Tom Lenk

Tom Lenk played Andrew Wells and Cyrus, one of Harmony’s minions, in Real Me. Tom was born in Westlake Village, California, on June 16th, 1976. His full name is Thomas Loren Lenk. He attended Moorepark College and later UCLA’s theatre programme. In 1997, Tom won the Carol Burnett Award and Scholarship before touring with the European cast of Grease playing the role of Doody. Tom has written three plays. Tom’s father Fred is a computer programmer, and his mother Pam is a teacher in the Pleasant Valley School District. Tom can be seen in Bandwagon (a movie starring Emma Caulfield), Window Theory, Straight-Jacket, And Then Came Summer, Boy Next Door, Boogie Nights (as Uncle Floyd’s Kid), Popular, Joey and Judging Amy. The character of Andrew became popular and was brought back as part of the Scoobies in season seven. Tom can also be seen as Andrew in the Angel episode ‘Damage’.
In January 2005, Tom wrote and starred in Will You Be My Special Friend?, which featured various special guests including Emma Caulfield, Danny Strong and Adam Busch.
Tom appeared as Lord of the Rings character Frodo in Alyson Hannigan’s 2006 movie Date Movie.

Nikki and Robin

In the Angel episode Damage, new Slayer Dana begins to get memories of past Slayers. At one point she believes she’s Nikki Wood, the Slayer Spike killed in the 1970s. Her son, Robin became the Principal of Sunnydale High in Buffy’s season seven:

Spike: “Right. Let me explain. You got visions. Right? Vampire Slayer memories kickin’ around in your head. Which is tough… ‘cause it sounds like you’re past midnight on the crazy clock anyway”
Dana: “Please don’t. I have to get home to my son… to my Robin.”
Spike: “Robin? Oh. Hey, you’re talkin’ about Nikki, the slayer I offed back in— Uh, yeah. You probably don’t want to think about that, pet.”

Changing the Slayer line

In Chosen, Buffy, with the help of Willow, turns Slayer mythology on it’s head. They give the power of the Slayer to every potential in the world, rather than to one girl at a time. Female empowerment has been the predominant theme during the show (if you didn’t get that already, where have you been?). In Chosen, Buffy criticises the ‘old men’ who created the ‘one Slayer’ rule and says that Willow is powerful enough to overturn their decision. The possibilities are now endless - but for our Slayer it means one thing: she’s no longer on her own. A strong theme running throughout the seven seasons of the show has been that Buffy’s ‘gift’ sets her apart from every other person on the planet (apart from Faith, and Kendra of course), making a ‘normal life’ almost impossible. Now however, she is merely part of a great collective of empowered female solidarity and her smile at the end shows her realisation that all has changed.
The repercussions of Buffy and Willow’s act can be seen in the Angel episode Damage, in which a disturbed girl is given Slayer powers.

Lord of the Rings

The demon Gnarl in the episode Same Time, Same Place, is very similar to the Lord of the Rings character Gollum. Jane Espenson confirmed that this was intentional in a post at the Bronze Beta: “Collect the money on the bet. There was some Gollum in the history of Gnarl.”
In Intervention, Xander says that Buffy called Glory’s minions “hobbits with leprosy”. He’s referring to J.R.R. Tolkien’s creatures from his book The Hobbit and the trilogy the Lord of the Rings. Hobbits are like men, but are much smaller, with large hairy feet. They are home-loving and enjoy food, parties and smoking pipes. Glory later calls Spike “Precious”, which is fitting as the Lord of the Rings character Gollum refers to the One Ring as “my precious”.
In Gone, Warren says to Jonathan, “Oh, cheer up, Frodo”. Frodo Baggins is a character from Lord of the Rings. In Chosen, the scenes of the thousands of CGI Turok-Han in the Hellmouth was clearly influenced by the scenes in the Mines of Moria in the Lord of the Rings movie The Fellowship of the Ring.
In Damage, Andrew reacts to Spike’s reappearance by comparing it to Gandalf’s resurrection in The Fellowship of the Ring (“more beautiful than ever”} before weeping on Spike’s shoulder and whispering “Frodo, he’s alive.”
In Power Play, Gunn calls Drogyn “Aragorn.” Aragorn is the name of a long-haired character in The Lord of the Rings, played in the movie version by actor Viggo Mortensen.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

In Normal Again, Willow refers to Buffy as, “Cuckoo’s Nest”. This is a reference to the book about a mental asylum One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. It was turned into a movie, starring Jack Nicholson.
In the Angel episode Damage, Harmony says, “A girl over in the nuthouse went all Cuckoo’s Nest, hacked up a couple of guards and went over the wall.”