Episode 13: The Zeppo

Season Three, Episode Thirteen

"The Zeppo"

Oh hai Faith! Haven’t seen you in a while!

Instead of discussing the beginning of this episode, I'm just going to put the entire transcript of the dialogue before the opening credits roll, because it's awesome:

Giles:  I think that was the last.
Buffy:  Willow, you okay?
Willow:  (breathing hard) Yeah, I'm fine. Th-the shaking is, is a side effect of the fear.
Giles:  (on his feet) Thank you. (takes off his glasses and rubs his brow)
Buffy:  Well, if it wasn't for that clouding spell...
Willow:  (smiles) Yeah, it went good! (glances at the candle) Nothing melted like last time.
Faith:  These babes were wicked rowdy. What's their deal?
Giles:  I wish I knew. Most of my sources have dried up since the, uh, Council has relieved me of my duties. I was aware there was a nest here, but quite frankly, I expected it to be vampires. These, these are new.
Buffy:  And improved.
Giles:  (stands up) Yes. I'm sorry. I should've had you better prepared, and I should never have allowed Willow and, uh... (looks around) And, uh...
*They all realize that Xander is nowhere to be seen. Just then they hear something stirring under a pile of garbage. There they see Xander crawling out from under a collapsed cardboard box and other refuse.*
Xander:  (out of breath) I'm good. We're fine. (gets up) Just a little bit dirty. (gives two thumbs up) Good show, everyone. (staggers out into the cave) Just great. I think we have a hit.
Willow:  (concerned) Are you okay?
Xander:  Tip-top, (exhales) really. If anyone sees my spine laying around, just try not to step on it.
Buffy:  (worried) Xander, one of these days, you're gonna get yourself hurt.
Faith:  Or killed.
Buffy:  Or both. A-and, you know, with the pain and the death, maybe you shouldn't be leaping into the fray like that. M-maybe you should be... fray-adjacent.
Xander:  (slightly miffed) Excuse me? Who, at a crucial moment, distracted the lead demon by allowing her to pummel him about the head?
Faith:  Yeah. That was real manly how you shrieked and all.
Xander:  (haughtily) I think you'll find that was more of a bellow.
Buffy:  Uh, what do we do with the trio here? Should we burn them?
Willow:  (smiles) I brought marshmallows. (with dignity) Occasionally, I'm callous and strange.
Giles:  I expect we can leave them. I'm more interested in finding out what they are, and whether we can expect more of their kind.
Buffy:  (starts out of the cave) I hope not. They're way too fit.
Xander:  I say bring 'em on!
Giles:  Uh, Xander, I think in the future perhaps it would be best if you, you, uh, h-hung back to the rear of the battle, you know, for your own sake.
Xander:  (facetiously) But, gee, Mr. White, if Clark and Lois get all the good stories, I'll *never* be a good reporter.
Giles:  (not getting it) Hmm?
Xander:  Jimmy Olsen joke, sir. Pretty much gonna be lost on you, huh?
Giles:  Sorry.
Xander:  Hey, it's okay.

This episode is very simple with it's message, but yet still really well told and entertaining to watch. The main message is this: Xander isn't useless. Character centric episodes are always really awesome, but there is something really special about Xander's. Probably a lot of the reason being that he is best friends with two girls, Xander tries acting "manly" and therefore doesn't reveal his feelings very often. From watching him, you can tell that he has low self-esteem and questions his importance often. However, the episode does an amazing job of showing us just why Xander is awesome and an important member of the Scooby gang.

After the opening, we see Xander apparently under the impression that he is a football player. He screams for this random football guy to toss him the football. At first they ignore him, but then in order to shut him up, probably they toss it his way. He ends up missing the ball and it hits Jack O’Tool’s lunch over. We soon learn how very sane Jack is after he says how he should cut Xander’s face open...

He looks nice, doesn't he?

From one conflict to another, Xander runs into Cordelia who has taken up Xander teasing at the Varsity level by telling him that he’s the useless part of the group. She may be mean, but she strikes a nerve and gets Xander thinking. As she leaves, she admits “there was no part of that that wasn’t fun."

Xander begins discussing coolness with Oz and tries to figure out what makes Oz cool. Oz is not very helpful at all to this conversation, but is awesome and when Xander asks him what he [Xander] has he answers with “an exciting new obsession.” Oz is amazing.

In the library, Giles and Buffy are discussing the end of the world very seriously. Some bad guys apparently intend to open the hellmouth. Serious music, serious tones, werewolf Oz: badness is going down. She then goes to discuss the impending doom with Willow. She asks Willow if she wants to help and then admits that there's something about this one that makes her nervous and she “needs [her] Willow" I completely understand, Buffy.

Apparently Xander is now forty and in the middle of his midlife crisis as he drives by in a car.

So. Many. Jokes. *head explodes*

He tells Buffy and Willow how it’s his thing and Buffy asks if “this a penis metaphor?” We all giggle. After talking about his issues with his small penis new car, Buffy seems out of it and Willow tells him about the big evil brewing. He asks what he can do and in the next scene he is getting donuts. Man, I would love Xander to get me some donuts...

Because he can't catch a break, he obviously runs into Cordelia while picking up the donuts and she practices so new moves in her Xander teasing games. However, because of his car, a hot girl is talking to him and accepts Xander's offer to go for a ride. They go to the Bronze and apparently, this chick is only into Xander because of his car *gasp.* She has an insane fetish for guys with nice cars and won't stop talking about the guys she's met and the cars they've owned; I'm right with Xander wanting to kill myself if she says one more thing about a guy or a car. Angel enters the Bronze and Xander jumps up to go and talk to him. He asks if they need any help and Angel says no, leaving Xander stranded with this irritating woman. On the way back, Xander rants to his new found useless to car fetish girl. While ranting, he hits his car into Jack’s "car" (which we'll soon learn wasn't his car at all because he's into stealing cars. Man, Xander, you're with such good company!)

Buffy, Willow, and Giles are very nervous and discussing impending doom—then Giles complains about his lack of jelly donut. Willow tells him that Buffy ate three. Giles suggests Xander make another run and Buffy says no and that she wants to know he’s safe.

And safe is exactly where Xander is, at the hands of Jack with his friend “Katie.” Katie is very terrifying to Xander for some reason; she looks pretty nice to me….

I think Katie likes Xander

Jack says the difference between him and Xander is “fear, who has the least fear.” The police turn up next and Xander doesn’t rat him out. Jack then decide he likes Xander. Now the three of them (Xander, Jack, and car fetish girl) go to get “the boys” from the graveyard…from inside of their graves…because they are dead. This is the making of a really good night!

After the first dead guy rises, car fetish girl leaves in terror. I breathe a sigh of relief; I couldn't stand dealing with her much longer.

Giles goes to get some information from a brightly colored cloud….I don’t know which is more awesome, this or when Wesley gets information from a fast food place’s burger. No, I take that back. The burger was amazing.

       <

Xander runs into Giles and asks if they need help and he tells Xander to “stay out of trouble.” During this time, Buffy goes to Willy to find him beat up and she needs to call an ambulance.

Xander is now very much a part of this group and can’t find a way to escape from them. Just when it looks like he is going to be forced to make cakes with them all night, he sees Willow and runs over and she is very cryptic. She hugs Xander and says she loves him and then leaves. Jack comes back and tells the gang how Xander doesn’t feel a part of the group and they talk about initiating him. Xander: what do I have to do? Jack: you gotta die

Before they have the chance to kill him, Xander runs to his car and drives away. And he took all the cake making supplies with him, what a jerk!

While driving away, Xander runs into Faith fighting a demon and gives her a ride in his car. They both run up to her apartment to hide. Faith asks Xander to hold her while she puts her shoulder back into place. Then she says how the demon got her really wound up…

Faith:       “[…] A fight like that and no kill... I’m about ready to pop.”
Xander:   “Really? Pop?”
Faith:       “You up for it?”
Xander:   “Oh I’m up.” [Faith grabs his crotch.] “I’m suddenly very up. It’s just...um...I’ve never been up with people before.”
[Faith kisses him aggressively.]
Faith:       “Just relax. Take your pants off.”
Xander:   “Those two concepts are antithetical.”
[Faith removes his shirt, grabbing him and kissing him vigorously. When he starts to react in kind, she throws him on the bed, bounding after him like a wild animal. She straddles him and removes her own top.]
Faith: “Don’t worry, I’ll steer ya around the curves.”

Right after sleeping with him, she tosses him out, clothes in hand, and says “that was great, I have to shower” and closes the door on him.

Back at the library, Willow shoots Oz in order to make him go sleepy to keep him safe during the big evilness of the night.

After getting dressed, Xander goes back to the car and looks at the cake products.

Not cake mix

Xander tries thinking about the dead guys and bombs but his thoughts turn to “I can’t believe I just had sex.” he can’t focus and decides Buffy will know what to do.

Buffy is with Angel and they are fighting about how evil this upcoming evil is. Xander interrupts and decides not to ask because he sees it’s a bad time, before leaving though he asks if he can help to which both Buffy and Angel just stare at him.

lolz

Now Xander is on his own to figure out this bomb business while the others focus on the evilness. And apparently these dumb party guys know how to make a bomb pretty damn easily because the next seen shows a working bomb set for an hour, yay!

On the way to Giles to solve this bomb thing, he runs into the guys and grabs one of the guys and questions him while driving. From him, he finds out the bomb is in the boiler’s room at school. He tried asking how to diffuse it the guy is beheaded by a mailbox before he gets the chance.

This next scene is made of win. Everyone (Buffy, Angel, Giles, Willow, and Faith) are all staring nervously at some large demon while Xander races by in the background being chased by the dead guys.

Xander gets an axe and starts telling the guys that if they play with fire---and then they run away to which he yells “I WASN’T FINISHED! Note to self, less talk” lolz

Xander goes to the boiler room and finds the bomb. It has less than 2 minutes left and has no idea how to diffuse it. Jack shows up and fights Xander. Jack reintroduces Xander to Katie and threatens to do a lot of violent things to him. Xander questions whether he has time to do all of that in 49 seconds.

Xander asks Jack who has less fear while blocking him from the exit:

Xander:  I know what you're thinkin'. Can I get by him? Get up the stairs, out of the building, seconds ticking away... I don't love your chances.
Jack:  Then you'll die, too.
Xander:  (raises his eyebrows) Yeah, looks like. So I guess the question really is... who has less fear
Jack:  (tries to psyche Xander out) I'm not afraid to die. I'm already dead.
Xander:  Yeah, but this is different. Being blowed up isn't walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It's little bits being swept up by a janitor dead, and I don't think you're ready for that.
Jack:  Are you?
Xander:  (glances at the bomb, smiles thinly) I like the quiet.

With two seconds left, Jack gets scared and diffuses the bomb. “Good boy. I don’t think I want to be seeing you on campus anymore, Jack.”

After Xander leaves, Jack says he isn’t going anywhere—then opens the door to an angry Oz who tears him up.

Buffy, Willow, Oz, and Giles discuss the horribleness of the evil and last night. Willow: “no one will know how close it came to stopping, what we did” enter Xander. He says nothing about what happened and what he did. He walks away and sees Cordelia. She teases him and he just walks straight past her, smiling.

To conclude this post, I'm going to quote a paper I wrote for school last semester. I was writing a research paper on the importance of losing your virginity within the Buffyverse and found some really interesting quotes about this episode in particular. The quotes are cited and if anyone cares, I can post the titles of the articles and were I found them if you ask in the comments, otherwise I won't bore you with academic papers. Here's what I wrote about this episode and it's importance for Xander:

"A three-minute encounter transforms him forever. He still does not have super powers, he still is not a demon, but he has found a piece of his missing masculinity. (Cameron, 2007.)"By the end of the episode, Xander is even able to stop a dead classmate, brought back to life using dark magic, from setting off a bomb in the school using only his cool calm in the face of emanate danger to explain why he should stop the bomb. Paralleling  Xander’s experience to Buffy’s, it can be said that “while sex leaves Buffy ‘weakened, responsible for the destruction unleashed upon the world,” sex enables Xander to ‘face his crisis head-on, giving him the power to redeem himself and contain a similar type of destruction’ (Swain, 2010).”

-Sarah

Kali's Notes:
- The title of the episode refers to Zeppo Marx, who was the straight man among the Marx Brothers and long considered to be the most unexceptional member of the act (like Xander is in this and many other episodes).
- I get a kick out of this episode because we usually see everything from Buffy's point of view. There is this huge evil attempting to open up the Hellmouth and end the world, but that's only occuring in the backround to the main plot of AX's story. It makes the seriousness of their fight actually pretty funny since it's really only a sidenote.
- AX doesn't have any special powers or abilities, but beginning here AX starts to be important because he is the "heart" of the group.
- This show is phenomenal at doing the unexpected. Never in a million years did I think that AX would end up losing his virginity to Faith, especially in a way that was entirely meaningless (in the sense that they have no relationship before or after it). As Sarah said, it does give AX the courage to fight against these undead trouble-makers. Still, never saw it coming.
- AX comes close to redeeming himself in this episode, not because of how he saves everyone from being blown up, but the fact that he remains silent about it. This is something that he is proud of doing so he keeps it close to his heart and doesn't let anyone else know even if it would make him seem more like a hero. He definitely has a BAMF moment when he's asked about his fear of dying and just replies "I like the quiet." You are close to having your name back, but you're still an asshole so keep trying.
- Oh, and I have to say that the scene where Angel and Buffy are arguing and professing their love all super-serious and that makes it absolutely hilarious, especially when AX interupts.
- Favorite Line is Willow: Occasionally I am callous and strange. So am I, Willow, so am I.