season two   >   bad eggs

Bad eggs. I believe when this episode came out I was on the "sucks copious amounts of rocks" wagon. And now, looking back…it's not so bad. How can you not love an episode devoted to sex ed? Wacky hijinks involving egg parenting? Pick axes? You simply have to.

You'll go mad if you don't.

We begin this episode, after a short detour in the Closet of Youthful Lust with Xander and Cordelia, in the aforementioned sex ed class. Willow, Xander, and Cordelia have all conveniently signed up for the same course. Buffy too, one assumes, except she's not there. She's in the library, we find out later, researching some vampire dudes. Like, real used-to-be-cowboys dudes. They're Gorches, and they is bad. Yes sir. Nasty little critters. Buffy ran into one of them at the mall the previous night when she was supposed to be picking up her mother's dress but instead saved a mallrat from being et. But I'm getting ahead of the story, I am. Or actually I'm not, since that was the teaser and I seem to have skipped the teaser. But, anyway, we're in sex ed now. Xander and Cordelia hilariously attempt to work out their own issues in front of the class in response to their teachers innocent question regarding the dangers of teen sex. From their little exchange, one can assume the danger of teen sex involves halitosis, people kissing like Hoover vacuums, being too long to fit prone comfortably in a Miata, and putting up with vapid chitchat just to get some touch.

Well, that depends. Are you talking about sex in the car or out of the car, because I have a friend -- not me -- that was in a Miata and parked at the top of a hill, and she kicked the gear shift, and...

I rather love that exchange. And it's actually quite on the mark. There's many a teen-aged girl who wondered why God would allow the Miata to be invented. No one here, I'm sure. But they're out there.

Sadly, the fun is over as soon as it began because goody two shoes Willow has to raise her hand and bring up pregnancy. Willow, who has never known the pain of a Miata's stick shift in her back, looks oddly smug. One can assume this is because she is a lesbian and worries not about teen pregnancy. In fact, she looks as smug here as she looked uncomfortable during the teacher's accusation that they all think about sex. This too probably has much to do with the fact that she's gay and all she knows about gay sex is from slash fic and sort of wonders where she'll ever get that third arm she's calculate she needs, but we'll get to that in another article. One that may or may not be written some time this century, depending on how well I do at procrastinating.

The fun of teen sex comes crashing down around all those pesky virgins' ears, as the teacher informs them that they will be carrying eggs around. I cannot tell you how stupid this is. Everyone knows you're supposed to use 10 pound sacks of flour. Everyone. Obviously Sunnydale High was too busy paying for drug experimentation for their athletes to care about quality teaching props. My indignation aside, the class is told to pair up. Buffy not being there gets stuck being a single parent. Something she takes way too personally. [Little did she realize what good pratice it would be for later when she would have to take care of her magically invented sister! - SP] Maybe she should think about going to class, rather than hanging out in the library with a stuffy librarian wearing velvet pants. In fairness to Giles, they may actually be corduroy, but they are still ridiculous. And not the best match for tweed.

Through a whole lot of dialogue that doesn't tell us a whole lot other than that Buffy's ass is capable of killing a Giga Pet, we can discern that the Gorch's were bad asses. Giles tells Buffy to have Angel help her on the hunt. Apparently to Angel and Buffy, this can loosely be defined as "go at it like rabbits would if they could make out heavily in a graveyard while the vampires you are supposed to be hunting watch from two feet away. And don't notice." The Gorch brothers, appropriately repulsed by this nauseating display of something bordering on necrophilia, recognize Angelus. Odd, that. I wasn't aware he was a bad ass when he reached the states. He looked rather pathetic in that alley in New York, but the Gorchs are currently living in the sewers off of rats dreaming of whores, so I guess they really can't judge.

I believe this is also the scene where one of the greatest lies in the Buffyverse ever was uttered: "I can't have kids." Oh, Angel. How we wish. How we wish.

I figured there were all sorts of things vampires can't do. You know,
like...work for the telephone company, or volunteer for the Red Cross, or...have
little vampires.

Buffy does eventually get tired of making out with dead-boy, and goes home for restful sleep. Her egg cracks its shell and sticks a tentacle in her ear. Yep. As dumb as it sounds, that is what happens. Buffy wakes up exhausted, because parenthood is exhausting. Luckily the teen health teacher disappears, and Sunnydale has no money in its budget for substitute teachers, so the class gets the period off. This never happened to me in high school, and I'm kind of bitter. But it's a good thing, because Willow and Buffy are just plumb exhausted. Xander, that little gomer, is hyper as can be. Probably because he hardboiled his egg. It's a little difficult to be an energy-sucking parasite if you've been hardboiled, ya know?

The next night, Buffy gets in late from another make out session with Angel and is attacked by her egg. It's all very tense and ripped off from Aliens, but Joss probably figures that's fair, considering he got screwed by the franchise. Eventually outwitting the little bugger, she stabs him with scissors and beats him with the phone. There's a Mommy Dearest joke in there somewhere, I just know, but witness my self-restraint. Thank you, thank you very much.

Joyce, showing no restraint, huffs into her daughter's room, asks why she's dressed and why she's up so late and grounds Buffy's ass. This, folks, is why the Slayer should be a wanderer, free from the fetters of stupid mothers. But whatever. I suppose tons of other slayers would've killed to be sentenced to the library after school. Because that's where I always got sent when I was naughty. The school library.

I'm, like, going to go into hyper recap mode, all right? All right. My lunch hour's almost up, and I've got icons to make. So everyone's at school the next day, Cordy and Willow lie and say nothing strange happened with their eggs even though the eggs really hatched and made them zombie slaves (on the upside, Willow's egg seems to have made her dress tastefully for a change.) Xander tries to eat his egg, cracks it open and sees that it is actually an evil egg, and not one that makes a tasty treat. They go to the mysteriously empty school lab to dissect it out in the open, Willow shows up late because she was busy setting Giles up for his fall, then she and Cordy knock Xander and Buffy out. [Sounds logical to me.]

Buffy and Xander get locked into the Closet of Teen Lust with two eggs. Buffy kills eggs. Yay! Joyce goes to pick up Buffy, finds out she's not there and has her righteous indignation tragically cut short by Giles attacking her with a baby bezoar. And here's an odd thing with these egg-dudes. You don't seem to zombify until it's convenient for the script…I mean the mama bezoar. Like, Giles was talking and was basically normal until he got Joyce, and then they both walked out zombified. Willow and Cordy were fine until they got Xander and Buffy. It's all very odd. Xander and Buffy follow a newly zombified Jonathon to the Mama. And then it all sort of goes wonky. Or more wonky. It's, like, this creature was buried underneath the school. And somehow the teacher got its eggs. And everyone got zombified and the Mama called them all home and had them go to the school's supply room where the pickaxes are kept, because my high school had pickaxes around [well, duh, didn't everybody's?], and then they sort of dig it, it being the mama, and more eggs up. Also, Zombie!Willow puts no effort into it at all. None. She's the wussiest zombie servant ever.

The Gorch's show up [what the hell were the Gorch's even doing in this episode, anyway?], a battle ensues, one of the Gorches gets eaten when he tumbles into the pit with Buffy, Buffy pickaxes the hell out of the Mama, crawls out, and the other Gorch dude takes off. And Buffy lets him. Yep. Good Slayer. Everyone faints, all the little Bezoar things fall off, Giles lies and says it was a gas leak [another one??] and Buffy gets in more trouble for not being in the library.

Sometimes parents just don't understand. [Well, duh. Don't you listen to the Beastie Boys?] [no. but i did
listen to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. -ST]

The End.

[Except not exactly the end because there's another one of those Buffy/Angel make-out sessions. Or were you just blocking that part out?] [thanks bitch.]