Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Controversial Thanksgiving Episode Is Worth Revisiting

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"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" never shirked away from a good holiday episode. Probably the most famous one is Season 2's "Halloween," a particularly creepy "Buffy" episode where a warlock's spell makes the people of Sunnydale actually become the costumes they're wearing. "Buffy" Season 4 then revisited Halloween in the episode "Fear, Itself" before moving onto the next holiday, Thanksgiving, in Season 4, Episode 8, "Pangs."

Season 4 is a transition point for "Buffy," and the season's quality — as well as later "Buffy" season rankings — typically reflect those growing pains. This season moved the show's characters out of high school and into college. Co-leads Angel (David Boreanaz) and Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) left the show for the spin-off "Angel," and charming vampire Spike (James Marsters) went from villain to unwilling ally. All the changes swirling around Buffy are what drives her during "Pangs," where she decides to organize a Thanksgiving for her closest friends: Willow (Alyson Hannigan), Xander (Nicholas Brendon), and Giles (Anthony Head). Xander brings his girlfriend Anya (Emma Caulfield), and Spike (James Marsters) crashes the party in his first episode as a semi-official member of the Scooby gang.

While this was before the term "Friendsgiving" became popular, that's exactly what Buffy puts together in "Pangs." But the event is complicated by the villain of the week: Hus (Tod Thawley), a vengeful Native American spirit. One of the Chumash people, Hus wants revenge on the descendants of the settlers who oppressed his tribe. As a result, Buffy and the Scoobies find themselves in an awkward place with a "monster" who has legitimate grievances.

Some rank "Pangs" as one of the best Thanksgiving TV episodes ever, while others contend it bites off a bit more than it can chew (vampire and Thanksgiving meal puns both intended).

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"Pangs" aired in time for Thanksgiving 1999, and watching it now is like a time capsule that preserves what the attitudes were around Native American restitution and Thanksgiving myths back then. Willow mentioning that her mom doesn't celebrate Columbus Day is treated as something unusual, whereas now that sort of backlash is more accepted.

By 1999, the term "Indian" was still in the process of being replaced by "Native American," which plays out in "Pangs," as Buffy checks Giles' use of the former term. Across "Pangs," the white characters also discuss how the founding myths of Thanksgiving (that pilgrims and the Natives shared food and culture peacefully) were pretty bogus. Yet, "Pangs" treats settled history as, well, history. Buffy feels guilty as a white person snuffing out a Native person's revenge, but the lives Hus is threatening now need protecting.

Hus' vengeance quest kicks off when it turns out the construction site of UC Sunnydale's new anthropology building sits on top of an old Christian mission site where the souls of Chumash warriors rest. That's a potent image: a building promoting diversity built over a colonial mission and Native American bones. Hus even infects Xander with a magical disease, like how white settlers brought diseases that decimated Indigenous populations.

Now, it's important to remember what the characters say isn't necessarily what the episode believes. Willow says they should help Hus "bring atrocities to light," while Giles counters: "If the history books are full of them, I'd say they already are." Willow's a young bleeding heart, Giles is an older, stuffy British man, and those lines reflect who they are. The character who most memorably wields the soapbox is Spike, who tells the Scoobies to get over themselves.

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Hus barely speaks, which hurts the episode's framing that he's a wronged human and not a monster, but the episode almost preempts that with another Spike line. When Willow says they can talk Hus out of wanting revenge, Spike replies, "You exterminated his race, what could you possibly say that'd make him feel better?"

Again, "Pangs" tends to split "Buffy" viewers. Some praise the episode's humor and characterization, but others highlight the political themes as poorly-aged. But others, even Native American writers, have praised "Pangs" in spite of itself. Writer Jane Espenson is still proud of it, too, calling it one of her best "Buffy" episodes.

Speaking to Yahoo TV in 2016, Espenson revealed how "Pangs" first came about:

"Joss [Whedon] had mentioned a few times that he always wanted to do a Thanksgiving episode in which the characters had to eat their dinner with a dead Native American on the table as a reminder of the losses built into the holiday."

That about sums the episode up: Progressive intentions to spotlight historical atrocity while still centering white people and using a Native person as a prop. That's not to say Espenson wrote the episode carelessly. The Chumash tribe was chosen because its members lived in the area of Southern California where Sunnydale is meant to be. 

"Pangs" also unlocked Spike's role as the new sarcastic comic relief. The "Buffy" writers sometimes struggled with finding Spike's proper role, eventually turning him from a villain into a reluctant hero. He spends "Pangs" tied to a chair, throwing barbs at Buffy and co., and getting shot full of arrows by Hus' ghostly warriors. 

Like the holiday it celebrates, "Pangs" has some inextricable flaws, yet there's still fun to be had with it.