Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Radar

• The two-finger gesture Spike makes in the fourth-season episode "Hush" and the entire fifth season opening credits is understood to be quite rude in the United Kingdom — it's the British version of flipping someone off — but slipped under the U.S. network radar.
  • Similarly, on Angel, Season 5, episode "The Girl In Question," an Italian demon makes the equivalent Italian chin-rub gesture.
• There's also Spike's repeated use of "bollocks".
• "You make me come...plete."
  • How about: "Lost in ecstasy/Spread beneath my Willow tree..."? Yeah, that episode, and that song in particular, was Joss Whedon saying, "Au revoir, Madame Metaphor!"
  • In case you're wondering, Willow has just (mostly offscreen) placed herself at Tara's business end as Tara is literally floating in ecstasy. They're not even trying anymore.
  • Joss Whedon's comment during the commentary of the "complete" scene?

Um... this... yeah, this is porn.'

• "Warm in the night, when I'm right in her tight... embrace, tight embrace!"
  • "You're the cutest of the Scoobies with your lips as red as rubies and your firm yet supple... tight embrace!"
• During the episode where Buffy and Faith switch bodies, Ms. Summers asks Faith (who she thinks is Buffy) about college. Faith responds with "I've been a busy little beaver."
• "It was like a meat party in my mouth!" — Lampshaded by Dawn right after she says it: "Okay, I'm just a kid, and even I know that sounds wrong."
• Also from the episode "Hush" — Buffy is attending one of Giles' briefings. Everyone has been made mute by some demonic spell, so most communication is done through gestures. Buffy tries to say "Can I kill these guys with a stake?" She makes an up-and-down 'stab stab stab' gesture. Everyone stares, since without a stake in her hand, that hand-gesture appears to indicate a whole other... activity.
  • The most blatant example also comes from "Hush". After Xander beats up Spike for mistakenly believing he had attacked Anya, Anya walks over to him, smiles coyly, makes a circle with her thumb and forefinger and sticks her other forefinger in it repeatedly. And they exit quickly, stage right. To this day, Joss Whedon is unsure how that got past the censors.
    • It didn't get past BBC2's censors - both of the above examples (as well as Spike's gesture mentioned at the beginning of the page) were cut from the Beeb's early evening airings (although all three remained intact on Sky).
    • Was that really supposed to be getting crap past the censors? It was as blatant as it gets. And all the other characters roll their eyes in embarrassment at that one.
  • And another one: During this session, Giles asks, "What do they want?" Willow points towards her chest, meaning her heart. Xander misunderstands, and makes a rather obvious cupping motion with both hands.
• "I can lay my body down but I can't find my sweet release..."
• At the beginning of "Once More, With Feeling," the musical episode, Xander makes quite possibly the filthiest reference ever on network television. He is playing with a box of donuts and says, "Respect the cruller! And tame the donut!" which paraphrases Tom Cruise's "Seduce and Destroy" speech from Magnolia with breakfast pastries standing in for crude words for male and female genitalia. To be fair, this did occur while the show was on UPN and was not subject to a Standards and Practices department.
• The "-bator" scene in "Buffy vs. Dracula".
  • Wait, what's sexy about princebator?'
• "Doppleganger" finale Evil Twin Willow is sent back to the Parallel Universe where twin Oz kills her. Read her lips! She says "Oh F..."
  • Word of God says that she is supposed to be saying "Oh Fine." Yeah, I don't believe them either.
  • From her first appearance, as she walks into a cage holding a chained, naked Angel.

"Puppy's all quiet. Come on. Don't be a spoilsport...That's right, Puppy. Willow's gonna make you bark."

• • When Vamp!Willow returns and they are discussing her likeness to the real Willow...

Buffy: It was exactly you. Except for the part about you being a dominatrix, far as we know. Willow: Yeah right, me and Oz playing Mistress of Pain games every night. Giles frowns at the thought. Xander: Anybody go to a scary visual place? Buffy: Oh yeah. Giles lifts his glasses.

• • Viewer: Uh...no.
  • "Blood Ties" is similar with Glory saying "Oh sh..." after being teleported, although in this instance more of the word in pronounced.
• In Who Are You?, Willow and Tara perform a spell together that, along with all the panting and sweating, seems to resemble something else entirely. But since homosexual scenes aren't as commonly accepted as heterosexual relationships, the writing team had to come up with creative ways to show their passion. Hence the orgasmic spell.
  • Another example is in "The I in Team" when Tara offers Willow a dolls-eye crystal that belonged to her grandmother, but Willow refuses on the grounds that it's a valuable family heirloom. But after they spend the night "casting spells", Willow turns up at her dorm the following morning holding the crystal, implying that she accepted it as a love token. (If that's not enough for you, the episode has both Buffy and Willow returning to their empty dorm the morning after Buffy and Riley had sex for the first time, and the following episode has Willow and Tara talking about what happened last night in one of their more famous lesbian sex = spellcasting conversations).
• Xander's line "I think about two girls doing spells together, and I do a spell by myself."
• How about the scene in the season four episode "The Initiative" where Spike tries to bite Willow and is unable to because of his Restraining Bolt. Does This Remind You of Anything??:

Spike: I don't understand. This sort of thing's never happened to me before. Willow: Maybe you were nervous. Spike: I felt all right when I started. Let's try again. (He tries, but he can't do it.) Spike: Damn it! Willow: Maybe you're trying too hard. Doesn't this happen to every vampire? Spike: Not to me, it doesn't! Willow: It's me, isn't it? Spike: What are you talking about? Willow: Well, you came looking for Buffy, then settled. You didn't want to bite me, I just happened to be around. Spike: Piffle. Willow: I know I'm not the kind of girl vamps like to sink their teeth into. It's always like, "Oh, you're like a sister to me," or, "Oh, you're such a good friend." Spike: Don't be ridiculous. I'd bite you in a heartbeat. Willow: Really? Spike: Thought about it. Willow: When? Spike: Remember last year? You had on that fuzzy pink number with the lilac underneath. (Gives her a sexy look.) Willow: I never would have guessed. You played the bloodlust kinda cool. Spike: Mmmm. I hate being obvious. Being all fangy and 'Rrrr.' Takes the mystery out. Willow: But if you could... Spike: If I could, yeah. Willow: You know, this doesn't make you any less terrifying. Spike: Don't patronize me! (Paces around the room.) I'm only 126! Willow: You're being too hard on yourself. Why don't we wait a half an hour and try again? (Makes a funny face.) Or... (Grabs a lamp and whacks him.)

• • A Mood Dissonance moment from "The Body"

Dawn: Uh, this one time in history, uh, (Buffy begins walking down the aisle toward Dawn) she had this book called Annals of History, and she didn't know how to say the word "annals" (Kevin looks surprised) so she kept saying-

• Buffy and Angel after seeing a very erotic movie.

I don't like getting you worked up like that. We can't actually do any of those things. You'd lose your soul. Besides, I don't even own a kimono. Just don't like to rub your nose in it. *cringes* Suddenly wondering where that expression comes from...

• • Same episode. Knowing that Angel lost his soul after a moment of true happiness, Faith tries hitting on him, only to be knocked back. Which leads to this exchange:

Mayor: "So you couldn't give him one moment of true happiness." Faith: I was thinking more along the lines of a long weekend..."

• Willow gives Buffy relationship advice. Oz has no objections.

Willow: Ooo, Scott Hope at eleven o'clock. He likes you. He wanted to ask you out last year, but you weren't ready then. But I think you're ready now, or at least in the state of pre-readiness to make conversation, or-or to do that thing with your mouth that boys like. Oh! I didn't mean the bad thing with your mouth, I meant that little half-smile thing that you... You're supposed to stop me when I do that. Oz: I like when you do that.

• In the season 5 premiere Buffy, Anya, and Willow discuss how "sexy" Dracula is and Buffy mentions his "Dark, penetrating" eyes. When Buffy decides to hold off on killing him until they have more information:

Riley: You're not just saying that because of those "dark, penetrating" eyes of his . . . Are you? Buffy: No! His eyes were — there were — there was NO penetration! Cross my heart.

• The season 3 finale, Buffy calls Mayor Richard Wilkins "Dick". Guess what else is called dick?
  • A private investigator?
  • Well given that his name is Richard, Dick is actually a short form of the name. At least in British English. So she might be being cool! Not rude.
  • It's innocent on paper, sure. The pause before and emphasis during her pronunciation of the name, however, could not be taken as anything but...well, yes.
• From season 2, Buffy gives Giles advice on how to ask Ms Calendar out.

Buffy: Just remember, 'I feel a thing, you feel a thing', but personalize it. Giles: Personalize it? Buffy: She's a techno pagan, right; ask her to bless your laptop.

• • In retrospect, that bit of conversation has a better instance earlier in the episode. Buffy's way of telling Giles how to go about it is as thus:

Buffy: Just say, I feel a thing, you feel a thing, so maybe we can 'have a thing'.

• • And yet another one from season 2 dealing with Giles and Jenny Calendar:

Jenny: You're just going to have to trust me, Rupert. Giles: Alright. I place myself in your hands. Jenny: Mmm, sounds like fun. Giles: *big smile, incoherent stuttering*

• Doublemeat Palace, starting with the name of the restaurant and eventually ending with a demon shaped like... Well, imagine an eight-foot-long chestburster with no arms and an even larger, rounder forehead, which spits thin streams of pale fluid (and was defeating by a lesbian cutting it off to save her helpless female friend from it, although I am {{[[[Late to The Punchline]] or was}}] doubtful that that was the intended Subtext). The fact that the "Buffy At Work" The Making Of documentary used a clip of Buffy watching a video of "the cow and chicken coming together for the first time" (the back of a television emitting frantic moos and clucks was all that was shown of that part of the worker orientation video) when a Buffy the Vampire Slayer writer who worked for a video store was talking about pornography, especially with the Doublemeat mascot, implies that the doublemeat subtext was intentional. (But despite that, who doesn't want one of those hats, or a plush toy of the mascot?)
  • And, just in case it wasn't obvious enough, see Willow describing the demon to Tara when they get back together toward the end of the season.

TARA: Okay, wait, it was under her wig? WILLOW: Well, it was this thing, it just came out from inside her head. TARA: That's disgusting. What did it look like? WILLOW: Well... let's put it this way. If I wasn't gay before...

• In the season 2 episode "The Dark Age", Willow, Xander, Cordelia and Ms. Calendar are filing into her classroom for Saturday school, and Buffy unexpectedly walks in the door behind Ms. Calendar. "All right guys, the first thing we're going to do is… Buffy!", to which Xander replies, "Huh? Did I fall asleep already?"
• In "Lie To Me:"

Buffy: Ford wouldn't even give me the time of day. Ford: Well, I was a manly sixth-grader. I couldn't bother with someone that young. Buffy: It was terrible. I moped over you for months. Sitting in my room, listening to that Divinyls song "I Touch Myself." *everyone looks at her* Of course, I had no idea what it was about!

• In "Earshot", Buffy hears the thoughts of an admiring teenage boy. They're about as clean as you'd expect.
  • Don't forget the thoughts of Xander. Hooboy, I feel his pain, there.
• In "All The Way", we get another gem thanks to Anya's bluntness and Xander's pirate costume:

"But you get to dress up and play games. Xander's gonna teach me a new one after work called Shiver Me Timbers. Ever heard of it?"

• • And later:

Anya: How about you? Ever played? Tara: Not really one for the timber.

• • Same joke pops up in season 7:

RONA: Gotta go with the stake. It's classic. I like the feel of wood in my hand. KENNEDY: Lost me there.

• Subversion: Willow mentions that she and Xander "played doctor." Then it's revealed that Willow meant that she looked up diagnoses for Xander in a text book.
• In "The Puppet Show":

Sid: (to Willow) How about you and I do a little rehearsing on our own, honey? You know what they say: once you go wood, nothing's as good!

• Don't forget the time Dawn told Tara that she would find out all she needed to know about demons on the streets. Tara handed her a book. "That's a strange place for a horn...Oh...it's not a horn."
• In season 6, "As You Were," Buffy refuses to let a horny Spike (pun not intended) inside the house because Dawn is waiting for her:

Spike: (to Buffy) I hear you. I want you, you want me. I can't go inside, so maybe the time is right for you to...come outside.

• The cookie analogy Buffy uses when talking to Angel about not being ready for relationships yet in the series finale, Chosen.

Buffy: I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming who ever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day, I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat m- or enjoy warm, delicious, cookie me, then that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done.

• Faith/Buffy and Spike in Who Are You is vivid.

"I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up. I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you til you pop like warm champagne and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more".

• • Which Spike hadn't forgotten. He brings it up with Faith three years later, after she talks about one guy she was with who liked her to dress up as a schoolgirl and use a whip on him.
  • A subtler one, when Buffy tries to convince Giles Faith had switched their bodies.

Giles: All right. If you really are Buffy, you'll let me tie you up, without killing me, until we can work this out. Buffy: Giles, Faith has stolen my body and for all I know she has taken it to Mexico by now. We don't have time for bondage fun."

• From "Earshot".

"Prison's like high school but they don't give you noogies, they give you...."

• From Dawn's first appearance was when she told her mom that she wants Willow & Tara to teach her the stuff they do together "then she got quiet and told me to go to my room".
• From "The Freshman"

Willow: "It's just, in high school, knowledge was pretty much frowned upon. You really had to work to learn anything. But here, the energy, the collective intelligence... It's like this force, this penetrating force, and I can just feel my mind opening up, you know, and letting this place just thrust into and- and spurt knowledge into... That sentence ended up in a different place than it started out in."

• This exchange from "Hush" which was just Ho Yay-tastic.

Xander: Don't even think of biting me. Spike: Sure, you're just a yummy treat. Xander: Course, I am. I'm moist and delicious.

• Angel's Xanatos Gambit in convincing Faith he's lost his soul and wants to join the Mayor to get information. When she has him pinned on the ground he comments on how much he enjoys her wriggling on top of him.
• There was a scene in season 7 when Principal Wood took Buffy out to dinner and she ate a rum-soaked pear and she called it "the best thing I ever put in my mouth".
• Spike's crazy tirade in "Beneath You" somehow snuck in some dirty stuff.

I wanted to kill you. I think they were dreams. So weak... you made me weak, thinking of you. Holding myself, spilling useless buckets of salt all over your.... ending.

• • You know that tears taste salty, right? Right?!
    • As does certain other fluids — given the highly sexual Buffy/Spike relationship, and Spike's frequent use of the Last-Second Word Swap for sexual innuendo, it wouldn't be surprising if both meanings were intended.
  • An even dirtier part of that tirade: "Hey, hey! No touching! Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you? Feed on flesh. My flesh. Nothing else. Not a spark. Oh, fine. Flesh, then. Solid through. Get it hard, service the girl." Then he starts to unbutton his pants.
    • That last was a pretty clear reference to their previous relationship - specifically to the fact that Buffy had just been using him and didn't view him as a person.
• Spike's line from the beginning of "Tabula Rasa".

Spike: We kissed! All Gone with the Wind like with the rising music and the rising...music.

• The earliest example was in season 1 when Buffy looked inside a box containing a fertility statue named Kokopelli. ("Jeepers" was the word she used). No wonder Dawn didn't want to part with it. Her exact words were "But, I love him".
• In Oz's last appearance, it ends with a tender moment between Willow and Tara. Tara then blows out a candle because they're about to do This and That.
• From "Checkpoint". Buffy scolds Spike for getting in the way of one of her slays. He responds by ripping into her inability to keep a boyfriend:

Maybe your beauty's fading. Maybe slaying's aging you prematurely. Things aren't firm and high as they used to.

• That time Spike tried to kill Drusilla for Buffy.

Spike: Don't mock this! Buffy: Go mock yourself.

• Faith getting Xander to have sex with her in "The Zeppo".

Faith: You up for it? Xander: Oh, I'm always up. Suddenly , I'm very "up". It's just that I've never been "up" with people.

• From "The Harsh Light of Day". Watch it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Anya: (DING) Fabric softener.

• What about "The Yoko Factor" ?

Xander: Maybe that all changes when I'm off doin' sit-ups in Fort Dix! Giles: (quite drunk) Fort Dix? [begins to giggle hysterically]

• The demon threatening to rape the the girls in Season six's opener Bargaining. There is absolutely no uncertainty what he's talking about.

Demon: Now let tell you something children. We're not gonna fight you. We're just gonna hold you down and enjoy ourselves for a few hours. You might even live through it. Except that certain of my boys have anatomical incompatibilities that tend to tear up little girls. So who wants to go first?

• A fairly obvious one in "Once More With Feeling", when Buffy is trying to figure out what is going on.

Spike: Just come to pump me for information? Buffy: What else would I want to pump you for? ...I really just said that, didn't I?

• Unfortunately, in 2011, in Britain, Sci-Fi TV broadcast Buffy repeats with the naughty bits cut out. The most egregious is the Agincourt riff in Season 5 finale. Shakespeare wrote "We band of brothers." Spike said "We band of buggered." Censored version "We band of muggles."
• A particularly subtle one in the Season 3 episode Helpless: after a rather... tense training session with Angel, Buffy is sat down with Giles revising the effects of crystals, and is rather fidgety. At one point she twiddles a rather long and thin crystal, and when Giles asks her if she's alright she responds:

Buffy: I guess that... I just have some... energy to burn.

• When Buffy is freaking out over what 'aspect of the demon' she might take on Willow's eyes go wide before she offers this gem.

"Was it a boy demon?"

• A nice bit of Foe Yay in "Something Blue" moments before Spike/Buffy fall under the love spell.

Buffy: "Oh make a move, please. I'm dying for a good (s)lay."

• Willow is feeling ill after eating too much.

Tara: Oh, baby, want me to rub your tummy? (to the others) She likes it when I ... (quietly) stop explaining things.

• When Faith is in Buffy's body she cops on pretty quickly about Willow and Tara (before any of her friends have) and remarks "So Willow's not driving stick anymore"
• This exchange from Life Serial:

"I need you to hold hands" "With each other?" "Well you know what homophobia really means... Stop touching my magic bone!"

• • Wow... this is so past radar when you don't put explanations of what's going on around them!