Alan calls it out before the credits even roll: the fact that Scott Hope dumps Buffy the moment a shinier love interest is on the horizon is one more brick in the case that this guy was never any good. From there Jarrod and Alan dig into "Homecoming," the by-the-numbers-but-a-blast hour where Buffy, freshly single and feeling invisible (a teacher doesn't even remember the student whose life her class supposedly changed), throws herself into a homecoming-queen grudge match against Cordelia — right as Mr. Trick debuts Slayerfest '98 and sics a roomful of assassins on what he thinks are two Slayers. The guys trace the episode's real engine, competition as validation, through Trick's mission statement of a monologue, and they have a lot of fun with the machinery around it: the "Winklevoss twins" hunters, a live video switcher dressed up as spy tech, the return of country-vampire Lyle Gorch, and the most-dangerous-game lineage running back to Richard Connell's 1924 short story. Along the way, Willow and Xander's dressing-room kiss finally cracks a seal Alan suspects the writers will have to awkwardly reseal, Oz stays magnificently expressionless, Faith spreads a fake-STD rumor to torch Scott on the dance floor, and Cordelia stakes a vampire with a spatula before verbally reducing Lyle to a cowering boy. There's a real digression into why theme songs and title sequences are a lost art (blame Lost), a color-theory tangent on why Freddy Krueger's red-and-green sweater works, and the eternal Buffy question of who cleans up all the bullet holes. It ends on a homecoming-queen tie neither rival wins — and Trick trading up to a job with the Mayor. Band Candy waits next week.

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