TEACHER'S PET
SEASON 1 EPISODE 4
This marks the first of probably my favorite kind of episode: the Xander-centric episode. Granted, this is far from the best one, and definitely one of the cheesier ones from Season 1, but it's still pretty fun. Right away the episode starts off with a very silly dream sequence in which Xander is a cool musician/vampire fighter/Buffy impress-er. He awakens in biology class just to see Buffy being picked on by her teacher. This episode actually develops Buffy quite a bit; here Buffy is actually shown as smart, but undetermined. Brilliant but lazy, as Doc Ock might say. Anyway, that science teacher was trying to be helpful so he is immediately killed in the next scene.
Open back up on one of the funnier Bronze songs, "I Already Met You", and Xander being treated like crap. This is a running theme in Xand episodes. His manliness is questioned by the high school jock of the week Blaine, and as he tries to impress him with Buffy and Willow, Angel shows up after his absence in the last episode. He gives her a cryptic warning about a vampire with a fork and vanishes as soon as he came, giving her his leather jacket, while Xander watches in petty jealousy.
As the gang talks about the science teacher being missing, Xander notices the older substitute woman and fumbles all over her when she approaches. She's actually rather unattractive, but all the guys seem to drool all over her. In class, the teacher goes over preying mantises...hmmm...
"I wonder what she sees in me. It's probably the quiet good looks coupled with a certain smokey magnetism."
Xander and Blaine begin to compete to see who will get to work with her for the science project, if you know what I mean. Then Cordy, as annoying as ever, finds a headless doctor in the fridge. Odd that absolutely nobody opened that until now. Buffy gets a lead on Fork Vampire and heads to the park and sees him confronting Ms. French, the substitute. How convenient! He takes one look, sees her botox and runs. Watch the shot where the manhole cover closes, it's pretty funny. It's definitely on a string or something.
The next day, Buffy begins to suspect Ms. French. Another thing to watch for are the establishing shots of the front of Sunnydale High School. This one, where the kids play hacky sack is used quite a bit. Buffy is late to class because she has to attend therapy for seeing headless Dr. Gregory. As she approaches class, she sees Ms. French completely rotate her head all the way around. It's definitely one of the worst effects in the first season. So Xander, unaware of Buffy's discovery and Blaine's sudden disappearance, sets a date with cricket-eating Ms. French to...work on a science project. So Buffy warns Xander in probably the worst way possible, and Xander thinks she's making it up because she's jealous.
At her house, she drugs him and knocks him out, and two big preying mantis hands drag him away. He awakens in her basement with Blaine, who now that I think about it, is one of the funniest one-episode characters the show has. And the giant preying mantis actually looks pretty good for Season 1's standards.
"Great, now I can get out of my cage. Into yours."
The rest of the gang figure out that it only feeds on virgins, and Willow is adorably concerned for Xander, being the only one that knows him well enough; then they all rush out to find Ms. French's house. They eventually find fork guy and get him to lead them to her. Buffy kills him with a tiny white fence. Again he kind of just falls over, no dust or anything. They work out this inconsistency pretty soon though.
Just as Xander's head is about to get chomped, they all rush in, and Buffy stuns Ms. French with bug spray, before chopping it up into little bits. Then Xander chops up the eggs symbolizing his virginity...I think. Angel shows up again and it's clear that Buffy's starting to fall for him. Then everything is back to normal in science, but as the episode ends, inside the closet lies several eggs that nobody caught. This is never followed up on. It's actually the same ending as the American Godzilla movie.
This is a pretty silly monster of the week episode, and not one of the better Xander-centric ones. Still, it has a lot of good moments, mostly coming from Xander, and strengthens the relationships of the characters.
**1/2
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