Reptile Boy
Original
Airdate: October 13, 1997
Writer:
David Greenwalt
Director: David Greenwalt
Continuing the theme of Buffy’s desire to live a life like
other girls, Buffy wants to get out and have some fun. Unfortunately, Giles is putting on too much
pressure for her to train and perform her slayer duties and Angel is
patronizing her because of her age. So
she tries to find some fun elsewhere, and she’s supposed to learn a lesson. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work as well
as hoped, making this episode feel more like an uneven season one episode than
a progressive second season episode.
Giles comes off as rather aloof this episode.
Despite his feelings that Buffy may be slipping, she clearly isn’t, as
she has no problem blocking his practice attack, nor springing to action to
save herself, Cordelia and Callie from
Angel isn’t helping much either. Obviously, being a vampire is a major problem
when it comes to his relationship with Buffy, so introducing this problem of
age difference seems rather insignificant.
The bigger problem is that he will never age, whereas Buffy will
eventually get old and die. It works
slightly because Angel is not known for his social skills.
Considering how the romance between her and Angel is bad
news, it makes sense for her to try to find another boy that doesn’t carry so
much drama. So Tom seems to be a
reasonable fit for that role. Of course,
she would be wrong with whoever she picked.
It is slightly interesting that the one nice guy in the frat, Tom, is
that way only because he was saving the slaughter for his master.
Usually, when the writers attempt to do a message episode,
in this case it “don’t lie to your parents/guardians and go to a party and
drink or else you’ll be fed to a monster”, it doesn’t work well. While the metaphor could’ve worked to teach
Buffy not to drink open containers at frat parties because someone there
could’ve slipped her a roofie, the episode serves
more to teach Giles a lesson that he can’t push Buffy so hard because the
episode showed him as the one who made the bigger mistake. It also underwrites a major point in their
relationship; Buffy lied to Giles so she could go to the party. By the end of the episode, what should’ve
been a rift creating moment for the two is a throwaway moment.
This situation affects neither as much as it does Willow,
who finds herself having a hard time trying to cover up for Buffy’s attempt to
enjoy herself. Obviously, before Buffy
showed up she was very much an introverted goody two shoes. Of course it was easier to justify bending
the rules before because of the stakes involved, but this time it is pure
indulgence. Her breakdown to the
clueless Angel and Giles is one of the high points of this episode.
As “Buffy” is often seen as a sort of feminist empowerment
piece, this episode decides to have her face off with an evil misogynistic
frat. They drug young impressionable
women and sacrifice them to the serpentine
Cordelia gets a good amount of screen time
this episode. While I won’t complain
about seeing more of her, knowing her character arc makes me a little antsy for
when we see more of her depth. It seems
that they’re prolonging her integration into the gang for the sake of it being
easier to write for.
This episode is an interesting mess. It could’ve been either a good episode to
establish the characters in the first season, or to go with the theme of Buffy
balancing her “normal” life with slayerdom. Instead we get an episode that has qualities
of both, but as a whole doesn’t pack a significant punch.
Overall
Score: 6/10
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