She was definitely going for British, as per Matt's reasoning, and failing. The girl she's looking at is of Angel's time-period, but not Darla.

I never thought she was going for British. I thought she was just going for generic old fashioned. Buffy didn't care that the girl in the sketch was British, or whatever, she cared about the frou-frou.

I'm not sure what nationality Halloween!Buffy was supposed to be, but I do know that SMG can't do a British accent to save her life. See Gone (that's the blinvisible ep right?) wherein she tries to mock/imitate Spike with the "bloody birds of a feather" line. They should have just cut it - it's embarassing.

I have too much free time on my hands today, apparently ...

She was looking at pictures of 18th century U.K. ballgowns from a Watcher's diary that concerned Angel's early years as a vampire,

True, but the costume she put on wasn't identified as a British noblewoman's (or any particular nationality), and it was the costume she was chanelling, not the sketch.

and referred to herself as a noblewoman once transformed.

From a quick read through of a transcript I get that, during her transformation, she referred to herself as a proper lady, and Willow referred to her as an 18th century girl, neither one specifying nationality.

I think it would've made perfect sense that she morph into a British noblewoman, but I'm guessing maybe the British accent wasn't going to happen for SMG, so they went, as Cindy says, for generic old fashioned helpless girl (well, to be accurate, Cindy didn't add on helpless girl like I did). To my ear, her accent sounded closest to American southern.

It sounded to me like they were trying more for the phrasing/grammatical structure of speech, or what Buffy in the 20th century thought was 18th century, but with no particular accent.

I thought she was trying to do a French accent.

I thought the picture she was looking at was a drawing of Drusilla, from the book Willow "borrowed" from Giles when his back was turned.

I thought she was trying to do a French accent.

OK, if no one can even agree on what type of accent it is, it must be worse than the Lucky Charms Angelus accent, because at least we are pretty clear what he is going for!

Given that it's Buffy, the idea that her notion of how a woman in that kind of gown would speak draws largely on GWTW doesn't exactly throw me. Canonically, her costume was mostly a projection only loosely based on a sketch anyway, not a real person.

From the I In Team:

Buffy and Riley, out of context:

Buffy: (eyes wide) My God.

Buffy: You said it was big. You told me, but you never said it was *huuuge*!

Riley: (offhanded) I don't like to brag.

Buffy looks at him and a grin breaks his face.

Buffy: (looking down again) I had no idea. This is incredible.

...And that's just removing the description of the Initiative hanger.

I think that must be why I love S4 so damn much. I wonder how many quotes can be taken like that just removing a few choice words.

Also, Daniel, love the Sealab sig.