Sunnydale High’s new Principal - Snyder - forces Giles to run the school’s annual talent(less) show. Things start to go wrong when a demon begins to steal body parts from those taking part. Things get worse when the Scoobies realise a ventriloquist’s dummy may be to blame.
| Airdate: | 5 May 1997 |
| Writer: | Rob Des Hotel + Dean Batali |
| Director: | Ellen Pressman |
| Cast: |
Cordelia: "All I can think is, it coulda been me!"
Xander: "We can dream."
Behind the Scenes Trivia
Closing credits
The closing credits of the show were altered in two episodes. The first time was in The Puppet Show when the gang were seen performing a scene from Oedipus Rex. In Once More, With Feeling, the dance of the road sweepers was played instead of Nerf Herder’s usual theme. The beginning credits for the musical are completely different to the way they usually are, but if you listen, the initial tune is a take on Nerf Herder’s own Buffy theme tune.
Flight of the Bumblebee
The following lines were deleted from The Puppet Show:
Buffy: “Pretty good. I never heard ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ on the tuba before.”
Lisa: “Most people aren’t up to it.”
Nicky’s ad lib
In The Puppet Show, Xander holds up Sid the Dummy and says, “Redrum, Redrum”. This was an ad lib by Nicholas Brendon.
Scooby talents
From the original script of The Puppet Show this line was cut for length:
Buffy: “And I don’t think we’ll be featuring Xander’s special gift…”
Xander: “Okay, some people are jealous that they can’t burp the alphabet.”
Buffy: “…so we’re back to drama. We’ll just do it quickly. get in, get out. Nobody gets hurt.”
Cast and Crew Trivia
Armin Shimerman
Armin Shimerman played Principal Snyder. Armin is best known for playing Ferengi Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a role he played for seven years. Along with Michael Ansara, John de Lancie, and Richard Poe, he is one of only four actors to play the same character on three different Star Trek series (and the only one to be a regular cast member on one of those series). Armin has appeared in many TV shows including Married…with Children (as Mr Lovejoy), Seinfeld (as Stan the Caddy), Ally McBeal (as Judge Walworth), and as a wizard in Charmed. In Judging Amy, he played a lawyer who was trying to argue that demons exist. Armin was also in the Star Trek edition of the U.S Weakest Link.
Burke Roberts
Burke played the magician Marc (who was actually a demon) in The Puppet Show. He has also been in The Fall of Night, Sands of Yore, Mockingbird Don’t Sing, Daytrippers and Picket Fences.
Chase Hampton
Chase Hampton, who played the juggler Elliott in The Puppet Show, The Rules of Attraction, They Crawl, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, 7th Heaven and The X Files. He was also a member of The Mickey Mouse Club.
Ellen S. Pressman
Ellen S. Pressman directed The Puppet Show and Inca Mummy Girl. Ellen has also directed episodes of American Dreams, Time of Your Life, Charmed, Felicity, Party of Five, My So-Called Life, Sirens and thirtysomething. She was a producer on L.A. Law.
Krissy Carlson
Krissy played the ballerina Emily in The Puppet Show. She has been in Pacific Palisades, Step by Step, Sunset Beach and MTV’s Undressed. Krissy is a model and was a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Extremes and the Blazer Dancers.
Lenora May
Lenora May, who played Mrs. Jackson in The Puppet Show, has also been in The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, Sins of the Mother, Kenny Rogers as The Gambler, Part III: The Legend Continues, Hobson’s Choice, When a Stranger Calls, Stubby Pringle’s Christmas, Six Feet Under, The X Files, Beverly Hills, 90210, Family Ties, Wonder Woman and Little House on the Prairie.
Natasha Pearce
Natasha Pearce, who played Lisa in The Puppet Show, has also been in Rocky Road, Drive Me Crazy, Roundhouse, Miss Match, Friends, Popular, ER, Sister, Sister and Equal Justice.
Richard Werner
Richard Werner played ventriloquist Morgan Shay in The Puppet Show. He has also been in Stardust, The Bacchae, Dead Tides and Baywatch Nights.
Tom Wyner
Tom was the voice of Sid the Dummy in The Puppet Show, and in the Buffy video game Chaos Bleeds. Tom has done voices for many TV shows, cartoons and video games including Digimon and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.
Character Trivia
Emily
Blonde Sunnydale High student, who entered the school Talent Show as a ballerina. She was killed when a member of the Seven ripped out her heart in the locker room in The Puppet Show.
Marc
Marc was a magician in the school talent show who appeared to be human but was actually a demon and member of the Brotherhood of Seven. He tried to get Giles’s brain by performing the Guillotine trick on the gullible librarian, but he was stopped by Buffy. Marc was killed by Sid the Dummy in The Puppet Show.
Morgan Shay
Morgan Shay was a Sunnydale High student, and ventriloquist in the school’s Talent Show. He owned Sid the Dummy. Morgan was killed by a member of the Brotherhood of Seven, who removed his brain. The gang discovered that Morgan suffered from severe headaches and was dying, so his brain was rejected by the demon The Puppet Show.
Principal Snyder
Snyder joined Sunnydale High after Principal Flutie was eaten. He hated kids and took an instant dislike to Buffy and her friends. Even Joyce called him a “nasty little horrid bigoted rodent man”. He was aware of the presence of the Hellmouth and helped local police to cover up any weird activities in the school. Snyder also had a connection with the Mayor, who was the first person he called when he expelled Buffy. His involvement with the Mayor and his activities was actually less sinister than first made out as he was shocked when he thought he’d uncovered a drugs deal in the school, but was in actual fact faced with the Mayor and a box of weird spider-creatures. He seemed to know nothing about the Ascension and stood up to the Mayor when he changed into a demon, who eventually ate him.
Sid the Dummy
Sid was a ventriloquist’s dummy which was possessed since the 1940s by the soul of a demon hunter. His aim was to kill all of the Brotherhood of Seven to allow his soul to finally come to rest. He killed Marc, who turned out to be a demon, and his wish came true in The Puppet Show.
Continuity
Bunny suit
In The Puppet Show, Buffy says, “OK, everyone look at me like I’m in a bunny suit ‘cos I feel so stupid saying this”. In season four’s Fear, Itself, Anya wears a bunny suit to a Halloween party.
Past events
In The Puppet Show, Principal Snyder mentioned the fate of his predecessor Principal Flutie in The Pack (”That’s the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.”) and said it was “wild dogs” who got Flutie (in The Pack). He also mentioned the cheerleader who went up in smoke in The Witch.
Willow’s stage fright
Willow gets stage fright, which was first hinted at in The Puppet Show when she ran terrified from the stage during a talent contest. In Nightmares, Willow was forced to sing a piece from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly on stage but when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Her stage fright was also explored in the episodes Restless (when she was in front of her class and everyone was laughing at her) and - to a lesser extent - in Once More, With Feeling when she was the only main character not to sing a great deal.
In The Yoko Factor, Tara suggested to Willow that she take sophomore Psych but Willow suggested drama instead. In Real Me we saw Willow berate Buffy as the Slayer didn’t have the time to take drama class with her. In Restless, Willow has a dream about having stage fright about the drama class, who are performing a play without actually having any classes.
Music Trivia
The Greatest Love Of All
Cordelia’s ‘talent’ in the school’s talent show (in The Puppet Show) was singing “The Greatest Love Of All”. The song was written by Linda Creed and Michael Masser, and was a huge hit for Whitney Houston in 1986. Cordelia sang this song several years later on the season four Angel episode ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem‘ when Lorne wanted to ‘read’ her. Obviously, this is one of her favourite songs.
Mythology Trivia
Brotherhood of Seven
The Brotherhood of Seven were a group of demons who must get the heart and brain of a human every seven years to keep up their disguise as humans. The Seven were all killed by demon hunting dummy Sid in The Puppet Show.
Korean Slayer
In The Puppet Show, Sid the Dummy reveals to Buffy that he previously worked with a Korean Slayer in the 1930s.
References
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a Vietnam war movie made in 1979, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on Conrad’s book The Heart of Darkness. In Restless, Xander brings a video of Apocalypse Now for the Scoobies to watch. Later, Xander dreams of the scene in the movie of the encounter between Lieutenant Willard (Martin Sheen) and Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in which Principal Snyder plays the role of the Colonel. In Gingerbread, Snyder says, “I love the smell of desperate librarian in the morning” which is an adaptation of the famous line from the movie, when Lieutenant Colonel says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”.
A third Snyder-related reference to Apocalypse Now is in The Puppet Show. At the end of the episode, we get to see the dramatic scene that Buffy, Willow and Xander perform. One of Xander’s lines is: “Darkness! And horror of darkness.” At that moment, the camera cuts to Snyder sitting in the audience. The most memorable line of Conrad’s book belongs to Kurtz (the character that Snyder spoofed in Restless), who says, “The horror. The horror!”
The Angel episode Apocalypse Nowish is a clear reference to the book and film.
Oedipus Rex
At the end of The Puppet Show, Xander, Buffy and Willow nervously performed a piece from the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by the Greek playwright Sophocles (496-406 B.C.). Xander played Oedipus, Willow played the Priest of Zeus, and Buffy played Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother/wife.
Willow suddenly ran off the stage in fright - which was not part of the script. Alyson thought it seemed right that Willow would have stage fright. This fear was taken up by writers and showed in several future episodes, such as Nightmares.
In Soulless, Angel references the play to Connor when he says, “And now my boy’s in love… all hearts and flowers. But doesn’t it freak you out that she used to change your diapers? I mean, when you think about it, the first womanyou boned is the closest thing you’ve ever had to amother. Doing your mom and trying to kill your dad…hmm, there should be a play.”
The Shining
In The Puppet Show, Xander holds up Sid the Dummy and says, “Redrum, Redrum”. Redrum is from Stephen King’s novel The Shining, and for those not in the know, it’s ‘murder’ spelt backwards. The Shining was made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance.
In Gone, Buffy says, “All work and no play makes Doris a dull girl”. This is a reference to The Shining in which the main character, Jack Torrance, writes the words “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” when he starts to go crazy from cabin fever.
In Normal Again, Jonathan says, “I’m going all Jack Torrance here, you know?” referring to the main character in The Shining.
In Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?, Angel is staying in room 217 in the hotel. This is the same room number in The Shining in which young Danny Torrance finds a dead woman in the bathtub.
In Billy, the scenes of Wesley chasing Fred through the hotel with an axe are reminiscent of the move version of The Shining, in which Jack Torrence does the same thing.
The Usual Suspects
In The Puppet Show, Xander says “Does anybody else feel like they’ve been Keyser Söze’d?” This is a reference to the movie The Usual Suspects where the main character Kevin Spacey tells a story to the police to make them feel sorry for him and divert attention away from him when he was the bad guy all along.
Goofs
Seen at 07.46 minutes:
When the Scoobies sit on the stage, there are two guys behind Buffy, one with a guitar. Someone whistles to Buffy, and in the next shot, the guys have suddenly gone.
Seen at 18.04 minutes:
When Joyce says good night to Buffy before she goes to bed, Joyce leaves the light on, leaving the switch up. Buffy then turns off the light but later wakes up screaming. Joyce rushes in and turns the light on by turning the switch up - but it wasn’t down in the first place.
Seen at 34.53 minutes:
The “power circle” formed by Giles towards the end seems awfully quick for him to have determined so confidently that not one of the talent show participants was missing.
Seen at 36.18 minutes:
Willow is seen typing away at her computer in one scene but it doesn’t appear to be switched on, or it at least isn’t reacting to whatever she’s typing.
Seen at 41.07 minutes:
After the demon is decapitated, Sid stabs him once and then as he pulls the knife out to stab him again you can see that the knife is clean, yet it should be bloody.
Seen at 41.39 minutes:
The knife in the corpse’s body disappears when Buffy picks up Sid and the curtain goes up.
Seen at 41.40 minutes:
Surely someone in the audience must have heard the loud fight going on just behind the curtain? And who pulled the curtain? Where were the rest of the people in the talent show when all this was going on?
Quotes
Snyder: "I know Principal Flutie would have said, 'Kids need understanding. Kids are human beings.' That's the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
Willow: "It could be anyone. It could be me! ... It's not, though."
Snyder: "There are things I will not tolerate: students loitering on campus after school, horrible murders with hearts being removed... and also smoking."
Buffy: "Giles, unto every generation is born one who must run the annual talentless show. You cannot escape your destiny."
Xander: "Did I mention that I *hate* this school?"
Cordelia: "All I can think is, it coulda been me!"
Xander: "We can dream."