Entertainment
Forgotten Buffy Episode Made History In the Worst Possible Way
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show that transformed pop culture forever while transforming some of its stars into household names. The show effectively made history, as evidenced by the many prestigious awards it won, including multiple Creative Arts Emmys and 10 Satellite Awards. However, one Buffy episode made history in the worst possible way: “The Puppet Show” was the series’ lowest-rated episode ever, and to make matters worse, it broke a franchise tradition by playing the credits alongside the final scene rather than separately.
Buffy And The Puppet Show
This is normally where we’d do a recap of the episode in question, but for Buffy fans, “The Puppet Show” is an episode that lives in infamy. It’s a bit of a bait-and-switch story in which Buffy and the Scoobies first believe that they must fight a walking, talking demonic puppet that sounds almost as creepy as he looks. It turns out, though, that he’s actually a demon hunter who has been cursed to live in the doll’s body until he completes a special task. Namely, hunting and killing each member of the brotherhood of seven demons.
While Buffy fans think of “The Puppet Show” as (to put it mildly) a lesser episode, most don’t realize that it is the lowest-rated one of the entire series. In this case, “lowest-rated” is not a measurement of quality, though the episode does have a deservedly terrible reputation. For example, Rolling Stone ranked this episode as #127 in their big list of best-to-worst Buffy tales. That doesn’t sound so bad until you consider there are only 144 episodes, meaning that this one comes dangerously close to scraping the bottom of the barrel.
In this case, “lowest-rated” means instead that out of all the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes, “The Puppet Show” was the one that was viewed the least when originally broadcast. According to the show’s Nielsen Ratings, only 1.9 million households tuned into this puppet misadventure when it was first broadcast. The “first broadcast” part is important because, as you might imagine, reruns invariably pull in fewer viewers than their first-run counterparts.
Buffy fans hate “The Puppet Show” for many reasons (including the bizarre plot and clunky dialogue), but it’s worth noting that it had less competition for lowest-rated episode than you might think. As the show got more popular in subsequent seasons, even really bad episodes (looking at you, Season 6!) would still have millions of viewers more than the average episodes. Ratings were lowest for Season 1, and “The Puppet Show” had the dubious honor of being the least-viewed episode in those tumultuous early days.
Speaking as longtime Buffy fans, we’re also annoyed that “The Puppet Show” made history in another negative way by running the end credits over the final scene via a split screen. Creatively, this was a bizarre choice that ruined the flow of what was already a very bad episode. Apparently, the network agreed: after the initial airing, this final scene was excluded from future WB airings, but (for better or for worse) you can now watch the restored scene on DVD, streaming, and TV.
There you have it, Buffy fans: in terms of viewership, “The Puppet Show” is the worst episode of the franchise. And the strange choice to split screen the credits meant that an already-terrible episode failed to stick the landing. Fortunately, subsequent episodes only got better, making this paltry puppet pablum a thing of the past for fans eager for more stalking demons and less talking dolls.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for April 29, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
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If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
To admire.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
ADORE
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Hurdle Word 2 hint
Heavy.
Hurdle Word 2 Answer
HEFTY
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Hurdle Word 3 hint
Two-legged.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
BIPED
Hurdle Word 4 hint
Hefty.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
HEAVY
Final Hurdle hint
Pointy.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
SHARP
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on April 29
It may appear full, but the Moon isn’t actually at 100% illumination yet. In fact, we’re still a couple of days away. But it’s still big and bright enough to do some moon gazing, so keep reading to find out what features you might be able to see tonight.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Wednesday, April 29, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. Tonight, 94% of the moon will be lit up, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide.
Without any visual aids, tonight you should be able to see the Mares Vaproum, Tranquillitatis, and Imbrium. With binoculars, you’ll see the Mare Frigoris, Clavius Crater, and the Alphonsus Crater. And, finally, with a telescope you’ll see all this plus the Apollo 17 landing spot, Rima Ariadaeus, and the Fra Mauro Highlands.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon is predicted to take place on May 1, the first of two in May.
What are Moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes roughly 29.5 days to circle Earth once, going through eight distinct phases in the process. Even though we always see the same side of the Moon, the amount of sunlight hitting it changes as it moves in its orbit. The shifting light creates the changing shapes we know as full, half, and crescent Moons. Altogether, there are eight main lunar phases.
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
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Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
The ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop is down to a record-low price at Amazon — now $400 off
TL;DR: Amazon has the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop on sale for $899.99, down from its $1,299.99 list price. That saves you $400 on a 2025 gaming laptop with an Intel Core i5-13450HX processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 graphics, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 165Hz FHD+ display.
$899.99
at Amazon
$1,299.99
Save $400
Finding a current-gen gaming laptop in today’s economy for under $1,000 is already amazing, but Amazon’s latest ASUS deal is offering you an all-time low bargain.
As of April 28, the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop is on sale for $899.99 at Amazon, marked down from $1,299.99. Price tracker camelcamelcamel has confirmed that this is the lowest-ever price for this gaming laptop.
For that price, you’re getting the RTX 5050 and Intel Core i5 version of the TUF Gaming F16, which is built around an Intel Core i5-13450HX processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Laptop GPU. It also comes with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD, so it should be nicely suited for jumping between games, school work, everyday browsing, and plenty of tabs without causing your sessions to come to a sudden crash.
With those sorts of specs, this version of the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 lets you comfortably run games from the latest graphically demanding titles — including Crimson Desert, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Pragmata.
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The 16-inch FHD+ display is a big part of the appeal, with ASUS’s fitted 165Hz 16:10 panel with 100% sRGB color giving you extra vertical space compared to a standard 16:9 screen while keeping motion smoother in fast-paced games like Fortnite and Counter-Strike 2. The handy Adaptive-Sync also helps cut down on stuttering and screen tearing when your frame rate starts shifting during intense firefights or brawls with lots of assets moving around at the same time.
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The TUF Gaming F16 keeps the series’ usual more rugged angle, as well. ASUS has had the laptop tested to MIL-STD-810H standards, while its 2nd Gen Arc Flow Fans, full-width heatsink, and full-width vent are designed to help keep performance steady without making the machine unnecessarily loud.
If you’re after a laptop that’s more for work than gaming, Samsung’s ultra-sleek Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 just got a $450 price cut.
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