Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Bad Eggs”

bad-eggs

I almost hate to admit it, but I kind of understand the temptation to put cowboy vampires (vampire cowboys?) in Buffy … at some point. Maybe not in this episode, which is the Buffy equivalent of when you try to make pasta sauce out of whatever’s in your cupboard and while it might technically contain tomatoes, at least, and hold together in some way, that doesn’t mean it was a good idea.

But if you were writing a show set in southern California you might at some point think about history, and then want to put something Olde in — not a serious part of history, nothing too real, but something of the Pop Cultural West, maybe — and it might occur to you that there were cowboys, right, at some point, and heck, maybe some of ‘em got turned! Why not.

Let me answer that: BECAUSE THIS EPISODE, IS WHY NOT.

On the other hand, I present to you: the mall. The mall at which Buffy and Joyce are shopping, as the episode opens; the mall that is somehow the Platonic ideal of Nineteen-Nineties American Mall As I Knew Them. The white tile. The food court. The lighting. The sad hallway to the bathrooms — why were they always so sad, those hallways? — that, in this case, also leads to the very, very dark arcade.

The mall is so perfect you could use it as the foundation for a thesis about malls in ‘90s American television.

This is not that thesis.

Season 2, Episode 12, “Bad Eggs
Written by: Marti Noxon
Directed by: David Greenwalt
Original airdate: January 12, 1998
Rewatch date: January 15, 2018 FOR STUPID REASONS that I would like to say are because I was a very busy woman with a social life but are more like “It’s January” “I’m a little depressed” and “I downloaded Animal Crossing and that was a foolish mistake.” I DID go see a band on the 12th, but it was an early show and thus I have no excuse, really.

“I killed my Gigapet!”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Bad Eggs”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Ted”

Long TV seasons — those 22-episode runs I used to take for granted, and now occasionally long for — make for some very weird timing. There isn’t a Buffy for me to talk about between the beginning of March and the end of April, which is one thing—but the episode before that long break is “Killed By Death” What were they thinking?

And what were they thinking when this season went into winter break with “Ted,” only to come back with “Bad Eggs” — followed immediately by “Surprise”?

Not that “Ted” is top-ten-worst-episodes levels of terrible, exactly, but this kind of tv timing — placing a middling monster-of-the-week episode after a heavy two-parter that does a lot to shift this season’s overarching plot — feels so of an era. There weren’t midseason finales, back in the day, but there was also just more room to play. Shrinking seasons have done away with some of the filler — a word that sounds like a pejorative, but I don’t mean it that way. Let’s call it narrative filler: episodes that didn’t move a story arc forward (at least not much), but allowed for character work to thrive. I can think of a lot of shows that could benefit from more of that that, and only one that’s really good at it: Legends of Tomorrow, which flips the standalone/arc ratio (of what I watch, at least), transforming it into “episodic funtimes with the looming threat of a Big Bad.”

“Ted” is a character episode, and another moment for Buffy to be right (eventually). To get a win — if one that comes after a lot of struggle. This is either the show building her up before it tears her down so cruelly, or giving her a cushion of confidence from which to bounce back from Angel’s impending betrayal. Which it looks like to you is probably some sort of Buffy Rorschach test: do you see cruelty, or kindness?

Season 2, Episode 11, “Ted
Written by: David Greenwalt & Joss Whedon
Directed by: Bruce Seth Green
Original airdate: December 8, 1997
Rewatch date: December 8, 2017

“Willow, tell me you didn’t keep any parts?”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Ted”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “What’s My Line”

It turns out that when you’ve been having a sort of gentle, persistent, underlying existential crisis—the mental equivalent of one of those colds that’s just sniffles for weeks on end—the “What’s My Line” two-parter can be a little disconcerting.

The crisis is not solved, but Buffy rolls on. And while there’s a lot of plot in these episodes—Dru’s illness, the Order of Taraka, Ice Skating Princess Buffy, Buffy’s desire for a normal life and its conflict with her vampire boyfriend, the introduction of Kendra and her baffling accent—what most interests me is how kind they are to Buffy. Not in the fashion department, of course (lavender shoes with chunky heels!), but in terms of genuinely considering what a fated destiny would feel like to a teenage girl, and what the struggle to come to terms with that might entail.

This two-parter was Marti Noxon’s first appearance as a writer for the show. Her episodes are not universally perfect (“Bad Eggs” is rushing down the pike at us), and Noxon took a lot of the blame for the things fans hated about season six. (Here’s another take on that argument.) But given how often I’ve noticed that Buffy’s weakest episodes are written by, well, men, Noxon’s appearance here, in a two-parter dedicated to bolstering Buffy’s sense of chosen-one self-worth, is more than notable; it’s a sort of signpost, indicating the kind of influence Noxon will have on the show as the seasons progress.

Season 2, Episode 9 & 10, “What’s My Line Parts 1 & 2
Written by: Part 1: Marti Noxon & Howard Gordon; Part 2: Marti Noxon
Directed by: Part 1: David Solomon; Part 2: David Semel
Original airdate: November 17 & 24, 1997
Rewatch date: November 17 & 24, 2017

“You’re the one freaky thing in my freaky world that still makes sense to me.”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “What’s My Line”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “The Dark Age”

When I was a teenager, I hated it when adults on teen-focused shows got their own episode-long narrative arcs. I hated it when they just got extra much screen time, like Angela’s dad and his stupid restaurant on My So-Called Life.

In reality, Graham Chase’s culinary dreams probably didn’t really take up that much time. (That’s a show I’ve been afraid to rewatch.) And even back then, I might reluctantly have acknowledged that storylines like that played an important role: they made adults people, and they made them fallible. In so many stories about teens, adults—parents—are perfect or useless, idealized or dead. Their selves, and their missteps, aren’t the point, so they’re irrelevant.

Joyce gets left out too often in early Buffy, which is less than ideal but also understandable from a Slayer perspective; she and Buffy have already had 16 years to try to see each other as people, and we’re picking that up mid-process. The Slayer is busy finding her Slayer footing, and looking to her Watcher for advice and guidance. And she has to come to see her Watcher as a full, flawed human—a human who’s made mistakes, and reinvented himself, and may continue to do both—as well.

Enter Ethan Rayne. Again.

Season 2, Episode 8, “The Dark Age
Written by: Dean Batali & Rob Des Hotel
Directed by: Bruce Seth Green
Original airdate: November 10, 1997
Rewatch date: November 10, 2017

“This is what happens when you have school on Saturday.”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “The Dark Age”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Lie to Me”

At some point in the last 20 years, I forgot that “Lie to Me” was written and directed by Joss Whedon—just the third such episode, and the last one before “Innocence.”

Back in the Day (by which I mean the ‘90s), we didn’t have 10,472 media outlets telling us, each week, who’d directed an episode, what to expect, how many heart-punches we’d have to endure. We just had previews (“Scenes!” someone would yell, and everyone would rush back to their spot on the futon or the floor, wine glass refilled) and then, at the episode’s start, credits. “Oh god, it’s a Joss episode,” was heard more than once. You roll up your emotional sleeves and you get your tissues.

“Lie to Me” is an odd one. Is Ford’s story sad, or is he a creep? Does Buffy essentially murder him when she leaves him in the club, or does she give him what she wants? Is that the same thing? And, on the nitpicky level, did Spike turn Ford on purpose, to torture Buffy? Or did that little bit of vampire mythology—the whole big sucking thing—get a little handwaved, this time around?

Season 2, Episode 7, “Lie to Me
Written and directed by: Joss Whedon
Original airdate: November 3, 1997
Rewatch date: November 9, 2017
Reason for late rewatch: 11/3 is my wedding anniversary and Thor: Ragnarok came out. I was busy.

“Go. Experience fun. I’ll try not to have a crisis.”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Lie to Me”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Halloween”

One of the biggest lessons of Buffy is simple: many dramas could be avoided if we all just had more conversations! Here are some starter topics:

“I was once part of a coven-thing and my past may come back to haunt us.”
“Hey, why were you talking to Cordelia?”
“Has a costume shop every appeared overnight in Sunnydale before?”
“Can you love me even though I’ll never be normal?”
“Do you have any experience with small children?”

Any of these—or all of them—would be helpful in “Halloween,” which is one of those very good, very Buffy episodes that seems like it might be fluff but then most definitely is not.

It’s also the first appearance of Ethan Rayne and Larry, so you know it’s important.

(A note: I skipped “Reptile Boy”—for now. I watched it the week after the Weinstein story broke, and thought about it as more stories rose to the surface, and have been thinking about it ever since. My brain is not ready to process all of that, so rather than let it be a logjam, I’m just going to come back to it later.)

Season 2, Episode 6, “Halloween
Written by: Carl Ellsworth
Directed by: Bruce Seth Green
Original airdate: October 27, 1997
Rewatch date: October 27, 2017

“I’ll have you know I have many relaxing hobbies”
“Such as?”
“Well. I’m very fond of cross-referencing”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Halloween”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Inca Mummy Girl”

Over the course of Buffy’s first season, I — sometimes to my own surprise — found redeeming qualities in even some of the least-respected episodes. At the very least, something like “I Robot, You Jane” made me think about the state of the internet circa 1997, which, oddly enough, is something I rarely tire of thinking about.

“Inca Mummy Girl” has very, very little to recommend it. Well, except that I just saved an interesting Smithsonian article about Peruvian mummies to Instapaper for subway reading. And there’s a good line about scones! And Oz turns up! And Willow starts to think about moving past Xander! So that’s something.

For some very simple context, I offer this: “Inca Mummy Girl” was written by the same two men who brought us the similarly culturally troubled “The Pack.” Their IMDb listings tell me that they were both story editors on a dozen or so episodes, but these were the only two the pair actually wrote.

Truly, I cannot imagine why that is.

Season 2, Episode 4, “Inca Mummy Girl
Written by: Matt Kiene & Joe Reinkemeyer
Directed by: Ellen S. Pressman
Original airdate: October 6, 1997
Rewatch date: October 6, 2017

“I thought this exchange student thing would be a great deal. But look what I got stuck with. ‘Momento’? ‘Punchy fruity drinky?’ Is Cordelia even from this country?”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Inca Mummy Girl”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “School Hard”

I don’t want to oversell the power of Spike’s arrival, but … holy cats, Spike’s arrival. “School Hard” sits neatly between the flawed “Some Assembly Required” and the hot mess of “Inca Mummy Girl,” and it crackles.

This isn’t all down to Spike; the episode is perfectly shaped around him. Snyder’s furiously frustrated authoritarian is good for contrast and laughs, and Sheila Martini (seriously) was a smart touch: an actual juvenile delinquent who makes Buffy look like she should be winning Most Diligent About Parent-Teacher Night awards. Running parent-teacher night is enough of a damper on Buffy’s other activities; doing it with gangly, impossible Sheila in tow is Example A in why some of us hated group projects in high school.

And then the new threat arrives in a swirl of smoke and minor property damage. That twinkle in Spike’s eye when he surveys Sunnydale: no other vampires have that. Not Angel, sulking guiltily; not the Master, raging with vampiric entitlement; not the many henchmen who are never allowed out of game face. Just Spike, come to trample on everyone’s expectations.

Season 2, Episode 3, “School Hard
Written by: David Greenwalt
Story by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt
Directed by: John T. Kretchmer
Original airdate: September 29, 1997
Rewatch date: September 29, 2017

“From now on, we’re going to have a little less ritual, and a little more fun around here”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “School Hard”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Some Assembly Required”

Say what you will about a plot involving a science nerd trying to make a Franken-girlfriend for his dead jock brother—”Some Assembly Required” has one thing going for it right off the bat: Giles does the voiceover now! Goodbye, cheesy voiceover guy; we hardly knew ye, we definitely don’t know what your name was, and we’re definitely fine with that.

Buffy, having worked out (some of) her issues, is doing a lot better this week. Now that I’m really watching for it, it will be interesting to see how/if this season remembers the level of trauma it started with. Memory tells me it’s hit or miss but mostly miss, but memory has been faulty before. Memory also thought this episode was terrible, and it’s not. Its plot is terrible, but around the edges there’s some delightful character work and the occasional perfect snappy Buffy dialogue.

To wit: Buffy and Angel’s entire graveyard exchange when he finds her awaiting a newb vampire’s rise. In the span of a few minutes, they flirt, they just about fight, she admits to trying to make him crazy with the dancing last week, he admits it worked. Angel’s Xander jealousy is just stupid, and he knows it, but he explains it in the worst possible way: “He’s just a kid.” A kid who’s the same age as Buffy, whose offense is set aside when she falls in a conveniently located open grave. Hey, look! She found a plot!

(I’ll see myself out.)

Season 2, Episode 2, “Some Assembly Required
Written by: Ty King
Directed by: Bruce Seth Green
Original airdate: September 22, 1997
Rewatch date: September 22, 2017

“I think anyone who cuts dead girls into pieces does not get the benefit of any doubt.”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “Some Assembly Required”

Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “When She Was Bad”

PREVIOUSLY, ON BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER… all of season one happened, Buffy died, the Master died, Buffy didn’t stay dead, Angel and Giles made some dubious choices about trying to protect Buffy, and it’s all better now, because did we mention dead Master?

PRESENTLY, ON BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER … If life were “normal” in Sunnydale, is this what Willow and Xander would do? Walk around quoting movies and not quite flirting? (This season’s first appearance of me yelling WILLOW NO came impressively fast.) Buffy’s been AWOL all summer, apart from a few postcards. It was the most boring summer ever, according to Xander.

It the real world, it wasn’t, not really. The summer of 1997 was the summer Princess Diana died, and even when we didn’t want to, we saw her on TV: footage from the accident, footage of those kids, footage of her funeral. Robyn had a hit that summer—a far cry from her hits of today. The Spice Girls were definitely a thing. So was Meredith Brooks’s “Bitch,” which somehow people still quote. The Fifth Element came out at the start of summer ‘97, just as Buffy’s first season was ending. Movies were often very bad (Con Air, Batman & Robin) but we also got Contact, which still has some things going for it. In the UK, readers had just met a young fellow called Harry Potter.

Looking back on pop culture often feels weird because so many things are built to make you remember the big stuff. It’s as if life was one big Remember This Wacky Thing from Before We Existed! post on Buzzfeed. The little stuff was there, too. I listened to That Dog’s Retreat from the Sun incessantly. My mix tapes were full of Jawbreaker, Helium, Velocity Girl. I had already met people from The Internet for the first time—the first few times.

In August of 1997 I moved into an apartment on St. Mark’s Place where I would live for the next five years with a rotating cast of roommates and questionable futon situations. I had not yet officially graduated from college because I had been in no state to finish my required colloquium at the end of senior year. I spent the summer reading books about fairytales, identity, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and I passed, somehow. My memory of that is so faint, like it barely happened. What did I say to those advisors? How did I wrap anything up after the year I’d had?

I didn’t graduate on time because my stepfather had died, suddenly, in November of 1996. I was ten days shy of 21. The story of that year—of years after that—is the story of me, shocked, not knowing how to grieve, or even how to be. I made mistakes. I did very stupid things. I was cruel because I didn’t know how to be anything, needy because I didn’t know how to fill that space.

You can see, maybe, why “When She Was Bad” cemented Buffy as something that was mine.

Season 2, Episode 1, “When She Was Bad
Written and directed by: Joss Whedon
Original airdate: September 15, 1997
Rewatch date: September 15, 2017

“Hi guys. Miss me?”

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Welcome Back to the Hellmouth: “When She Was Bad”