"Pangs" is one of my favorite episodes. The writers and actors had a great time exploring all the various pros and cons of celebrating Thanksgiving Day, and we get to see Buffy showing that she can also Slay the Culinary Arts in the kitchen. Angel makes a cameo, unbeknownst to Buffy, and Spike has to be tied to a chair in order to behave, but gets to eat some gravy as a reward. Xander contracts syphilis as Native American revenge, but then finds a cure. There's a LOT to be thankful for!
Read the complete script
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Some of the best quotes:
BUFFY: You know what I should do? I should have my own Thanksgiving.Invite all you guys, cook the whole meal just ike Mom always does. It'll be great!
WILLOW: Buffy, earlier you agreed with me about Thanksgiving. It's a sham! It's all about death!
BUFFY: It's a sham, but it's a sham with yams. A yam sham.
WILLOW: You're not going to jokey-rhyme your way out of this one.
GILES: Tell me again why we're not doing this at your house.
BUFFY: Giles, if you want to get by in American society you have to learn our traditions. You're the patriarch. You have to host the festivities or it's all meaningless.
GILES: And this is in no way an elaborate scheme to stick me with the clean up.
Spike peers through a dusty window into a dilapidated building. Inside, in a pool of golden lamp-light, a small nest of vampires is settling down with a dazed human victim. An older vampire is about to bite. Then he pauses and holds the whimpering victim out to a younger vampire. A heart-warming domestic scene. Spike watches, his breath frosting the window, a picture of misery and longing.
RILEY (Talking about his home in Iowa) ... After dinner, we all go for a walk down by the river with the dogs. And there's... trees, and I know what you're thinking, it's like I grew up in a Grant Wood painting.
BUFFY Exactly. If I knew who that was.
RILEY Just a guy who painted stuff that looked like what I grew up in.
BUFFY: Ah. Well, have fun at the homestead.
RILEY: Always do. What's the line -- "Home's the place that, when you have to go there --"
BUFFY: "-- they have to take you in." That's what they say.
BUFFY: We don't say Indian.
GILES: Yes! Right. Always behind on the terms. Still trying not to refer to you lot as 'bloody colonials'.
BUFFY: The thing is, I like my evil like my men: evil. You know, straight up, black hat, tie you to the railroad tracks, soon my electroray will destroy metropolis BAD. Not all mixed up with guilt and the destruction of an indigenous culture.
BUFFY: What happened to the Chumash?
WILLOW: How about imprisonment? Forced labor? Herded like animals into a mission full of bad European diseases?
BUFFY: Boy, the Cultural Partnership center really didn't stress any of that stuff.
XANDER: Can we come rocketing back to the part about me and my new syphilis?
ANYA: Oh, that'll make you blind and insane, but it won't kill you. The smallpox will.
XANDER: Sweetie... not helping.
GILES: Buffy, Xander is in real danger. Are you sure the solution is pie?
BUFFY: Over bickering and confusion? I'll take pie.
GILES: We will find a solution --
BUFFY: And we will have a nice dinner. Okay? Both. End of story. I'm having a Thanksgiving. It's going to be perfect.
SPIKE: Help me...
Buffy slams a palm to his chest, sends him flying back on his ass. He scrambles out of the direct sunlight, his blanket beginning to smoke.
SPIKE: What part of "help me" did you not understand?
BUFFY: The part where I help you.
SPIKE: Come on! I'm parboiling out here!
SPIKE: I'm saying Spike had a little trip to the vet and now he doesn't chase the other puppies anymore. I can't bite anything. I can't even hit people.
Spike is being tied to a chair. Buffy finishes the last knot as he complains:
SPIKE: Bloody hell, woman! You're cutting off my circulation.
BUFFY: You don't have any circulation.
SPIKE: Well it pinches.
SPIKE: Oh, someone put a stake in me!
XANDER: You got a lot of volunteers in here...
SPIKE: I just can't take this mamby-pamby boo-hooing over the bloody Indians!
WILLOW: The preferred term is --
SPIKE: You won! All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That's what conquering nations do! That's what Caesar did, he's not going around saying "I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it"! The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, you massacred them, end of story!
XANDER: Maybe it's the syphilis talking, but some of that made sense.
SPIKE: Do you know what happens to a vampire that doesn't get to feed?
GILES: Actually, I've always wondered.
SPIKE: Living skeletons, mate. Like famine pictures from those dusty countries, only not half as funny.
BUFFY: You can have gravy. Gravy has blood in it, right?
SPIKE: You know what else has blood in it? Blood!
(After the Chumash Warrior turns into a bear)
SPIKE: You made a bear!
BUFFY: I didn't mean to!
SPIKE: Undo it! Undo it!
XANDER: Hey! Gentle Ben! Over here!
Not getting a reaction, Xander grabs a bag of raw, unpeeled potatoes. He starts lobbing them at the bear.
XANDER: (to the bear)That's for giving me syphilis!
WILLOW: ... did you see me? Two seconds of conflict with an indigenous person and I turn into General Custer.
BUFFY: It wasn't exactly a perfect Thanksgiving.
XANDER: I don't know. It kinda seemed right to me. A bunch of anticipation, a big fight and now we're all sleepy.
