Go Fish, Inca Mummy Girl, or Reptile Boy. Which one would you keep?

Hey, what about "That One Where The Woman Keeps Watching Thirty Seconds Of High School Football" "Some Assembly Required?" That episode is pretty much as pointless as you can get. Some football played died, gets Frankenstein'd, and now he wants a girlfriend, so he kills a bunch of characters we don't care about.

The sad thing is, Frankenstein is one of the classics of the genre. The Fly isn't, and Go Fish is about as good as the trope gives. Inca is a lot better than Mummy '17, which is only other Sexy Mummy film I can think of. Reptile Boy is just a cult with human sacrifice, too many of those to count. But Frankenstein?

Also, Cordelia gets her head cut off, no biggie. Buffy makes a joke about being violated by Deep Ones, GASP!

Fun Fact: This is the only script that equally works well as an Buffy, X-Files and Daria episode.


P.S. The Coach getting his hands on Deep Ones Research the Soviets were conducting actually fixes the holes with this episode. As does, the project never worked, until the hell mouth started out of control mutations.
 
Reptile Boy. Not only is Willow standing up to Angel and Giles kind of cool but I also like the frat house scene where Angel gets angry about them wanting to sacrifice Buffy (am overlooked Bangel moment I think) and Xander says that is a guy one wants to party with
 
AlphaFoxtrot said:
Hey, what about "That One Where The Woman Keeps Watching Thirty Seconds Of High School Football" "Some Assembly Required?" That episode is pretty much as pointless as you can get. Some football played died, gets Frankenstein'd, and now he wants a girlfriend, so he kills a bunch of characters we don't care about.

The sad thing is, Frankenstein is one of the classics of the genre. The Fly isn't, and Go Fish is about as good as the trope gives. Inca is a lot better than Mummy '17, which is only other Sexy Mummy film I can think of. Reptile Boy is just a cult with human sacrifice, too many of those to count. But Frankenstein?

Also, Cordelia gets her head cut off, no biggie. Buffy makes a joke about being violated by Deep Ones, GASP!

Fun Fact: This is the only script that equally works well as an Buffy, X-Files and Daria episode.


P.S. The Coach getting his hands on Deep Ones Research the Soviets were conducting actually fixes the holes with this episode. As does, the project never worked, until the hell mouth started out of control mutations.
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I agree: the true, monstrously bad episode of season 2 is Some Assembly Required. I'm making a tier list of episodes and it was the first one I put into 'delete it' 🤣 💀
 
Where the Wild Things are, ah, "The One Where Giles Gets Upset About Social Problems Of The 1960s. Take That!" And everyone is in danger because Buffy has slightly more sex with her steady boyfriend than College students normally would, I guess. Yes, that one was a stinker.
 
Plasma
Plasma
Remember how they try to act like it’s a big reveal that the old lady was bad…LOL
Seriously. She was a spinster who ran a co-ed orphanage for twenty years before the pill, all it would take is a handful of pregnancy scares to turn her into an anti-sex fanatic. Having seen Riley's O-face, I sort of get her position. Maybe not the waterboarding children part, of course.
 
AlphaFoxtrot said:
Hey, what about "That One Where The Woman Keeps Watching Thirty Seconds Of High School Football" "Some Assembly Required?" That episode is pretty much as pointless as you can get. Some football played died, gets Frankenstein'd, and now he wants a girlfriend, so he kills a bunch of characters we don't care about.
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I would say it fits the theme of the season- unlike 'Go Fish'- with the 'love gone wrong' aspect; guy loves his brother but won't let him go. Mother is so obsessed with one son that she neglects the other, football-zombie wants to love somebody so he persuades his brother- through the power of sports imagery- to murder a girl. Go team.

I can't remember any actual murders though; the grave robbers go after people who are already dead. At least until Cordelia.

There are plenty of lil' things to recommend though. The grave-digging scene is quintessential classic 'high school Buffy', as in the Bangel opening. And I think its the first episode with an element of grey morality regarding the antagonists; at least one of them is not strictly 'evil' and that's commented upon.
Plus Giles asks out a chair, its so romantic!!

AlphaFoxtrot said:
The sad thing is, Frankenstein is one of the classics of the genre.
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At least we later get S4's Adam, who is way more Frankenstein than football-zombie-dude....even if the plot of SAR riffs off of some of his movies.

But we never get a classic fish-monsters-from-the-deep-who-want-our-women type episode.

So yeah, for many reasons 'Go Fish' is probably the one of the three that doesn't fit the season and should go...but in all honesty I find Inca Mummy Girl to be the worst of the season. It's just so dull and plodding, themes be damned.
Oh and btw yes Buffy Ampata was in fact evil! She killed people with her mouth!
 
Inca Mummy Girl to keep as it does have the most interesting and tragic villain. I love the way they avoid the love redeems cliche. Just makes it all the more sad in the end.

Go Fish is actually a reasonably fun episode. I think it's just because it's placed near the end that people hate it. The monsters look quite cool. I loved the way Buffy never phoned it in with its monsters visually and always tried to make them look unique. Also the moment where it bursts out of Wentworth Millers skin is a brilliant scene of visceral horror. I also have to give Miller credit for showing potential as an actor even here, starting out in the episode as a meathead jock, but becoming more sympathetic and having quite good chemistry with Buffy as time went on to the point where I was sad to see him die. (It's even more hilarious that Miller is so good at playing these macho, meathead, jocks, considering he is a sensitive, gay artist in real life LOL.)

Reptile Boy is utter crap. Sorry to those who like it, but honestly I find it so boring. It's honestly one I'm tempted to skip every time I watch Buffy. The monster is also as generic as you could imagine in terms of concept and design. A rare example of it being phoned in in early Buffy in regards to monsters.
 
Inca Mummy Girl was my pick.

Oz being introduced in that episode. Plus at the time I was a big fan of Xander(the every guy at the time) and it was nice to see him not fawning over Buffy and actually making ground with a girl. Sadly we all knew it wouldn't pan out to well for him.
 
Fuffy Baith said:
I just feel like Buffy and everyone should be a little more concerned. Yes Buffy is the slayer, but even she can be taken advantage of. I just think she should be more cautious about these things. Kind of like a Ted. The episode implies one thing and then backs out of it by saying well that's not what really happened, so let's forget the situation. Just bothers me is all.
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There are many cases of episodes deliberately using sexual imagery that kind of go "but it didn't actually happen so it's okay," but I wouldn't consider this one of them because what happens (the attempted sacrifice) is literally a metaphor for rape. It's an episode about teenage girls being taken advantage of by older guys who want to prove their worth to each other in exchange for social clout and wealth. In real life this usually involves sexual violence. In the buffyverse, it involves literal demonic sacrifices. Saying the episode "glosses over" the drugging and the threat of rape would imply that the episode's actual message was unrelated, but it's not. Other episodes are way more flippant about sexual violence ("Teacher's Pet" comes to mind immediately) and treat it like a joke while "Reptile Boy" is about how sexual violence upholds existing power dynamics (the girls are sacrificed for the men's benefit). Definitely not one of the best episodes ever but one that's pretty clear about the message it's trying to send.

I keep finding myself really enjoying a lot of the episodes people consistently say are bad... I liked all three of these (and "Bad Eggs, which has also been mentioned here). of the three I think my favorite was "Inca Mummy Girl," but I genuinely do think "Reptile Boy" has the clearest theme and metaphor even though it's my least favorite of the three... I don't know which one I'd keep. I guess "Inca Mummy Girl" since I like the parallels between Buffy and Ampata, and it's Oz's first appearance and I like him. "Go Fish" is a fun time but not that important. I like the special effects in it, though, and the ending is really funny to me.
 
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