It was written by Thania St. John and Jane Espenson, directed by James Whitmore, Jr., and first broadcast on The WB on January 12, 1999.
The whole town of Sunnydale vengefully investigates the death of two children, blind to the fairy tale aspects of the situation.
Joyce shows up and announces that there will be a vigil at City Hall that night, as she has founded a group called MOO (Mothers Opposed to the Occult).
Mayor Wilkins says a few words before Joyce gives a speech about how the people of Sunnydale must take back their city from the monsters, witches, and slayers.
Later, Michael, Amy, and Willow perform a spell in a circle that surrounds the symbol Buffy saw on the children's hands.
After using the Internet to contact Willow, the Scooby Gang learns that every fifty years throughout history, the murdered bodies of two nameless children have been found, resulting in peaceful communities being torn apart by vigilante chaos.
The earliest record dating from Germany during 1649, where a cleric from the Black Forest discovered the corpses of "Hans and Greta Strauss", inspiring the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel.
Just as Buffy wakes up, her mother lights books on fire, sentencing the three girls to death by burning at the stake.
"[2] The story about the Little Dutch Boy who saves Holland by plugging a hole in a leaking dam, and stays there all night until the villagers find him, appears in the novel Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge.
"[4] Mark Oshiro says, "There’s a powerful metaphor here for how a mob mentality approaches something or someone they don’t understand, and how that sort of behavior is inherently destructive.
Club praised "Gingerbread" for its humorous dialogue and the way it progressed the story arc, but criticized the action as slow and repetitive.