Buffy The Vampire Slayer, “Teacher's Pet" Review (1x04)

Brief Synopsis: “Xander, and most of the male population of Sunnydale High, are falling all over themselves trying to impress the new substitute biology teacher, Ms. French. When Buffy sees this femme fatale scare off a particularly nasty vampire, however, she begins to suspect that Xander may be in serious trouble.”


"Witch" (1x03) quick link here                                                                  "Never Kill A Boy On The First Date" (1x05) quick link here


Before getting started on this review, here are a few notes about how these reviews will be formatted...

1) I will be reviewing the episodes in bullet point form. This is because it makes the reviews simple to read, and helps break up the vast amount of text.
2) I will be uploading a new review every one or two days, so be sure to check back often! Alternatively, you could subscribe to the blog via email to receive the reviews in your inbox (the subscription box is located to the right-hand side of this blog).
3) If you are watching the show for the first time along with these reviews, please be warned that there may be a few spoilers for things that haven’t happened yet.
4) If you are here from my Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Angel fan page from Facebook (located here :- www.facebook.com/BTVSFC), these reviews are similar to the rewatch reviews that I wrote for that page, only they are longer, more detailed, and in a much nicer format than Facebook allows (curse their lack of italics, bold, and underline!)
5) The basic layout for the review will be the review itself, the ‘quote of the episode’, and then the final score for the episode (out of ten). All of the final scores will also be placed on a separate tab so that you can refer to them easily.

With that being said, let’s get started, shall we?



• I’ve got to be honest, this isn’t one of my favourite episodes at all. This in my second least favourite episode of season one (the honour of my least favourite goes to “I Robot...You Jane”, which is also my lowest ranked Buffy episode ever).
• This is the first episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer that was written by David Greenwalt, who went on to co-create Angel with Joss Whedon. By the time season two starts only Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt remain on the writing staff.
• Xander’s dream is so ridiculously cheesy and lame...I love it! I’m a fan of the cheesiness of season one.  I feel sorry for Xander, I can’t help it. Who can’t relate to unrequited love? It’s interesting to note that in Xander’s dream Buffy is the damsel in distress. She’s weak, scared, and about to be killed. Does Xander subconsciously resent the fact that Buffy, a girl, is significantly more powerful than him? I think that he does resent it a little bit. For the first couple of seasons of the show, Xander is a very insecure person who is always trying to show off his ‘manliness’. When Buffy is powerless in season three’s “Helpless”, Xander says “Give you a hand with that, little lady?” while it’s not a big moment, it does establish a behaviour pattern. This isn’t the only instance of something like that happening. Of course, as time goes on and Xander becomes more secure in himself, all of that behaviour fades away and he becomes very proud of his role within the Scoobies (‘the one who sees everything’). 
• I’m glad that we’re getting an episode so early on that isn’t Buffy-centric. It gives the impression that other characters in the show are going to be equally as important as Buffy herself (or at least close).
• When Dr. Gregory gives the lecture about ants the projection on the screen behind him is of a beetle. Oops.
• I like the continuity of having Dr. Gregory back. Dr. Gregory was the teacher in “Witch” when Buffy did the witch test on Amy.
• How awesome is Dr. Gregory? I wish I had a teacher like him when I was in school. Dr. Gregory telling Buffy to ignore Principal Flutie’s negative opinion of her (and other peoples) was heart warming. He was the first person on the faculty (that isn’t an English librarian) to really inspire Buffy and to help her try to better herself , “Let’s make them eat that permanent record”. I think it made all the difference for Buffy in that moment. Since arriving in Sunnydale, Buffy hasn’t had it easy...and that’s excluding all of the supernatural elements! Buffy has been mildly bullied and treated a bit like a juvenile delinquent by almost everybody at Sunnydale High. Everyone is expecting her to mess up again. Even Joyce seems to be waiting for it to happen! Having a teacher on her side for once must have been really inspiring for her...then he was, of course, killed. I think Joss learned the lesson early on that the more isolated and challenging Buffy’s circumstances are, the more story there is to tell.

• Superfine are playing at The Bronze! “I Already Met You” and “Stoner Love” are played during this episode on two separate nights. That’s odd. Why did they do two gigs in a row on school nights?  Great songs though! While there are many things I feel that season one did incorrectly, the quality of the music at The Bronze isn’t one of them. Spring Monkey, Dashboard Prophets, Superfine...whoever chose the music for Buffy, and the bands that appear at The Bronze, deserves a basket of muffins. I love how grungy and 90’s the music is. It takes me back. Buffy The Vampire Slayer & Angel probably accounts for 30% of the music on my iPod.
• Xander: “Well, he's buff! She never said anything about him being buff!”
Willow: “You think he's buff?”
Xander: “He's a very attractive man! How come that never came up?”

Xander’s petty jealousy of any male that enters Buffy’s life in the first 2 seasons is very annoying. Outside of that, I love Xander very much. This quote, however, is very funny.

• Buffy and Angel have excellent chemistry right from the beginning. The scene in The Bronze where Angel is warning Buffy about Fork Guy is brilliant. It really sets up that something is coming down the line. I didn’t get that impression too much in “Welcome To The Hellmouth” and “The Harvest”, as their interaction was somewhat limited. I think part of their great chemistry comes from the fact that they were genuinely attracted to each other! Sarah and David dated for a few years in real life.
• Giles: “That’s all he said? Fork Guy?”
Buffy: “That’s all Cryptic Guy said: Fork Guy.”
Giles: “I think there are too many ‘Guys’ in your life.”

The number one reason why this quote is awesome is that Giles laughs at his own joke. I would love to have a voiceover inner-monologue for Giles sometimes. You just know that he thinks he’s hilarious! Plus, I’d love to hear all his exasperation and sarcastic comments over some of the things the Scoobies say.

• The noise that Xander makes when he first sees fake Natalie French is highly amusing. You know the noise, that spazzy “Aye-ah ohhhhhh, uh-ohhhhhhh”. It sounds like a drunk Tarzan. 
• Principal Flutie: “We all need help with our feelings. Otherwise we bottle them up, and before you know it, powerful laxatives are involved. I really believe if we all reach out to one another we can beat this thing. I'm always here if you need a hug...but not a real hug! Because there's no touching, this school is sensitive to wrong touching.”
• I also love it when Flutie says “heal!” to Buffy, whilst pointing at a seat, like he’s talking to a dog. I understand why Joss decided to kill Principal Flutie off rather early on. Flutie is a nervous wreck and seemed far too weak to run a school located on a Hellmouth. Say what you want about Snyder, but he did know how to run a school (mostly). Plus, Snyder survived over two years on a Hellmouth. That’s got to be some kind of record!
• Fork Guy is much more interesting than fake Natalie French. I would rather have had Fork Guy as the “monster-of-the-week” in this episode. Don’t get me wrong, Fork Guy isn’t overly appealing himself, but he just has more that peaks my interest than the she-mantis. What is Fork Guy’s purpose in this episode? Why does he appear? Is it just to create some misdirection on who the villain of the episode is going to be? If so, it failed. Was it for the sole purpose of giving Buffy a way to find the she-mantis towards the end of the episode? There seems like a thousand other ways that could be accomplished. I think the reason why I don’t like this episode very much is because it’s not very well written or thought-out.

• LaVelle is Xander’s middle name. That’s an unusual name.
• Ouch. I think fake Natalie needs a chiropractor. That “full on Exorcist twist” was awesome though. The Mid-90s C.G.I. wasn’t exactly great, but it still worked well.
• Xander, Xander, Xander...Xander is quite the idiot in this episode, but it’s understandable. Xander completely ignores Buffy when she tells him that Natalie French is a giant bug. Xander even deluded himself into thinking that Buffy said it because Buffy was jealous that Xander had found someone. If anyone was jealous over this entire situation, it was Willow. I can understand why a lot of people dislike Xander in this episode (and seasons one and two in general). It’s clear that Xander has a lot of growing up to do (which he takes a long time to actually start doing. I don’t consider Xander to be a grown up until a few episodes into season five). On the other hand, I see Xander’s point of view. With the exception of Willow (who, as we established, Xander has no interest in), Xander seems to have had no interest from females at all at this point. Then this beautiful adult woman comes along and shows a lot of interest in Xander. I think most people would get a little cocky and excited too. Let’s not forget, Xander has been having major feelings for Buffy the past couple of months, and she has been showing zero interest in him. His self esteem is probably really low at this point. The only thing that you can fault Xander for in this episode, is that he didn’t believe Buffy when she told him what fake Natalie French actually was.
• Fake Natalie’s black dress is rather...interesting. I’m gonna go with “interesting”. Approved.

• Random trivia occupying my brain: The praying mantis costume is actually the same one used in Babylon 5 during its first season. It’s one of the more convincing costumes this season. Season one and early season two have some truly terrible costumes, that don’t look realistic in the least. The two leading that charge are the Moloch robot costume in “I Robot...You Jane”, and the giant penis-looking costume of Machida in “Reptile Boy”. Oh my God, that Machida costume is so bad that I laugh my ass off every time Machida is on screen. Even though I’m not a fan of that episode, I’m looking forward to it for the costume alone! Where was I?....
• Blaine deserved to be eaten. What a moron. Why do so many decent students die over the years, but an idiot like Blaine survives (and Percy)?
• So fake Natalie’s plan was reproduction...that could have been much worse for Xander!...oh wait, nevermind....she’s going to bite his head off during sex...I  guess there is something wrong with an aggressive female.
• Was anyone surprised that Xander was a virgin? I sure wasn’t. He hadn’t been able to talk to any female without making an idiot out of himself at this point...except Willow, who he views as an entirely genderless being. I find Xander so relatable. I couldn’t talk to females until I was about 15. I’d always try to be funny and end up coming across as weird.
• While on the subject, this episode does do a wonderful job of sending out the message that it’s okay to be a virgin. Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s target audience was teenagers and young adults, so sending that particular message out into the world was wonderful. Especially as so many other TV shows with the same target audience deal with sex much differently.
• Good Lord, Dr. Gregory’s replacement is sinfully boring.
• The episode ends with some of fake Natalie French’s eggs cracking open underneath her desk at Sunnydale High. Something that always bothered me was that these eggs never made an appearance at all after this episode! I’m not looking for another episode that centred around them, as I found this episode rather boring, but it would have been nice to see one down the line. Perhaps in one of the Initiative cells in season four? 
• Overall, this episode is entirely forgettable. Nothing overly memorable happens in the episode and it doesn’t further the season’s arc in any significant way. With the exception of a few decent lines and funny moments, there’s not much else to rewatch it for. I’ll admit it, I get a little bored during this episode. I don’t think Buffy has a truly great episode until “The Pack”.

Quote Of The Episode

Cordelia: “I mean, one minute you’re in your normal life, and then who’s in the fridge? It really gets to you, a thing like that. It was...let’s just say I haven’t been able to eat a thing since yesterday. I think I’ve lost, like, seven and a half ounces! Way swifter than that so-called diet that quack put me on. Oh, I'm just saying when tragedy strikes, we have to look on the bright side, you know? Like how even used Mercedes still have leather seats.”

Cordelia’s little speech to the councillor is absolutely fantastic. This was the time where I started to like Cordelia. She’s so incredibly shallow that it’s amusing.

FINAL SCORE: 4/10

So what are your thoughts on "Teacher's Pet"? Did you enjoy this episode? Dislike it? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments section below!

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