Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Beauty and the Beasts - S03E04 Review

BEAUTY AND THE BEASTS 
SEASON 3 EPISODE 4

This is one of the preachier episodes of the series. Maybe 'least subtle' is a better way to classify it.  Along with an anti-beer episode that will be explored next season, this episode has a very obvious metaphor; this time it's domestic abuse and the theme runs through all the of the storylines.  In some it works well, and in others...not so much.  The episode starts off with a narration of Buffy reading The Call of the Wild but it soon transitions into Willow reading it from a book to a wolfed-out Oz in the library's cage.  You may notice that Oz looks way more like a dog now than a werewolf; this is one of my least favorite changes of the series, but they stick with this.  We do see more werewolves on Angel that are similar to Season 2 Oz though.  A sleepy Xander shows up to watch Oz while Willow goes to study.  She leaves and he pretty much immediately falls asleep like the lovable oaf he is.

Meanwhile Faith and Buffy are out on patrol and talking about Scott.  Buffy says she likes him but it seems sort of less than genuine.  Faith then explains that all men are beasts and are only in it for the chase.  Cut to a boy getting chased by some sort of monster and ripped apart; I never noticed how much they like using the "talk about something ironically and then cut to it happening" gag before.  It's like every episode!  The next day Buffy is walking with Will and Oz when she's approached by Scott and two of his friends, a couple named Pete and Debbie.  Oz knows Debbie from jazz band, and makes some amusing conversation that no one else could get away with.  Buffy remembers that she has an appointment with Platt, the school counselor, and Debbie says she's had to see him and that he's a quack.

Will and Oz walk in on Xander Giles trying not to panic, thinking that Oz may have gotten loose the night before and killed a guy (that Oz also happened to know) due to Xander's sleepiness.  Buffy goes to see Platt (who is totally Hooch from Scrubs, by the way).  I like this guy, he's a good way to turn the monsters into a metaphor, and he helps Buffy by forcing her to talk about her problems with Angel.  Later Buffy shows up at the library and hears the possibility that Oz killed someone.  Giles suggests that Faith watching Oz for the night while the others work on other possibilities.  That night Buffy goes out looking for another potential killer and she gets attacked by a growling and snarling Angel.  They fight for awhile but she subdues him and is clearly freaked.  Meanwhile Xander, Cordy, and Willow go to the morgue and examine the body of the kid that got killed.  This leads to a lot of funny moments from Xander and Cordy who are utterly disgusted.  Willow has a surprisingly strong stomach about the whole thing...that is, until she faints.  They do get strands of hair from the attacker but admit that it doesn't look good for Oz.

Buffy takes feral Angel back to the mansion and chains him up until she can figure out what to do with him then she heads to relieve Faith of her Oz-watch duties.  You know Faith is dancing around listening to music and not paying attention, that's not THAT much better than sleeping.  Buffy spends all night reading up on hell dimensions and when Giles arrives in the morning, she too is asleep.  Pssh double standard, get mad at Xander but everybody else gets right off the hook!  She makes up an excuse about having a dream that Angel came back and wondered what he'd be like if he did and Giles says he'd probably be an animal.  A beast, if you will.

At lunch, Buffy sits with Scott, Pete and Debbie.  Scott tries to be sweet but she's not really in the mood for his compliments so she bolts and heads to see wild Angel.  David gives a really good performance in this scene despite having no dialogue.  There's also a shot of his chains, which seem pretty loose.  Could that come back later, perhaps?  Nahhhhh...  Debbie and Pete sneak into a supply closet to make out and Pete starts to freak when he sees one of his jars of some gamma ray green substance empty.  Meanwhile, Buffy heads into Platt's office and starts telling him about Angel, only to find him dead.  It's a good scene and Sarah does a great job; those sad eyes are hard to resist!

Back with Pete and Debbie, it turns out that Pete has been taking this potion to make him...vein-y?  I'm not sure why he takes it, but it makes him really aggressive and he slaps her around, admitting that he killed Platt.  He eventually calms down and tries to console her, sort of blaming it on her for "making him mad".  I see what they're going for, it's basically a supernatural version of an abusive relationship where the woman feels helpless and the man resents her for his setting off his hot temper.  The "beast" aspect of man is conveyed rather well with the whole metaphor of the werewolf.  And it works in the context of Angel being a monster in this episode in contrast with how he used to be (before Angelus, of course).  But when they try to make a weird message about domestic abuse, it doesn't quite work, especially with how that plot actually resolves.

Oz, who is now off the hook for the killings, is waiting in the quad for Debbie to give her some notes for a class.  He sees her shiner and she gives a BS excuse about hurting herself, while Pete watches with an irrational jealousy.  At the library Oz shows up and says that Debbie is the common factor between the two deaths and naturally the assumption turns to Pete.  They all head out to find the two while Oz locks himself in the library cage.  Buffy and Willow find Debbie and talk to her and she pretty much defends Pete to the end.  While it is realistic that she doesn't leave him because she loves him, it's kind of just cruel for cruelty's sake.  They try to talk sense into her but she won't hear any of it.

Meanwhile Angel breaks out of his chains at the mansion and runs off while Pete and Oz argue in the library.  Pete freaks out and goes all veintastic while Oz wolfs out as soon as the moon rises.  The two have it out in the library and destroy things like a wrestling match.  Everybody shows up to the library and Buffy tries to shoot Oz to sedate him but Debbie pushes the gun out of the way and Giles gets tranq'd instead.  Oz runs away so Faith and Willow chase after him with Faith finally shooting him and knocking him out while Buffy faces off with Pete.  They have a short and lackluster fight before Pete escapes and meets back up with Debbie in the supply closet, except this time he kills her.  This is what I don't like about the episode; it's pretty needlessly dark, it shows a victimized girl who didn't learn her lesson and just gets killed by her angry boyfriend.  If it affected the main characters in any way, then that would be fine, but no one really bats an eye at in other than a couple lines of "sucks that THAT happened".

Anyway, Pete and Buffy have another little fight in the supply room until a vamped out Angel shows up to save her.  He fights with Pete for a little while and then uses his chains to snap his neck.  Interesting that they didn't show his neck being snapped on screen.  Was it too violent?  Because they showed that stoner kid getting his neck snapped two episodes ago.  I dunno, maybe they just wanted that reaction shot of Buffy wincing, I'm not really sure.  Afterwards, Angel finally comes to his senses and is able to mutter a "Buffy", quite similar in cadence to the one he said right before he died; nice symmetry!  Then he breaks down and hugs her...at her waist; no sexual imagery there, no sir.  And a nice reprise of the Buffy and Angel love theme.  That's seriously like the best piece of music ever.

So we get a pretty mediocre little wrap up about how Pete was basically Dr. Jekyll and wanted to make himself a manly macho man...because he was REALLY attractive with all those veins.  Xander and Cordy show up to remind people that they've been gone for 90% of the episode and then Buffy heads off to console Scott about the death of his two friends.  Odd that he was so close to them; they didn't seem like they were actually good friends at all.  And so the episode ends with Buffy narrating Call of the Wild again as she watches Angel in the mansion.  The narration parts are really well-done and fit the episode and the beast concept surprisingly well.

Overall this isn't one of my favorites, but it does hold up better than I remember it.  The Pete and Debbie aspect of the episode does sort of falter, but I like the Mr. Platt stuff.  Plus, Sarah and David give really great performances in this one; it's especially impressive for David due to his lack of dialogue.  It does suffer from too little Xander and Cordy, but what little screentime they have is solid.  It's a good episode, but not really a great one.

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