Season One, Episode Four
"Teacher's Pet"
Much like the last episode, I think the theme is very clear so I’m going to just jump into it instead of doing an episode recap as well. I think one of the main issues in this episode deals with male masculinity and its ties to sexuality; there are many examples of this with the dynamic between Blaine and Xander. Both seem to have a complete one track mind throughout the entire episode which centers around who's getting the girls.
We already are aware of the fact that Xander feels inferior and has esteem issues but this episode puts them into the forefront of every one's mind. We start with Xander being embarrassed by Blaine and fleeing in order to hug Buffy and Willow to prove that he can get girls. Then Buffy leaves to talk with Angel and Xander can't stop talking about how good looking he is in a very frustrated tone. Later in the episode, he even teases Buffy saying that Angel is a girly name. Basically, he spends much of the episode acting like an irritating straight male.
In the next scene, we learn how all this is going to tie in with this week's feature creature (excuse me while I go barf from quoting Dawn.) Xander goes up to the gang and explains how their science teacher won't be in today because he's "missing." Buffy and Willow both question him on what exactly he heard to which Xander admits that he wasn't paying attention because the cheerleaders were distracting him with their hotness. The group's discussion is then interrupted when the new hot teacher walks up and starts asking Xander for directions. He fumbles over his words and ends up not being able to tell her what she needs so Blaine jumps to the rescue. Poor Xander.
“it’s funny how the earth never opens up and swallows you when you want it to"
Now we get to our favorite teacher ever. Natalie French writes her name on the board and introducing herself as Natalie French instead of Ms. French, separating herself from other teachers. By announcing her first name, she’s making herself seem less professional and therefore allowing more men to think about her in sexual ways instead of as an authority figure. Blaine and Xander take the bait and begin teasing each other about who Natalie likes more and discuss the time they'll get to spend after school working with her.
Continuing on with other gender issues within this episode, some guy tells Buffy she shouldn’t be out at night and calling her little lady yet it’s perfectly fine for him to be out at night while drinking. Even if he was sober, Buffy is still going to be much safer outside than he is. Natalie ends up trying to hurt both Xander and Blaine when we normally expect men to hurt women within relationships. Blaine being outed as a virgin even though he's an athlete and thereby expected to be well versed in all things sexual.
my dad’s a lawyer and if you tell anyone I’m a virgin I’ll sue you!
This episode plays off of a lot of gender stereotypes and ultimately defies them all (because Joss is awesome.)
Back to the story, the gang minus Xander discover what Natalie is and try to warn Xander that...
“he’s got a crush on a giant insect!”
When Buffy begins to tell Xander, he starts changing the subject from this episode’s evil to Angel and the fact that Buffy’s jealous that another woman likes him. Xander is used to dealing with evil and weird things in Sunnydale but yet he turns off all his senses to realize danger is near when it deals with a woman who is displaying interest in him. If he wasn’t so distracted, he could have noticed that a teacher asking an underage student to (a) go to her house, (b) giving him alcohol upon arrival, and (c) asking him intimate questions is a sign pointing to things not being so amazingly awesome.
Side note: What mother hears from their teenage son that he’s going to his teacher’s house and lets him leave?! If Xander was a girl, you know that he never would have been allowed to leave the house and the school would be called so fast to file a complaint and/or contact the police to file a suit if they had any proof of any inappropriate contact occurring.
Another (nerdy) note: Joss is really a fan of fake cliff hangers in this season. Last episode it was with the eyes in the trophy and this with the eggs starting to hack. They’re sort of funny to watch because I keep remembering how much I believed that these things were going to be significant later and then they weren’t. It’s kind of like people who had really well thought out theories before DH like the one that used the poem from the second task in GoF to show how in DH Harry would visit the department of mysteries and Sirius would come back and then nothing like that happened. Not that I ever established such thought out theories for these things, but I do remember telling my sister that I thought they were going to come back into play in some significant way.
I enjoy this episode because of all it gives us involving gender issues, which is my field of study, but it still is a pretty terrible episode so check back tomorrow to read Kali's blog mocking it to no end.
Favorite Line: “She is, by and large, woman shaped” - Giles
-Sarah
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