NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9505507" data-attributes="member: 907">I tend to agree, though I would de-emphasize the arc aspect. Look at the first half of Buffy or, for that matter, Claremont-era X-Men. For the most part, each episode is its own thing, but there are things going on there that feed into the overall narrative – both plot-wise and character development-wise.For example, take the Buffy episode Halloween (season 2, episode 6). The A-plot is fairly simple: a new costume shop opens in town just in time for Halloween, with very competitive prices, so many people buy their costumes there. But it turns out the proprietor is a chaos sorcerer, who has enchanted his costumes so that they will actually turn their wearers into what the costume is. So Xander turns into a soldier, Willow turns into a ghost (but retains her self-awareness), and Buffy into a pre-French revolution noblewoman. Hijinks ensue, Spike tries to take advantage of the situation, but the spell is eventually broken and everyone returns to normal. So on the immediate level, this is a one-and-done episode.But at the same time, this is the introduction of Ethan Rayne, an old "friend" of Giles. And we learn that Giles has a bit of a shady history – Rayne calls him "Ripper". And the thing that breaks the spell is when Giles beats Rayne up until he is told how to reverse the spell. This reveals new aspects of Giles's character as well as introduce a recurring character from Giles's past. And another factor that will later get a callback is that apparently Xander retains memories of his soldier self, which will be used to great effect in a later episode this season. But these are all background things that take a while to come to fruition and will later lead to "Hey, it's that guy again!" rather than plots that continue directly into the next episode.</blockquote>

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