The Great Buffyverse Rewatch of 2015: I Robot, You Jane/The Puppet Show
A couple of MOTW episodes now - the first is not much-loved - but perhaps you would like to defend it? The second introduces Snyder, the Principal we all love to hate.
I Robot, You Jane
AKA “The One Nobody Much Likes”
We start with a History flashback, to Italy in 1418. (Why that date? Who knows.) An eager young monk is summoned by his master, who wants to know if EYM loves him. He does, so Master snaps his neck. So that’s all good then. Interestingly the subtitles do not say exactly what the Italian says, though it’s all very elementary stuff. However, other monks realise the master is a demon called Moloch (also a star of Paradise Lost and The Aeneid as it happens, as a Carthaginian god as well as one of Satan’s best buddies. ) The Other Monks cast a spell and trap him in a book which they place in a box.
For no reason that is adequately explained, the box and book turn up in the library, where Buffy is less than excited and Giles doesn’t have time to take a proper look at it. Bad move, Rupert. Willow is instructed to skim it, or scan it, as Jenny corrects him. Another bad move.
Sarky schoolboy helper Fritz tells Giles that “if you’re not jacked in, you’re not alive”, as books are obsolete. Did anybody ever really say this? It sounds more than vaguely pornographic, which is unfortunate at this stage in the show. There are suddenly a whole bunch of desktops in the library, which we will never see there again as we have never seen them before. They have enormous CRT monitors and nowhere near as much computing power as my phone. Or possibly my fridge. Willow has a hand scanner, not quite as wide as the page of evil demon-infested page she’s scanning, but it still works and the (weird, non-alphabetic) letters vanish from the page as she scans. Willow does not notice this because she’s had a temporary brain transplant? She puts the book away and white words appear on the black screen: “Where am I?”
Buffy is wearing the shortest skirt yet, but Willow has a flowery thing. It seems it’s already a week later and Willow has fallen in love with an online date called Malcolm and stayed up all night talking to him. Buffy warns her that she doesn’t know anything about this guy. Who can see her through the screen, it appears. Fritz is warned to watch Buffy.
Yes, folks, it’s “The Internet is dangerous” 101. Oh dear, there’s a laptop. Why would a high school student have something that was so incredibly expensive in 1997? Xander is jealous of this Malcolm guy - he and Buffy are slightly wigged. More lectures on stranger danger. All internet friends are axe murderers.
Fritz repeats “I’m jacked in” a lot. Which is weird for all the wrong reasons.
Willow is upset that Buffy isn’t happy for her. And she’s blown off a couple of classes. See folks? The Interwebs lead to all kinds of bad things. Buffy consults Dave, who is a geek. Dave’s advice is not based on any actual knowledge, however. He warns Buffy off.
Buffy is now worried. The geeks are odd. Giles points out that “those boys aren’t sparklingly normal.” - because if you like computers you must be weird, right?
Buffy spies on the geeks. CCTV looks at her ominously. Fritz speaks to the computer, which replies with a white on black prompt line. “Kill her”.
Jenny comes in to check Giles’s database. Nice excuse Ms C. Everyone speaks as they type. Odd, that. Malcolm gives W a clue, so she switches off the monitor.
Jenny notices The Book pages are blank. Meanwhile a nurse has checked the computer and failed to find vital information. It’s what happens if you trust records to those things. Oh, wait.
Fritz tries to kill Buffy. Dave warns her just in time. Malcolm is cross and sounds remarkably like HAL9000. He wants Dave’s love. Then he writes his suicide note for him. Buffy worries about her hair, as you would after an electric shock in the shower.
Buffy, Giles and Xander work out that Moloch is in the computer. He appears to threaten Buffy. She points out all the bad things a demon in the Intertubes could do. They need to find Willow. Instead, Buffy finds Dave’s corpse. All the computers in the lab have switched themselves on, remotely.
Willow gets home, alone - her parents are absent; not for the last time. This makes it easy for Fritz to kidnap her. Giles finds it easier than he expected to convince Jenny there’s a demon on the internet, when she points out that the divine exists in cyberspace. The news tells us that serial killer profiles have been downloaded from the internet. (How? Just let’s not ask.)
Willow wakes in a scary red light. Moloch introduces himself. He now looks less like a Fyarl demon and more like Darth Vader’s bastard demon son. Red eyes, always a good look. Willow is less than charmed, especially when he kills Fritz. (Who totally asked for it frankly. No tears shed here.) Buffy and Xander break in and see them via CCTV. Moloch has them trapped and starts to gas them. Meanwhile Giles and Jenny are trying to put him back into a book. Moloch is rejected by Willow, which makes him go green.
The spell appears to work. It takes Moloch a long time to collapse and he’s then simply trapped in his shell, not in a book. Willow beats him up a bit, then Buffy gets him to punch an electrical gubbins. He is dead.
Giles visits Jenny. He is even warier of computers now, mainly because they don’t smell. Best line ever. “the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be smelly.”
Buffy, Xander and Willow realise they can none of them have a happy, normal relationship. They are doomed.
They have no idea yet just how much.
*****
The Puppet Show
People are practising for the school talent show. Cordelia sings and Giles has a look of utter horror on his face. Buffy and pals mock him. The new Fuhrer, Mr Snyder has appointed him to run the annual Talentless Show, and intercepts them on their way out of the auditorium, forcing them to participate. It is clearly the ultimate appropriate punishment for skipping school. Buffy sees a dummy. They give her the wig.
Morgan, the ventriloquist, seems very good. Sid, his dummy, has a good line in backchat. Meanwhile, in the locker room, a ballet dancer is attacked.
Sid chats up Willow. Snyder points out that treating kids as human beings is the kind of woolly-headed thinking that leads to getting eaten. He dislikes kids and wants clean order and quiet. So inevitably there is a loud scream of horror. The dancer’s heart was removed.
The Scoobies ask around. Morgan seems to have been acting strangely around Emily. He’s been seen arguing with his dummy. Cordelia is distressed - all the attention is focussed elsewhere.
Buffy tries to talk to Morgan, who has head pains. The dummy talks back to Buffy. She breaks into Morgan’s locker, despite Snyder’s interference. The dummy is missing. Apparently he is on stage plotting murder with Morgan.
Joyce plans to attend the show, to Buffy’s horror. After bedtime Buffy wakes with a start - something horrible was in her bed - but nothing is there when her mother looks.
Giles is learning - a trick of Xander’s saves him from a Cordelia rant. But Buffy arrives with news that Sid attacked her in her room at night. She’s not just some crazy person. Perhaps, Giles opines, Morgan is one of a demon cult who harvest organs. However, he’s getting weaker daily, which doesn’t fit.
In class Sid answers for Morgan, is confiscated and stowed in a cupboard. When Morgan returns for it, he’s gone, and Morgan is seriously stressed. It turns out that Xander has purloined Sid. He annoys the others by failing to be funny with the dummy.
Buffy looks for Morgan, going backstage and encountering Snyder who seems way too ubiquitous. She wears a spectacularly naff leopardskin dress, almost too short to cover her bum. Over it is a leather jacket, which fits her far too well to be Angel’s.
In the library Xander is researching to a background of spooky music. Sid disappears. Buffy finds a body, then is crushed by a falling chandelier, essential equipmen for every school stage. She is not strong enough to lift it. (???) Sid attacks her. However, it seems they are at crosspurposes - Sid was a (rogue?) demon hunter trapped in the body of a dummy and thought Buffy was the demon. He becomes Exposition Man for a while, to the great relief of Giles. Nice crack in the fourth wall.
Giles calls fifteen minutes to curtain. Cordelia is frightened. Sid is chatting to Buffy. He knew a hot Korean Slayer in the 30s. When he kills the demon he will die. Meanwhile, he genuinely is horny. Giles holds a power circle. Nobody is missing so who is the demon?
Buffy finds a brain. It’s unsupported by a skull and is gross. It’s Morgan’s - and it turns out he had a brain illness - so the demon still needs a healthy, intelligent brain. However, Giles is asked to be the subject in a guillotine trick. In which a head is sliced off. Clear thinking there, Rupert.
At the last moment Xander works out where the demon plans to strike next. Cue fisticuffs. Xander catches the rope in the nick. Marc turns into his demon self, but Sid attacks him with a knife - and then the guillotine removes his head. Sid cuts the heart out. This is the end for him, though.
The curtain opens to show a waiting audience.
We see Xander as Oedipus, with a terrified Willow and inept Buffy performing to the credits. Possibly the best credits ever?
So, are you sufficiently warned off the Internet? Do you feel sorry for Willow, though? Is it really impossible to have a nice, normal relationship on the Hellmouth?
Do puppets give you the wig too? Why did the demon turn out to be a character we'd seen hardly anything of? Is Snyder just the most horrible human in the show? What do you feel about his approach to discipline? And Giles/Jenny - cute or super-cute?
All caps, once more, are from Pretty as a Picture.
I Robot, You Jane
AKA “The One Nobody Much Likes”
We start with a History flashback, to Italy in 1418. (Why that date? Who knows.) An eager young monk is summoned by his master, who wants to know if EYM loves him. He does, so Master snaps his neck. So that’s all good then. Interestingly the subtitles do not say exactly what the Italian says, though it’s all very elementary stuff. However, other monks realise the master is a demon called Moloch (also a star of Paradise Lost and The Aeneid as it happens, as a Carthaginian god as well as one of Satan’s best buddies. ) The Other Monks cast a spell and trap him in a book which they place in a box.
For no reason that is adequately explained, the box and book turn up in the library, where Buffy is less than excited and Giles doesn’t have time to take a proper look at it. Bad move, Rupert. Willow is instructed to skim it, or scan it, as Jenny corrects him. Another bad move.
Sarky schoolboy helper Fritz tells Giles that “if you’re not jacked in, you’re not alive”, as books are obsolete. Did anybody ever really say this? It sounds more than vaguely pornographic, which is unfortunate at this stage in the show. There are suddenly a whole bunch of desktops in the library, which we will never see there again as we have never seen them before. They have enormous CRT monitors and nowhere near as much computing power as my phone. Or possibly my fridge. Willow has a hand scanner, not quite as wide as the page of evil demon-infested page she’s scanning, but it still works and the (weird, non-alphabetic) letters vanish from the page as she scans. Willow does not notice this because she’s had a temporary brain transplant? She puts the book away and white words appear on the black screen: “Where am I?”
Buffy is wearing the shortest skirt yet, but Willow has a flowery thing. It seems it’s already a week later and Willow has fallen in love with an online date called Malcolm and stayed up all night talking to him. Buffy warns her that she doesn’t know anything about this guy. Who can see her through the screen, it appears. Fritz is warned to watch Buffy.
Yes, folks, it’s “The Internet is dangerous” 101. Oh dear, there’s a laptop. Why would a high school student have something that was so incredibly expensive in 1997? Xander is jealous of this Malcolm guy - he and Buffy are slightly wigged. More lectures on stranger danger. All internet friends are axe murderers.
Fritz repeats “I’m jacked in” a lot. Which is weird for all the wrong reasons.
Willow is upset that Buffy isn’t happy for her. And she’s blown off a couple of classes. See folks? The Interwebs lead to all kinds of bad things. Buffy consults Dave, who is a geek. Dave’s advice is not based on any actual knowledge, however. He warns Buffy off.
Buffy is now worried. The geeks are odd. Giles points out that “those boys aren’t sparklingly normal.” - because if you like computers you must be weird, right?
Buffy spies on the geeks. CCTV looks at her ominously. Fritz speaks to the computer, which replies with a white on black prompt line. “Kill her”.
Jenny comes in to check Giles’s database. Nice excuse Ms C. Everyone speaks as they type. Odd, that. Malcolm gives W a clue, so she switches off the monitor.
Jenny notices The Book pages are blank. Meanwhile a nurse has checked the computer and failed to find vital information. It’s what happens if you trust records to those things. Oh, wait.
Fritz tries to kill Buffy. Dave warns her just in time. Malcolm is cross and sounds remarkably like HAL9000. He wants Dave’s love. Then he writes his suicide note for him. Buffy worries about her hair, as you would after an electric shock in the shower.
Buffy, Giles and Xander work out that Moloch is in the computer. He appears to threaten Buffy. She points out all the bad things a demon in the Intertubes could do. They need to find Willow. Instead, Buffy finds Dave’s corpse. All the computers in the lab have switched themselves on, remotely.
Willow gets home, alone - her parents are absent; not for the last time. This makes it easy for Fritz to kidnap her. Giles finds it easier than he expected to convince Jenny there’s a demon on the internet, when she points out that the divine exists in cyberspace. The news tells us that serial killer profiles have been downloaded from the internet. (How? Just let’s not ask.)
Willow wakes in a scary red light. Moloch introduces himself. He now looks less like a Fyarl demon and more like Darth Vader’s bastard demon son. Red eyes, always a good look. Willow is less than charmed, especially when he kills Fritz. (Who totally asked for it frankly. No tears shed here.) Buffy and Xander break in and see them via CCTV. Moloch has them trapped and starts to gas them. Meanwhile Giles and Jenny are trying to put him back into a book. Moloch is rejected by Willow, which makes him go green.
The spell appears to work. It takes Moloch a long time to collapse and he’s then simply trapped in his shell, not in a book. Willow beats him up a bit, then Buffy gets him to punch an electrical gubbins. He is dead.
Giles visits Jenny. He is even warier of computers now, mainly because they don’t smell. Best line ever. “the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be smelly.”
Buffy, Xander and Willow realise they can none of them have a happy, normal relationship. They are doomed.
They have no idea yet just how much.
*****
The Puppet Show
People are practising for the school talent show. Cordelia sings and Giles has a look of utter horror on his face. Buffy and pals mock him. The new Fuhrer, Mr Snyder has appointed him to run the annual Talentless Show, and intercepts them on their way out of the auditorium, forcing them to participate. It is clearly the ultimate appropriate punishment for skipping school. Buffy sees a dummy. They give her the wig.
Morgan, the ventriloquist, seems very good. Sid, his dummy, has a good line in backchat. Meanwhile, in the locker room, a ballet dancer is attacked.
Sid chats up Willow. Snyder points out that treating kids as human beings is the kind of woolly-headed thinking that leads to getting eaten. He dislikes kids and wants clean order and quiet. So inevitably there is a loud scream of horror. The dancer’s heart was removed.
The Scoobies ask around. Morgan seems to have been acting strangely around Emily. He’s been seen arguing with his dummy. Cordelia is distressed - all the attention is focussed elsewhere.
Buffy tries to talk to Morgan, who has head pains. The dummy talks back to Buffy. She breaks into Morgan’s locker, despite Snyder’s interference. The dummy is missing. Apparently he is on stage plotting murder with Morgan.
Joyce plans to attend the show, to Buffy’s horror. After bedtime Buffy wakes with a start - something horrible was in her bed - but nothing is there when her mother looks.
Giles is learning - a trick of Xander’s saves him from a Cordelia rant. But Buffy arrives with news that Sid attacked her in her room at night. She’s not just some crazy person. Perhaps, Giles opines, Morgan is one of a demon cult who harvest organs. However, he’s getting weaker daily, which doesn’t fit.
In class Sid answers for Morgan, is confiscated and stowed in a cupboard. When Morgan returns for it, he’s gone, and Morgan is seriously stressed. It turns out that Xander has purloined Sid. He annoys the others by failing to be funny with the dummy.
Buffy looks for Morgan, going backstage and encountering Snyder who seems way too ubiquitous. She wears a spectacularly naff leopardskin dress, almost too short to cover her bum. Over it is a leather jacket, which fits her far too well to be Angel’s.
In the library Xander is researching to a background of spooky music. Sid disappears. Buffy finds a body, then is crushed by a falling chandelier, essential equipmen for every school stage. She is not strong enough to lift it. (???) Sid attacks her. However, it seems they are at crosspurposes - Sid was a (rogue?) demon hunter trapped in the body of a dummy and thought Buffy was the demon. He becomes Exposition Man for a while, to the great relief of Giles. Nice crack in the fourth wall.
Giles calls fifteen minutes to curtain. Cordelia is frightened. Sid is chatting to Buffy. He knew a hot Korean Slayer in the 30s. When he kills the demon he will die. Meanwhile, he genuinely is horny. Giles holds a power circle. Nobody is missing so who is the demon?
Buffy finds a brain. It’s unsupported by a skull and is gross. It’s Morgan’s - and it turns out he had a brain illness - so the demon still needs a healthy, intelligent brain. However, Giles is asked to be the subject in a guillotine trick. In which a head is sliced off. Clear thinking there, Rupert.
At the last moment Xander works out where the demon plans to strike next. Cue fisticuffs. Xander catches the rope in the nick. Marc turns into his demon self, but Sid attacks him with a knife - and then the guillotine removes his head. Sid cuts the heart out. This is the end for him, though.
The curtain opens to show a waiting audience.
We see Xander as Oedipus, with a terrified Willow and inept Buffy performing to the credits. Possibly the best credits ever?
So, are you sufficiently warned off the Internet? Do you feel sorry for Willow, though? Is it really impossible to have a nice, normal relationship on the Hellmouth?
Do puppets give you the wig too? Why did the demon turn out to be a character we'd seen hardly anything of? Is Snyder just the most horrible human in the show? What do you feel about his approach to discipline? And Giles/Jenny - cute or super-cute?
All caps, once more, are from Pretty as a Picture.