But, this episode is far from flawless. There's some pretty risky stuff in it. And, I think that's part of why I love it so much. There are some things on Buffy that I am quick to really not like because of its flaws, like, well, most of season 6. But there are some other things that I love in spite of the flaws, sometimes because of the flaws, like, well, most of season 7. This is one of those things.
Summary: School field trip to the zoo. We meet a bunch of mean kids. They start bullying a kid, and eventually drag him into the area for the hyenas, which has been cordoned off. Xander decides he's going to go be the big hero (almost certainly as a way to impress Buffy), and follows them in, but when Buffy and Willow try to follow after him they're cut off by a zoo employee who explains they've quarantined the hyenas, so don't go in there. Even if they call your name. Um.
Long story short, the mean kids and Xander end up getting possessed by hyena spirits. At first this just seems to manifest itself as acting weirdly - with the hair sniffing and the general being a dick and the laughing, dear god, the laughing. But it starts becoming more and more primal as it continues, until eventually the hyena-possessed kids eat a live pig. And then, as Xander is, as Buffy puts it, "trying his hand at felony sexual assault", the other kids are eating their principal. So those are things that happen.
Eventually they figure out that the zookeeper who quarantined the hyenas in the first place must have known about them, so they seek him out and try to figure out a way to exorcise the hyenas from the people. They come up with a plan, so Buffy goes to lead the hyenas to the zoo while Giles and Willow and Mr Zookeeper Guy get the place ready. Except it turns out that the whole reason that the kids got possessed by the hyena demon was because the Mr Zookeeper Guy left his tribal paint on the floor when he was trying to get possessed by hyenas. So Mr Zookeeper Guy becomes Mr Evil Zookeeper Guy, knocks out Giles, puts a knife to Willow's throat, and gets the hyena spirits into him. Then he gets pushed into a pit full of hungry hyenas and dies.
Yeah, it's dark and weird, and in some ways kinda goofy, but I just really like it. This might be one of those things where sometimes episodes just speak to people and no one else gets it - I know someone adores the episode No Place Like Home, which I didn't find to be particularly memorable - but I dunno. I just really like it, I think it's really well done. There are some fun moments...
Giles: Xander's taken to teasing the less fortunate?
Buffy: Uh huh.
Giles: And there's been a noticeable change in both clothing and demeanour?
Buffy: Yes.
Giles: And, well, otherwise all his spare time is spent lounging about with imbeciles.
Buffy: It's bad, isn't it?
Giles: It's devastating. He's turned into a sixteen year old boy. Of course you'll have to kill him.
and some sad moments, like when Xander starts being a total asshole to everyone, especially Willow, who's utterly in love with him. And the scary moments like uh, let me think, when they eat Principal Flutie. Because *shudder*.
And whenever I've seen everything about this episode, all anyone ever talks about is the thematic thing, it's a metaphor for bullying. Of course it is. But there's more to it than that. Because, how I read it in any case, it's not just a metaphor for bullying. It's that time, often taking place in high school, where you don't really know who your friends are anymore. The fact that Xander becomes this jerk ass-face who openly bullies Willow for the sake of popularity (under the influence of the hyena, of course), to me, it was speaking about that awful time when the friend group seems to be falling apart, and you're not sure who's there for you anymore. (What's that, you say, personal connections? Where?) What can I say, high school is hell. Or, alternatively, on a hellmouth.
Also, I think this is the first and last time we really see Xander go dark. Don't get me wrong, Xander has some pretty dark moments through the series - I'm not going to bring them all up, but trust me, everyone has dark moments on this show - but this is the only time we see Xander go full darkness (which, for the purposes of this thing, I will define as, "Knowingly attempting or committing acts that will have long-lasting and/or destructive, serious consequences, and not caring"). All the main characters save Buffy go full darkness at some point or another, but I find Xander's to be one of the most interesting, A) because it was so brief, and B) because it was so alien. And also because, more often than not, Xander's the one that ends up grounding people when they go full darkness.
And Nicholas Brendon (who plays Xander) did a good job with it, gotta hand it to him. Since Xander is essentially harmless comic relief, I'm appreciative of seeing an entirely different style of acting coming from him, and honestly, he was the most believable hyena person out of the lot of them.
What did bother me about this episode was that, they didn't really work hard to redeem Xander. This would be one of the most significant flaws of the episode. After Xander publicly humiliates Willow, and tries to sexually assault Buffy, he kinda gets off scot free because, supposedly, he doesn't remember anything that happened while the hyena was possessing him. Spoiler alert: he remembers everything.
He did get some redemption. The very moment he's himself and not a hyena, the first thing he does is attack the guy holding a knife to Willow's throat. I appreciated that. I liked the fact that in spite of the fact that he's on the ground - not a great position to be in no matter how you look at it - and there's this guy painted in tribal paint with a knife who just deliberately got himself possessed by a hyena, Xander leaps at him anyways. Because he's threatening Willow. And that's just unacceptable. I think their friendship's kind of adorable, especially in these first few seasons. Also, does Xander know how to NOT jump blindly into any situation? Don't think so. But, while this kind of resolves the plot between him and Willow, that whole thing between him and Buffy is still kind of a loose end that's never addressed again, which is kind of frustrating.
Especially considering that, much much much later on in the series, when Spike tries to sexually assault Buffy, they turn it into this huge thing. It wakes Spike up to the monster he is, he gets his soul because of that incident, and interestingly enough, no one reacts stronger to this than Xander. Take from that what you will, although that probably also has something to do with when Xander was nearly raped and killed by a psychotic Faith.
But my point is that in season 6 when it happens, it's properly addressed as the horrific thing that it is. In this episode, Xander's never redeemed, and the audience is supposed to just kind of forget about it and continue on as if nothing happened. There are a few reasons for this, I think: A) the first few seasons of Buffy were highly... fantastical. Everything was a metaphor for something else, and the villains were all monsters who were clearly monsters and totally unambiguous in their evilness and so were easily slain. In season 6, the entire season is about the pain of living in real life, or as close to real life as a show about vampires can be. So when it happens then, there's no metaphor or layers to look at, it's all right there, and it's awful and painful to watch and we hate it. B) Xander was under the influence of a demon, and so more easily forgiven. Spike was Spike, under the influence of nothing save a few drinks maybe, no more (or less) evil than he has been since the beginning, the exact same Spike who we grew to love through the seasons, and so there was no one else to blame. But what people seem to overlook is that Xander did it because of the pre-existing feelings he had towards Buffy. The hyena was in control, but it was running on fuel that was already there. Now, I still am reluctant to blame Xander, because we all know that he would never ever under any circumstances do that if he were the one in control, and I don't think the fact that he had feelings of lust is a horrible thing, since it's natural and pretty much uncontrollable, especially in a teenage boy. I'm just saying that it didn't come from nowhere. Which, don't get me wrong, there is no one who loves Xander more than I do, but he's in no way totally innocent. Especially since, and here we come back to my point, he never actually apologizes, even. That is what ultimately irritates me about this whole thing, is that it never gets addressed, not even in a simple, "About what happened..." kind of way.
And yet... I still like this episode.
I appreciated the fact that it was so daring with its subject matter. Not a whole lot of shows would be willing to get into sexual assault in the sixth episode of the series. And also the cannabalism. Eating the principal.
Which, I mean, yeah, that's gross, but more importantly, wow, I was scared. Up 'til then the issue hadn't been much more than, "Hey, look, the jerks who are known for acting like jerks are acting like jerks," so it was necessary for them to raise the stakes. And eating the principal accomplished that. Like, did it ever. Brr, shivers. It's not just scary in the subject matter, it's jarring, because here was Principal Flutie, this recurring character who didn't do very much except try a little too hard to relate with the students, and now he won't be recurring anymore. Farewell, Flutie, we hardly knew ye. Also, this marks the entrance of Principal Snyder, who I personally cannot wait to start despising again.
Interestingly, I found that as I researched this episode a little bit, it turns out that this episode had been completely rewritten before they shot it. The original shooting script is just about unrecognizable from the actual episode. And it kinda shows in some subtle, but noticeable things. For instance, Mr. Zookeeper Guy talks about the hyenas calling people's names in order to lure them out. In the episode, they use this as an, "Okay, there's something Hellmouth-y going on here" and not much else, but in the actual shooting script, they really use it. Lots of eerie calling of names is written in there to connect it to the initial spiel. It happens once in the actual episode, and that's more of a taunt than a mystical luring thingy.
What they do use, however, is the hyena laughter. Which works for me. Brr, creepy. Also the foreboding african drums helped.
What else.... oh yes! Giles gets knocked out in this episode. This is the first in a long line of times Giles gets knocked out. As Cordelia once put it:
Cordelia: How many times have you been knocked out, anyway? I swear, one of these times you're going to wake up in a coma.
Giles: Wake up in a....? Oh nevermind.
Also, at the end. Xander claims he doesn't remember anything he did when he was a hyena, and asks if he did anything else "embarrassing" besides eat a live pig. Buffy chooses not to get into the whole sexual assault thing, and they part ways, off to class. Giles approaches Xander, and...
Giles: I've been reading up on my, uh, animal possession, and I cannot find anything anywhere about memory loss afterwards.
Xander: Did you tell them that?
Giles: Your secret dies with me.
Xander: Shoot me, stuff me, mount me.
First of all, let's just forget about the fact that they're deliberately ignoring kind of an important issue here, 'cause I've ranted about that enough. Secondly, I'm still not sure I understand that last comment. I mean, I get it, like the context and what it therefore probably means, but still.
Thirdly, I read that exchange completely differently on the rewatch. The first time I watched it I could not, for the life of me, understand Giles's intentions here. Is he just throwing Xander a bone? Holding something over his head? I mean, these are two characters who are both on the show from the beginning and with it to the end, and yet they never have a really defined relationship. Giles is Buffy's father (figuratively speaking), Willow's magic mentor, and any number of other things to the other characters, but Xander? Xander, who is not an intellectual, who has little to no knowledge of the supernatural, who does not have super powers of any kind and never gains any, who is constantly making jokes about demons and evil that should probably be taken kinda seriously, you can see how there might not be so much of a connection.
Which is why I still couldn't figure out what Giles meant by this exchange when it happened even on the rewatch UNTIL the camera cut back to Giles for a second, and he was wearing this expression.
And suddenly I went "Oh, this IS a fatherly thing!" Which sort of makes it a little better because, the only way I read this, Giles is making a conscious decision to not condemn Xander. The only reason Giles would ever make this decision is because he believes that the things Xander did while being inhabited by a demon are not his fault. It's been shown time and time again that if Xander does something particularly idiotic, Giles has absolutely no problem telling him so in the most venomous tone he can muster, which, by the way, is pretty friggin' venomous. So the fact that he doesn't, in spite of all the number of horrible things Xander did while he was a hyena says to me that Giles doesn't want to put him in a position where he's held responsible for things a demon did, and more importantly to me, that he does see Xander in the same way he sees the other Scoobies - he... legitimately cares about him. This is exciting for me, because there is not a huge pile of evidence that suggests that Giles thinks of Xander as anything more than an obligatory nuisance, and it makes me extremely happy to see something that says otherwise.
Amazing what we can glean from about three seconds of screen time of one facial expression.
I still think they dealt with the assault rather badly, but at the very least, I now see the purpose of their decision to just kind of leave it be.
Can I talk about how much Cordelia was NOT in this episode? Because the episode was literally about bitchiness. HOW WAS SHE NOT THE STAR. I mean, sure, Cordelia's brand of being a jerk is a hundred times subtler, if a hundred times more biting, but STILL. Also, Cordelia's just great, in general, and I miss her when she's not there.
Also, Willow grows some balls. Figuratively. Basically, hyena-possessed Xander is trying to essentially sweet-talk Willow into letting him out of the book cage (which comes in quite handy on this show - it's where they later put Oz when he changes into a wolf during the full moon). Then, as he sweet talks her, he makes this sudden vicious grab for her, which she steps out of the way of just in time.
Xander: If I'm so dangerous, why'd she leave you alone with me?
Willow: 'Cause I asked her to.
Xander: Why?
Willow: 'Cause I know you better than she does... and I wanted to be here to see if.... you were still you.
Xander: You know I am. Look at me. Look.
Willow: Xander...
(Xander makes his vicious grab that she dodges)
Willow: Now I know.
OH SNAP
Now, I gotta say. This was a scene that I think was better in the pre-rewritten version. In the version that they shot and was aired, Xander just freaks out and starts screaming at her to let him out. Which, yeah, okay, that's decidedly not Xander, which is shivers-y. But in the original shooting script, he becomes a lot more sly, and a lot more cruel, which is in turn a lot more interesting. To me, anyhow.
That's all I've got for you today. Until next time, friends.
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