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| Writer: | Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer |
| Director: | Ellen S. Pressmen |
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| - | Review |
A lot of other people give this episode a hard time, but I actually kind of like it. Sure the main plot is mediocre, but at least the main characters have a bit of fun with it. Aside from the basic nature of the plot and the fact that Spike isn't in it, there's really nothing bad here. This is a decent episode that has a self-contained story and some interesting discussion about sacrifice in it.
One of the most notable things is the introduction of Oz though. Television writers everywhere should take notice here, because this is how you introduce a new main character into an already running show. Oz doesn't speak to one main character all episode long. It's also cute that he 'discovers' Willow when all covered up in that Eskimo costume. Oz is going to be slowly introduced to the main characters separately over the course of several episodes coming up, which is just really cool and so not contrived.
The rest of the episode is really about Xander and his running theme of always getting demon dates. It's amusing to know that this will never stop (see foreshadowing section). The mummy girl really does care about Xander and really doesn't want to hurt him. What happened to her was tragic and not her fault but, obviously, what she is doing is wrong. I also really like her conversation with Buffy in her room about sacrifice because it exactly paralells what Buffy went through in "Prophecy Girl" (1x12).
I also want to mention how much I liked the way Willow finally gave up on Xander romantically. Xander has not shown any kind of persistent interest in that kind of relationship with her from the start, so she wisely decides to move on. She isn't angry or bitter about this revelation either, which is nice. This sets up her emotional readiness to begin a relationship with Oz beginning in "What's My Line? Pt. 2" (2x10).
The production values are pretty good and the music was perfect to set the mood of the happenings. There's not really much else to say about this. I simply think it is an amiable stand-alone and nothing more.
| - | Minor Pros/Cons (+/-) |
| Pros: | |
| + | The early training scene where Buffy, very cutely, coerces Giles to let her go to the dress-up dance. |
| + | The conversation between Buffy and Xander about Willow kissage. |
| + | The mummy girl gets some cool special effects for her death kiss. |
| + | Xander's twinkie scene with the mummy girl is cute and amusing. |
| + | The bad demon dates for Xander keep on coming! |
| + | Buffy telling Giles to get a "grown up" car. He actually does in "Real Me" (5x02). |
| + | Poor Jonathan gets introduced on the show with bad luck. I love his frequent 'extra' appearances that will eventually lead to a more important role in S6. |
| - | Foreshadowing |
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| - | Quotes |
| BUFFY: | It's the uber-suck. |
| XANDER: | Hold on a sec. So, this person who's living with you for two weeks is a man. With man parts. This is a terrible idea. |
| WILLOW: | What about the beautiful melding of two cultures? |
| XANDER: | There's no melding, okay? He better keep his parts to himself. |
| XANDER: | Typical museum trick. Promise human sacrifice, deliver old pots and pans. |
| WILLOW: | On the other hand, maybe Rodney just stepped out for a smoke. |
| XANDER: | For twenty-one hours? |
| WILLOW: | It's addictive, you know. |
| WILLOW: | I shrugged. |
| XANDER: | Next time you should probably say 'shrug'. |
| WILLOW: | Sigh. |
| - | Score | Learn about the Grading Scale |
| 70/100 |
C+ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ |
The main plot is likely problematic and/or hokey, but sharp humor and/or character development and relevance keep it afloat. A couple moments may be over-the-top in a bad way.
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| - | Screencaps |
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Comments (25)
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| 1. | AngelusAug 21, 2006 (Mon)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Ive always loved this episode. Xander is in full form in this one. |
| 2. | buffyholicOct 9, 2007 (Tue)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| I totally agree with your score, mike. I like this episode a lot, we can see the characters have fun with it and we have great dialogue and character interaction. And I like the mummy story. The story allows the characters to develop, like the talk about the Chosen One relating to both Buffy and Ampata. And of course, we meet Oz. Great character. |
| 3. | NixDec 10, 2007 (Mon)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| One thing's always bugged me: how does Ampata know English? How does she fit in so well? She fits in much better than I would, and I'm from Giles's native culture. (For that matter she fits in better than Giles does.) (I guess she must be extracting knowledge from the people she kisses or something.) |
| 4. | NixMay 24, 2008 (Sat)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| I just noticed something. They actually take the mickey out of the corny plot *in the episode*. So the writers *knew* the plot was corny... and went ahead with it anyway. With an attitude like that, I think I'm rather glad this was their last ep. |
| 5. | bigmoneygripSep 27, 2008 (Sat)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Favorite quote: "You're not a praying mantis, are you?" |
| 6. | PaulaNov 8, 2008 (Sat)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Okay, my big big BIG problem with this episode (and I have similar complaints with a lot of BtVS episodes, but never quite so bad as here): What did who tell Joyce after "Ampata" just disappeared? (At this point, the truth obviously wasn't an option. One season later in the show it would have been.) And what in the world did who tell the real Ampata's family?! ("Sorry, tell others over there not to send their kids over to Sunnydale since innocent kids just randomly disappear here, and no, we never even found his body?") Other than that, the introduction of both Jonathan and Oz in this one episode was obviously pretty cool. |
| 7. | EmilyFeb 15, 2009 (Sun)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Nix, I think Ampata knows English because she's been sitting and rotting in that museum for so long. It's possible her soul or something was still around- that she wasn't necessarily dead- and she heard everyone speaking around her. Or maybe you're right and she was extracting info from people she kissed. |
| 8. | NixFeb 26, 2009 (Thu)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Paula, the attitude to people killed by supernatural forces (but not *natural* forces) in _Buffy_ was well-expressed by the late great Douglas Adams, years before Buffy was thought of. He said in _The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts_ (actually copied off Slashdot but this quote is accurate: I'm just a lazy sod): "Ah yes, the whale. Well, this came about as a result of watching an episode of a dangerously insane TV detective show called _Cannon_, in which people got shot the whole time for incredibly little reason. They would just happen to be walking across the street, and they would simply get killed, regardless of what their own plans for the rest of the day might have been. "I began to find the sheer arbitrariness of this rather upsetting, not just because characters were getting killed, but because nobody ever seemed to care about it one way or another. Anybody who might have cared about any of these people -- family, friends, even the postman -- was kept firmly offstage. There was never any, 'Good night sweet Prince', or, 'She should have died hereafter', or even, 'Look you bastard, I was meant to be playing squash with this guy tonight', just bang, clear them out of the way, on to the next. They were merely, excuse me, Cannonfodder. "I thought I'd have a go at this. I'd write in a character whose sole function was to be killed for the sake of a small detail in the plot, and then damn well make the audience care about it, even if none of the other characters in the story did. I suppose I must have succeeded because I received quite a number of letters saying how cruel and callous this section was -- letters I certainly would not have received if I had simply mentioned the whale's fate incidentally and passed on. I probably wouldn't have received them if it had been a human either." -- Douglas Adams |
| 9. | NixFeb 28, 2009 (Sat)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| OK, I think I've found an example of mummy-knowledge that cannot be explained by my sucking-knowledge theory or by Emily's rather nice 'just listening in' theory. The mummy *calls Ampata's name* at the bus station. Unless it was a mind-reader (for which there is no other evidence and which seems rather unlikely) there's no *way* it could know that: Buffy doesn't so much as speak his name there, and nobody else knows it. So this must be a plot hole. |
| 10. | NixFeb 28, 2009 (Sat)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Emily: we have textual proof of your hypothesis. She says: 'I have toured... I was taken to Atlanta, Boston, New York... I did not see so much.' These are all younger than 500 years (plus transcontinental travel sucked half a millennium ago). Thus this is a reference to her coffin being taken there (and all she saw was the insides of museums). |
| 11. | DevilfishAug 5, 2009 (Wed)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Between the obviously cheesy plot, the introduction of the worst guarded museum ever, the assumption by generally intelligent people that every latino speaks and reads the Inca language (Giles should really know better) and another batch of kids disappearing without much worry or consequence, my suspension of disbelief was thouroughly shattered. At least the evryone-speaks-English trope is subverted here: Ampata seemingly remembers 'touring' the US as a museum piece, so she probably picked up English that way. One assumes. Seeing this episode for the first time (late to the party much?), for me it really ranks as badly as the one with the cheesy praying mantis storyline. Just... bad. |
| 12. | MichelleSep 25, 2009 (Fri)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Eh. This is typical MOTW stuff. What irritates me is that Giles, a guy who speaks, I believe, six languages, hasn't mastered Spanish? Really? |
| 13. | LeeluSep 25, 2009 (Fri)View This Person's Comments | Link | |
| @Michelle: I believe he pretty much is only learned in dead/ancient languages, as that's what is most relevant to his line of work. |
| 14. | MaxApr 9, 2010 (Fri) @ 8:36amView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| After watching season 7 I was just wondering whether anyone else thinks the mummy was a potential slayer when alive?
Probably no proof to suggest otherwise, but it is nice to speculate... |
| 15. | lokialexJun 16, 2010 (Wed) @ 11:26pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| Just wondering, isn't this the first time we get to see Jonathan, who is a very important character in numerous episodes. |
| 16. | yippers6Jul 18, 2010 (Sun) @ 2:11pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| @Max She explained that she was sacrifced so probably not but you never know |
| 17. | nathan.taurusJul 23, 2010 (Fri) @ 6:58pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| The first appearance of Oz. I like how he sees Willow at the Bronze for the first time and is instantly attracted to her, even though she is covered head to toe. Just by her face and eyes he can tell he likes her. That's why they were the perfect couple of all Willows partners.
Max: I like the would be-could be- a Slayer. She does know a thing or two about fighting. She did kill the bodyguard, choke Giles and use Buffy's fighting technique to knock her into the coffin. Although, many people on this show know defence fighting even when they shouldn't. |
| 18. | John RobertsSep 15, 2010 (Wed) @ 4:24pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| This is my least favorite episode so far. Praying Mantis was dumb but it was the first Xander-lusting-after-hidden-demon dumb episode. This is the second Xander-lusting-after-hidden-demon dumb episode. Plus the teacher turning into a bug is actually a fresher concept than the mummy coming alive. My Mom knew all about the mummy coming alive, long before any of us were born.
My son tells me Buffy is a stupid show. He hasn't ever seen it, mind you, it just sounds stupid to him. I wouldn't dare let him see this episode, I'd never hear the end of it. |
| 19. | G1000Sep 15, 2010 (Wed) @ 6:09pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| John, this episode is awful, but just power through until you reach "Surprise" and "Innocence". From then on, it becomes a totally different (and much better) show, although there are still a few stupid episodes to come. |
| 20. | JasonSep 15, 2010 (Wed) @ 7:47pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| I think a fascinating (and not very talked-about) aspect of Buffy is its inconsistency. Has any other show achieved so much, and consistently had such bad episodes? You might posit that a fundamental aspect of truly great television is taking risks, and some of the risks (by definition) won't pay off. And therefore there will be bad among the great. But I don't think that's what's going on here. The bad Buffy episodes don't seem like almost-great risky drama that just didn't work-- instead they seem lazy and cliched. It's a very interesting phenomenon to me. |
| 21. | John RobertsSep 16, 2010 (Thu) @ 6:59amView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| I'm not sure how different Buffy is that other shows in that regard. Star Trek alternated truly good episodes with ambitious-but-flawed episodes with throwaway episodes that never could have been good. The weekly schedules and budgets were a bitch, so sometimes Roddenberry and company would throw in a cheapie filler episode to catch a breather.
"Let's do Xander has a demon girlfriend" feels to me like something that was assembled while Whedon throught through what to do with Spike, Angel, and Buffy. |
| 22. | CoyoteBuffyFanFeb 13, 2011 (Sun) @ 10:35pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| This is a middle of the road episode for me. I love the introductions of Jonathon and Oz. The way they bring both of these characters into the show is, indeed, quite ingenius. Strength of the show.
Also, I like how Willow lets go of Xander here (although her feelings do surface again after Xander starts dating Cordelia). The rest of the episode is meh. Not much really to say about it. |
| 23. | deadlegoApr 25, 2011 (Mon) @ 7:30amView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| @nix- while at the museum standing over the mummy buffy and xander and willow discuss how buffy is going to meet Ampata at the bus station. We know that the mummy can hear even in mummy form as she mentions that she listened a lot whilst 'touring'. |
| 24. | smallprint84Sep 19, 2011 (Mon) @ 2:25amView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| I also liked to mension how the kiss-scene between Xander and Ampata was shot, with the atmospheric score and the yellow lighting (see screencap).
Very nice. |
| 25. | Gemma Dec 9, 2011 (Fri) @ 1:12pmView This Person's Comments | Link | |
| I like this episode, it allowed the Buffy, WIllow and Xander to grow and mature. They moved towards healthy relationships. Both Xander and WIllow moved on in some way from their original crushes. WIllow seemed more amenable to Xander and Ampata, having heard Xander voice is true feelings about which will allow her to start a healthy happy relationship with Oz. Buffy having looked introspectively about Ampata's situation and finally thanks Xander properly for saving her life, knowing that if she hadn't she would have shared Ampata's fate to the extent of being a sacrifice. Xander and Buffy's friendship moves forward without the weight of his attraction for her getting in the way. Ampata's situation was portrayed in a nice way, her being a real person and not liking the choices she has to make to stay as a living girl, the fact that she doesn't smile when she kisses/kills her victims shows this isn't a decision she takes lightly. What happened to her wasn't her fault in a way i see a kinship between herself and Buffy. The conversation they have in Buffy's room shows a nice insight into this and i think is conducive to Buffy finally accepting her fate - for the time being at least which lead to her thanking Xander. This episode true to form had an influx of humour with the gang deriding the actual plot of the episode! Poking fun at what may have and ultimately did happen to Rodney. Best dialogue of this episode came from Xander and WIllow at the Bronze with Willow being in her eskimo costume. Willow: 'I shrugged' Xander: 'Maybe you should have said Shrug'. WIllow: 'SIgh' :D Although perception into sacrifice was made it wasn't a major theme nor a subplot in this episode. I liked that there was a little interaction on this topic because it served as reflection for Buffy but there were differences in the reasons behind each girls lets say demise. Buffy volunteered to save humanity but Ampata was told that her life would be cut short, no fuss no nothing. The writers stayed away from delving to deeply into whether Ampata was being sacrificed to something real or whether it was superstition. Also the body guard was a little of the unknown for me, were we expected to believe that this Incan cult/ civilisation had survived for all these years? Bottom line: I did like this episode, there was a nice look back at season one episode 4 and it sets up Xander's destiny with demon dates! |
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