Our slayer is patrolling through the park, near the playground, when Joyce surprises her with a snack.  She wants to "share" the slaying with Buffy, since it's such a big part of her life.  A vamp jumps out and Buffy fights with him, chasing him when he runs off.  Joyce goes to sit down on a bench on the playground, and discovers two dead children lying on the little whirlaround thingy.  Buffy comes back to find her mother almost in tears.  The camera pans down and we see that one of the children has a strange symbol either drawn or tattooed on her hand.  Later, when the cops are there, Buffy says she's sorry that Joyce had to see this, but tells her that she's going to get whatever did this to the kids.  At school the next day, Buffy tells Giles what happened, and draws the symbol she saw on the childrens' hands.  Giles tells her he suspects that humans did this as part of a ritual or something.  In the cafeteria, Xander feels really odd around Oz, and goes to great lengths to 'prove' that he and Willow are over.  Amy is also in attendance, whom we haven't seen since Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.  Except she has brown hair now.  Oz mentions that it's Buffy's birthday next week, but Buffy herself shows up so they can't talk about it.  She tells them about the deaths of the two children the night before, and how Joyce was the one to find them.  Willow can't believe that a mom would actually take time out to do something like that, and expresses her surprise just as Joyce shows up in the cafeteria, saying that she had nightmares about it all night.  Joyce asks Buffy if Giles has any idea about who did this, and she tells her the cult idea.  Joyce immediately associates 'cult' with 'witchcraft', much to Willow's dismay.  Buffy goes off with Joyce, who tells her that she called everyone she knew, and now there's going to be a vigil at the city hall that night.  That night, at the vigil, Joyce and Giles meet up and are still really awkward around each other (because of Band Candy).  Willow's mother shows up, and appears to be really disassociated from Willow's life.  The two moms bring up the idea of witches being responsible for this, again.  The vigil starts with a speech from the Mayor, and then Joyce takes the mike.  She begins an impassioned speech, and talks about unnatural evils, monsters, witches, and slayers (in front of the whole group).  She says it's time the grown ups took charge, find the people who did this, and make them pay.  We cut to a scene later of a Wicca group that includes Willow and Amy, and they have the symbol drawn on the floor.  The next day at school, Buffy breaks up some intimidation by some guys on Amy and one of the guys from the Wicca group the night before.  They start something with them because they suspect they're witches, and 'everyone knows witches killed those kids'.  Giles corners Buffy later and tells her that he's beginning to suspect that the signs are pointing toward witchcraft.  In the lounge, Buffy looks at Willow's books while she's in the bathroom and discovers the symbol drawn on one of her notebooks.  When Willow comes out, Buffy starts to question her but is interrupted by a pop-locker search and seizure.  Snyder and the school officials are going through all the kids' lockers, taking everything that looks like it might be related to witchcraft, and taking away the students who owned it.  Amy is one of the students, and Willow's is soon searched too.  In the library, all of Giles's reference books are being taken away by Snyder's marauders.  Snyder comes in and flaunts his victory over Giles, and tells them that they can do nothing to stop M.O.O.....Mothers Opposed to the Occult.  At Willow's house, Willow's mom believes that Willow's behavior is a cry for discipline, and grounds her.  Back at Buffy's house, Buffy finds out that Joyce is the one who arranged the raid at school that day, and that she doesn't want her to see Willow any more.  In the course of the conversation, Joyce tells Buffy that she thinks her slaying is more of a reaction than action, and that it's not really helping anything; that Sunnydale hasn't gotten to be any better for her efforts.  Buffy gets angry and says that taking away all of the books they need to figure out what's going on isn't going to help the town get any better, either.  Buffy leaves, and Joyce sees the two dead children, who tell her that she's doing what's right, and how they can't rest until Joyce finds out who did this, and punishes them.    At the playground, Buffy encounters Angel.  She tells him that it's odd how people die in Sunnydale all the time and nobody seems to notice, but now everyone's freaking out. Angel says it's because they were children.  She then tells Angel what Joyce said about how fruitless her role in all this is, and Angel says she's wrong.  She worries that she'll never win.  Angel says they never will, but that's not why they fight.  They do it to protect who they can, and try to make it safer for everyone.  Somewhere along the line he says something that gives Buffy an idea, and she goes to the library, where she finds Giles trying futilely to use the computer (ha HA!), which he's been forced to resort to using after they took all of his books.  She asks them what they know about the kids who were found, and they all realize that nobody knows anything about these kids.  Nobody knows their names, or who their parents were, or anything.  They determine to find out what they can on the net, and Giles surrenders his chair to Oz, who says that Willow's the one who'd know where to look.  He links up with Willow over the internet, and she researches.  They find almost the same story, and pictures of the same children, every fifty years way back to 1659.  It's the same two children every time.  Suddenly their connection with Willow is lost, as her mom comes in and takes the laptop away, telling Willow that she's been talking with Joyce and 'her associates', and all she can do now is let Willow go with love. Back in the library, Giles points out that some fairy tales have a grain of truth of them.  He refers to the story of Hansel and Gretel, and says that there are some demons who thrive on hatred and persecution, and feed on it by watching it in humans.  They decide that this happens every fifty years or so when the demons are 'hungry'.  Just then the boy witch from Willow's group comes running in saying he was attacked, and there's going to be some kind of trial down at the city hall.  The group splits up to go deal with the rising animosity in town. At Willow's house, her mom and several other people arrive at her door to tell her it's time to go, and call her a witch.  Buffy and Giles show up at Buffy's house, but are both chloroformed by Joyce and her minions.  In her fog, Buffy sees the children talking to her mother, saying that they won't feel safe until the bad girls are dead.  At city hall, Willow and Buffy and Amy have been tied to large vertical stakes, where they're about to be burned.  At Buffy's house, Cordelia has come to tell Buffy to stop all this craziness, and finds Giles unconscious on the floor.  She wakes Giles up.  Meanwhile, Oz and Xander have found Willow's room deserted, and head to City Hall where they dodge some henchmen of M.O.O.  The gang of parents set fire to Amy's pyre first, which contains a lot of the books taken from the library.  Amy turns herself into a rat, and escapes.  Willow tries to play it up, saying she'll destroy them all if they don't release her and Buffy, but the parents still see the two little children telling them to kill the girls.  In Giles's car, Cordelia mixes up some stuff that Giles had in his apartment for an un-veiling spell, which he hopes will allow the parents to see the demons in their true form.  Still running from the M.O.O. guys, Oz and Xander hear Willow crying for help, and crawl through a vent in the wall to try to get to her.  Buffy pleads with her mother to not do this, but Joyce isn't hearing it.  Giles and Cordelia show up, and in a very un-Cordelia like fashion, she smashes the glass to the fire hose with her elbow, and turns the water on the people, and the flames beneath Buffy and Willow.  Giles performs the ritual, and the two little kids turn into one big demon that Buffy kills by breaking the post she's tied to and impaling the demon with it.  Just then, Oz and Xander fall through the ceiling, look up at them, and say "we're here to save you". Some time later, at Willow's house, Willow and Buffy try to return Amy the rat back to her human form, and reflect on how Willow's mom is doing the selective memory thing that Joyce used to be so good at.  The only thing she remembers is that Willow is dating a musician, and now he's got to come to dinner the next week.  They fail at trying to return Amy to human, and Buffy ponders if they should get her one of those little wheelie things.  FLAWS:        None found. THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE:        Okay.  Not good, not bad, just kinda okay.  The only thing this episode really lays the groundwork for is the whole 'Amy the rat' thing.  Amy (as a rat) shows up in several more episodes.  BEST LINE:       When the school officials are going through the kids' lockers, Xander says "Oh man, it's Nazi Germany, and I've got playboys in my locker!" When Cordelia wakes Giles up at Buffy's house, she remarks "How many times have you been knocked unconscious, anyway? I swear, one of these times you're going to wake up in a coma."

"Gingerbread"