DigificWriter

Somebody really needs to fix the link in the board guide.

Anyway, I'm posting my thoughts on "Anne" and "Dead Man's Party" from the rewatch I'm currently doing.

For me, "Anne" has always been one of the stronger Season Premiere episodes of the series, but, on rewatch, the thing that struck me the most is how much groundwork it lays for what will come our way on ANGEL, from establishing the darker environment of L.A. to setting up Anne Steele in the city to the introduction of the Scourge demons to even the more Noir tone that ANGEL made its own.

I also noticed some thematic echoes between the episode and the Season 6 Premiere Bargaining, since both episodes deal with Buffy being absent/dead.

With "Dead Man's Party", I've previously found it to be somewhat frivolous, but watching it this time I realized that it's actually the thematic twin of the Season 6 episodes Afterlife and Once More with Feeling, especially the latter, which, like DMP, appears to be fun and light on the surface but has so many hidden layers to it, such as the moment in DMP when Buffy's friends and family confront her out in the open about her having abandoned them and the moment in OMwF when Buffy admits to her friends and family that they had pulled her from Heaven when they resurrected her