The Great Buffyverse Rewatch of 2015: Never Kill a Boy on the First Date/ The Pack
Never Kill a Boy on the First Date
Buffy is training - honing her quipping technique. “I’m Buffy and you’re history” - but Giles is unimpressed - too gory for his taste. This is a Buffy who wants to have fun, whatever she’s doing, including making the world safe, but Giles wants her to be more serious. Thus the clash between duty and teenage life starts an episode mainly concerned with managing the impossible contradictions of being the Slayer.
Meanwhile, the Master is annoyed and kills a vampire to show it - bad technique is taken more seriously there it seems.
Buffy has an admirer who actually wants to use the library for books - a first in the show. Owen is poetic and clearly has a bad crush already - and not just on Emily Dickinson (“quite a good poet for an American”). Buffy would like a copy of the same book, but vampires are on today’s menu, once he’s gone. Willow instantly recognises her vixen ways as she encourages Buffy to sit with him.
It appears the Order of Aurelius is around, and something is going to happen tonight. Giles is unimpressed by Buffy’s dating plans as he has no Tardis to hand and drags her off to wait in a cemetery until late when he regretfully allows her to follow her hormones to The Bronze.
A bus full of people appears. There is spooky music, so we know things will go wrong and a crazy-faced man is the obvious causer of havoc.
At The Bronze the band sings about “Just a Girl” - what Buffy would like to be - as Cordelia dances smoochily with Owen. But crazy bus man is ranting, so the driver doesn’t see the vampire in the road until too late. For the driver, that is. Crazy bus man is next to be eaten, followed by the rest of the passengers.
Owen wants to know why Buffy wasn’t at The Bronze for him the previous night and lends her his watch to seal the bargain for a date without the chess club because they might get angry and start fights. Xander listens in, not thrilled.
Giles feels Buffy is the strangest girl and she rapidly explains a night to relax would be welcome. Meanwhile the Master orders two things - the Anointed One and the death of Buffy.
Xander and Willow give Buffy sartorial advice. Just think about this for a moment. Xander is wearing a shiny, spotty green shirt. Willow is in startlingly bright stripes. You get my drift?
Xander tries to warn Owen off, while Buffy argues with Giles about her right to go on a date. She has a pager in case of emergency, after all. Giles, Willow and Xander go off to the funeral home just in case.
Owen talks poetry. Buffy works hard at looking interested and not-frivolous as he reinforces Giles’s message that there are more important things in life than dating. Owen finds Buffy hard to fathom - it’s as if she’s two people. He won’t be the last admirer to feel this about her. Cordy tries to butt in, and is neatly rebuffed. “You would have to go someplace that’s away.”
Giles is on his way to the funeral home when he is intercepted by vampires who hiss and growl a lot. He manages to lock himself inside and block the door, so he’s in an all-purpose laboratory room for embalming and cremating. Xander and Willow offer to fetch Buffy.
Cordy spots the salty goodness that is Angel. He’s going to need some serious oxygen when she’s finished with him. If only she knew how much. There is manly glaring as Angel and Owen meet. Xander and Willow suggest the funeral home as a fun location for a double date. Owen is intrigued but she doesn’t want to take him, though she kisses him to show willing.
Owen has followed them, however - it’s so cool. Willow has to make up a swift explanation for Buffy’s movements. Somehow they still think they can keep Owen out of the loop. Giles has hidden in a drawer with a corpse, to avoid capture by the Brethren, and is unimpressed that Buffy has brought a date. Buffy takes her friends to a suitable office, then searches all the other drawers. Meanwhile, Willow and Xander barricade the door with a lot of lightweight, flimsy stuff like a lamp shade, “just in case”, but have neglected to check behind the curtain. Silly, silly people. There’s a vampire under that sheet.
The vampire is crazy bus man, who hasn’t quite got the memo about being evil and is singing snippets of spirituals as he hunts down prey he can smell. The barricade is dismantled very easily and there is some chasing around corridors. Some of these corridors are wide and oddly reminiscent of a school, but more dimly-lit. Just sayin’.
The vampire attacks Buffy, then throws Giles at a wall. Is this the first time he has been knocked out? It won’t be the last. However, he just accidentally triggers the switch for the cremation furnace. Fire pretty.
Owen rather resourcefully beats off the vamp, which is actually better than Buffy or Giles have managed so far. However, he makes the crazy assumption that once down the vamp will stay there. So he gets knocked on the head. The mortuary/laboratory/crematorium does provide props for some varied fight choreography, one must admit.
Buffy is peeved that her date appears to have been killed, so cue one oven-roasted vampire. Nice body-slide there. Giles slams the door, just like Hansel and Gretel did to the witch. But that’s a different fairy story.
Owen comes round with a bad head and is steered off home by Xander and Willow. Giles wants to make a point about the advisability of mixing dating and slayage, but Buffy stops him. She’s still really interested in Owen, though. However, his enthusiasm for nearly getting killed spooks her and she has to turn him down. Giles sympathises and tells her he has no instruction manual. (Really?) At least there’s no more danger from an Anointed One.
Nope. They are wrong on that one.
Just a MOTW episode? The start of a theme about Buffy's inability to find a normal, human relationship? Any other important themes?
The Pack
School trip to the Zoo. Xander explains the true glory of this - they are not in school. Buffy is wearing an orange jacket with no visible skirt beneath. Auditioning for Austin Powers perhaps? Nasty pack of mean kids are having fun ignoring the zoo exhibits, just like everyone else. Xander and Willow, yet again in ill-judged horizontal stripes, miss the mean action just as Buffy has missed zebras mating. Family matters of one sort or another are going to be important in this episode it seems.
The nasty clan move on to pick on Lance, who is actually doing some school work. Nobody else appears to have even a notebook, so it seems even meaner to accuse him of a family reunion with the monkeys. He is at least demonstrating his literacy. When Flutie intervenes, though, he cannot bring himself to tell on his aggressors. They are moderately grateful for this and take him with them to the Hyena House, which is apparently off-limits. Therein lies the fun.
Lance is thrilled to be part of the gang and leads the way across the security tape. Xander recognises that the gang is playing with Lance and heroically goes after them, as this job doesn’t require actual slaying. Willow seems impressed, but she and Buffy are about to follow. Random zoo employee turns up and randomly tells them hyenas are very quick to prey on the weak, in case we hadn’t got the message. He has also chatted to Masai tribesmen about the supernatural abilities of hyenas. Because that’s just what David Attenborough does. He is clearly mostly interested in spooking sophomore girls.
Meanwhile the Nasties have found their way into the dark hyena pit, such a suitable place for newly-arrived veldt animals. Lance is a victim again, but Xander arrives to save him. Just in time to be affected by the flashy green eyes of doom from the hyenas to the Nasties. They all turn on Lance and cackle, like a group of laughing animals.
At the Bronze Willow knows Xander’s blood pressure but is worried that he’s quiet. Buffy is wearing a familiar (shrinking) leather jacket. It goes with her shoes. Xander arrives, looking suspicious, but admitting to restlessness. Winged monkeys arrive and Xander eyes them, pointedly. He laughs at their nasty jokes.
The school has a runaway pig. (Not the last) - Herbert the Razorback mascot. He has a green spiky spine.
Willow tutors Xander in math, so he can avoid flunking out of school and working fast food. (Ooops. That worked.) Flutie lectures Buffy on school spirit but Herbert is a scared piggy. A vicious game of dodgeball ensues. Willow is distressed, but the mean kids pick on a victim, with Xander on their side. The coach loves the brutality of a pack game and mentality. Then Xander is truly mean to Willow, whose face crumples while the pack laughs. They now roam the school together, stealing food, but it’s overcooked. Only very rare pork will do. Poor Herbert. Not even a cameo, really.
Power walk. The pack are all in dark colours, contrasting with other students who are brightly-dressed. (Remember The Wish?) Xander watches Willow pour her heart out to Buffy, but only from a distance. He’s sniffing a lot. Willow assumes she’s now the third who makes the crowd. Giles diagnoses that he’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. “Testosterone is a great equaliser. It turns all men into morons.” Apparently brutal, predatory behaviour is a normal aspect of the male.
Flutie is very cross about Herbert. He orders the mean kids to his office. In retrospect, a poor decision.
Giles explains Masai magic. It means possession is a real possibility, and could lead to hyenadom and carnage.
Xander makes his move on Buffy, but she’s too strong for him - even though he has acquired a Fatal Black Leather Coat. (Do we ever see him in it again?)
Flutie confronts the Nasties. It does not go well for him. The frames cut back and forth between the attack on Flutie and Xander’s attack on Buffy, with clear parallels. The scent of fear intoxicates all the possessed, but only Buffy has the strength to fight off her attacker, by knocking him out. (The first use of the library cage to lock up a student.) Giles returns with the news of the impromptu meal in the office.
A trip to the zoo for Buffy and Giles, while Willow watches Xander. Wise move there.
Meanwhile the Nasties chase a girl in a pink sweater. She has a pink baby in her backpack. Xander merely messes with Willow’s head. His arguments have just enough validity to be plausible, but he lacks the patience to let them work.
The Zookeeper seems to know a surprising amount about rituals and pack behaviour. The Nasties have tracked Xander to the library and rescue him. Willow hides out, but is almost a victim - Buffy and Giles arrive in the nick.
We see a bullying man with his wife and child get into a car, where they are attacked by the pack. Could this be a Message? Buffy intercepts and the Nasties follow her to the zoo.
Giles works it out at last. Zookeeper is in his Mel Gibson Braveheart guise, to show he’s dangerous. He ties Willow’s hands. Fifty shades of blue? And the pack arrives and magic words make for green flashy eyes again. There is fighting and zookeeper becomes the second human snack of the episode. Giles missed it all.
Xander claims amnesia and the right to protect his Willow. Giles calls him out on it. There is a blokeish backslap. Giles smiles.
So, Xander’s amnesia has been established offscreen - Giles wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation we see. Giles was also not there to hear Buffy mention the attempted rape - but did she and Willow keep quiet about it totally? There must have been some sort of post-mortem in the library, after all.
One could call this the Lord of the Flies episode (complete with Piggy); the moral about the behaviour of groups is fairly thickly laid on. This is another episode in which the unthinkable happens - Flutie is the second faculty member to die in three weeks, and the authority figure. Clearly nobody is safe in this show. Especially not figures of responsibility or people who are nice to Buffy. We may just see more of this trend. Not to mention Principals being eaten.
Thoughts?
Buffy is training - honing her quipping technique. “I’m Buffy and you’re history” - but Giles is unimpressed - too gory for his taste. This is a Buffy who wants to have fun, whatever she’s doing, including making the world safe, but Giles wants her to be more serious. Thus the clash between duty and teenage life starts an episode mainly concerned with managing the impossible contradictions of being the Slayer.
Meanwhile, the Master is annoyed and kills a vampire to show it - bad technique is taken more seriously there it seems.
Buffy has an admirer who actually wants to use the library for books - a first in the show. Owen is poetic and clearly has a bad crush already - and not just on Emily Dickinson (“quite a good poet for an American”). Buffy would like a copy of the same book, but vampires are on today’s menu, once he’s gone. Willow instantly recognises her vixen ways as she encourages Buffy to sit with him.
It appears the Order of Aurelius is around, and something is going to happen tonight. Giles is unimpressed by Buffy’s dating plans as he has no Tardis to hand and drags her off to wait in a cemetery until late when he regretfully allows her to follow her hormones to The Bronze.
A bus full of people appears. There is spooky music, so we know things will go wrong and a crazy-faced man is the obvious causer of havoc.
At The Bronze the band sings about “Just a Girl” - what Buffy would like to be - as Cordelia dances smoochily with Owen. But crazy bus man is ranting, so the driver doesn’t see the vampire in the road until too late. For the driver, that is. Crazy bus man is next to be eaten, followed by the rest of the passengers.
Owen wants to know why Buffy wasn’t at The Bronze for him the previous night and lends her his watch to seal the bargain for a date without the chess club because they might get angry and start fights. Xander listens in, not thrilled.
Giles feels Buffy is the strangest girl and she rapidly explains a night to relax would be welcome. Meanwhile the Master orders two things - the Anointed One and the death of Buffy.
Xander and Willow give Buffy sartorial advice. Just think about this for a moment. Xander is wearing a shiny, spotty green shirt. Willow is in startlingly bright stripes. You get my drift?
Xander tries to warn Owen off, while Buffy argues with Giles about her right to go on a date. She has a pager in case of emergency, after all. Giles, Willow and Xander go off to the funeral home just in case.
Owen talks poetry. Buffy works hard at looking interested and not-frivolous as he reinforces Giles’s message that there are more important things in life than dating. Owen finds Buffy hard to fathom - it’s as if she’s two people. He won’t be the last admirer to feel this about her. Cordy tries to butt in, and is neatly rebuffed. “You would have to go someplace that’s away.”
Giles is on his way to the funeral home when he is intercepted by vampires who hiss and growl a lot. He manages to lock himself inside and block the door, so he’s in an all-purpose laboratory room for embalming and cremating. Xander and Willow offer to fetch Buffy.
Cordy spots the salty goodness that is Angel. He’s going to need some serious oxygen when she’s finished with him. If only she knew how much. There is manly glaring as Angel and Owen meet. Xander and Willow suggest the funeral home as a fun location for a double date. Owen is intrigued but she doesn’t want to take him, though she kisses him to show willing.
Owen has followed them, however - it’s so cool. Willow has to make up a swift explanation for Buffy’s movements. Somehow they still think they can keep Owen out of the loop. Giles has hidden in a drawer with a corpse, to avoid capture by the Brethren, and is unimpressed that Buffy has brought a date. Buffy takes her friends to a suitable office, then searches all the other drawers. Meanwhile, Willow and Xander barricade the door with a lot of lightweight, flimsy stuff like a lamp shade, “just in case”, but have neglected to check behind the curtain. Silly, silly people. There’s a vampire under that sheet.
The vampire is crazy bus man, who hasn’t quite got the memo about being evil and is singing snippets of spirituals as he hunts down prey he can smell. The barricade is dismantled very easily and there is some chasing around corridors. Some of these corridors are wide and oddly reminiscent of a school, but more dimly-lit. Just sayin’.
The vampire attacks Buffy, then throws Giles at a wall. Is this the first time he has been knocked out? It won’t be the last. However, he just accidentally triggers the switch for the cremation furnace. Fire pretty.
Owen rather resourcefully beats off the vamp, which is actually better than Buffy or Giles have managed so far. However, he makes the crazy assumption that once down the vamp will stay there. So he gets knocked on the head. The mortuary/laboratory/crematorium does provide props for some varied fight choreography, one must admit.
Buffy is peeved that her date appears to have been killed, so cue one oven-roasted vampire. Nice body-slide there. Giles slams the door, just like Hansel and Gretel did to the witch. But that’s a different fairy story.
Owen comes round with a bad head and is steered off home by Xander and Willow. Giles wants to make a point about the advisability of mixing dating and slayage, but Buffy stops him. She’s still really interested in Owen, though. However, his enthusiasm for nearly getting killed spooks her and she has to turn him down. Giles sympathises and tells her he has no instruction manual. (Really?) At least there’s no more danger from an Anointed One.
Nope. They are wrong on that one.
Just a MOTW episode? The start of a theme about Buffy's inability to find a normal, human relationship? Any other important themes?
The Pack
School trip to the Zoo. Xander explains the true glory of this - they are not in school. Buffy is wearing an orange jacket with no visible skirt beneath. Auditioning for Austin Powers perhaps? Nasty pack of mean kids are having fun ignoring the zoo exhibits, just like everyone else. Xander and Willow, yet again in ill-judged horizontal stripes, miss the mean action just as Buffy has missed zebras mating. Family matters of one sort or another are going to be important in this episode it seems.
The nasty clan move on to pick on Lance, who is actually doing some school work. Nobody else appears to have even a notebook, so it seems even meaner to accuse him of a family reunion with the monkeys. He is at least demonstrating his literacy. When Flutie intervenes, though, he cannot bring himself to tell on his aggressors. They are moderately grateful for this and take him with them to the Hyena House, which is apparently off-limits. Therein lies the fun.
Lance is thrilled to be part of the gang and leads the way across the security tape. Xander recognises that the gang is playing with Lance and heroically goes after them, as this job doesn’t require actual slaying. Willow seems impressed, but she and Buffy are about to follow. Random zoo employee turns up and randomly tells them hyenas are very quick to prey on the weak, in case we hadn’t got the message. He has also chatted to Masai tribesmen about the supernatural abilities of hyenas. Because that’s just what David Attenborough does. He is clearly mostly interested in spooking sophomore girls.
Meanwhile the Nasties have found their way into the dark hyena pit, such a suitable place for newly-arrived veldt animals. Lance is a victim again, but Xander arrives to save him. Just in time to be affected by the flashy green eyes of doom from the hyenas to the Nasties. They all turn on Lance and cackle, like a group of laughing animals.
At the Bronze Willow knows Xander’s blood pressure but is worried that he’s quiet. Buffy is wearing a familiar (shrinking) leather jacket. It goes with her shoes. Xander arrives, looking suspicious, but admitting to restlessness. Winged monkeys arrive and Xander eyes them, pointedly. He laughs at their nasty jokes.
The school has a runaway pig. (Not the last) - Herbert the Razorback mascot. He has a green spiky spine.
Willow tutors Xander in math, so he can avoid flunking out of school and working fast food. (Ooops. That worked.) Flutie lectures Buffy on school spirit but Herbert is a scared piggy. A vicious game of dodgeball ensues. Willow is distressed, but the mean kids pick on a victim, with Xander on their side. The coach loves the brutality of a pack game and mentality. Then Xander is truly mean to Willow, whose face crumples while the pack laughs. They now roam the school together, stealing food, but it’s overcooked. Only very rare pork will do. Poor Herbert. Not even a cameo, really.
Power walk. The pack are all in dark colours, contrasting with other students who are brightly-dressed. (Remember The Wish?) Xander watches Willow pour her heart out to Buffy, but only from a distance. He’s sniffing a lot. Willow assumes she’s now the third who makes the crowd. Giles diagnoses that he’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. “Testosterone is a great equaliser. It turns all men into morons.” Apparently brutal, predatory behaviour is a normal aspect of the male.
Flutie is very cross about Herbert. He orders the mean kids to his office. In retrospect, a poor decision.
Giles explains Masai magic. It means possession is a real possibility, and could lead to hyenadom and carnage.
Xander makes his move on Buffy, but she’s too strong for him - even though he has acquired a Fatal Black Leather Coat. (Do we ever see him in it again?)
Flutie confronts the Nasties. It does not go well for him. The frames cut back and forth between the attack on Flutie and Xander’s attack on Buffy, with clear parallels. The scent of fear intoxicates all the possessed, but only Buffy has the strength to fight off her attacker, by knocking him out. (The first use of the library cage to lock up a student.) Giles returns with the news of the impromptu meal in the office.
A trip to the zoo for Buffy and Giles, while Willow watches Xander. Wise move there.
Meanwhile the Nasties chase a girl in a pink sweater. She has a pink baby in her backpack. Xander merely messes with Willow’s head. His arguments have just enough validity to be plausible, but he lacks the patience to let them work.
The Zookeeper seems to know a surprising amount about rituals and pack behaviour. The Nasties have tracked Xander to the library and rescue him. Willow hides out, but is almost a victim - Buffy and Giles arrive in the nick.
We see a bullying man with his wife and child get into a car, where they are attacked by the pack. Could this be a Message? Buffy intercepts and the Nasties follow her to the zoo.
Giles works it out at last. Zookeeper is in his Mel Gibson Braveheart guise, to show he’s dangerous. He ties Willow’s hands. Fifty shades of blue? And the pack arrives and magic words make for green flashy eyes again. There is fighting and zookeeper becomes the second human snack of the episode. Giles missed it all.
Xander claims amnesia and the right to protect his Willow. Giles calls him out on it. There is a blokeish backslap. Giles smiles.
So, Xander’s amnesia has been established offscreen - Giles wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation we see. Giles was also not there to hear Buffy mention the attempted rape - but did she and Willow keep quiet about it totally? There must have been some sort of post-mortem in the library, after all.
One could call this the Lord of the Flies episode (complete with Piggy); the moral about the behaviour of groups is fairly thickly laid on. This is another episode in which the unthinkable happens - Flutie is the second faculty member to die in three weeks, and the authority figure. Clearly nobody is safe in this show. Especially not figures of responsibility or people who are nice to Buffy. We may just see more of this trend. Not to mention Principals being eaten.
Thoughts?