Apple of my eye: Once again, Buffy plugs all things Apple. As well as Willow’s regular iBook laptop, Help introduces a new-look iMac on Buffy’s desk at Sunnydale High.
Friendly jingles: 'I Like Ike' was a slogan adopted by Baltimore-based supporters of US Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 election campaign. Ike won, by the way.
This is my domain: Just for fun, the Buffy team created a real Cassie Newton web site at www.cassienewton.com. That URL is no longer online, but you could try . The site features the same hideous poetry as the TV version.
"One of the most frightening things about this," revealed writer Rebecca Rand-Kirshner, "is tapping back into my high-school journals. Looking back throws you into all of those apoplectic teenage memories. I didn't crib any of my own poetry, but I did crib my own mentality." Fan response to Cassie's site was massive, prompting Mutant Enemy to consider making a fake 'Dawn's Diary' site too. Sadly, this never materialised.
The future foretold: Since she foretells her own death, Cassie's name is surely a reference to Cassandra, the prophet of the Trojan War epics. Cassandra warned her father, Troy's King Priam, about the danger of that famous wooden horse the Greeks brought to the city. She wasn't believed either.
A grave matter: Tara's headstone is dated 7th May 2002. This is the exact date that Seeing Red first aired in the USA. Tara's date of birth is engraved as 16th October 1980. That doesn't quite match up with season five's Family, which was based around Tara's 20th birthday. Willow's placing of stones on Tara's grave is a common Jewish practice - a way of honouring the deceased, showing that the grave has been visited. It's a subtle nod to Willow's background.
HollyHood: Principal Wood apparently grew up in the wrong part of town – the mean streets of Beverly Hills. It's a dangerous 'hood, populated by Thirtysomething teenagers like Luke Perry and Shannon Doherty.
So it goes: Kurt Vonnegut's classic sci-fi/war novel Slaughterhouse Five is being read by Cassie, for pleasure. That's only the short title though.*
Googled: Willow used to have rare net skills. Now she just uses the highest-profile search engine around. Despite our best efforts, we failed to find any Doogie Howser fanfic on the Web.
Poor father-figures: Cassie’s dad is initially depicted as a rather unpleasant chap – the latest in a long line of bad dads portrayed in Buffy and Angel. Buffy’s dad left Joyce and shacked up with his secretary, Cordelia’s dad fiddled his taxes and went to prison, Wesley’s dad was a nasty piece of work by all accounts, Angel’s dad hated his son, and Buffy’s potential stepdad Ted turned out to be a violent, mad robot. Do we detect a pattern here?
I'm with the band: Cassie sports a T-shirt for the insanely popular duo The White Stripes. We also see a Devil Doll sticker on a locker door. Devil Doll is a singer whose song Faith in Love played in season four's The Harsh Light of Day. Later, when Buffy refers to the heavy metal of the Blue Clam Cult, she means to say Blue Oyster Cult – a rock band best known for their 1978 hit Don't Fear The Reaper.
*In full, the book is called 'Slaughterhouse Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod (and Smoking Too Much) Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire-Bombing of Dresden, Germany, the Florence of the Elbe, a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale: This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where The Flying Saucers Come From.' When we launch a password-protected area of this site, these are the passwords we'll be needing you to remember, in full.
And we're kidding!
