Bad Eggs

We open on two pairs of legs walking. The camera pans up to reveal that one pair belongs to a woman, and the other to a beefy man in a black t-shirt, jeans, and a cowboy hat. We're at the mall, and classical music plays in the background. For reasons that will become clear, I'm surprised they didn't accompany the opening shot with some music that's more "Yee-Ha! Let's Hogtie This Stereotype!" You know, something with a banjo or a player piano. But we've got plenty of time for blatant pigeonholing. We move up a level to find Buffy begging her mom for some clothes. Joyce says the outfit in question makes her look like a streetwalker. I didn't realize that Eilish was stocking California apparel shops. Joyce muses that the stores are closing, and she needs to order some flyers for her opening at the gallery we all don't know and don't love. She says she'll handle that and the food, and Buffy can pick up her outfit from "Everyday Woman." Buffy snots, "Everyday Woman? Why didn't you just go to 'Muumuus R Us'?" Joyce: "Do now, make fun of your mother later." Will do.

Buffy gets on the down escalator, and sees Yostereotype Sam and his chippy coming up on the other side. Upon glancing in the mirror on her right and noting that something's wrong with the picture, she realizes that Yostereotype Sam is a vampire. She turns and pushes past some people to get back to the top. In a very unrealistic turn, this provokes only a mild "Hey!" from one of the patrons. Sars would've thrown an elbow and written a Tomato Nation about it. I'd like to note that the purple sweater Buffy's wearing is improbably flattering, and the accompanying black pants accentuate that. I feel like I at least have to try to comment on the fashion on this show, although I can name at least three other gay male TWoP recappers who could do a better job. Women's clothes just ain't my bag, baby. Buffy follows the couple into a deserted little arcade. I doubt they would keep this section unattended, but whatever. Someone, and I wish I could remember whom, on the boards recently pointed out that continuity and other errors in the old episodes were infrequent and inconsequential enough to be fun to point out, unlike the job of work it is these days. Buffy hears a pinball machine and walks toward it as she hears Yostereotype Sam telling his chippy that he has something to show her. She tells him to cram it, as she's working her high score, which is kind of sad, since she couldn't have been playing for more than a minute or two. Still, it makes me like her enough not to refer to her as a chippy any more. Of course, she's only in the episode for about a minute more, but I can't really help that, can I? He brushes her hair aside and tells her she's got "the prettiest little neck [he] ever did see." They are pushing the stereotype pretty hard here, but the writers at least were able to restrain themselves from having him say "purtiest," so I won't call the sheriff just yet. Buffy snits that "you guys really never come up with any new lines, do you?" Whether she's putting down vampire or cowboy stereotypes is a judgment call. Girl Too Sassy To Be Called A Chippy snots right back that they were talking. Buffy simpers that he promised he'd never cheat on her again. The former chippy wins more points by saying she's going to bail, but Yosemite Stereotype, now in vamp face, says he's not done. Since he makes no attempt to stop her after she sees his face and runs off, I'm not sure what he's talking about. Goodbye, Girl Who Proved Way Too Sassy And Cool To Be Called A Chippy. May you not be lured in by redneck vampire stereotypes in the future. I won't miss having to type that name, though. Yosemite Stereotype gets a chuckle out of me by calling Buffy "sugar lips," but ruins that goodwill by continuing, "Giddy up." Groan. They fight. Yosemite Stereotype breaks a pinball machine by throwing Buffy into it, further increasing my antipathy toward him. Arcade games are to be worshipped, not destroyed. Not that I wasn't responsible for a fair number of "Tilts" in my adolescent years, but I'm older and wiser now. He takes a break from the action to introduce himself as "Lyle Gorch." Buffy, unimpressed, boots him away. She draws a stake, but he somersaults away (with a "yee-ha," no less), gets to his feet, and proclaims, "This ain't over." Please. We're not even to the opening credits.

Buffy finds her mom, who's waiting with two trays of food. Joyce is all, where's my dress? Whoops! What wackiness! We cut to Joyce plowing madly through her closet, shrieking, "I haven't a thing to wear to that cocktail party! And is this a wire hanger?" Not really, but am I really supposed to care an iota about this development? It couldn't have been that important, Joyce, if you left it until the store was about to close. Nevertheless, Joyce lectures Buffy on being responzzzz. She asks, "Don't you ever think about anything besides boys and clothes?" Isn't it creepy when the characters talk directly to you? I feel so cheap now. Buffy: "Saving the world from vampires?" Joyce: "I swear, sometimes I don't know what goes on in your head." Haw haw -- ain't that the funniest thing you ever did hear? Credits.

We reopen with a scene that I'd guess brought a class-action lawsuit against the Buffy lip-mike operators. Xander and Cordelia are slurping away in the darkened utility closet. Cordy starts to say something, but Xander turns on the light and says, "This would work a lot better for me if you didn't talk." Cordy shoots back: "Well, it would work a lot better for me with the lights off." And it would work a lot better for me if this scene ended up on the cutting-room floor, but does anyone care? Nope: lights off, smoochers home. Then Xander turns the light back on and asks if Cordy can't look at him when they kiss. Xander, the setup man isn't supposed to set himself up. Cordy: "No, it's not that I can't, it's moreI don't want to." See what happens, Xander? They start bitching that they're both ashamed of what they're doing and it's hurting their self-esteem and does anyone not know that they're going to be lip-wrestling again in a matter of seconds? Good, then I can skip that part. They sink out of the frame, and my face sinks to the wastebasket. In case you're attached to the graphic sound effects: Baaarrrrfffff.

Cut to a portly bespectacled teacher uttering, "S-E-X!" The class responds, "V-I-R-G-I-N!" Well, you know they were thinking it. The teacher goes on that the human sex drive is intense. "How many of us have lost countless productive hours plagued by unwanted sexual thoughts and feelings?" Xander raises his hand, and everyone tee-hees as the teacher says it wasn't a poll, but frankly, I don't think that was a particularly appropriate rhetorical question to pose to a high-school class. Resonant? Yes. Appropriate? Not so much. Cordy lowers her head in shame, as well she should. The teacher thankfully finishes his pilgrimage to the point, which is that our hormones can bring us to have sex despite the negative consequences. Hear that noise? That's the sound of thousands of viewers uncomfortably crossing their legs upon remembering their worst sexual experiences. The teacher asks for an example. Well, there was this one time I dated this guy in L.A. when I was living in New York, and I went out to visit him, and the first night I was there, he ditched me to go chase after some club trash who was high on crystal meth. Charming, huh? He's fat now, and he just turned 35. Hee. As one of my lovely best friends (who will be covering the Oscars for the site) once told me, "There's nothing sadder than an aging Lothario." Yes, she will make a fine recapper.

And now that I've finished a verbal trek of my own, we get to Cordy, who earnestly asks, "Well, that depends; are you talking about sex in the car or out of the car? Because I have a friend, not me, that was in a Miata parked on top of the hill, and she kicked the gearshift, and --" Ha! The teacher cuts her off, although I wanted to hear the rest of that story. He says he was looking for something a bit more commonplace, but honestly, for a group of seventeen-year-olds in California, I'd think that if you're not having sex in the car, you're not having sex. Xander raises his hand and makes a "veiled" comment about the "heartbreak of halitosis." Hee. Cordy shoots back that that's nothing compared to kissing a guy who thinks the "Hoover technique" is a turn-on, and while the sound effects from the closet scene back her up, how dumb does everyone have to be not to have figured out that these two are leading off first base? Willow interrupts the "tete"-a-"tete" with "pregnancy." The teacher applauds this answer. I'm distracted every time the camera focuses on Willow, because there's this extra they keep focusing on whom I feel like I should recognize. Maybe it's because he looks like Max Perlich, if Max Perlich were seventeen and had a hoop in each ear. Anyway, the teacher uncovers a tray of eggs, and says that since unwanted pregnancy is the number-one consequence of teenage sex, they're all going to practice taking care of an egg. Just go with it. They're supposed to choose a partner with whom to share the "parenting" duties, and to come up and collect an egg. Willow excitedly starts to choose Xander, but he's too busy marching over to Cordelia. Aw, poor Willow. Before Xander gets to Cordy, however, she asks some dude to her to "have a baby." Considering your sex-in-the-car story earlier, Cordy, I'd be a little more explicit about how you want to achieve that end. Xander then asks some blonde girl if the egg she's holding isn't "Xander Junior." She laughs, proving she's too dumb to be a good match. You need someone to balance out the intelligence genes, Xander.

Willow and Xander enter the library and ask Buffy why she wasn't in class. She cites vampire issues, and asks if Mr. Whitmore noticed. Willow says yes, and gives Buffy her very own spoiled, whiny brat. Er, "egg." Buffy: "As far as punishments go, this is fairly abstract." Hee. Willow explains that it's her baby, and Xander says she should teach it Christian values. Willow complains that her egg is Jewish, and Xander suggest she teach it the dreidel song. I loved getting invited to my Jewish friends' houses and playing dreidel. And there's the bar mitzvah, and eight days of Chanukah, and fun songs, and seders. Damn. Why wasn't I raised Jewish? I guess I can take solace in the fact that I didn't have to go to Hebrew school, but I was instead subjected to the prison of piano lessons, so that's small comfort. Wow, this recap is really all about me, isn't it? Buffy panics that she can't take care of things, and that she killed her Giga pet. I had to look up that reference, and even after doing so, I have absolutely no recollection of it. Was I really that out of it when I was 26? Recalling the story above about my L.A. boyfriend pretty much answers that question. I should point out, however, that her claim not to be able to take care of things is certainly ringing true after what happened to Chloe. Buffy asks who she got as a partner. Ready for the fun error identification? Willow and Xander didn't tell her that they're doing the parenting exercise in teams, and they each have an egg of their own. Mr. Whitmore did say that he had discussed the assignment the week, but given Buffy's complete incomprehension upon seeing the egg, I don't think she digested that. Although it's possible the writers elected to fix this gaffe by never mentioning Xander's, Willow's, or Cordelia's partners in the rest of the episode. It's the old gaffe-cancels-out-gaffe theory. Hey, it's more credible than "magic is physics" or whatever the latest bullshit they've come up with is.

Anyway, Willow breaks it to Buffy that there were an uneven number of students. Buffy, horrified: "I'm a single mother?" Hee. She goes on that this means she's doomed to live her mother's life, and I'll give Buffy a break for the all-about-me-ness of that comment, since I happen to know that every sixteen-year-old girl's worst nightmare is to turn into her mother. Ask Sars if you don't believe me. ["If I'd known I was going to turn into a deadly respiratory ailment instead, I'd never have written all those bitchy things in my diary." -- Sars] Xander says that the whole egg experiment is completely pointless, and I couldn't agree more. Giles interrupts the inanity with an exclamation that he's found a passage about Lyle Gorch, saying he's a "fellow of repute." He almost crushes Buffy's egg with the book. Hee. Giles says that Lyle and his brother Tector made their reputation by massacring a Mexican village in 1886. Buffy: "Friendly little demons." Giles gets the "punchline" that it was before they became vampires. Duh-hee, duh-hee, duh-hee. Although it amuses me greatly to think of these two meeting up with the Ingalls family. A vamped "Half-Pint"? Now that's comedy gold, people. Giles says the good news is that they're not exactly the sharpest spurs in the West, so rather than having some master plan, they're probably just there for a nice rejuvenating stay at the Hellmouth Demon Spa. Xander proposes a motion that Buffy slay the Gorches, and Willow cutely seconds it. Giles starts to urge caution, but trails off. "Why do you all have eggs?" Hee. It's all in the delivery. Willow brightly suggests that Buffy enlist Angel's help in finding the Gorches, and Giles agrees. Xander snarks that he doesn't see a lot of hunting getting done in that scenario. Buffy: "Like Angel and I are just helpless slaves to passion. Grow up!"

So what cut here would make you sit up and say, "Wow, they got me! I sure didn't see that coming!" Go on, I'll wait. Email me. Well, I got 589 responses, and not one of them was "Buffy and Angel causing the lip-mike operators to work overtime." So you can see why I'm getting a little tired of that particular "Surprise!" television convention. A couple of forced we-should-really-be hunting interjections penetrate the heavy breathing, but are immediately sucked back into the maws from whence they came. They take a couple of steps, and Buffy asks Angel if he sees anything. Upon hearing a negative, she starts up with the mack mamma stuff again. I hope her egg isn't around to see this. It's not, but the Gorch brothers are, watching from a nearby tree. Tector is just as much of a frontier stereotype as his brother. Tector asks if that's the Slayer, and calmly notes that it's "Angelus" whose face she's threatening to swallow. It seems unlikely that Tector would be able to identify him by sight -- Angel was already souled by the time the Gorch brothers became vamps, making it highly improbable to me that their paths would have crossed, and maybe they could have come across his picture in a book, but considering these two obviously didn't even get up to McGuffey's Reader, how likely is that?

Buffy, dressed for bed, goes over her "daily care of egg" checklist. She bids goodnight to "Eggbert." Is that a shout-out to Scott Adams? She goes to sleep. Later, the egg starts twitching, and a feeler breaks through the shell. It simulates continental drift as it creeps toward Buffy's face. It's such a dramatic moment that we have to take a commercial break. When we come back, the thing still hasn't reached Buffy, but before I join my odious ex-boyfriend in the over-35 category, it wraps several tendrils around Buffy's face.

Boring sewer scene. Tector wants to stay someplace nice, but Lyle says they have to keep a low profile until the Slayer situation is resolved. Tector thinks Lyle's afraid of Buffy. They fight for fun. Lyle actually says, "Yippee-ki-yay." Shut up, Lyle. The only person permitted to say that is Alan Rickman.

Morning. Buffy's alarm goes off. Her egg is intact. In the kitchen, Buffy says she didn't sleep well. Joyce: "What's the matter, your egg keep you up all night?" Buffy: "You're killing me." Seconded. And -- scene! No, really.

Giles emerges from the stacks to find Buffy, Xander, and Willow. They exposit that "Teen Health" got canceled, as Mr. Whitmore didn't show up. Well, at least a she-mantis didn't show up to teach it. ["Amen." -- Sars] Buffy speaks monosyllabically, prompting Xander to snark, "Apparently Buffy has decided that the problem with the English language is all those pesky words. You. Angel. Big. Smoochies?" Hee, but Buffy's monosyllabism doesn't preclude the most tried-and-true response around: "Shut. Up." Willow's clearly just as sluggish as Buffy, and Xander speculates that it's the stress of parenting. He takes his egg out and starts tossing it around. He of course eventually drops it, leading to squeals all around, but it doesn't break. Why? He cooked it. Hee. I may need to revise my estimate of his brainpower. Willow: "You boiled your young?" Giles says that he cheated, but observes that there's a "Machiavellian ingenuity" to Xander's actions. Xander: "I resent that! Or possibly, thank you." Nope, no revision necessary. By the way, there's an egg on the bookshelf near Giles. Why? I have absolutely no idea. Cordy busts in, all up in arms about Mr. Whitmore's absence, saying that he might be dead. She's met with little enthusiasm until she wink-winks to Xander: "His body could fall out of a closet somewhere, so we should check some closets, to see if he's ina closet." I don't know about Mr. Whitmore, but you might find Subtlety's corpse in there. Or you might just find Larry. Anyway, Xander hustles Cordy out of there before the tent gets fully pitched. Buffy wonders if she should indeed be looking for Mr. Whitmore, but Giles thinks she should conserve her energy. Another mention of Angel warns us to brace for lip-mike impact.