Synopsis:

Actually, if you wanted to, you could just read the list of movies Joss "paid homage" to during this episode, and not bother reading this part. Fairly simple plot this week....

Buffy and her mom are shopping at the mall when Buffy spots a cowboy hitting on a girl on the escalator---a guy with no reflection. She immediately follows the vampire, who introduces himself as Lyle Gorch, gets into a minor fisticuffs with him, then rejoins her mom, forgetting to pick up her mom's dress in the process. This sparks another lecture from Joyce about Buffy's sense of responsibility, a theme running through this episode.

Xander and Cordelia are necking and arguing enthusiastically in the janitor's closet before class; neither of them has any idea why they're hanging out together aside from hormones. Mr. Whitmore brings up that very subject in health class as he distributes egg "babies" to the students, lecturing them about parental responsibility and sex. Willow and Xander pick up their eggs and obtain partners for the experiment----but because she skipped class, Buffy ends up a 'single mother', something which fails to thrill her when Willow and Xander meet her in the library after class to give her her egg. Giles has by this time found a reference for Lyle Buddy; it seems he and his brother are young, not-very-bright Texas vampires; not exactly heavy hitters. Still, he thinks Buffy should take back-up when she goes on the hunt for him.

She takes Angel, and the two of them spend most of the evening making out in the graveyard while Lyle and his brother Tector watch in confusion. Buffy returns home and goes to sleep after putting her egg "to bed". The egg, meanwhile, sends out tendrils to penetrate Buffy's ears and nose while she's sleeping...

The next day in the library (during health-class period, cancelled because of Mr. Whitmore's disappearance), Buffy and Willow are tired and dozy and protective of their eggs, while Xander is typically alert and care-free about parenthood. Possibly because he cheated and boiled his "young". Cordy shows up and drags Xander off to a closet for a make-out session on the lame pretense of looking for Mr. Whitmore, and Buffy plans to hunt the Gorches again with Angel that night.

Which ends up in another kissing session. Buffy and Angel kiss and end up talking about the egg experiment, the future, and their lack of plans for same; whatever will happen though, they want to be together.

At the same time, a very dim security guard is being bonked on the head by Mr. Whitmore in the basement of the high school.

Buffy returns home via her bedroom window, just in time to see her egg hatch something really icky with lots of legs that jumps for her face. Wigged, she manages to stab the thing, then calls Willow in a panic. Willow claims her egg is fine, that Buffy's must be one-of-a-kind incident. She hangs up her phone next to the shattered shell of her "baby", her eyes eerily blank.

Joyce comes in after all that noise and grounds her for what she believes are Buffy's plans to leave the house to meet a boy. The next day, she tells Buffy to wait for her at the library after school, and she'll pick her up; she's to go nowhere else.

Buffy, Cordelia, and a very calm Willow are heading for the science lab to autopsy the thing when Xander tries to crack his egg for lunch and finds a nasty boiled thing instead of egg yolk and white. All four adjourn to the lab after Willow leaves briefly to mention their plans to Giles.

Meanwhile, many many zombies are digging something up in the basement.

Two minutes after Willow gets back, Cordelia's egg (in her backpack) hatches, and takes over her, too. Which is when Willow and Cordy knock out Xander and Buffy, and stuff their bodies in a broom closet (the same one from Xander & Cordy's earlier make-out session) with two eggs ready to hatch.

Joyce shows up to retrieve Buffy from school, is very annoyed to find her not at the library, has a little pleasant conversation with Giles, and is then taken over by a hatchling that the zombie'd Watcher puts on her neck. The two of them head for the basement, along with many other students and teachers who have retrieved gardening and digging implements from another closet.

Buffy smashes the eggs, she and Xander escape and head for the library, and are then stumped, because Giles isn't there, although he left a page in one of the books open to the monster Willow mentioned before knocking them out---a Bazoar. It nests underground, lays eggs which hatch and attach to human spinal cords, then controls them through the hatchlings. Xander crunches another eggshell and they realize Giles has probably been taken over too. Outside the library, they follow one of the most recent converts down to the basement, (with much trepidation) and watch the possessed students and faculty dig up eggs and work to free the Mama Bazoar. Cordy is taking a carton of eggs outside; Xander follows her to stop her from getting them out of the school, while Buffy briefly leaves to get a *big* weapon.

She's managed to get a pickaxe when Lyle & Tector show up, looking for a fight. Their fight spills over into the Bazoar chamber, where the zombies attack them. Tector gets pulled into the mother Bazoar's stomach, and Lyle, furious at this, pushes Buffy into the pit with the monster---but not before grabbing the pickaxes. Horrid noises issue from the hole in the floor; then Buffy, covered with goo and slime and looking furious, climbs out, having killed the monster from inside its stomach. Lyle flees in terror, not being _that_ stupid. Xander manages to knock Cordy out and stop the spread of the eggs before all the zombies collapse at the Mama Bazoar's death.

Everyone wanders outside, Giles spreading the story of a gas leak as Joyce looks for Buffy (who's gone to clean up). When she finds her daughter, Mrs. Summers is relieved she's okay, but furious she wasn't in the library where she was supposed to be. Buffy is confined to her room until further notice.

Which isn't so bad, since the tag shows her necking with Angel out her window, not breaking any rules her mother has laid down (yet).

Review:

Like I said, you could just read the list of movies Joss "paid homage" to during this ep, and not bother reading the synopsis. I enjoyed this the second time through, when I knew where the icky bits were, but I was too busy being on the edge of my seat and going "bleah!" to enjoy it the first time. It's a bit of horror-movie fluff, really, with only one or two serious minutes throughout the whole hour.

Continuity:

Basically a stand-alone ep, with one or two continuity set-ups: Cordy & Xander are still sneaking around behind everyone's backs... but not for long, if they don't learn a little discretion. They're going to blow it soon, that 's obvious. And Buffy and Angel discuss their long-term future, where it's very definitely established that as a vampire, Angel can't have kids, and that Buffy isn't thinking that far ahead anyway.

Relationships:

Why the heck are Xander and Cordelia still together? I mean, if they can't even look at each other, or be around each other without putting each other down, how can there be any attraction? Well, I'm assuming that Cordelia's comments were mostly directed toward Xander's perceived lack of style, and not his actual face and/or body. (I mean, we saw her checking him out in Halloween; how repulsed can she be?). Either it's a twisted social death wish on both their parts, or there's some actual liking and attraction that they're both too pig-headed and scared to admit to. Probably ever. They have a very immature, incredibly hormonal relationship, the kind that leads to *very* messy break-ups and scenes when things go bad. I'm planning on bringing popcorn to the meltdown, 'cause it'll be fun. For me, anyway.

Buffy and Angel actually got to have fun this week, which was cool. A little out of established character, but we're not caring---it was in keeping with the monster show mood to have them making out in the midst of danger in the graveyard. The show can't have them be angst with a capital A all the time, thankfully. Discussing their lack of future plans was a good thing, too; given Buffy's life expectancy, it makes a lot more sense for them to live in the "now", anyway.

Characters:

Guest shots:

Lyle & Tector Gorch are a scream. Someone on-list had read the previews and thought that "cowboy vampires" meant young, vigilante-ish, reckless vampires. To see two such utter redneck retard bloodsuckers instead of the European, intelligent, stylish ones that are the staple of the show is a neat surprise and a very funny premise. They are so macho, so incredibly, totally unadmirable, and so clueless, that you can't *wait* for Buffy to kick these guys' butts. The actors were obviously having way too much fun with their roles, but who can blame them? How often do you get to see such total stereotypes combined with the vampire stereotypes, and taken to a new level of silliness?

Mama Bazoar and the hatchlings don't seem to have a real motivation beyond "take over the world", but that's okay. The Body Snatchers and Aliens ripoff plot works because of the "egg babies" subplot, since there's an actual reason for someone to care about what happens to an egg for part of the episode, aside from the Mama Bazoar. The props were icky enough most of the time to give the whole situation the needed wig factor to make it work. (Although the one Buffy killed looked very plastic by the time it was dead).

Continuing characters:

Xander and Buffy have the funniest chemistry when they're on their own, with none of the "brains" to guide them. I loved watching them try to come up with a plan in the library. They're both quite bright but intellectually lazy--- action and violence are a lot more fun! The whole sequence after they awaken in the closet reminded me of some of the bits in "I Robot", when the two of them were worried about Willow and working themselves into a tizzy. Xander saves Cordelia yet again; and I liked the concerned "are you guys okay" after everyone left the gym. The continuing food gag (Xander will eat anything, even his young...) and the cheating by boiling his egg are also very, very in character and funny. Another good Xander ep after a string of only Xander-kissing-or-fighting-with-Cordy installments.

Willow's on the verge of figuring out what's up with Xander & Cordelia, but she's in pretty heavy denial. It's not like they're being very smart about hiding it; if the idea weren't completely unbelievable to her, I think she'd know what was happening by now. She's very cute --- she and Buffy both are--- with her egg, all happy about the school project and protective of her "baby." I know that she and Xander couldn't be partners for plot purposes (neither could Xander and Cordelia, for the same ones; everyone had to have their own egg), but there was a nice little bit of character stuff going on there when Willow turned to Xander and he was already headed toward Cordelia. The rest of the episode, Allyson Hannigan did a good job of being *too* calm and matter-of-fact, enough to let the audience know that Willow wasn't quite herself today....

Cordelia can't stand to be left out of stuff; that's why she hangs out with the Slayerettes. It may even be part of why she's involved with Xander. Not a whole lot for Cordy to do this week, but the rant about the bear backpack was amusing.

Giles didn't have a lot to do this week either, but there were still some good moments: the whole conversation with Joyce in the library, sounding so normal and yet vaguely edgy gave me the creeps, since I couldn't be sure what was going to happen until he yanked out a hatchling (aiiii!). Joyce has got to be clued in to what Buffy's up to, soon, in my opinion. Granted, most of what Buffy does looks very flaky if you don't know the reasons for it, but she's overreacting through much of the ep, punishing Buffy for stuff she doesn't *know* her daughter has done. Parental frustration and helplessness leading to doing anything for the sake of doing something. She's either going to start seeming too strict or very clueless if they don't let her know her daughter's the Slayer by the end of the season.

Buffy had a pretty easy week, aside from getting swallowed by the monster. Lots of kissing with Angel, one or two little fights with some second-string vampires, and one monster-in-the-bedroom moment. Well, and she got grounded and beyond-grounded by her mother, which wasn't fun until the end. Still, she usually manages to get around Joyce with her window trick pretty easily. Her momentary "I'm doomed to become my mother" riff in the library was new; kind of set up the conversation with Angel later. The odds are good Buffy won't live long enough to have kids, or that she'll be too busy fighting vampires to have them until she's past child-bearing age. Being involved with Angel does tend to make some of these questions moot, though.

Other Things:

I'm pretty sure Lyle Gorch and the faux Anointed One from last season are played by the same actor; you have to wonder how many times this guy is going to die on this show. (Well, he didn't die this week, but you never know. He could come back and die again.)

The library sign, if the tape is paused, read "Sunnydale High Library. Website Coming Soon. BVS Brats Talk." Evidently Ms. Calendar and Joss have managed to overrule Giles....

I want to know where Principal Snyder was during all this. And what his reaction to the mess in the basement was. And how many redshirt security guards does the high school go through, anyway?

Best Bits:

* Xander almost taking a bite out of a hard-boiled hatchling; *icky* as that was, the look on his face was hysterical

* Giles staggering out of the basement, rationalizing what happened to everyone in sight, even though he has no clue what just occurred

* The redshirt security guard going into the basement. You can't help yelling "No! Don't go in the basement! Nooo---" and yup, he gets bonked two seconds later

* Buffy climbing out of the pit, looking very Terminator---Tommy Lee Jones would be proud of her---and Lyle taking one look at her and running away <*snicker*>

* Lyle & Tector's fight in the sewer---pointless, stupid, macho, and totally them.

* All the students and teachers marching down into the basement with hoes and shovels---and music from "Children of the Corn" in the background to giggle to

* The long, suspense-building music chords through different parts of the ep, so you can yell at the screen some more and giggle when everyone on-screen jumps. Joss and the director were having too much fun here!

Perri's Review