"Go Fish" Question

BuffyElevated

BuffyElevated

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Sineya
I saw a post on Facebook that got me thinking...

In "Go Fish" when Buffy is thrown into the water with the swim team-turned-fishmen she asks, "So what? You're just going to feed me to them?" & the coach replies, "They've already had their supper. My boys have other needs". Buffy just jokes it away in pure Buffy fashion by saying, " Oh great, that's just what my reputation needs.... that I did it with the whole swim team." Then at the end when the coach falls in, the fish monsters attack the coach and Buffy says, "Boy, they really love their coach."

My question is how did you interpret this scene? Do you think the boys ate the coach or "did it" with him, as Buffy said? I personally felt like it was pretty obviously implied that they had their way with the coach, but I've seen other say they just thought they ate him.
 
Joan the Vampire Slayer
Joan the Vampire Slayer
Interesting post!
I took both scenes as cringy rape jokes. I have always found it disturbing how quickly and easily Whedon & Co defaulted to sexual assault jokes throughout Buffy's run.

The first scene, if Xander had not rescued Buffy, would have resulted in the fish-men gang raping Buffy. I have no doubt that the second scene did result in the gang rape & killing of the coach. Weird choice of story-lines for a series focused on teen & pre-teen girls.
 
Buffy in a wet T-shirt. I'm sorry, what was the question?

The whole groups of them could have forced themselves on Buffy. I think they recognized the coach, understood what he had done to them, and just savagely attacked him. But, the I think the proposed interpretation is also a correct reading of the text as well.

I mean, we never really learn what type of mental state the fish men are in, and their... Members aren't explained either. Ocean going fish really don't have... Members. Unless it was actually a demon human hybrid, and the Soviets just said it was mackerel.
 
NoShip said:
I took both scenes as cringy rape jokes. I have always found it disturbing how quickly and easily Whedon & Co defaulted to sexual assault jokes throughout Buffy's run.

The first scene, if Xander had not rescued Buffy, would have resulted in the fish-men gang raping Buffy. I have no doubt that the second scene did result in the gang rape & killing of the coach. Weird choice of story-lines for a series focused on teen & pre-teen girls.
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Well Joss has revealed himself to be a pretty big prick with very little respect for women, so.... It seems to be pretty on brand for him.
 
I took it the same way that you did. I also think there is a culture of adults that should be protecting victims protecting jocks not just with grades like Snyder suggest but from the consequences of their vile behavior.

I graduated about a decade after Buffy did and that culture was absolutely rampant around here. The Steubenville scandal happened not too long after I graduated and literally nobody was surprised by the adults attempting to shield the football players from facing the consequences.

In my own school district the school superintendent walked in on a coach and a student and he didn’t get fired till 4 years later when a girl’s father went to the news with proof after telling the school that morning that if they didn’t fire him he’d go to the news. This was not an isolated incident. I also remember a teacher in the middle of class calling a 14 year old student a whore. He was also not reprimanded.

It’s just kind of the sad reality of the way the world works.
 
NotASlayer
NotASlayer
As a Brit, American school sports culture is incomprehensible.
N
NoShip
As an American, this kind of head up your ass stupidity about the local team is all too comprehensible. ☹️
T
thrasherpix
This is one of the few eps that actually do remind me of the schools I went to in how the jocks were protected and the obnoxious attitudes by adults and kids both (for some reason the adults were usually worse than the kids).
Okay, so I remember watching this episode when it aired. I didn't really think much of the joke. The coach was clearly insane. His proposed use for Buffy was equally insane. I half recall thinking this was a parody of some High School Coach football trope. At the time, okay episode. Girls seemed to appreciate the Xander fanservice. Boys probably appreciated Buffy's wardrobe in the sewer sequence more than anything.

I recall this episode is not held in high regard. I think it's because this is clearly a very Gen X episode dealing in Gen X tropes and Gen X humor. Whereas Millennials were taught to view rape as less of a crime and more as a failure of third wave feminism to triumph over her enemies, or something.
 
NoShip said:
I took both scenes as cringy rape jokes. I have always found it disturbing how quickly and easily Whedon & Co defaulted to sexual assault jokes throughout Buffy's run.

The first scene, if Xander had not rescued Buffy, would have resulted in the fish-men gang raping Buffy. I have no doubt that the second scene did result in the gang rape & killing of the coach. Weird choice of story-lines for a series focused on teen & pre-teen girls.
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Josh Whedon shouldn't be writing about any form of sexual violence, he does it horribly.
 
For the longest time I just assumed the fish men ate the coach. BB changed my mind. Going on by the juvenile humor of this ep and all, it probably was meant to imply they banged their coach (before presumably eating him).


That aside, I still get curious about the coach himself. (Also the nurse who seemed like boys turning into monsters was a horrible yet ordinary thing. That is she objected to the coach but didn't act like it was too bizarre to wrestle with.) He used his strength against the nurse, even pretty much against Xander, but when Buffy shows up he goes straight for the gun. Maybe it was written that way for plot to get Buffy down in the water but, intended or not, it implies to me that the coach knew Buffy was super strong...and he certainly had connections to get top secret mutagens to give to his swim team. More government operatives in Sunnydale?
 
Okay, Elin Hampton's IMDB says she worked on a few shows in the late 90s, and is/was married to David Fury. However, in television, uncredited rewrites are very common, especially Joss "punching up" the script. This very well could be his joke.
 
Hopefully this doesn’t come off as harsh but I really think we have to stop letting Joss be the boogie man in these decisions, it’s starting to feel like Reddit. This episode was very much one of the monsters are metaphors episodes that Buffy is famous for. Almost everyone who grew up in the US at least can absolutely relate to the high school athlete SA culture and the adults who enabled it, this episode was examining that culture and not portraying it in a positive light. It was shown as yet another thing that young people have to overcome. With the metaphor thing in mind my take away from the ending is that the adults who create these monsters will not be safe from them.

Instead of examining any of that it’s just well here’s an episode that has themes of SA culture because Joss is bad. He didn’t even write the episode. It’s totally fine of people don’t jibe with the episode but I don’t think it’s interpreted the way that it should be.
 
SavvyScoobie
SavvyScoobie
This is probably because there are patterns of excusing SA and rape in Buffy. I mean in season 1 there was an episode where a guy tried to advantage of Buffy in car, later on she got victim blamed.
@SavvyScoobie That was actually in Go Fish and it was absolutely in the episode to show the athlete SA culture that is rampant in US high schools and colleges in a negative light. I feel like this episode and what it was trying to say was spoon fed to the audience but…


There is absolutely valid criticism on how SA is used in the Buffyverse and how the narrative focuses on the perpetrator rather than the victim in the aftermath but Go Fish isn’t even remotely the part of that trend.
 
KaitKat said:
@SavvyScoobie That was actually in Go Fish and it was absolutely in the episode to show the athlete SA culture that is rampant in US high schools and colleges in a negative light. I feel like this episode and what it was trying to say was spoon fed to the audience but…


There is absolutely valid criticism on how SA is used in the Buffyverse and how the narrative focuses on the perpetrator rather than the victim in the aftermath but Go Fish isn’t even remotely the part of that trend.
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Whoops sorry might've generalized! Not here to argue but I do feel like other people using the internet would've gotten really mad and started something here (no shade)!

Hate how male coaches are so weird, towards both female and male students..
 
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