I was halfway through the BBC run of Buffy series 6 when I saw the Afghanistan episode of South Park. I suddenly had a terrible fear that there was a similarly dreadful Buffy experience waiting for me. I confided in a friend who'd seen series 7, and she assured me I had no reason to fear.

She was right in that there never was any explicit flag-waving. But when I finally did see series 7, Bring On The Night made me a bit uneasy. Perhaps I was unconscously sensitised by the echo in the title of Dubya's 'Bring it on', but when I saw Buffy's closing oration I thought I detected a Karl Rove subtext under it. 'We just became an army'. 'Anyone else who wants to run, do it now' - not so far from the 'get out of the stadium' rhetoric in South Park.

Immediately afterwards, I discovered that my series 7 boxed set concluded with episode 12 Potential instead of episode 11 Showtime. Come to think of it, I was a lot crosser about that than I was about the possible subtext.