at this early stage, the question isn't whether blayne is going to forget these events, but whether the show is going to forget that blayne was ever even a student. _buffy_ gets more serious about continuity starting in season two, but continuity never becomes the creative team's highest priority.
Your instincts are correct about this episode. Just a general monster-of-the-week filler episode, not super important. Season 1, and especially these early episodes, were really more about setting up the general world of the show. We start with establishing what a vampire slayer is and we have our big vampire two-parter...and then we have The Witch to establish that witches also exist in the Buffyverse... and then we have this one to establish that there are, also, other monsters that Buffy is going to have to deal with besides vampires and witches! 😉Love watching you discover the show! Can't wait for the next one! 🥰
S1 as is always mentioned is weak due to its low budget, but it gets us to really know and love the characters, and 'the monster of the week' type format is evident throughout most of it. However, again it does provide an analysis of social comment, this time how the experienced and mature adults can take advantage of the innocent and weak younger people. This time in the form of a mature female teacher who is being drooled over by all the teenage boys, and is using them for evil purposes.
The reason the fight was done in shadow puppet style is because they had to borrow the mantis costume from another show (Babylon 5, also a fantastic show) and had to return it undamaged. This is a sign of the shoestring budget the 1st season was opperating on.
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES!!! LUKE, DON'T READ THIS!!! NOR ANYONE ELSE WHO HASN'T SEEN EVERY EPISODE! I consider this the first episode where the Scooby Gang show their distrust in Bffy's slaying instincts. It's a small moment in comparison to things like _Becoming, Dead Man's Party, Revelations, The Yoko Factor, Empty Places,_ and other smaller moments, but not believing Buffy (even to the point of Giles and Willow questioning in disbelief Buffy thinking the teacher is a preying mantis [and Xander at a later moment in the episode, but thinking it's about jealousy] before they accepting pretty quickly) shows the beginning of a whole arc in and of itself where the Scoobies don't always trust Buffy's slaying instincts.
Yeah, I'm sorry, so sorry. Terrible nonsense. The show at this point was so low budget they were reduced to renting costumes. The mantis is a re-used prop from the Babylon 5 TV show. It really does get a lot better than this. I know you say you've only seen four - almost certainly, when you've seen all 144 episodes, it'll still be in your bottom four.
Which was why they couldn't show Buffy hacking it to bits. But they didn't need to keep it hidden in the dark, though. It was a cool costume on Babylon 5 (season 1). Or maybe it had already seen it's better days since then as it might have fallen into poor condition.
This is widely considered to be 1 of the 2 weakest episodes of the 1st season. But it still had very important lessons to it. It continues to establiahes definitively that there are not just vampires in the show, as we have now seen a witch and a monster. It also diacuases predatory adult minor relationahips, and shows that boys can be victims too, despite societal pressures to think boys can never be the victims of adult women, and how toxic masculinity prohibition to boys being virgins can make them vulnerable to such abuse.
