My BtVS Rewatch Notes:
S1E4: Teacher’s Pet
- I can’t get over the fact that confident Xander in the dream is so freakin’ hot!
- Teacher’s Pet is one of the most disliked episodes of the verse, yet it was the first episode in the show to turn gender roles upside down by reversing the traditional roles in a typical damsel in distress tale: the young female blonde virgin gets kidnapped by a rapist who threatens to steal her virginity and then murder her until the tall male dark-haired warrior saves her and her virginity – this exactly happens in this episode in reverse, even the kidnapper is switched to female.
Xander dreams of being the hero who saves the damsel because that’s the idea that his parents and society have been feeding him and other boys like him all their lives, by the end of the episode it’s Buffy who saves Xander and she will be saving him throughout the series.
- While girls are valued for being pure and untouched, boys are pressured to sleep around. Virgin boys are humiliated and bullied for not getting laid on regular bases, which leads weak-hearted and minded boys to seek immoral ways to escape humiliation like lying or tricking girls into bed or raping them.
As a typical teen boy in a typical American high school, Xander knows that in order to be respected and valued in school, he must: be macho, save women, be physically buff and strong, be an athlete, have sex, and Xander is none of the above and that’s why he thrives to be all of the above, because that’s what is expected from him. ( Notice how Buffy assumes that Xander must have had sex, because guys are supposed to have sex! )
- Xander is dismissed by bullies, lead singers, and Buffy because he doesn’t have what it takes to be a real man – apparently clothes are one of them, Angel’s leather jacket wins against Xander’s bracelet – and in this episode sex is what makes one a man. He’s probably not ready to journey from boyhood to manhood, but it doesn’t matter, he must “score” to keep up with the other cool guys, not knowing that they as well are as much boys as he is.
If Xander had realized from the beginning that in order to fit in and be cool he should not care about how others see him, he’d probably be one of the coolest kids in school.
- Let’s talk about Angel. Witness the personality transformation! That is NOT the same guy from the first two eps. The writers obviously figured out Angel’s role by this episode.
- Same-gender friendships: You can easily see how at ease Willow is now that Buffy is around. Here we see them rolling their eyes at Xander believing he’s got a shot with an older attractive woman. If Buffy were a guy, he’d probably be buddying with Xander over this while Willow rolled her eyes alone.
- Speaking of buddies: how adorable that Willow knows that Xander is a virgin. And how sad that when he loses his virginity in The Zeppo, he won’t tell her – which is also interesting because Xander tells no one about it. Interesting and sad.
- I felt really sorry for Buffy about the teacher who died. Poor girl just needs someone who believes in her.
