Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Bad Eggs - S02E12 Review

BAD EGGS
SEASON 2 EPISODE 12

This episode opens up with Buffy and her mom walking around at the mall. Her mom sends her off to pick up an outfit for her, and she starts to, before getting distracted by a southern vampire and an unknowing victim. I mean of course he's a vamp, he's wearing a cowboy hat! She follows them into a closed arcade and the girl runs off, leaving Buff to deal with the Texan vamp. This is Lyle Gorch, and in addition to having the worst name of all time, he also has the worst character of all time. The fight lasts like six seconds. The fight scene music is pretty cool though; it's unique to this episode I think. After the tussle, Buffy's mom gets pissed that she forgot her outfit, and asks what she was doing. Buffy replies "saving the world from vampires" that her mom completely ignores. What's interesting though is that she doesn't mention this conversation when she actually DOES find out. The show is usually so good about little bitty callbacks. Maybe nobody wanted to remember this episode.

At school, Xander and Cordy are having steamy make-out time in the broom closet as cheesy sensual soft rock plays. They both seem to be really disgusted by each other and decide to leave...but then start making out again. That's like every Xander/Cordelia joke now. Still pretty funny though. Conveniently, today's class is about sex, making way for several passive aggressive jabs between Xander and Cordy in the form of answers to the teacher. The teacher seems really condescending in this episode actually. He gives out eggs for the class to group into parents and take care of to symbolize a negative consequence of sex. Actually that's pretty genius. It probably wouldn't prevent any sex, but it's a cool idea at least. The worst part is when Willow instinctively goes for Xander to be the parent but Xander walks over to Cordy first. I hate seeing her sad, it's too adorable!

So Xand and Will head to the library and give Buff her egg since she was late for class, then Giles tells about Lyle Gorch (and his annoying brother Tector), who are apparently like a hundred years old. How did they last so long being so stupid? They're the worst. That night, instead of patrolling, Buffy and Angel just make out a lot...while the Gorch brothers...watch. They're probably my least favorite part of the episode; they don't factor into the plot at all, and only serve to be supremely annoying. There's also a scene where they sit around underground and use awful accents. Later that night Buffy goes to bed and long tentacles poke out of the egg, latching onto her face. In the morning she wakes up really drained, but there the egg is, all fine and snug and whatnot.

Class is cancelled that day due to the teacher being absent; very reminiscent of Teacher's Pet, actually. Buffy and Willow are both tired, while Xander seems fine, although seconds later it's revealed that he boiled his egg so he didn't have to worry about it breaking. Then Xander and Cordy go to "look for the teacher" in closets. Yes, very convincing!

Giles: I suppose there IS a sort of Machiavellian ingenuity to your transgression.
Xander: I resent that! ...or possibly thank you.

That night there is pretty much a repeat of the Buffy/Angel kissing scene. But this time is kind of segues into a conversation about parenthood and how vamps can't have kids. But it does lead to a couple rather sweet lines. Call them melodramatic if you want, but I like them together! But after that exchange we see a security guard at the school (since when does Sunnydale High School have security guards?) and he wanders into the basement and finds a tunnel. Then he gets pushed down the tunnel by the missing teacher. At home, Buffy sees her egg moving before it hatches and full-on attacks her. It's pretty much a purple scorpion; it scurries all over the room before she finally kills it with a pair of scissors. She calls Willow, who says everything's fine, but then it's revealed that she's already being controlled by the egg monster.

Buffy's mom, having heard the commotion, comes to Buffy's room and sees that Buffy's dressed. She then proceeds to ground Buffy in one of Joyce's douchiest moves of the show. I don't know, something about her "strict" acting really gets on my nerves. At school, the gang is sitting outside when Xander starts to get hungry. He cracks open his eggs and puts it to his mouth before realizing it's a dead monster scorpion thingy. In the lab they're examining it when all of a sudden, Cordy and Willow knock out Buffy and Xander and stuff them in a closet. Then they and some extras head down into that tunnel from earlier with tools to do some harvesting or something.

Buffy's mom goes to the library to pick her up but finds only Giles there. They share a bit of conversation before Giles latches a scorpion onto Joyce. What I like about this scene is that something is definitely off the whole time, but it's rather cleverly done; you don't know for sure that Giles has been body-snatched until it's too late. As far as the body-snatching stuff goes, it's actually really well set-up; it's just a shame that it doesn't really factor in much outside of this scene and the first scene where Willow is being controlled.

Buff and Xander awake in the closet with only mild concussions; Xander should be dead based on how hard he got hit! They break out of the closet and in Giles's absence decide to do some research of their own. It's pretty funny how clueless they are; they're definitely the least smart of the core four. Meanwhile, Will, Cordy, Joyce, and practically the whole school is in the tunnel digging, harvesting eggs to plant on more people. Buff and Xand see Jonathan get bugged outside of the library and follow him to the lair of the mother. They get a good look at the mother, which actually looks pretty cool.

For some reason the Gorch brothers show up, don't ask me why. It sort of becomes a free-for-all between Buffy, the vamps, and the body-snatched people. Xander even gets to punch Cordelia in the face in a hilarious moment. Tector Gorch gets swallowed up by the mother, then Buffy gets pulled in too. But she kills it off-screen with a pickaxe. It's a lame conclusion and the logistics don't even make sense. Did she get eaten by it and bust out like Hercules and the hydra? Because there's not much room down there. She climbs out all messy and Lyle runs away. Oh and everyone else collapses, conveniently losing all of their bugged-out memory. So Buffy and Giles explain that it was a gas leak that caused all the problems, which everyone seems to buy. Buffy is super grounded, and Joyce is super annoying. So she just has Angel come to her room instead. Happy ending!

Overall this is a pretty silly episode, but it's better than I remember. The major downside is that many of the characters aren't themselves for a lot of the time, leaving little room for funny character interactions. But overall, it's an okay monster of the week episode...except for those insufferable Gorch brothers.

**