Teacher's Pet

Teacher's Pet
Written by David Greenwalt
Directed by

Original Airdate:

Plot: When the regular biology teacher at Sunnydale High disappears, the new substitute gets the attention of all the boys, especially Xander....

Review

Warning: This is not a pop quiz If reading SPOILERS for "Teacher's Pet" will cause you to have to stave after class, please turn back now...

In short: Entertaining at times....

One of the problems of viewing season one episodes for the first time after having watched Buffy faithfully for the past three seasons is that I'm always struck with the dilemma of having to put aside other fans notions and opinions on the various episodes and trying to come to them fresh and without any preconcieved notions. Certainly fan love of "Angel" and the absolute raving about it being one of the best Buffy episodes ever produced raised my expectations so high that no episode could ever live up to them, thus leaving me a bit disappointed when I finally did get the opportunity to see it. (Thank the stars for the WB's wonderous insight of repeating episodes from season one a few years back. Sort of makes me wish they'd do it again this summer...but, alas it's not to be).

Another episode that I'd heard varying opinions about was "Teacher's Pet." So, after years of scouring the Net and lots of begging, a kind member of the Buffy on-line community finally shared this episode with me, thus (finally) completing my collection and allowing me to participate in this week's discussion about the episode as well complete my season one reviews. (Which means at this point there are only two reviews that I need to fully work on and complete in order to complete the world-famous Buffy reviews archive...and by golly, I intend to do that).

But, back to "Teacher's Pet."

Going in with a lot of expectations, some of them a bit low, I'll admit, certainly didn't help matters much. Honestly, from what I'd heard I expected to see one of the lower in quality episodes of season one.

But instead what I got was an entertaining and diverting hour that really did some things extremely well.

First of all, after two episodes in the sidelines, this is the first one to really focus on Xander and I liked that. Certainly it's not a tour-de-farce performance from Nicholas Brendon as we'll see later in "The Pack" but it's certainly nicely done and it helps makes future events a bit more clear. To start off, we get Xander's day dream of not only protecting the Slayer but also of being a member of a band, to a swooning Buffy. Then, we get to see Xander and his reaction to the usual male crowd of keeping score of how many times they have engaged in sexual activitiy and the irony (at the end) of seeing how few of them actually have. We also got to see Xander have his crush on Ms. French and her strong draw to all men--even to Giles. Certainly seeing a lust-sick Xander pine for Ms. French and how he could possibly woo her was nicely done. Also, seeing his go from at once in lust with her to being wary as he went under with the martini was nicely done. And his line of "I love Buffy" was cleverly done and worked well within the moment.

Also, to see Xander be the calm, rational one in Ms. French's basement was a nicely done moment.

And, for the first time, we get a confirmation of Willow's crush on Xander. It was certainly interesting to see how in Xander's day-dream he wants to be in a band to attract girls and that he thinks that aspect will engender romantic feelings from Buffy, while it is Willow who will later fall for the band-guy in the form of Oz.

And, of course, we got some mysterious guy antics from Angel. Looking back, I can see a lot of potential there for Angel in the early goings to be a mysterious informant of sorts. I think having him show up and give Buffy cryptic warnings was nicely done. In a lot of ways, he reminds me a bit of Deep Throat on the X-Files, with his showing up and giving out information. Certainly, we can see why Angel wanted to give Buffy the information he did in the long term, but in the short term, I wish his idenity as a vampire had been kept secret a bit longer.

I also liked the early seeds of Xander's jealousy toward Angel being planted here. And seeing Angel's brief appearance here certainly makes a lot of things come into greater focus later on down the road--such as in Angel or Prophecy Girl.

And while all the character moments work well, it's the main, monster plotline that was overall disappointing. Certainly there was some potential there in the plotline, and let's face it who hasn't ever suspected that a substitute teacher isn't some form of evil in disguise. However, this plotline has been done on the X-Files in a much better realized episode called "Die Hand Die Vertz" In that story, the school teacher turns out to be Satan rather than a giant preying mantis. I think part of the reason it worked there was the pure evil nature of the character. Also, we saw the creation of the monster and the consequences of it coming. Here we got to see it come to town and while we got the motivation of wanting to reproduce and continue, it just didn't seem as interesting. Now, if we'd found out that that creature was reproducing and the Scooby gang faced a time crunch to defeat it, that might have worked out well.

And I've got to admit that at times the preying mantis looked a bit lame and limited. I am sure that this is due to the limitation of a television budget and they did overcome it fairly well by keeping the monster in shadows, but it still looked lame.

Well, that's about it for now, except for a few small things...

--Cordy's small role was interesting. I also liked her having to go for therpay and getting to hear it. It was a great scene.

--Giles' reaction to Willow's hacking the coroner's office database was funny as well.

--It's interesting that of the three early eps that feature Angel, two of them are by David Greenwalt, who has since gone on to help Joss create his spin-off series.

Well, that's it for now. Overall, an enjoyable effort on the character side but let down on the monster plot.

My rating: 6.5 (out of 10.0)

Next up: Buffy's got a date.....but that whole slaying thing might get in the way