"With all sorts of hormones surging through your bodies, compelling you to action, it's often difficult to remember that there are negative consequences to having sex. Would anyone care to offer one such consequence?"
"Well, that depends. Are you talking about sex in the car or out of the car?"
The closest they've come to a good, scare ya, horror movie episode. Possession and creepy crawlies. Peaked in the middle, when we didn't yet know the nature of the little creepy crawly that was stalking Buffy. There was a metaphor that was very there if you wanted to notice but was never explicitly thrown at us, an analogy between raising children and raising monsters. Good thing it wasn't made explicit, because it actually wasn't relevant. Little slimy things and big slimy thing are what was relevant.
( Cordelia watch )My favorite part came right at the beginning, in a mall, where Buffy sees a couple on an escalator, one of whom is nonreflecting in the mirror that lines the side. So in tracking them she goes into a "backstage area," a functional, nondescript hallway, light-green institutional lighting, pay phones and restrooms, ugly oval trash bin, just a way from here to there. Fine contrast, overdecorated mall, underdecorated core, but you need to have a vampire plot to walk you from one to the other.