Homecoming

First televised November 3, 1998. Première diffusion en france le 13 novembre 1999
Guest Starring K. Todd Freernan (Mr. Trick), Jeremy Ratchford (Lyle Gorch), Fob Filippo (Scott Hope), Ion Abercrombic Harry Groener (Mayor Wilkins), and Eliza Dushku (Faith); Written and Directed by David Greenwalt; Edited by Skip MacDonald

Intro: Buffy and the gang discuss their Homecoming plans. (Buffy will go with Scott.) Later, Buffy takes some blood to Angel. He's still in pain. She tells Angel about Scott. The next day, Scott tells Buffy he wants to break things off. From across the street, Mr. Trick's men are videotaping Buffy.

Act 1: The mayor is notified of terrorists in town. At school, yearbook pictures are shot. Cordelia checks out her Homecoming Queen competition-Holly, Brenda, and Michelle. Buffy and Faith train in the library, Cordelia forgets to tell Buffy about the picture-taking; Buffy is angry and decides to run against Cordelia for HQ. Mr. Trick issues a challenge, a competition, to kill Buffy and Faith as part of SlayerFest'98.

Act 2: Willow and Xander dress for the dance. They practice dancing and kiss-to their shock and dismay. Buffy plans her HQ campaign with Xander, Willow, and Oz-until Cordelia enters, and Buffy learns that the three are already working for Cordelia. Buffy and Cordelia campaign. Willow and Xander are torn between Buffy and Cordelia. Cordelia and Buffy ride to the dance together alone in the limo-but the driver works for Mr. Trick and abandons the two girls in Miller's Woods. They find a videotape of Tricktelling them they are about to be hunted (though he thinks he's talking to Buffy and Faith).

Act 3: At the dance, Willow, Xander, and Faith listen to Oz's band. Buffy and Cordelia run through the woods. Buffy traps one hunter, who says there are two Germans, a demon, and a vampire couple from Texas (Gorch). Willow and Xander wonder where Buffy and Cordelia are. They are holed up in a cabin. The demon attacks. The Germans lob an explosive into the cabin. Buffy and Cordelia escape; the demon doesn't. The cabin blows up. The Texas vampires are at the library; Giles is unconscious.

Act 4: Two policemen "arrest" Mr. Trick. Buffy and Cordelia arrive at the library. Buffy kills the female vampire. Cordelia scares off the cowboy vampire. The Germans have tracked the girls to the library. Buffy tricks them into shooting themselves. Mr. Trick is brought to the mayor, Richard Wilkins. Wilkins says it's an important year for him. Children are important and need to be controlled. At the dance, the HQ is about to be announced. Buffy and Cordelia finally arrive. There is a tie in the HQ voting-Holly and Michelle both win.

COMMENTS: In another solid (if no( spectacular) episode, viewers get the usual assortment of evil characters hunting Buffy. This is mostly played for laughs, not to mention having the recurring motif of a formally-dressed Buffy having to engage in all-out battle. (This goes all the way back to the feature film, in which Buffy battles vampire king Lothos during a senior dance. In the first-season finale. "Prophesy Girl." Buffy battles the Master during the Spring Fling Dance.) This time around, the battle takes place mostly off school grounds, though the idea is the same.
Equally incongruous is Buffy's sudden decision to run for Homecoming Queen-especially in retaliation for Cordelia's fathire to reinind her that it was yearbook photo day. Okay, this was probably the last straw. though their relationship hadn't been all that bad in recent episodes. In any event, it was just a contrived way to create sonic kind of competition between the two as a counter to the competition of Slaver-Fest '98. As with "Beauty arid the Beasts,- we respect the thematic unity more than the execution.
Mr. Trick continues to be an interesting character, combining vicious evil with a penchant for going about his business with a certain flair. We agree with MayorWilkins: "SlayerFest-I love that name". Here Trick begins his association with the mayor, who has been mentioned in earlier episodes (Principal Snyder, for instance, was licading off to a meeting with him at the end of "Dead Man's Party") but not seen.
It's clear that the writers had worked out the mayor's season long story arc from the very beginning (the kind of planning we have come to expect-and appreciate-from the team), obvious from this exchange with Mr. Trick near the end of the episode:

       Wilkins: This is a very important year for me.
       Trick: Election year.
        Wilkins: Something like that .... Children are the heart of a community. They need to be looked after, controlled. The more           rebellious element needs to be dealt with. The children are our future. We need them. I need them.

At the time this seemed to be a parody of every politician's usage of "the children" to manipulate public emotion toward or against a particular policy. In light of the season finale, however, it's clear that Wilkins-and the writers-had something more specific in mind.
One disappointment of "Homecoming" is its lack of metaphor, something the series has strived for - Whedon has said that Buffy's battle against monsters is a metaphor of the struggles high school kids go through, in which they believe every problem is a life or - death issue with the fate of the world at stake. While it's too much to ask that these multiple levels occur every episode, "Homecoming" seems to be tailor-made for such things-a hint of things returning home (i.e. comfort and normalcy). But as mentioned earlier, the series had already pretty much returned things to normal after the dramatic events from "Becoming" and "Anne. " That made it too late to do much on that score by now, and viewers are left with the competitions. which don't have anything to do with homecoming (in a thematic sense).
Lyle Gorch, by the way, returns from the second season episode "Bad Eggs."