Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Inca Mummy Girl (2x04)

[fajrdrako]

Moving right along here... from the sublime to the ridiculous.

But it isn't really, of course. It's just another episode, and we're back to more-or-less the pre-Spike standards. The thing is, "School Hard" spoiled me. (I still don't understand that title.)

With "School Hard", we got what I think of as a grown-up story, and for the first time I really believed that vampires could be dangerous (and bad, and good) and that Buffy's role as Slayer really meant something on both a cosmic and a human scale.

So: relaxing the adrenaline level, it's back to "tales out of school", and if you'll forgive me for saying so, it all looks a little stupider than ever. Especially Xander. We're back to adolescent concerns and situations, and I'm feeling a little impatient with the "who'll get a date for the dance" situations. It's like going from post-grad studies back to kindergarten.

Still: you've gotta like it, when a major plot point is a teen-age girl's lack of lipstick.

Points:

1. I was amused by the security and staff at the Sunnydale museum. Their special-exhibit Inca mummy gets up and walks away. (Presumably with her 'bodyguard' hiding in the closet all that time? I confess, I was hoping he'd look like Oded Fehr.) A modern corpse is substituted. The priceless pottery disc with old writing is broken, some shards missing. Buffy and Giles come back the next day and the museum staff still hasn't noticed these goings-on?

Ah well, no doubt it was all done by a gang on PCP.

2. Just when Xander had won a whole bunch of brownie points from me for gaining some maturity and courage last episode, he lost 'em all and then some by being both cretinous and girl-crazy this time, and specifically for dumping Willow after he'd already said he'd take her to the dance (with Buffy). Yeah, Willow understood, and I understood too: it was very not cool.

3. Way too much sitcom stuff - by which I mean, too many sustained jokes I didn't find funny.

4. Some good dialogue:

Cordelia: You didn't look at him first? He could be dogly. You live on the edge.
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.

5. Xander says Rodney is "God's gift to the bell curve." I thought at first that meant he was smart, but I guess it was supposed to mean he was dumb. Doesn't matter, because he dies in short order.

6. In this show, when they say "The human sacrifice is about to begin," you take it literally.

7. I wasn't sure why Rodney wanted to steal the plate. Did he think he could fence it?

8. Good Buffy line: "Just this once I'd like to be the Overlooked One." Just once? I think I've heard that refrain before.

9. But it's followed by an intriguing line from Giles:

Buffy: Oh! I know this one! Slaying entails certain sacrifices, blah, blah, bity blah, I'm so stuffy, gimme a scone.
Giles: It's as if you know me.

Which can be taken in a few different ways, and implies depths and secrets, which I like. Or am I just supposed to think he's being sarcastic? It didn't sound that way.

10. I had a hard time figuring out what the Inca girl's name was, since everyone said it differently. Impala, Impaka - it turned out to be Ampata. Okay.

11. I liked:

Willow: So, Ampata. You're a girl.
Ampata: Yes. For many years now.

12. Cordelia was at her most annoying, treating Sven like a dog, and it was predictable from the first moment that he could speak English just fine but wasn't about to tell her that. Both Xander and Cordelia when from being Redeemed to Unredeemable in this episode.

13. So we meet Oz, of whom I have heard. Though we learn almost nothing about him - least of all anything that implies he will be significant - he does appear reasonably bright, and he has the good taste and sense to notice Willow. On the other hand, appearing "bright" in contrast to all the other characters in this episode, isn't difficult - even Giles and Willow are not at their intellectual best here.

14. If I wasn't already kind of disgusted with Xander, the Twinkies scene would have done it. Yuck! Boy stuff again.

15. Okay, Xander hid have one good line, where continuity raised its lovely head: "You're not a praying mantis, are you?" (No, Xander, but she's no more interesting than your praying mantis girl was, and maybe a little less so....)

16. Kissing brings on mummification. I'm trying to think of the implications here. Can't tell if that's erotophobic, kinky, absurd or metaphorical.

17. Xander says re his costume: "I'm from the country of Leone. It's in Italy pretending to be
Montana." Huh? I take it he just made it up? That's another Xander line that sounds as if it should be followed by a laugh track, except I can't get it to make sense.

18. Willow in her Eskimo outfit looks kind of hot. I don't mean sexy, I mean overheated. I can recall sweltering in a few costumes I wore at at various conventions in California ... and I was never an Eskimo.

19. I was really bored in the scenes where Ampata almost kisses Xander because I don't like Xander (not in this episode, anyway), but when she almost kissed Willow.... woo, that was sexy.

20. And Xander rescues Willow. Good! His second redeemable moment in this episode.

21. Buffy identifies with Ampata: "She was gypped. She was just a girl, and she had her life taken away from her....I remember how I felt when I heard the prophecy that I was gonna die. I wasn't exactly obsessed with doing the right thing." Well, no, but she didn't go around killing people.

22. So we are reminded that Xander saved Buffy. I suppose that's a little bit retro-redeemable, but really, I think Xander mostly looks just immature and sexist in this episode. Second only to Cordelia.

23. Not enough Giles.

24. But Willow is cute.