About:
I hope you’ve sufficiently recovered from last week’s two-parter, two-slayer palooza! This week’s rewatch features a special guest star and a monster-of-the-week episode that may have you swearing off eggs forever. Also, there’s a lot of making out. I mean, A LOT.
The Buffy Season Two Drinking Game Rules
Drink once every time:
A vamp is dusted
A scene takes place in a cemetery
Cordelia says something cutting but true
Buffy and Angel share a romantic moment
Principal Snyder hates on students
Oz is ridiculously low-key cool
Drusilla says something nutty
Spike has mad swagger
Drink twice every time:
We see the entrance to Sunnydale High
We see a scene from the credits
Giles cleans his glasses
Jonathan appears in a scene
There’s an extremely outdated pop culture reference
A vampire is invited into a house
Now let’s get to all that promised kissing!
2.11 “Ted”
The Scoobies are walking down the street at night when Xander and Willow try to draw Buffy into their argument over whether Captain or Tennille was the real genius of the duo. Buffy rightfully pleads ignorance of the entire thing. They exposit that it’s been quiet around town since Spike and Drusilla fled and the Tanaka assassins have been called off, leaving Buffy free to nurse Angel back to health. When they get to Buffy’s house, her spidey senses are tingling, and she barges into the kitchen, thinking she’s saving her mom from monsters and interrupts Joyce making out with her new boyfriend, Ted. Buffy is immediately suspicious of the new man in her mom’s life, but Willow and Xander are instantly won over by free software samples and mini pizzas. Luckily, Buffy has vampires to take out her frustrations on. Buffy unloads on Angel about her Ted issues, and he gets to her to admit that the only guy she really wants to see with Joyce is her dad. If I were you, Angel, I wouldn’t delve too deeply into those daddy issues with your much younger girlfriend.
Sad Giles goes to check on how Jenny is doing. She’s pretty brusque with him and honestly, a little cruel. I’d be completely on her side about being irritated that a dude won’t give you space, if that dude were anyone other than Rupert Giles.
Xander compliments Cordy’s outfit in public like a dummy, which pisses her off. He privately confronts her about it, and they agree that neither of them ever wants their friends to find out that they kissed. Then they go make out in the broom closet.
Later, Xander completely ignores Buffy’s obvious discomfort about the Ted situation and agrees that they’ll all go play miniature golf and picnic with Ted and Joyce on Saturday.
Xander will sell your ass out for some homemade Bagel Bites. During the outing, Ted starts coming on super strong with the patriarchal rules, being judgy about Buffy’s grades, and having a massively threatening overreaction to Buffy cheating at miniature golf. Everyone else is oblivious, and Joyce outright doesn’t believe Buffy when she tells her about the threat. Buffy still asks Willow to do some internet sleuthing on Ted. Meanwhile, Buffy goes snooping at Ted’s office and finds a picture of Joyce on his desk (with Buffy cropped out) and finds out that Ted’s told his coworkers he’ll be taking off time for the wedding. Um, presumptuous much, Ted? When Ted comes over for dinner that night, he says a prayer before the meal that’s super pointed, asking that the people of the house be blessed with a little more honesty. Buffy lets it be known that she’d be less than thrilled with them getting engaged and gets sent to her room.
When Buffy climbs back in her bedroom window after patrolling, she finds Ted waiting for her with a fatherly lecture. He’s also gone through her things and found her holy water and weapons. It’s incredibly menacing and creepy, especially when he calls her “little lady”. He threatens to expose her “delusions” to her mother and tries to leave with her diary. When she goes to stop him, he slugs her and they have a huge fight that Joyce is unable to break up. But then Ted falls down the stairs and seems to break his neck, and Joyce accuses Buffy of killing him. The coroner loads up the body while Joyce is interviewed by police. She claims he fell down the stairs, but a traumatized Buffy tells them that she hit him. When Buffy is interviewed at the police station, she has trouble making her story clear, and it doesn’t help matters that there’s no evidence that Ted hit her, since Buffy heals so fast.
Willow and Xander are determined to find out something about Ted that proves Buffy was right about him. Xander is all agitated and ready to defend her, but after finding some of Ted’s leftover cookies in his bag, he mellows out and is no longer worried. Willow deduces that these cookies are hella suspicious. After some time at the microscope, Willow figures out Ted drugged his cooking with a tranquilizer that shares some properties with Ecstacy. That’s hardcore, Ted. Meanwhile, Cordelia was able to track down some documents on Ted, including an address.
While Giles is out patrolling on Buffy’s behalf, Jenny surprises him, wanting to apologize. She finally realizes how harsh she was, especially since she knows he feels bad for putting her in danger. So, of course, just then, a vampire shows up. The vamp attacks Giles, and Jenny grabs the crossbow from his bag. But she misses hitting the vamp and ends up shooting Giles in the back instead. Before she can figure out what to do, Giles yanks the arrow out of himself and uses it to dust the vamp, in the most badass move I’ve ever seen.
Buffy tries to talk to her mom about how terrible she feels about the whole thing, but Joyce can’t handle talking about it and asks her to go to her room. Buffy gets a little stir crazy and tries to climb out of her bedroom window when she realizes it’s been nailed shut, which seems way too observant for Joyce. Buffy decides her day can’t get any worse, then Ted shows up in her room again. He admits he had to “shut down” for a bit to get her off his back and shocked the hell out of the intern at the morgue when he got up off the table. While fighting, Buffy cuts him enough for it to be apparent that he’s some kind of machine, and she seems to have caused an electrical short before he locks her in her room.
Willow, Xander, and Cordelia break into Ted’s place, which is filled with old junk and looks abandoned. While looking over the records they’ve obtained, they realize that Ted’s first marriage took place in 1957 which doesn’t quite work out mathematically. They find a secret hatch in the floor that leads them to some creepy time capsule of a living room from the fifties, complete with a closet full of his first four wives. EEK. That, I did not see coming.
Ted goes downstairs and nearly gives Joyce a heart attack. He tells her that he was dead for six minutes, and unconscious after that, but it’s a miracle he’s alive. Joyce finally starts to notice his awful patriarchal bullshit, but it’s the electrical short in his speech patterns that really starts wigging her out. “You left me once, but I keep bringing you back.” YIKES, GIRL. She tries to get away from him but ends up getting knocked out. Buffy finally gets out of her room in time to beat Ted to scrap metal with a cast iron pan.
At school the next day, Xander provides the summary that Ted would apparently kidnap women and keep them in his bunker until they died. Willow was still impressed enough by his robotic genius to want some souvenirs. (This inclination will serve her well in later years.) They’re about to head into the library but take a quick detour when they see Giles and Jenny kissing through the window. So glad these two are back on!
How many times do I have to take a drink?
11
Vamps Dusted
2
Cameo
Ted is played by the late, great, John Ritter, in a surprising bit of casting. Ritter was known for his comedic roles and it’s effectively disquieting to see him play this villainous version of his typical nice guy.
The Truest Thing Anybody Said This Week
Buffy’s Overalls of Vulnerability
Which answers the age-old question: what does one wear after committing murder? Look for these again in the season finale!
2.12 “Bad Eggs”
Buffy and her mom are at the mall having a typical teen argument about Buffy not being able to buy an outfit that Joyce thinks is too revealing, and Buffy having to run an errand to pick something up for her mom before the store closes. Buffy immediately gets distracted on the errand when she notices a cowboy vampire and his date on an escalator. She follows them to a deserted arcade. While fighting, he realizes she’s the slayer, and he introduces himself as Lyle Gorch, but skedaddles before she can dust him. She joins her mom in the food court, only to disappoint Joyce when she thinks Buffy got too distracted by boys and clothes to remember to pick up her mom’s dress.
We join Xander and Cordelia back in the supply closet, being mean to each other, in between bouts of making out. And then the show cuts to their health teach spelling S-E-X on the chalkboard and launching into a discussion about the negative consequences of sex, which is frequently interrupted by Cordelia and Xander taking verbal swipes at each other. The class is assigned eggs to take care of to teach them that babies are a lot of responsibility. Later, Buffy is appalled to learn that because she missed getting a partner in class, she’ll be raising her egg as a single mother, doomed to turn into her mother.
That night, Buffy is supposed to be hunting Lyle Gorch and his brother Tector, but she and Angel are too busy making out in the cemetery to notice that they’re being spied on by the vamps in question. They recognize Angelus from the old days, and decide to formulate a plan, while they try to figure out why he now makes out with slayers. It really just leads to them bunking down in a sewer tunnel and fighting each other.
Later that night, Buffy’s egg baby grows a long tentacle that reaches towards her and burrows a finger in her ear. It’s horrifying. Also horrifying? None of these kids know to refrigerate eggs. The next morning, Buffy and Willow are listless and sleepy. But Xander boiled his egg to make it less breakable, and seems to be in a more chipper mood than the girls. Their health teacher didn’t show up and there are random eggs behind books in the library, but Cordelia is the only one thinks that a missing teacher is probably suspicious.
When Buffy and Angel are making out again in the cemetery, Buffy mentions her egg project, and it comes up that Angel can’t have children. Buffy seems a little surprised, but claims to not think much about her future.
Then they make out again. When she comes home, she sees her egg shaking in a very un-egg-like way and a spider-looking things bursts from the shell right into her face, then scuttles under the bed. Tell your mom to put the house on the market, Buffy. Y’all gotta move. It drops from the ceiling onto her shoulder, she throws it off, then stabs it on the wall with some seriously lethal scissors. She calls Willow to check on her, and ask if her egg is doing anything. Willow says hers is fine and in the fridge, but we see that’s actually hatched and Willow has a blank look in her eyes. Joyce comes in and catches Buffy dressed in the middle of the night and surmises she’s been sneaking out, and promptly grounds her. Hilariously, part of the punishment entails Buffy going straight to the library for hours after school until Joyce gets off work. As if that isn’t what she already does every day.
At school the next day, Buffy asks Cordelia if her egg is acting weird, which Cordelia just seems to chalk up as typical Buffy oddness. Willow is asking Buffy is there was any more hatchling activity the night before (and we see that Willow’s hatchling has attached itself to her back under her shirt) just as Xander decides that his granola bar isn’t cutting it, and he’s going to have some boiled egg for breakfast instead. Luckily, before he takes a bite, he notices that his eggshell actually contains demon spider remains instead, and he screams like a girl. This is the correct response. These things are SO gross, y’all. When they’re in the science lab, about the dissect the thing, Willow and Cordelia go kind of blank faced and attack Buffy and Xander, knocking them out. They have some random blank-faced dudes drag them into a supply closet and lock them up. Then all the not locked up students grab some digging tools from the maintenance shed and head into the basement. Joyce shows up in the library only to find Buffy not where she’s supposed to be and unloads on Giles about what a trial kids can be. As soon as she turns away, a blank-faced Giles attaches a Spider demon to her back and they head down to the basement with the others.
Buffy and Xander wake in the closet and realize they were left in there with two eggs, which Buffy promptly crushes before busting them out. The zombified students and teachers are digging a hole in the basement (this seems super inefficient to do this through concrete) as Buffy reads aloud from a text in the library about this pre-prehistoric parasite that hibernates underground to lays eggs and then the offspring attach themselves to a host and use neural clamping to control the host. Poor Jonathan (DRINK!) gets attacked by one of the hatchlings in the hallway, and Buffy and Xander follow him to the basement, where they find the seriously gross mama parasite. Buffy leaves Xander there while she goes in search of a weapon, and encounters the annoying Gorch brothers instead. The fight gets the attention of the zombie egg harvesters, who they now have to fight off instead. Xander tries to save Cordelia, but ends up knocking her out instead. Tector Gorch leans too far over the pit and ends up getting pulled in by the mama demon. While fighting off Joyce, Buffy also gets pulled into the pit, but grabs a sickle on her way down, and manages to kill the thing. As soon as it dies, all the hatchlings drop off their hosts, and everyone collapses unconscious. Buffy crawls her way out of the pit, looking like she’s not to be messed with, and Lyle Gorch skedaddles again. Don’t worry, we haven’t seen the last of him!
When they all wake up, Giles tells everyone it was a gas leak. (Between this and animal attacks, and gangs on PCP, I feel like we might end up needing a bingo card.) Joyce is relieved that Buffy wasn’t caught in the building with the gas leak, but is still pretty mad about how irresponsible she was to not be where she was told to be. Buffy is confined to her room until further notice, but luckily, Angel is good with heights.
How many times do I have to take a drink?
11
Vamps Dusted
1 – I mean, I assume Tector Gorch was dusted somewhere in that pit.
Bloody Good Snark
Stylish Yet Affordable Boots
How many girls wore teddy bear backpacks at your high school? Be honest.
As Stephanie asked just a couple of weeks ago, do you think Jenny was being too hard on Giles? He really just wanted to check how she was doing after a pretty traumatic event. Although, apparently all it took was was getting to shoot him with an arrow for her to be ready to date him again. Where do these episodes rank in your Buffy hierarchy? Do you think they suffer unfairly just by virtue of being sandwiched between some big season two classics?
Don’t forget to join us next week! We’ll be ratcheting up the drama when Meredith covers the iconic “Surprise” and “Innocence”.
