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tori_reviewsThis one got a little wonky, but it was a fairly wonky episode.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 2x05 – Reptile Boy
So, like the last one, this is an episode I don’t remember well, in either sense of the word. I barely remembered it, but what I did recall wasn’t anything good. And by and large I think that opinion is staying intact.
This episode is basically another I Robot, You Jane. It’s barely a metaphor, basically an after-school special, and kind of obvious about it. It kind of works…sometimes, but it ends up being incredibly generic; you could file off the Buffy serial numbers, and this is an episode of Gilmore Girls.
And I’m really struggling to come up with much to say about this one. Nothing about it seems all that important. Although there is something to be said for Buffy’s development in this episode. It is a little like last episode where it’s a square peg that will fit in the round hole, but not as well as it’s trying to.
I guess I have a little bit to say about the way Giles is used here. Because this is definitely dad-Giles. With him, like with so much else, the writing isn’t being particularly subtle about him being the group dad, especially to Buffy. And given that that isn’t how I see their relationship it’s not working for me here. I understand, especially in the early seasons, that it is a valid way to read their relationship, it just isn’t mine.
I suppose I do want to mention Cordy’s involvement here. Because this episode really feels like it belongs in s1. Like it should have been part of her earlier arc of getting involved with the Scoobie gang, when she doesn’t quite know what they’re all about but weird things seem to happen around them. Yes that would be a little odd when she didn’t yet know about all the monsters, but neither did the other girl and the story kind of skims over that.
In this case, by the time I’ve done even a minimal writeup, I’ve already kind of forgotten this episode. Fortunately the next one should be better.
What am I shipping?
Pretty much no one. Definitely not Buffy/Angel, I can tell you that.
---
On reflection, I figure I could probably expand on a couple of the points I brushed past on first go.
First off, fine, I’ve been not making this comment for more than a season now, but this is a decent episode to talk about it in. I’ve got to talk about actor ages and how they affect my viewing of this. I’d say SMG and AH look close enough to high school aged, partly because I’m pretty sure they are the youngest and particularly with how they’re costumed so that it doesn’t cause too many problems…at least directly. Indirectly, it means that when casting college guys, the college guys end up looking pretty old. And the knock-on effect there is that while I can train myself to accept the lead characters as high schoolers, my quick read on the guys makes them way too old to be dating high schoolers and therefore extra skeevy.
Really, even in concept 16-23 seems a bit much (yes I realize the irony of saying this as a B/G shipper, maybe I’ll get into why some other time). Clearly I don’t have a problem with age difference in concept (and whatever you ship on this show, you probably can’t be too judgmental about age gaps), but because this episode is wearing it’s metaphor out in the open, I can’t help but notice how predatory they are. And I’m not sure whether I feel more sorry for Buffy or Cordy.
Buffy falls for the clearly rehearsed bad boy/nice guy act they have going on. And I can’t really blame her, I’m sure it wouldn’t be obvious to me if I was in her situation, much less at her age. Which is the point of the not at all subtle metaphor, she gets an extreme version of something that happens to plenty of people in the real world.
But watching Cordy throw herself at the college guy…I almost find that worse. CC doesn’t look as young as the other two ladies in the main cast, but this kind of immaturity still stings. Because…she goes on about how she’s trying to secure her future with a rich guy and…even if they weren’t trying to feed girls to a snake monster, he’d clearly be toying with her. He’s likely not looking for something serious at all, much less with a girl 6-7 years younger than him when he's about to graduate college and she’ll still be in high school. If, on the rare occasion a relationship like that would work out, it’s not with a douchebag like that guy.
NB is a different story. While I usually don’t have too much trouble taking him as a high schooler as long as we’re surrounded by the trappings of him being a high schooler, here it doesn’t work. I think having him at the party would play very differently if he looked like a scrawny high school kid who stood out in this crowd, but he doesn’t. So while I buy that the frat guys know who is in the frat and therefore what guys should and shouldn’t be there, I want Xander to be more obviously out of place I guess.
Also, I brought up earlier that the way Cordy interacts with this plot feels like something that could and should have happened in s1, Xander also kind of feels that way. While Xander does still act a bit…much when it comes to Buffy, he goes big here in a way that seems more like s1 than following what’s happened in s2 so far.
I’m sort of torn on one thing. On one hand it kind of makes sense that the frat guys (in an apparently quite rich frat) would often have an in with the girls at the prep school before casting their net out into the other high schools. And to some extent it is a self-cleaning problem since the snake demon seems to have power in the Earthly realm that might be used to keep police (or just people) from thinking of a common factor. But on the other hand, I don’t know if I believe that the other girl didn’t tell anyone she was going to be with a guy at the frat house (I don’t know in what capacity, I don’t think there were back to back parties) so I feel like it’s a big ask to buy that no one has even come around looking for her.
I kind of want to go on a rant about how bad this episode makes Buffy/Angel look, and how I don’t think it knows that he comes off as one of the skeevy college guys. But…even saying more about this episode, I can’t be bothered to get into it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 2x05 – Reptile Boy
So, like the last one, this is an episode I don’t remember well, in either sense of the word. I barely remembered it, but what I did recall wasn’t anything good. And by and large I think that opinion is staying intact.
This episode is basically another I Robot, You Jane. It’s barely a metaphor, basically an after-school special, and kind of obvious about it. It kind of works…sometimes, but it ends up being incredibly generic; you could file off the Buffy serial numbers, and this is an episode of Gilmore Girls.
And I’m really struggling to come up with much to say about this one. Nothing about it seems all that important. Although there is something to be said for Buffy’s development in this episode. It is a little like last episode where it’s a square peg that will fit in the round hole, but not as well as it’s trying to.
I guess I have a little bit to say about the way Giles is used here. Because this is definitely dad-Giles. With him, like with so much else, the writing isn’t being particularly subtle about him being the group dad, especially to Buffy. And given that that isn’t how I see their relationship it’s not working for me here. I understand, especially in the early seasons, that it is a valid way to read their relationship, it just isn’t mine.
I suppose I do want to mention Cordy’s involvement here. Because this episode really feels like it belongs in s1. Like it should have been part of her earlier arc of getting involved with the Scoobie gang, when she doesn’t quite know what they’re all about but weird things seem to happen around them. Yes that would be a little odd when she didn’t yet know about all the monsters, but neither did the other girl and the story kind of skims over that.
In this case, by the time I’ve done even a minimal writeup, I’ve already kind of forgotten this episode. Fortunately the next one should be better.
What am I shipping?
Pretty much no one. Definitely not Buffy/Angel, I can tell you that.
---
On reflection, I figure I could probably expand on a couple of the points I brushed past on first go.
First off, fine, I’ve been not making this comment for more than a season now, but this is a decent episode to talk about it in. I’ve got to talk about actor ages and how they affect my viewing of this. I’d say SMG and AH look close enough to high school aged, partly because I’m pretty sure they are the youngest and particularly with how they’re costumed so that it doesn’t cause too many problems…at least directly. Indirectly, it means that when casting college guys, the college guys end up looking pretty old. And the knock-on effect there is that while I can train myself to accept the lead characters as high schoolers, my quick read on the guys makes them way too old to be dating high schoolers and therefore extra skeevy.
Really, even in concept 16-23 seems a bit much (yes I realize the irony of saying this as a B/G shipper, maybe I’ll get into why some other time). Clearly I don’t have a problem with age difference in concept (and whatever you ship on this show, you probably can’t be too judgmental about age gaps), but because this episode is wearing it’s metaphor out in the open, I can’t help but notice how predatory they are. And I’m not sure whether I feel more sorry for Buffy or Cordy.
Buffy falls for the clearly rehearsed bad boy/nice guy act they have going on. And I can’t really blame her, I’m sure it wouldn’t be obvious to me if I was in her situation, much less at her age. Which is the point of the not at all subtle metaphor, she gets an extreme version of something that happens to plenty of people in the real world.
But watching Cordy throw herself at the college guy…I almost find that worse. CC doesn’t look as young as the other two ladies in the main cast, but this kind of immaturity still stings. Because…she goes on about how she’s trying to secure her future with a rich guy and…even if they weren’t trying to feed girls to a snake monster, he’d clearly be toying with her. He’s likely not looking for something serious at all, much less with a girl 6-7 years younger than him when he's about to graduate college and she’ll still be in high school. If, on the rare occasion a relationship like that would work out, it’s not with a douchebag like that guy.
NB is a different story. While I usually don’t have too much trouble taking him as a high schooler as long as we’re surrounded by the trappings of him being a high schooler, here it doesn’t work. I think having him at the party would play very differently if he looked like a scrawny high school kid who stood out in this crowd, but he doesn’t. So while I buy that the frat guys know who is in the frat and therefore what guys should and shouldn’t be there, I want Xander to be more obviously out of place I guess.
Also, I brought up earlier that the way Cordy interacts with this plot feels like something that could and should have happened in s1, Xander also kind of feels that way. While Xander does still act a bit…much when it comes to Buffy, he goes big here in a way that seems more like s1 than following what’s happened in s2 so far.
I’m sort of torn on one thing. On one hand it kind of makes sense that the frat guys (in an apparently quite rich frat) would often have an in with the girls at the prep school before casting their net out into the other high schools. And to some extent it is a self-cleaning problem since the snake demon seems to have power in the Earthly realm that might be used to keep police (or just people) from thinking of a common factor. But on the other hand, I don’t know if I believe that the other girl didn’t tell anyone she was going to be with a guy at the frat house (I don’t know in what capacity, I don’t think there were back to back parties) so I feel like it’s a big ask to buy that no one has even come around looking for her.
I kind of want to go on a rant about how bad this episode makes Buffy/Angel look, and how I don’t think it knows that he comes off as one of the skeevy college guys. But…even saying more about this episode, I can’t be bothered to get into it.
