Yee-Haw!

S02E12

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 more...I 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.

By Couch Baron

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 in...a 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.

Aaaaand there it is. Blah blah it's late, blee blee Angel will hunt, blue blue egg diary. Buffy says it's pointless, as she won't have kids until she's done having a life, which cues a stilted conversation about how Angel can't have kids, and how Buffy doesn't care because all she wants is him. Given what's about to happen to their arc, this conversation seems unnecessary, and the fact that Angel is happy to accept this declaration from Buffy sort of takes some of the air out of his reasoning for breaking up with her in "The Prom," so I would have been happier if they skipped this and just exposited the vamps-can't-have-kids idea elsewhere. Or skipped that too, since it didn't even turn out to be true. He backs her against the headstone, and I've really had about enough with the smacking sounds. But at least it's not Joe Millionaire making them.

School, ostensibly late at night. A security guard makes his rounds. He finds the door to the basement open, and goes down the stairs. He finds a door with a "Keep Out" sign open, and calls inside, asking if anyone's there. Getting no response, he turns on his Mag-Lite. It's kind of...big. Hmm. Moving right along, he sees some boxes piled up that must not be supposed to be there. Unstacking them, he discovers a large hole in the wall. He peers inside, but Mr. Whitmore appears behind him and knocks him through the hole with a pickaxe. If an actor speaks and no one's there to hear it, does he get a check?

Buffy climbs in her window. She notices that her egg is twitching, and walks over to it. Twitch, twitch, twitch. Forget 35 -- I'm going to be pulling Social Security checks by the time this egg hatches. Of course, my fat ex-boyfriend will still be older than I. Hee. Anyway, the shell finally blows apart, and a rubbery, vaguely arachnid-looking thing scuttles away. Buffy's choice of weapons to fight this thing is -- an iron! Huh? That only makes sense if the only things she's allowed to pick are Monopoly pieces, and even then, it's probably not the best choice. ["I'd go with the Scottie dog in this situation, myself." -- Sars] Buffy looks under the bed, but thankfully defies horror conventions everywhere by doing so quickly. She looks around. Slowly. She rotates her position. Slowly. 180 degrees. 270 degrees. 360 degrees. I could continue, but since my point is that they should frickin' get on with it already, I won't. The Alien-esque creature drops onto her back, but she rips it off and it scuttles away. Again. Since they refuse to end this scene, I'll retaliate by going off on yet another tangent. This one is a bit more relevant, however, as it concerns the derivation of the main story. Although it loosely pays homage to both Alien and The Puppet Masters (I'm told...I've never read or seen it), it seems to me that it most closely resembles a mini-arc on Star Trek: The Generation that ended with the episode "Conspiracy." Of course, you could argue that the Star Trek thing is a rip-off itself, and I'm sure you'd be right. Anyhow, despite not even having the chance to use it (or maybe she's just validating my earlier point), Buffy discards the iron and picks up a pair of scissors. The thing crawls up the wall, and Buffy's super-hearing allows her to spin and stab the thing. After it falls to the floor, she stabs it several more times for good measure. In a panic, she grabs the phone and calls Willow. She answers, and Buffy tells her to break her egg. Willow says that she put hers in the refrigerator, and speculates that the Gorches planted the spider-thingy as a trap for her. Since they can't get into Buffy's house, I wonder about the logistics of that explanation, but it's good enough for Buffy, who apologizes for waking Willow and hangs up. Willow does the same, but we see that to the cradle is her egg, hatched. I think that was a poor choice -- I would have preferred to be kept in suspense a bit longer. Willow looks at the camera all, "Willow's not here, Mrs. Torrance."

Back in Buffy's room, we see it's 2:45. Joyce enters, wondering what all the noise is about. Buffy manages to cover the dead hatchling, but can't do the same to the phone call and the fact that she's still dressed. Joyce thankfully doesn't drag it out as she grounds Buffy "for the rest of your natural life --"

"-- which means," she continues in the car on the way to school, "no after-school socializing, no Bronze, no nothing, not until I say so." She goes on that school ends at 2:30 (it does? Damn) and that Buffy is to go to the library and study until Joyce comes to get her at 5:30. Well, that's an enforceable plan, right there. Buffy gets out and sees Cordy talking to some girl. Cordy's wearing a teddy-bear backpack, which is kind of cute, if wholly incongruous. Buffy starts to ask her something, but Cordy goes off on a rant about how she got her bear years ago, but now everyone has one. Buffy: "Okay, Soliloquy Girl." Hee. She just wants to know about the egg, which Cordy says is in her bear. Buffy asks if it's been acting weird. Cordy: "It's an egg, Buffy. It doesn't emote." Heh. That Max Perlich extra totally just walked by again. I never would have noticed this guy if Max Perlich hadn't been on the show, but now trying to spot his younger copy is an exciting new obsession. Cordy walks off as Willow greets Buffy. Nearby, Xander is none too happy with a candy bar he's munching on, and prepares to complete the cycle of child abuse by eating his young. Willow asks if Buffy brought the spider-thingy in; Buffy says yes, and that Giles is in "full research mode." Cordy joins them as Willow says she'll get Giles and they'll all meet up in the science lab. The camera swings low to show that a spider-thingy is attached to her lower back. Like Willow would ever wear something that remotely revealed anything in the early seasons. Mind-controlling parasites I can believe, but Willow showing any skin before Season Four you can just sell somewhere else. Anyway, Xander puts the peeled egg to his mouth and sees that it contains a dead spider-thingy. He freaks as the girls look on.

Buffy, Xander, and Cordy look at one of the spider-thingys, all grossed out. Willow rejoins them, and says that Giles instructed her to get started. Xander and Buffy start with the "You dissect it. No, you dissect it!" Willow breaks it up as we get a look at Cordy's bear. Something squirms inside, and two feelers pop the eyes. I don't get it -- I thought this thing had to be in physical contact. It seems like just another "heads up, audience!" moment that I neither need nor want. Buffy and Xander think this means that something sinister befell Mr. Whitmore. Cordy leans down as Willow says, "It's possible that Mr. Whitmore wasn't harmed. Maybe the offspring simply used him to return to the mother Bezoar." Buffy and Xander barely get a chance to "Huh?" before Cordy whacks Buffy in the face with a metal pole. Willow picks up something heavy and sends Xander to Dreamland as well. Cordy and Willow toss Xander into a dark closet, and two henchboys do the same to Buffy. Especially given Xander's recent association with closets, it's appropriate that he's unconscious, since being in a position to play Seven Minutes In Heaven with Buffy is his big wet dream. Willow opens the doors to some sort of supply area, and a bunch of kids and a teacher file in and grab digging tools. It's broad daylight, so I don't understand this part either. Is everyone in the school possessed by now? Whatever. The possessed people head down to the basement and enter the hole in the wall from earlier.

By Couch Baron

Giles, Joyce, Max Perlich Jr., and others reach the basement. Everyone's hacking away at the concrete floor, and there are several trays of eggs about. I'm pleased to note that the security guard survived. They usually get such rotten luck on TV. We see a shot of something lurking under the concrete. It looks kind of like a squid. I think I'll channel the Sea Captain from The Simpsons and call it "Squiddy."

Buffy describes Squiddy as a "pre-prehistoric" (?) parasite. The mother hibernates underground and lays eggs; then the offspring attach themselves to hosts by neural clamping. The point of this little exercise from any viewpoint, survivalist or other, is patently unclear, but go with it. Xander and Buffy actually pose the question of what the mother wants, but we never get an answer, as they hear Jonathan screaming for help in the hallway. By the time they get out there, however, he's gone all Stepford and says he slipped. Buffy and Xander follow him to the basement. They see him go through the hole in the wall, and they follow. Jonathan enters the Bezoar Boudoir (I know. Ew), and Buffy and Xander surreptitiously observe the proceedings therein. Catching sight of Squiddy, Buffy goes to find a weapon while Xander pretends to be one of the gang. Since the people are being neurally controlled, you might think the Bezoar would inform its minions that there's a traitor in their midst, but who am I to question the actions of a pre-prehistoric creature? Anyway, Cordy carries a tray of eggs out of the room, and Xander follows her. Buffy's just gotten hold of a metal pole when our favorite rootin'-tootin' pair of vampire brothers shows up. Buffy tries to tell them that it's not a good time, but despite the fact that their brains look like they've been treated with Oil Of Olay, they don't believe her, and they fight. Buffy kicks Tector away, but Lyle tackles her through the hole in the wall, then takes time out from the fight to observe the spectacle before him. Buffy catches sight of Joyce, and querulously asks, "Mom?" Willow looks up, and flatly tells the others, "Kill them." Buffy and Lyle defend themselves. I think Tector is really no good without his brother, as he's still nowhere to be seen. Lyle asks Buffy what's happening, and takes a break to attack her once more, but the minions regroup and advance again.

Xander follows Cordelia and some other dude. He sneaks up behind the extra and throws him into the wall. Cordy swings at him, but he ducks. He tells her he doesn't want to hurt her, but she pops him in his bruised head, and he decks her. Probably not the most chivalrous thing he could have done, but his choices must have seemed pretty limited. Plus, you know he wanted to.

Buffy and Lyle continue to keep the minions at bay as Tector, finally having removed his head from his ass, enters the Bezoar Boudoir. Seeing Squiddy, he goes to have a look. Squiddy opens an eye, and Tector grins goofily at it and bids it hello. By way of responding, Squiddy lashes a tentacle around his neck and pulls him down. Buffy looks like she's going to be sick. Lyle rounds on Buffy and tells her it's her fault. Buffy, incredulously: "How?" Hee. He tosses her onto the concrete. Joyce tries to impale her with a pickaxe, but Buffy rolls away. When she says you're grounded, Buffy, she means it. I realize also that Joyce tried to kill Buffy twice in the course of the series. Dr. Spock ain't gonna back you up on your parenting techniques, Joyce. Anyway, avoiding Joyce's attack brings Buffy closer to Squiddy, and it lashes another tentacle around her feet. Buffy manages to grab a pickaxe before she gets dragged in. If you look closely, Buffy totally loses her grip on the axe as she falls in, and I'm not sure she would have been able to grab it again, but whatever. We hear some groaning and some impact noises as the minions look on, and then Squiddy's eye slowly shuts. With a goofy circus sound effect, all the spider-thingys fall to the floor, and the human hosts follow suit. Lyle looks around warily until the pickaxe comes flying out of the hole. Buffy, covered in black ichor, hoists herself out, and stares at Lyle. Ha! That's up there with my favorite Bad-Ass Buffy moments. Lyle tips his hat and bails faster than you can say "yeller-bellied varmint."

Sometime later, the human hosts are disorientedly emerging from the school. Giles tells them it was a gas leak, and that they should get some air and rest. Seeing Xander, he asks, "Wh-what was it really?" Hee. Xander says he'll tell him tomorrow, and Giles leaves. Xander asks Willow and Cordy, who are sitting nearby, if they're okay. They look like hell, and Willow unhappily asks if she really hit him. He acknowledges that, and Cordy asks if she hit him too. Xander: "Yes! Everyone hit me!" Cordy: "Good. Well -- I don't mean 'good' because I hit you, but I didn't want to be left out." Heh. Buffy arrives, with an egg-sized (hee) bruise on her forehead, and asks how "she" is, and I frown for a moment until I realize that she must be talking about Joyce. Xander says she's confused, but "it's going around." Just wait until "Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered," buddy. Joyce appears and tells Buffy how worried she was. Buffy says she was in the gym, which leads Joyce to strap her bitch on again and confine Buffy to her room. Considering that she's almost died in each of the last two episodes, I guess Joyce isn't one of those people who reevaluates life after a near-death experience.

By Couch Baron

Joyce enters the library, calling for Buffy. Giles pops his head out of the cage and greets her, and tells her Buffy hasn't been in. Joyce straps her bitch on about those irresponsible kids, then notices some texts on demonology. Giles says it's a hobby of his "having nothing to do with Buffy in any way." Heh. Although it's cool that they put this throwaway moment to good use in "Gingerbread." Remember when the show used to take little plot points like that and run with them? These days the writers keep trying to spike it in their own end zone. Get it? "Spike"? Well, if the show is going to write him so lamely, is there any reason I shouldn't? Giles starts to open a drawer, but asks Joyce if she heard a noise. Joyce turns toward the entrance, and Giles puts one of the spider-thingys on her back. She hilariously overacts with the screaming, and falls to the floor as Giles replicates Willow's blank expression from earlier. This scene did much better in the scare department -- while it's clear from events before and after that Willow took care of Giles, they didn't telegraph it, and the action moved along speedily enough that you didn't have scads of time to think it through. Although now that I am thinking it through, I still don't understand what the deal with that egg on the bookshelf was. Maybe it was a runaway. "It's 10 PM. Do you know where your eggs are?"

Giles and Joyce, apparently now on the same wavelength (haw!), march out of the library and head for the basement entrance, joined by some other students. A hand pulls a light string, and we see that Buffy has regained consciousness. She wakes Xander up. Xander mumbles something about him and Cordelia, and I'm over being baffled that no one's figured out their little tonsil hockey sessions. They get to their feet, and Buffy lamely tries the door and finds it locked. C'mon, Buff -- we've seen you rip out countless door handles, usually in far more gratuitous situations than this one. Xander wonders why Cordy and Willow didn't just kill them, but they get their answer when they catch sight of two twitching eggs on the floor. Buffy smashes them with a toolbox and kicks the door open. That's a poor substitute for ripping the handle out, Buffy. They burst into the library, but no one's there. Buffy says they need some information, and Xander pulls the name "Bezoar" out of his ass. Or possibly his lower back. "Bezoar" is kind of a strange name to pick for this creature, incidentally, considering that it classically refers to a growth in the stomachs of certain animals. The usage in Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone made sense. Not so this one. They discover a text that's open to an entry on the Bezoar. So Giles found out what it was, but Willow subjected him to a spider-thingy before he could tell anyone. That's Fanwanking 101. When you get to the Ph.D level, you get a shot at Season Seven.

By Couch Baron

Lip Mike Theater, part the last. Buffy and Angel mack in close-up. Angel asks if she won't get in trouble. Buffy says she earned it, and besides, she's not in violation of any rules. As we hear Joyce call her name, the camera pans back to show that they're at Buffy's window, with Angel on the eaves. Joyce asks if she's going to bed, and Buffy says she will in a minute. They resume kissing, but without the smacky sound effects. Aw. The last uncomplicated Buffy/Angel moment. It does make me a little nostalgic.

So I know this episode is some people's worst ever. As much as I cracked on it, I've got to disagree. I don't think it's even the worst episode of the season -- not by a long shot. Yes, it's derivative, but when you do a show so rooted in horror, you're going to have to borrow a few ideas. It's also cheesy, but that itself doesn't make it unenjoyable -- in fact, I think the massive logical gaps are funny in an episode this silly. And although a couple of specific scenes dragged, the pacing of the overall episode wasn't bad. The fact is, there were two different villain plots that came together in the end, as well as time spent on three different sets of relationships. That alone, to me, blows "Reptile Boy" or "Go Fish" away. Finally, while the Gorches were hopelessly stereotypical, I didn't find them offensively so, particularly not in comparison to the egregious "Family." So hate it if you must, but ask yourself this: When was the last time this show was any fun?