The Zeppo
The Zeppo
Season 3, Episode 13 (Episode 47 of entire series)
The Pack Revisited? What it might have been like had Xander not been caught in the spell. Don't buy that? How about...Xander as heroic? Maybe. I always thought so, even when he had some of his not-cool issues with Buffy, Willow, etc. Xander's search for identity in a nutshell, including his getting over Cordelia..his greatest belittler.
Okay. First off I just want to say that 15 minutes into the show, I was already wincing. I don't know why I find these kinds of things hard to watch, but I do. Check out Xander's facial expressions early on. It's like, Otis Redding's song Mr. Pitiful.
Then I'd just like to say that there are SO many things to say about this episode. However, I can't even begin to deal. So..
Show opens with Buffy, Faith, Giles and Willow doing their parts to subdue (okay, maim, kill, mutilate and spindle) some wacky-looking monsters of the Eyghon prototype. Frankly, I thought this was a dream sequence at first that would've touched on the Giles-as-not-Watcher thing. But it wasn't. Anyhoo, after the last one's killed, Xander's referred to and comes crawling out, panting, and basically hurt from his wrangle with one of the monsters. The gang tries to persuade Xander to hang back before he gets himself killed one of these times..but Xander's a man. Right?
Basically, the gang's on a course to stop the Hellmouth from opening yet again. This time it's brought on by a sisterhood of demons called Jhe. And supposedly it's going to be worse than when The Master opened the Hellmouth.
Meanwhile, in an effort to prove his cool to everyone, Xander really does become Wheel Man. He ends up impressing some chick who's crazy about cars. Fortunately for him, the chick shows her interest in him in front of Cordy, who's railed on him for like the millionth time. Unfortunately for Xander, the chick is a total bore. I mean, what else would send Xander begging for Angel's company??
Outside the Bronze, Xander runs into a car that supposedly belongs to Jack O'Toole. (Sort of.) This is the guy who threatened Xander at school earlier in the day, and here he continues to threaten Xander with a knife named Katie.
When Xander backs Jack's story of "no harm, just wrasslin'" to an investigating police officer, Jack's impressed and takes Xander under his wing.
Basically they end up going to a cemetery where Jack starts raising the dead. He rounds up his dead posse and Xander's their driver. While Xander watches, they break into a hardware store, saying they're going to bake a cake. Guess they knew he was coming or something.
Meanwhile, Oz is indisposed because it's wolf-out time for him; Giles, Buffy and Willow are trying to figure out how to stop the apocalypse..and each time Xander asks someone if he can help -- he asks Giles when he runs into him at the cemetery; Willow when he sees her on the street -- the answer is no. They're apparently worried about his safety and all that. It's not exactly an ego-booster. So whoever wrote Xander's line about laughing in the face of danger and then hiding until it goes away knew what he was talking about. Heh.
Xander ditches the dead and drives off, where he runs into a Jhe who's trying to kill Faith. Far be it from me to ask why he didn't just let her get the whammy, but he didn't. I don't have to like Faith, okay? Xander and Faith end up in Faith's motel room, where Faith asks Xander to hold her so she can reset her shoulder. Then Faith's "energy" level gets the better of her and she and Xander do that thing where they kind of have sex. Faith shoves him out afterwards and Xander realizes that the dead posse was going to build a bomb, not a cake.
He busts in on Angel and Buffy -- who're having a dramatic moment that has to do with how the world can be saved, with a little of that "it means I have to die..I love you" thing -- but realizes that he should go elsewhere for help.
I forget who wrote Self Reliance..I want to say Emerson or Paine or someone like that and I don't feel like looking it up, but anyway..Xander learns the bomb's at the school, and the deadboys are after him. He puts them down -- I mean, he kills 'em -- and then he and Jack are left to do the "My dead vibe is bigger than your dead vibe" sort of thing. It's all about fear, which was covered a lot in the Season one eps, especially Nightmares and even The Pack.
Upstairs, the rest of the gang (sans Oz, who's been sedated and locked down in a room in the boiler room) is fighting off the Hellmouth Beast thing and those Jhe things are there too. Did you know..the Jhe things eat the people/enemies that they best? It's weird to me to see that the Hellmouth, this huge life-ending thing once it's opened, only merited part of a story. The effects were there, but we didn't really get much sense made out of the how and why or see it being fought down. You could explain this away I guess by saying, Well, Giles's books are sorta not there, but it just didn't hold that much together for me. "New evil in town, old evil opening" one liners can work...I just didn't see much of it coming together.
Okay I could shut up. Anyway, next day at school, Xander doesn't tell anyone about his time last nite with the dead guys, the bomb, the Faith, etc. That's pretty cool, I think. Like, he didn't need to share. And he gives Cordy the good silent treatment, too, after she belittles him more. Sorry I ran off at the mouth. I still think that even a send-up ep. like this or whatever coulda let us see more of the neato effects. I'm an effects junkie if they're good. Loosely translated, that means, not the Angel/Eyghon demon fighting that occurred in The Dark Age.
1. Who knows about the Hellmouth? Not like they showed it in great detail.
2. Xander "outcooled" Jack; Jack defused the bomb.
3. Xander had creative fighting...toppled a vending machine onto Bob I think.
4. Xander did mailbox-baseball with the undead (Dickie, I think).
5. Xander hit a Jhe demon with his car.
6. Xander stayed silent in the face of Cordy's last verbal barrage.
1. Giles likes jelly donuts.
2. Xander's family is wacked..Uncle Rory's DUI? And why did they spell it Roary? Odd.
3. Xander and Cordy never had sex..For those of you who cared.
4. Dead guys can make bombs. This explains the 3rd person with Timothy McVeigh...?
5. Willow may have liked Barbie, but Xander was definitely into Superman..this time he mentions Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, yada.
Xander: "Are, um, all your friends dead?" -- to Jack, after witnessing some real hellraising...okay, raising of the dead.
1. Sunnydale High School
2. Restfield Cemetery
3. Some streets (Decker Hardware/Uncle Bob's Magic Cabinet)
4. Donut Shop
5. Faith's motel room
6. Angel's place
7. The Bronze
1. Buffy
2. Willow
3. Xander
4. Giles
5. Cordelia
6. Angel
7. Oz
8. Faith
9. Willy
10. Bob
11. Dickie
12. Jack O'Toole
13. Lysette
14. Doug
15. Les
16. Sisterhood of Jhe
17. Parker
18. Random Officer -- may not do page for.
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