia, the goddess of the lost, for her guiding spell: "Aradia, Goddess of the lost, the path is murky, the woods are dense, darkness pervades, I beseech thee, bring the light." The spell goes wrong and Willow is surrounded by green lights. Later, in season six's Bargaining (Part 2), Tara successfully helps Willow and Xander out of the woods by sending Aradia to guide them.

• According to Xander, the video screening at the episode's opening is their second annual video screening, which we didn't see, but presumably happened at some point last season, between Beauty and the Beasts and Homecoming.

• Anya's bunny fear is first mentioned in this episode when she wears a rabbit costume to the party. The fear becomes a running joke, and is brought up several times before the series' end. Buffy mentioned a bunny suit in The Puppet Show.

• Xander wears a tuxedo in case they're all transformed into their costumes again, which happened in Halloween.

• When talking to Buffy about her social life, Joyce mentioned that her last boyfriend was a homicidal robot, referring to Ted Buchanan from the episode Ted.

• Gachnar tells Buffy that 'They’re all going to abandon you, you know.' Her friends do just that in Empty Places, and to a lesser extent later this season in The Yoko Factor. Willow screams at Oz not to leave her at one point and Oz fears the loss on control that the wolf brings to him. Both of these are expanded upon in Wild at Heart.

• Willow refers to the events of Gingerbread when citing that both her and Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake.

GOOFS

• The Frankenstein doll is swinging while Giles and Buffy's talk, but during a cut away from and back to Giles the doll has stopped swinging, though there didn't seem to be enough time for it to have slowed that much.

• When Buffy is stabbed by the skeleton, she doesn't seem to be in any sort of pain afterwards.

• Buffy's braid goes from behind her shoulder to resting on it when Willow checks her wound.

• In the scene in which Xander and Oz bring over the sound system, Xander's hair changes in a few shots without him moving it.

The Freshman | Living Conditions | The Harsh Light of Day | Fear, Itself | Beer Bad

Wild at Heart | The Initiative | Pangs | Something Blue | Hush | Doomed

A New Man | The I in Team | Goodbye Iowa | This Year's Girl | Who Are You | Superstar

Where the Wild Things Are | New Moon Rising | The Yoko Factor | Primeval | Restless