Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Teacher's Pet   Rewatch 
January 22, 2015 7:30 AM - Season 1, Episode 4 - Subscribe

After her science teacher encourages her, Buffy is shocked to find him dead the next day. His replacement, the beautiful Ms. French, takes a liking to Xander. Iffy student/teacher relations aside there's one big problem: She's a giant praying mantis. Really. Ugh this episode.
posted by yellowbinder (18 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I enjoy almost every first season episode; this is the only one I can't find much nice to say about. I'm not even sure what the high school metaphor is and those are usually super clear in the first season.

Saved from the complete scrap heap for me by this Cordelia speech after seeing Dr. Gregory's body: "I don't know what to say, it was really, 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 lost, like, seven and a half ounces? Way swifter than that so-called diet that quack put me on. Oh, I'm not saying that we should kill a teacher every day just so I can lose weight, I'm just saying when tragedy strikes, we have to look on the bright side. You know? "
posted by yellowbinder at 7:37 AM on January 22, 2015 [7 favorites]


Cordelia being hilarious is the element that saves a lot of these early episodes from being completely disposable.
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:40 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, this is a classic first-season show, not just for Buffy but for virtually any show that tries to do both monster-of-the-week and long-term plot arcs. You can't just jump in on the mythology, but you don't necessarily want to make everything a Piece Of The Puzzle. So you get mantis women and jackal teens and bodyswapping witches and suchlike, and they serve to set a tone.

Easily in the bottom quartile/quintile/whatevertile you want to rank eps in, but it was a necessary brick in the wall.
posted by Etrigan at 8:40 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even beyond the ickness and dumbness of the plot, this episode feels weirdly paced. It's just kind of boring compared to the three that come before it .
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:52 AM on January 22, 2015


One of the strange things is Angel shows up to warn Buffy about "fork guy." This is all a set up so Buffy can see "fork guy" run away from Ms. French thus tipping her off that something is VERY wrong with her. It's a pretty over the top set up for a revelation that is pretty obvious just from the character's arrival and behavior. That Buffy can identify a vampire from his fashion but not a giant bug person seems really inconsistent. Besides Ms. French what with her neck craning and so forth doesn't seem to be particularly interested in protecting her little secret.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:44 AM on January 22, 2015


I recently did a 'good parts' watch of Buffy with a friend, and this episode didn't make the cut. That said, I did find the presence of the virgin jock pretty funny, last time I watched the series start to back. The 'fork guy' thing was a fun gag, too.

Cordelia being hilarious is the element that saves a lot of these early episodes from being completely disposable.

Cordelia has been my favorite character in the Buffyverse for some time.
posted by mordax at 10:51 AM on January 22, 2015


Cordelia has been my favorite character in the Buffyverse for some time.

Me too but only when I pretend she didn't exist after Angel Season 3.
posted by yellowbinder at 11:03 AM on January 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Me too but only when I pretend she didn't exist after Angel Season 3.

Yeah, that caveat is super important. It's a shame: she's gold in early Angel. :(
posted by mordax at 11:07 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


The funny thing I am discovering watching Season one is how enjoyable I am finding even poor episodes. This is watchable, even if it is very silly: Cordelia, who has nothing plotwise to do manages to be very funny.

This is also a key episode because it is the first non-Buffy focussed one. This is about Xander and his burgeoning sexuality. This is also the first episode which opens with a vampire fight, something the show will use again and again, although it's more notable because it transpires that the fight is in fact Xander's dream.

I think Season 1 suffers a lot in that it can't rely too much on the audience's knowledge of the characters, so has to instead make sure the threat of the week is interesting. A living preying mantis is not the best. There is also a problem in that the theme of this episode is quite punishing of sexuality, and it's point (that most 16 year olds are actually virgins) is rather obvious. A lot of the laughs in this episode are at Xander's expense, and he hasn't really earned that. This kind of punishing of sexuality is something horror movies often do at women, so perhaps the show is being slightly innovative by having a man being the innocent being taken advantage of, but it comes across as a little mean.

Stray observations

-Xander's middle name is Lavelle
-Love the little Xander guitar solo
-Angel pops up with some useless info and a slightly better performance
-The show keeps reminding you that they live on a hellmouth!
-Why did no-one else spot Dr Gregory's glasses?
-Miss French, as miss lapin mentions, seems very happy to just rotate her head
-They jump to a giant preying mantis with remarkable ease, although I do enjoy Giles' colleague who has degrees in etymology and mythology.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 11:38 AM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm not even sure what the high school metaphor is and those are usually super clear in the first season.

Even when the student is really into it, student-teacher relationships are inherently...er, predatory?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:43 AM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


I don't think it's supposed to be punishing of sexuality as much as revealing the dark side of a typical fantasy. The idea of a young man being seduced by an older teacher is often held up in popular culture as a "dream come true." This episode reveals it for what it is: predatory and abusive.

At that time I remember that having an episode focused on sexual assault was standard particularly in shows with teens, even comedies. It was one of those things that just HAD to happen. It's interesting that this focused on a male character and not a female one.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:45 AM on January 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Giles' colleague who has degrees in etymology and mythology
Entomology, not etymology (word origins). "Bugs and fairy stories." Which reminds me of one of those apocryphal student bloopers I was always fond of: "A myth is a female moth."

More of Xander behaving disturbingly about sex, which I talked about in the last episode so I won't go into it again.

Other observations:
- Do martinis really work that fast? I've been missing out all these years!
- Ways lack of technology dates this show: Xander doesn't pull out a mobile phone and curse the lack of reception underground; Buffy has a TAPE RECORDING of bat sonar. Eventually kids will need to have these things explained to them.
- That final shot of the eggs in the back closet of the classroom: who did Miss French get there instead of luring them back to her lair? Unless - was Dr Gregory a virgin too?!?! Woooaaah!
posted by Athanassiel at 4:41 PM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Somehow I missed this episode the first time I watched the series and didn't even realize it. (This was on DVD from Netflix.) I think I was aware from the fandom of something with Xander and a praying mantis lady, and the show kept dropping little references to it, so I thought this was just some supernatural adventure that was never shown on screen but mentioned a lot. Which was kind of neat. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed when I saw the episode on a rewatch.
posted by eruonna at 5:15 PM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Entomology, not etymology (word origins).

Damnit, I was so pleased that chrome had told me that I'd spelt it correctly I forgot to check it was the correct word...

I assume the Martini was spiked, although maybe Xander really can't hold his liquor.

Re: the eggs: it's possibly DR Gregory, yes, although someone else must have died too, as Blake describes what the She-Mantis will do to Xander.

Miss Lapin: I like your theory about the theme of this episode, and I can buy that reading. I'm not sure that's what the show was going for though, simply because it feels like the show is having fun at the virgins expense, rather than reasonably pointing out that being a virgin at 16 is standard (Willow makes a comment to that effect, but it's played as a joke at their expense). Also, if the show was going for that reading, it's setting itself up for a lot of trouble with Angel....

I think Buffy in general has a lot of trouble with sex. Buffy's sex life is pretty bad: her first two times end terribly, and when she tries for casual sex it ends up driving her into depression. The most sexually free character on the show, Faith, is hardly painted in a positive light.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 12:06 AM on January 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


This kind of punishing of sexuality is something horror movies often do at women, so perhaps the show is being slightly innovative by having a man being the innocent being taken advantage of, but it comes across as a little mean.

In some ways it's the same and in others different. It's the same in that there's punishment for succumbing to the temptation and having sex, a common horror movie trope. But it's different in that the already experienced are safe and off the table. Usually the folks who are already sexual in horror movies get the axe - literally even.

All of which may be excessive inspection; the teacher is simply the ultimate sexual predator.
posted by phearlez at 9:55 AM on January 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Like a lot of us in this thread, I went into this episode feeling a bit ho-hum about it from prior viewings, but I came away with a bit more than I thought initially.

One thing that I really liked about this episode was the characterization of the late Dr. Gregory as a tough but thoughtful mentor for Buffy, instead of just the hard-ass teacher who gets chomped in Act 1. A lot of kid and teen-oriented programming has an adversarial approach to adult authority figures, presenting them as clueless/evil, whereas BtVS treats most of its grown-ups (maybe not Flutie or Snyder) with a level of respect and multidimensionality. For instance, on a lesser show Joyce Summers could have been a Wet Blanket Mom whose sole purpose was to keep Buffy from doing cool slayer things every week, an analog to the stock Wet Blanket Wife/Girlfriend character from any number of cable dramas. But instead we can immediately see that she's a struggling single mom, trying to hold things together as best she can while trying to relate to her daughter. It takes a little more time before Giles fully abandons the role of Exposition Giver, but here we see him working as more of a team player, letting Buffy take charge on researching the mantis' habits and weaknesses.

I also thought that the role of Ms. French was a pretty good showcase for model-turned-actress Musetta Vander, who I first became aware of in the relentlessly cheesy 1994 Full Moon Entertainment classic Oblivion and its sequel. Vander plays a whip-cracking baddie with a certain Tura Satana-esque aplomb, and she's ridiculously hot and hilarious every moment she's on screen. If you enjoy Bat Durston-y space westerns and winky cameos from old genre actors, it's not a bad way to waste time on a Sunday afternoon. (And it's on YouTube!)

Lastly, I applaud the FX team for going out on a limb and trying to make the giant praying mantis work, but ultimately you can tell that they didn't have a lot of confidence in the prop, since you can barely see it with all the minimal lighting and fast cutting. Both S01 and S02 were shot in cheaper 16mm, which made for murkier photography, but it did have the welcome side effect of making some of the less polished FX look a lot better than they would have in standard 35mm. Sadly, this did not hold true for the mantis rod-puppet. :(
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:20 PM on January 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


The eggs in the classroom had to be from Dr Gregory because the eggs in the lair would be from the guy that Blaine saw her kill. What always gets me is the video library. Was it a separate location or just another room in the regular library? How big is it? How extensive is the collection?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 6:24 PM on February 17, 2015


Crickets in the sandwich. I think it's funny that we have this predatory woman (mantis) who clearly gives zero fucks ... but she's eating a tiny lap-over sandwich. She' inhuman enough to put crickets in it, but tuned in enough with the human culture to eat a tiny lunch.

Buffy: Factiod three, her fashion sense screams predator.
Willow: It's the shoulder pads!
Buffy: Exactly.
posted by bunderful at 12:57 PM on January 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


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