Okay, I've just put gas in the recapping tank -- in other words, I've consumed an entire two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. And believe me, to get through this episode, I'm gonna need it.
We open on a beach party. Cordy, Xander, and Willow stand by a fire as Xander complains about the cold. Wuss. There's free beer! We learn that the party is to celebrate the swim team's "victory." Xander blathers something about them not being much of a team and blah blah blah jealousycakes. Cordy opines that it's about time the school excelled at something. Willow reminds her about their high mortality rate, and she grins, because dead classmates are funny! I probably would have chuckled in high school, too, now that I think of it. We pan past a group of kids drinking and talking and generally having a good time -- like, tough concept considering the beer is paid for -- and reach a morose-looking Buffy sitting by herself. Okay, I can understand why Buffy wants to be alone, but if they're going to make me believe that the girl who's been on more teen magazine covers than I can count wouldn't have several drunk 'n' horny teenage guys falling all over her, they could at least give her some sort of blemish. Or maybe go wild with the crimping iron. Anyway, backing me up somewhat, some guy finally comes up to her, and they wax "poetic" about how the ocean is beautiful and "eternal." Well, one of those adjectives apply to this scene. He goes on with some crap about how the ocean is like a mother, and dude, if you want to get away with spouting putrid cheese like that, I'd advise you to swim a few laps in the pretty pool posthaste. Buffy, for no reason that I can see other than she's being polite, smiles and asks him, "So, Cameron Walker, you just won the state semi-finals. What are you gonna do ?" He replies that he's going to hang out with her and get to know her. His eyebrows are like two bushy caterpillars tentatively reaching out to each other like the fingers in Michelangelo's Creation Of Adam. All behold the miracle of the Unibrow. She starts to slow him down, but he tells her there's no pressure (until he gets horny). They're interrupted by the commotion of a tall swimmer-looking guy holding Jonathan's head in the keg water. We get a couple underwater shots looking up at Jonathan's submerged face, and sadly, I had occasion to use my Huey Lewis "I Want A New Drug" joke already in my first Oz recap, so let's just move along, shall we?
Buffy grabs the guy off Jonathan, noting a cartoon fish tattooed on his right upper arm, and tosses him away. Cameron chuckles, saying he had it coming. It's funny when you're not the one getting beaten up by a girl, right, jerky? A third swimmer invites Tattoo Boy to take a little "night dip" in a way that couldn't possibly be interpreted as homoerotic or anything. Buffy tries to attend to Jonathan, but he huffily says he can handle it himself, and stomps off. I guess Buffy and I must have imagined that girly shriek of "Somebody help me!" I'd suggest it was Cordy throwing her voice, as I understand she's into that these days, but I don't think she could get it to quite that high a register. Tattoo Boy and Shaved Head walk as Tattoo Boy bitches about Buffy. He stops, and Shaved Head walks on. Tattoo Boy seems to hear a voice from the ocean, and starts toward it. Shaved Head, who's got a pretty fey walk, suddenly scrunches up his nose like a brontosaurus farted, and turns around. Tattoo Boy is nowhere to be seen. Shaved Head goes to look for him, but passes a point off-camera from which we can hear a strangled cry. The camera pans left, and there's a steaming pile of torn skin, on a bit of which is the tattoo. The last thing we see is a Black Lagoon-type creature escaping into a large drainpipe. Credits.
I'd like to note that according to the IMDb, Wentworth Miller, the guy who played Gage, not only went to Princeton, but was a Tigertone. I hope Sars and Chuck get as much of a snicker out of that as I did.
Willow walks around the computer lab, supervising her class's efforts to make pie charts. Mmm, pie. She gets to Shaved Head, calling him "Gage," and notes that he's playing solitaire with naked-lady cards. Gage: "What's your point?" I'll try this one: You're a dick? The bell rings, and Gage leaves, but not before Snyder stops him to congratulate him on his performance in the day's meet. After all the kids are gone, Snyder tells Willow he's been having trouble finding a competent teacher this late in the term, and asks Willow if she would continue to sub through finals. She happily accepts, and he notes that she's a team player. "A team player wants everyone on the team to succeed." Ah, the pungent smell of bullshit in the morning. And you thought Tattoo Boy smelled bad last night. He goes on that he hears that there's a problem with "Gage Petronzi." Yeah -- the name. Willow says that he won't do homework or even show up for tests, but Snyder cares about as much as I do about whether Andrew Firestone will ever find true love, and asks Willow how, when the school could win its first state championship in fifteen years, she could give Gage a grade that would force his suspension from the swim team. He belabors the "I strongly reconsider you change the grade" shtick, and when I'm sick of Snyder seven minutes in, you know this episode's going to suck.
Willow, Cordy, and Xander pedeconference as Willow takes us over the boring Snyder meeting again. Xander's outraged at the special treatment for athletes, while Cordy thinks it's a fact of life. Xander asks about the principle that "all men are created equal," and Cordy responds that it's "propaganda spouted out by the ugly and less deserving." I think the show has sufficiently characterized Cordy as a princess and Xander as a common man at this point, so unless they're going to put on a stage performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, I think it's time to move on. I will, however, note that there's a really, really bad dub of one of Cordy's lines -- the one where she's responding to Willow about Thomas Jefferson. Xander whines that Buffy's not there to share his outrage about swim team perks: "She's too busy being one of them." Xander, if the girls' swim team asked you to lick mildew out of their showers, you'd lap it up like it was chocolate syrup, so enough with the bullshit, all right? I've had enough for one episode, and we're only eight minutes in.
Cameron pulls into the parking lot with Buffy in the passenger seat. He's blathering on about the ocean, again, and asks if she's ever heard of a woman named Gertrude Ederly. Buffy says no, the boredom on her face making her look like no one so much as, well, me. He says that she was the first woman to swim the English Channel, and that she'd carry on entire conversations with the ocean. God, the poor dolphins. Catching them in tuna nets and dumping garbage in their home isn't enough -- now we're trying to bore them to death. And I can only imagine there was a disproportionate number of whales beaching themselves the day old Gertie came chuggin' through. Buffy finally butts in to thank him for hanging out with no romantic pressure, which is Cameron's cue to ask her if she's wearing a bra. I guess the moral is that while a few teenage boys may be fish, they're all still pigs. Buffy tries to get out of the car, but Cameron locks the doors and tells her to relax, as he's not going to hurt her. Buffy: "It's not me I'm worried about." Hee. Cameron: "You like it rough." Okay, I give up. Which Lifetime hitchhiking drama were Cameron's lines lifted from? Anyway, Buffy does me a great service by twisting Cameron's arm and shoving his face into the steering wheel. The resultant honk makes me chuckle. Unfortunately, it also grabs the attention of a passing Snyder, who beckons Buffy out of the car as Cameron complains that Buffy broke his nose. Well, maybe the swelling will delay your Unibrow from coming into being, Cam.
Cut to the school nurse's office. The nurse is played by Conchata Ferrell, and with Charles Cyphers playing the swim coach, this is a pretty sad showcase for two accomplished character actors. The nurse puts an ice pack over Cameron's nose as Buffy tells Snyder she wasn't the attacker, but he says that's not how it looked from where he was standing. Of course, he was standing in I'll Personally Blow The Entire Team If They'll Only Win The Championshipville, but you already knew that, didn't you? Cameron pipes up that she led him on, and implies that she's a slut because of how she dresses. I'll point out not only that Buffy's skirt is longer than most of her Season One choices, but also that it is southern California. In spring. Shut up, Cameron. The coach enters, all gut and grey hair, and says that the nose isn't actually broken, and shouldn't the diagnosis be left to the fucking nurse? Snyder wonders whether they can still win the championship, and Coach Grey Gut says that he'll need Cameron back, as he's the best swimmer, since Dodd [ominous pause]. He's talking about Tattoo Boy, but since they couldn't even be bothered to tell us his name until his skin had long been converted to excrement by seagulls, I'll stick to Tattoo Boy, should he be mentioned again. Buffy asks what happened to him, but Snyder says that's none of her concern. He tells Cameron to hit the steam room, asks the nurse, "Ruthie" (what did Conchata do to be named after a bitchy 7th Heaven character?) to take care of his "boy," and orders Buffy to dress more appropriately, as "this isn't a dance club." Good one. Snyder and Cameron smirk like the coach is funnier than Chris Rock or something. Whatever.
In the library, Buffy monoblurts about what happened until Giles, Willow, and Xander each look up with the same weary expression. I feel you, guys. Especially you, Giles. Buffy, having taken longer to get back to earth than The Red Balloon, finally settles down enough to ask if there's anything new, and Giles dryly thanks her for her interest. He tells her that Tattoo Boy's remains were found on the beach. She asks if it was a vampire attack, but Giles says he was eviscerated, and there was only skin and cartilage left. Xander: "In other words, this was no boating accident." And you are no Richard Dreyfus. Which isn't too sad for you, now that I think of it. Giles says that Snyder has asked the faculty to keep a lid on the news, and that they're looking for a demon that eats people whole except for the skin. Buffy says that that doesn't make sense, and Xander agrees that the skin is the best part. Buffy: "Any demons with high cholesterol?" Two forty at last check, but I've been working out. Giles fixes her with a look. Buffy: "You're gonna think about that later, mister, and you're gonna laugh." The way the dialogue's been in this episode so far, she's probably right.
Cameron sits in the steam room. We get a couple shots of the locker room to establish that something is lurking. He hears a noise, and then we see a shadow approaching the steam room. False alarm -- it's Coach Grey Gut. He tells Cameron, "I think you've had enough," and that he should hit the showers. In the hallway, Xander, complaining about the research, is going to get a drink when Cameron barrels into him. Cameron acts like a jerk, which we already knew, thanks, and Xander gives him shit for the Buffy-beating he took. Cameron: "You're lucky I'm hungry." Wow. That has to be one of the wussiest lines a so-called "bully" has ever uttered in the history of television. What's ? "This isn't over -- I just really have to go to the bathroom"? Xander says that the cafeteria's closed, but Cam smirks that not to him, it isn't, and if 24-hour access to high-school cafeteria food is enough to get this guy to get up at five a.m. for swim practice every day, he's even dumber than he looks. And that's saying a lot.
Cameron enters the cafeteria, but stops and seems to smell something awful. In the hallway, Xander is trying to decide on a soda when he hears a yell. He rushes into the cafeteria, and finds some overturned tables and chairs right by where Cameron was standing. He sniffs the air, then finds another pile of skin, along with the shredded remains of Cameron's clothing. He backs away in horror, then turns around to find the Black Lagoon creature right behind him. The creature roars, and Xander gives a scream even girlier than Jonathan's.
Library. We don't even get to see Xander's daring escape? Cordy is attempting to sketch the creature from Xander's description, although it's frustrating with his backseat drawing. When she's done, Giles asks if the sketch is accurate. Xander says he thinks so, kind of, but the thing went through the window, and he was startled, and...Cordy: "Go ahead, say it. You ran like a woman." Hee! Buffy and Willow reenter, having procured some statistics on the school's swimmers, and says that Tattoo Boy and Cameron were indeed the two best swimmers on the team, and if the pattern continues, Gage will be the target, as he's Number Three. I think of him as more Number Two. Cordy laments that they're never going to win the state championship. "I think I've lost all will to cheerlead." Watch Bring It On -- it can make even the most uncoordinated twirl around their living rooms. Giles suggests that someone's killing the swim team members out of revenge, and Buffy muses that that person could have called a demon from whence it came for that purpose. She looks at Giles and repeats, "'From whence it came'? I'm spending way too much time around you." Giles gives a small pleased smile. Aw. I love that moment. Xander wonders who would hate the swim team that much, and they all look at him. "Besides me, I mean." Heh. Willow suggests Jonathan, and Buffy gives her leave to question him. Giles opines that Buffy should "discreetly" try to protect Gage, and she leaves. Xander asks what he can do. Cordy: "Well, you could go out to the parking lot, and practice running like a man." Wow. I don't think even I would have said that to Xander. But then again, I didn't think of it.
The day, Gage sits in the lounge, and Buffy watches him intently from a short distance. Sensing her gaze, he looks up, and she averts her eyes quickly. Lather, rinse, repeat.
In the computer room, Willow, in a hilariously overdone interrogation voice, asks Jonathan some questions. She's even using an attached desk lamp as a spotlight, although it's of course nowhere near bright enough. Hee. She deftly manages to ascertain that he wanted revenge against the swimmers, and forces him to admit his heinous crime: "I snuck in yesterday and peed in the pool." Willow's "Oh...EW!" is priceless. Jonathan looks sheepish. Hee.
Entering the school, Coach Grey Gut tells Snyder that the rest of the team is going to find out about Tattoo Boy and Cameron, and he's not sure he can ask them to swim. Snyder puts on the hip boots and slings some more bullshit about how the "dead" boys would want their teammates to go on and win. Coach Grey Gut says he needs to find a person by that afternoon's tryouts, like, of course the rest of the team is going to find out now, or they won't have a full squad and won't even be eligible. So they only had one person over the minimum? In a southern California high school? Whatever. Snyder says the coach will find someone. "All he has to do is wear a bathing suit, right?" Well, I assume he at least has to be able to do a couple laps without drowning also, but I was only on a swim team for a couple years pre-high school, so what do I know? Xander, sitting at a table, looks after them and wonders if he can hide a sock in a Speedo.
Bronze. Buffy watches Gage. Her creepy stalker stare is pretty amusing. Catching her again, he finally comes over and confronts her. She fails to sell a "swim groupie" act, and he rolls his eyes and walks away. I'd like to interject that I finally saw Swimfan. I didn't think any movie with so much shirtless Jesse Bradford could be one of the worst five movies I've ever seen. Boy, was I wrong. Buffy tries to come clean, nebulously saying that something has killed some people and might be after him, but Gage blows her off, saying Cameron told him about her "games," and it's one thing for Cameron to have said that to Snyder to absolve himself of blame, but was he that deluded that he actually thought that's what happened? Don't answer that. Buffy looks a little hurt. Outside, Gage strides out, muttering "bitch," and Angelus steps out of the shadows and says he must be talking about Buffy, and I know they had to get Boreanaz into this episode somehow, but couldn't they have come up with something that maybe narrowed down the possibilities of whom Gage was upset with from any girl at Sunnydale High? This episode is so shitty I feel like I should attach a colostomy bag to my television. Gage starts walking away, but Angelus keeps up the "conversation" with such "gems" as "Who is she, the Chosen One?" Is there some sort of religious symbol that can ward off excessive meta commentary? Gage agrees that she needs to be put in her place, and Angelus finally vamps out and says he's "recruiting," like, that's not suggestive at all, and sinks his teeth in. Gage manages to cry for help, and Buffy, who's just emerged from the Bronze and hears the screams, slowly walks a few steps before breaking into a run, and was this some television experiment where they filmed this episode without a director? Because I've never heard of the director's name that's in the credits. Nor have I heard of the writer's, which isn't much of a surprise at this point. Anyway, Angelus drops Gage and spits his blood out. Gage got gypped -- vamps almost always swallow. Hey, I've been recapping Oz -- I couldn't resist. Buffy hits Angelus with a spinning kick, then draws a mini-stake that she was using to hold her hair in place. Now that's combining fashion and function. I like it. Angelus, unfazed, tosses Gage away, and runs off. Considering that this is really their first face-to-face meeting in their right minds since "Passion," I was hoping for something a little more dramatic here, but considering what came after this, I can understand them going easy on us. Gage gets to his feet and asks if Angelus killed Cameron, but Buffy tells him it was something else, which scares him enough to ask her to walk him home. We don't get to see it, unfortunately. "So, uh, been kicking ass long?"
Pool. Coach Grey Gut calls for the swimmers to "take positions" (I never heard that; every starter for every race I swam in said, "Take your mark") and blows the whistle. Buffy, Willow, and Cordy watch. Gage, for some reason, stops in the middle of the lap and takes off his goggles. He looks into the stands, and, seeing Buffy, smiles and waves. Aw. Now I really wish we'd gotten to see that walk home. Gage totally doesn't have any bite marks on his neck, though. Buffy, a little bemused, waves back. Coach Grey Gut yells at Gage, and he resumes swimming. Cordy: "So he spit it out?" Whoa! Oh, she's talking about Angelus. Buffy speculates that Gage's blood wasn't palatable because it contained steroids. They quickly realize that that would explain the swimmers' behavioral changes and winning streak, and Willow surmises that what's in their blood is attracting the creature to them. In these ten seconds, the Scoobs exchanged more information and showed more brainpower than in the whole of Season Seven. I really cannot fathom how the writers expect us to believe that they never, ever talk. Not that I'd want to talk to any of them these days, but I don't think that's what they were going for.
Anyway, Cordy is telling them that the research has been a bust when she's distracted by something. She starts to lick her lips as the camera slowly pans up a swimmer, complete with bamp-chicka-bamp-bamp music, until we get to the face and see it's Xander. He looks pretty good, I'll admit, but since I've already mentioned Jesse Bradford, I'll opine that he has similar coloring and build to Xander and is about a hundred times cuter, so I'm not exactly using the pause button here. Cordy and Willow call his name, and he covers his naughty bits with a kickboard. Hee. Cordy asks what he's doing, and he says he's undercover. It's Buffy who gets the obligatory joke: "Not under much." Sigh. Cordy bitches a bit more, but when Xander explains that he is, as of the night before, a legitimate member of the swim team, her attitude changes in a hurry. Coach Grey Gut yells at Xander, and he goes to rejoin the team. He climbs up on one of the starting blocks as Buffy asks Willow if Jonathan was involved. Willow tells her he just peed in the pool. Buffy: "Oh." When Xander dives in, all the girls' eyes go wide. Hee.
Steam room. Xander sits down with the rest of the team and starts gabbing away. We pan down to a grate in the floor outside, which the fish creature reaches up from below and removes. Outside the locker room, Buffy waits. Xander emerges and says Gage will be right out. Inside, Gage is lacing up his sneakers when he starts sniffing the air, and then sniffs his armpits. Dude, I don't think the shooting script is in there. He walks around the locker room, following his nose. Outside, Buffy is pacing when she hears Gage yell. This time she rushes in with no hesitation to find him confronted by the fish monster. Lord, I feel sorry for whoever had to put on that rubber suit. Buffy pushes Gage away, but realizes something's wrong when he continues to yell. He opens his shirt, and starts peeling off his skin until soon, Buffy's got a fish monster on each side of her. The song "Fish Heads" just popped into my head for some reason. Break.
When we return, Buffy gets with the fish-fu. The fish get her on the ropes, but Coach Grey Gut appears, and they go sliding for the opening from whence they came. Cut to the nurse's office, where Conchata is dressing a cut on Buffy's arm. Giles and Buffy explain to the coach that the boys didn't die, but turned into monsters, and how they don't consider him under suspicion as a matter of course is completely beyond me. Giles does find it hard to believe that he didn't know the boys were taking steroids. So make the connection, Giles!
Computer lab. Willow's in the school medical records, and she tells Buffy and Xander that the boys' records show signs of steroid abuse, but "there must be something else in the mix." Buffy notes that Conchata treated all of them, and opines that she must have known. Buffy directs Xander to try to find out in what form the boys are taking the stuff, and says that she and Giles are "going fishing" with the tranquilizer gun. She should really patrol with that thing.
Sewers. Giles and Buffy look around. Does Giles have any shoes that are remotely appropriate for this task? I hope he'll at least drive to an outlet store to replace those wing tips. There's a scary moment involving a rat, like, not, and they come to a fork in the pipe. They pick one way, and the camera pans left, only from the speed at which it does so, it seems like someone decided to blow on it rather than actually turning it. Finally, before we get to May sweeps, 2003, a fish creature pops its head around the corner. Well, that was worth my time.
Up in the steam room, Xander practices for his Congressional filibuster. Dude, if I were one of the other guys, I'd be thinking that someone talking that much was doing the equivalent of mentally repeating, "Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts." There is just no call for that much chatter when you're straight, practically naked, and packed in like sardines. Anyway, Xander learns that the steroids are in the steam, which shuts him up. Go, steam, go!
Conchata berates Coach Grey Gut for continuing the steroid treatment, like, I'm sure they'd be comfortable yelling about this in a room that has better acoustics than Carnegie Hall. He says they just need to adjust the mix, and they continue pedearguing until he tosses her through the grate down to the sewers as food for the three fish monsters. No, I have no idea where any of that came from, although if you forced me to, I'd guess, "Someone's ass?" He replaces the grate, and Conchata slowly backs up through the waist-high water until she's pulled down. Goodbye, Conchata. You deserved better than that.
In the library, Xander, who's wearing a shirt that must have had the letters "O" and "P" removed from it for product-placement contract failure reasons, is panicking that he's going to change into a fish as well. His panic is understandable, although it seems reasonable to assume that, since he's the most recent addition to the team, unless everyone ends up changing, he's probably safe. Cordy moans, "It's one thing to be dating the lame, unpopular guy, but it's another to be dating the Creature From The Blue Lagoon." Xander: "Black Lagoon. The creature from the Blue Lagoon was Brooke Shields." Well, give Brooke a few more years, Xander. ["Especially with those brows. Come to think of it, has anyone seen her and Cameron together?" -- Sars] Buffy suggests that they lock up the rest of the swim team "before they get in touch with their inner halibut," and Giles says they need an antidote to the steroid gas. Willow volunteers to interview Conchata. Good luck with that. Buffy says she's going to talk to the coach.
Buffy confronts Coach Grey Gut. He denies his involvement at first, but then tells her about some Soviet experiments with fish DNA, and this whole explanation is lifted almost wholesale from The X-Files, although making a high school swim coach an evil genetic engineer is a twist, I'll grant you. The sort of twist that you get when you think you have appendicitis. Believe me, I know. They posture a bit until the coach opens his desk, gets out a gun, and orders her into "the hole." Which show am I recapping again? She complies. The coach says he cares about his boys. Great. Buffy starts as Conchata's half-eaten corpse floats by. Wouldn't she have drowned before she was eaten? I can't believe I still have the wherewithal to notice such things. That's what I get for recapping sober. Buffy asks if she's going to share the same fate as Conchata, but the coach smiles that while the boys aren't hungry, they do have "other needs." Please. They're wearing three-ply body condoms, for fuck's sake.
Cordy and Xander enter the pool area, but Xander goes to check if his neck has gone scaly. Cordy walks a little bit, and behind her, a fish creature runs and dives into the pool, like, I'm sure that a creature with fish DNA would want to swim in chlorinated water. Cordy thinks the fish creature is Xander, and if they wanted us to think the same, they might have shortened some of the "dramatic" pauses so that the interval between Xander going off-screen and the fish thing appearing was more than ten fucking seconds. And that's not an estimate -- I timed it. Anyway, Cordy, wearing an outfit that from the waist up wouldn't look completely out of place on Little House On The Prairie, gives a speech about how she'll be supportive, until Xander finally reappears. The fish thing breaks the surface and grabs at them, and they run away.
Giles shepherds the rest of the swim team into the cage, apparently having explained at least partially what's going on. Is it a good idea to lock them all in when any one of them might turn into a monster at any time? Willow says that everyone's accounted for except "Sean," the guy who told Xander about the steroids. Cordy and Xander enter at that moment and tell them they have a pretty good idea what happened to Sean. They fret about Buffy not having returned yet.
Down below, the creatures circle Buffy. Well, that was informative.
Xander confronts the coach in his office. He asks where Buffy is, and the coach's eyes almost bulge out in the direction of the gun, like, real smooth, Evil Genius.
The fish guys start attacking Buffy. She holds them off. Upstairs, Xander gets the better of Coach Grey Gut. Buffy looks like she knows she can't hold out for long, and the three start to close on her again. Xander lies on the floor, reaches his arm out, and calls to her. Buffy ducks underwater, then jumps up and manages to catch Xander's hand. The fish creatures grab at her legs, but she kicks them off and gets pulled up. As Buffy gasps for air, the coach rises up and hits Xander on the head with something, but Buffy sweeps his feet, sending him headlong into the hole. Buffy grabs one of his ankles, but all those Hungry-Man dinners he ate back in the seventies come back to haunt him as she can't keep hold. The "boys" converge on him, and I imagine they're hungry again, as even in their current state I can't imagine they'd be desperate enough to use him for their other "needs." As the boys pull him underwater, Buffy remarks to a now-conscious Xander, "Those boys really love their coach." No, they just think he's the writer.
Lounge. Xander informs the girls that he's meeting some of the guys for "plasma transfusions" that afternoon. How romantic. Giles appears and tells him that the people from Animal Control have left, and it appears that the fish creatures escaped. Buffy says she doesn't think they'll be returning, and Giles asks where she thinks they'll go. Buffy: "Home." Kill me.
Three rubber-suited creatures swim out into the ocean. How is it possible this episode came in short? I feel like I just starred in the TWoP production of The Old Recapper And The Sea.