A less-murderous publishing schedule is understandable. I did (eventually) notice this feature hadn't shown up last week. I thought maybe I'd just missed it. I always read it because I always learn something. This week, for instance, I heard of Tom T. Hall for the very first time.

Charlie
Charlie was one of my favorite characters, and his relationship with Jed was one of the highlights of the series' run.

I would totally gay marry Jane Espenson in whatever state also allows bigamy, because my husband would like it if we stayed married too.

Jane Espenson is extremely wonderful and hilarious.

Noel: we don't see her take the cuffs then, and I never saw it as ambiguous. I first saw these a decade ago though, so the details have had a lot of time to congeal in my mind. Barely a spoiler: later in Season 3 you will get a bit more info on what happened after we cut away from Giles and Joyce at the cop car. Based…

I think it's just Lyle and his new wife in Homecoming — Tector got killed during the Gorches' earlier encounter with Buffy in Bad Eggs.

The handcuffs
Joyce or Giles stole them from the cop Giles punched out, at the same time that Giles stole his gun.

This quote belongs on the poster/DVD box…
"The dumbed-down "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" no one wanted!" — Nathan Rabin, A.V. Club

I met him several years ago, and he was just great. Funny, charming, very friendly. This news is seriously bumming me out.

I bet my sister owns this game, and I further bet she bought herself, on purpose.

Michael J. Fox has Parkinson's. I have MS, but like Jimmy Eight Cats, so far it's just the chronic irritant kind.

Knock, knock.

Cameleopard is right — the original concept was for the president to show up a few times a year, and the focus would be on the staffers. Then they shot the pilot, and Sheen was so awesome that they knew they couldn't withhold that from the weekly audience.

Come on now, Buffy's sucky birthdays were a running gag.

I'm sure you're right.

Ok, I just read on Wikipedia that her last name was invented for the BtVS role-playing game.

The lack-of-cell phone thing was intentional in later seasons. I remember one of the writers saying it made it easier to keep things exciting if everyone had to get together to exchange information instead of just texting, "Smash pwr center, kthxbai." They also kept most of the characters from driving for a long time…

I like Season 4 too. It has its weaknesses, sure, but it has a bunch of great episodes too. The villain isn't all that well-realized, but he's also not as important to the overall story as what's going on with the Scoobies' group dynamic.

"Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest," "Angel," and "Prophecy Girl" are pretty important to the overall story. Season 1 is 33% vital! Not that you couldn't understand the show without it, but there's a lot of core information there.

Thanks to the WB's publicity department, it was well-known when the season began that Angel was getting his own spinoff, so his return never was much of a surprise. I think they did the best they could to at least show how Buffy was affected by the experience of having killed him. Even though he came back, it didn't…