Here is the Hellmouth Podcast Episode for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series Season 2 Episode 12 – Bad Eggs. (mp3 version here)

It’s a make-out fest in this episode.

We get a dose of Sex Ed

Parenting Woes

and the dreaded word Responsibility…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:39 — 18.2MB)

HMPC 0212 “Bad Eggs”  – Buffy The Vampire Slayer

• Welcome to the Hellmouth Podcast for the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Series, Season 2 Episode 12 titled “Bad Eggs”
• I want to quickly remind everyone about all of the ways that you can be a part of the Hellmouth Podcast.
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• Horrible University
• So let’s get to the episode recap finally, shall we
• This episode is all about three things: parenting, responsibility and making out. Maybe I got the order of those wrong, it should probably be making out, making out, and how making out leads to parenting and responsibility.
• Let’s start with responsibility
  • Buffy at the mall with Joyce is supposed to pick up a dress for her mom but instead meets Lyle Gorch one of my favorite guest vampires in the series.
  • The best thing for me about Lyle Gorch is that he comes across as this big tough guy but always ends up running away like a ninny halfway through a fight.
  • Needless to say, no dress was picked up and Joyce lectures Buffy about responsibility.
• Don’t know what goes on in your head?
  • Saving the world from vampires?
  • Blank stare
• Make Out #1 – Xander and Cordelia kissing in the closet
  • Cordelia doesn’t want anyone to know about the two of them together.
  • Physically they can’t resist each other.
  • Why don’t they want anyone else to know about each other?
• Sex talk in class
  • Willow is obviously unsettled by the discussion as I would imagine most high school students can tend to be when having a sex talk with a teacher and in front of their peers.
  • Pregnancy finally comes up as a consequence of teenage sex
  • Class is split into parenting teams and is given an egg to take care of.
  • So here is one of the parenting elements of the show. The first being the interactions with Buffy and her mom, like I said Joyce is a big role in this episode.
• Buffy is in the library
  • Buffy skipped class so she gets to be a single egg parent.
  • Giles has found Lyle Gorch and his brother Tector in his books, they are violent but not very smart.
• Make-out #2Angel and Buffy in the cemetery kissing very similar to Xander and Cordelia
• Buffy is at home taking care of her egg.
  • She has named her egg Egbert
  • While Buffy sleeps, Egbert hatches sort of
  • Creepy little lobster tentacle thing which we find out later is the hatchling of a prehistoric monster called a bezoar and it reaches for Buffy
  • Sits on her face and seems to feed off of her.
• In the library
  • Giles comes out of the stacks and see Xander, Willow, Buffy being mopey, except for Xander – Xander has boiled his egg
  • No Gorches on the hunt last night
  • Cordelia is full of life as well, I assume that her class partner had the egg the night before.
  • Cordelia wants Xander to help her search for Mr. Whitmore in a closet.
• Make out #4 Again that night Buffy and Angel are kissing in the cemetery
  • Buffy talks to Angel about her egg problems of parenting
  • She talks about having kids one day
  • Angel says he can’t have kids
  • Buffy plays it off as no big deal
  • Angel asks if she doesn’t think about the future?
  • She says no, when she looks at the future, all she sees is him.
  • He feels the same way.
  • Make out #4 More kissing
  • Tombstone, in loving memory… why?
• Buffy comes back in her room late that night to find Egbert pseudo-hatching again.
  • Creepy little scorpion lobster thingy jumps out of the egg and runs under the bed.
  • Drops on Buffy she throws it and tracks it, stabs it
  • She calls Willow to make sure she’s ok
  • Willow has already been zombiefied and  has a void look on her face.
  • Joyce comes in and sees Buffy on the phone and dressed
  • Thinks she was going out and grounds her – parenting moment here
• Xander is at school and needs a snack
  • Cracks his hard boiled egg and
  • Xander freaks when he sees his egg
  • Willow says to bring the egg to the lab and she will help Giles analyze it
  • In the lab Cordelia’s egg attaches through the Teddy Bear backpack
  • Willow mentions the mother bezoar
  • Cordelia and Willow attack Xander and Buffy and lock them in a closet
• Joyce comes to school to find Buffy.
  • She looks in the library and finds Giles
  • Giles takes a creepy scorpion thingy and sticks it on Joyce’s back and then they like the other zombies head to the basement.
• Buffy and Xander wake up in the closet
  • They had left Buffy and Xander in the closet with two eggs
  • Buffy smashes them
• Conveniently Giles had already found the Bezoar in a book and had it laying out on the counter in the library.
• The zombie kids have dug up the bezoar and are harvesting her eggs, really big creepy thing.
• Jonathan makes an appearance in the hallway he has been zombiefied.
  • Buffy and Xander follow him to momma bear
  • Buffy goes to get a weapon
  • Xander goes to stop the spreading of the eggs
  • Buffy finds a weapon and the Gorch brothers
  • Hijinks ensue
  • Great moment where Xander punches Cordelia
  • Bezoar grabs Tector
  • Drags him underground and eats him.
  • Buffy gets dragged under as well but she has a weapon and kills the Bezoar
  • All the creepy crawlies fall off and all the people pass out.
  • Lyle runs away again like a ninny.
• Cool moment Buffy covered in goo crawling out of the bezoar.
• The story Giles is spreading is that it was a gas leak
  • Everyone hit Xander
  • Joyce is confused but ok
• Make out number what are we up to now like 7, feels like more than that. More kissing, Buffy kissing Angel out the window
• End Episode.
• Rate the episode
  • Bonus point for Xander punching Cordelia, not that I at all condone hitting women. That is far from the case but the whole scene when she hits him and he says oww you hit my bump.
  • So I guess it loses a point for the same scene
  • Bonus point for the introduction of Lyle and Tector
  • Bonus point for the sex ed class memories
  • Bonus point for the cool way Buffy climbs out of the Bezoar looking very menacing and cool
  • Lose a point for No Oz in this episode because I think he could have had some great lines about the egg experiment.
  • Episode starts at a 7 after the bonus points it is a 9
• Listener Emails
  • Bob – I actually enjoyed this episode of the podcast quite a bit. Like you, I can’t stand Ted,  but I watch every episode before doing the edit to get an idea of where to place the images, so I subjected myself to Ted/Bad Eggs on a long train ride to visit relatives.  I laughed myself silly listening to your introduction to the episode, and yes, I hated it despite being a John Ritter fan also.When I try to pick my favorite season, season 2 has some incredible high spots. The introduction  of Spike and Drusilla takes the series to another level, and the emotional wallops and shock value of Surprise/Innocence, Passion, and Becoming are hard to match, particularly as we didn’t know what Joss was capable of the first time through the series, but Ted shows the inconsistency of this season.In hindsight, knowing Joss, Jenny’s reconciling with Giles obviously meant trouble, as with Willow/Oz. Willow/Tara, etc. I think that Buffy in this ep is showing a lot of her true character, she is often childish, bratty, jealous, and self-centered. When Buffy fans pick their favorite character, it is rarely Buffy, and I think there is a reason for this.
  • Kellie – I must respectfully disagree with the majority of your opinions regarding the episode “Ted.” That being said, however, I still really enjoyed hearing your perspective on the episode. Ted and Bad Eggs are actually two of my favorite season 2 episodes. I am aware that this puts me in the minority camp where the fandom is concerned. I agree with your assessment that most of the scooby gang was rather self-centered in this episode. Actually, in the many times I have watched this episode I have never really thought about in that way, but after thinking about it I see that you are totally spot on with your opinion of everyone’s attitudes this episode. Where I must disagree with you, however, is the point in the podcast where you said that you felt Buffy showed no remorse for killing Ted and that she didn’t seem to care. This statement is where I have to question whether you and I were watching the same episode. When Buffy thought that Ted was a human being, she was deeply troubled over having killed him. So despondent in fact that she couldn’t bear to be at school or around her friends. Not to mention how badly she felt over what it was doing to her mother. I would even go as far as to say that it affected her slayer duties as well. If you remember, that is the reason that Giles got shot with the crossbow in the first place, because he was going on patrol in Buffy’s absence. This is just my opinion, of course, but these to me don’t seem like the actions of a young girl being flippant about taking a man’s life. I could clearly see the emotional turmoil she was in because of it. If you remember, she even said to Xander, “I’m the slayer, I had no right to hit him like that.” This to me was not someone making excuses for her actions, but stepping up and taking responsibility for them. Buffy knew there was a possibility she would go to jail for killing Ted, and yet she was willing to stay and face the consequences because she knew that what she did was wrong and she wouldn’t be able to live with herself otherwise. This is the same Buffy who was so distraught over Faith accidentally killing the deputy mayor in the alley in season 3. Faith had many rationalizations for why his death wasn’t a big deal, but if you remember, Buffy wouldn’t take the bait. My point is, for Buffy, the taking of a human life has always been a serious matter. This is part of what makes Buffy the hero that she is, and is part of why we love her so much. I wouldn’t be able to respect her as much as I do otherwise. Her friends never gave up faith in her, and it turns out in the end that they were right. Perhaps we should model that same behavior and try to have more faith in our slayer as well. hopefully I have succeeded in giving you a new perspective to consider. That is what makes this podcast so fun, the fact that we can come together and debate and share opinions about something we all love. Looking forward to the next episode.
  • I have to admit that Kellie and I emailed back and forth about this and I stand before you ashamed and apologetic. I love Buffy, the character. She really is a hero and in spite of the fact that I criticize her frequently it is only to highlight what I consider to be one of the most interesting elements of the show and that is the flawed hero. But Kellie is completely right. I made some harsh judgements of Buffy in the Hellish podcast and I should have shown a little more faith in our slayer. For that I ask for your forgiveness Hellmouth Podcast listeners.
  • *   *   *
    You raised some questions in the What’s My Line? edition about the Watchers Council:
    “Why didn’t the Council know Buffy was alive?” and “Why didn’t they warn Giles that Kendra was on her way?”
    I’ve heard speculation on other podcasts about the nature of the Council and there seem to be a lot of questions about what they do and how they go about their business.  As speculation breeds speculation, here we go:

    In the episode Get It Done (7-15), we learn that the first Slayer was created by the Shadow Men who, with magic, instilled an essence of demon in a very young girl.  So, why a young girl?   the Shadow Men would realize that endowing a human with demonic power might cause more trouble than it solves and they would want to retain as much control as possible.  Thus, they would’ve chosen someone who they judged to be most easily controlled, someone culturally and historically subservient, someone with the habit of submission, of yielding to dominance:  a young girl (which suggests they had no daughters of their own – submissive? – yeah, right).  And they’d only risk creating the one.
    As time wore on, the Shadow Men would have morphed into an Institution which would give itself an impressive name and formulate all manner of protocols and routines, rules and hierarchies.  Eventually it becomes, in the English language, the Watchers Council.
    - we wind up with some people taking on a variety of command roles.  They are charged with planning and coordinating the disparate activities of the guys on the front line and, because the mission grows more complex every day, the hierarchical organization also grows more complex.  And once you have a bureaucracy, you find that the bureaucracy only grows

  • thus we have a divide between the field operatives who do the real work and the desk-jockeys who do the make-work.  That divide has two consequences:  1. People at HQ lose any real understanding of what goes on in the field and, 2. Front-line ops learn to distrust headquarters
  • It’s discouraging constantly having to answer to people who don’t understand that their schemes and directives and policies are too rigid or unrealistic to be practical and who won’t accept critical feedback or who divert your suggestions into a series of Committees where they warp into nonsense.
  • And so we come to the modern incarnation of the Watchers Council of Great Britain.   They also seem to have a way to identify those who are candidates for activation, though not every Potential Slayer is known beforehand (or at least contact is not made with every one).
    • My discussion about bloodline
  • The question is, does Zabuto send Kendra purely on his own initiative or does he consult the head office and does the Council arrange things?  She stows away in the cargo hold of a jetliner so, evidently, nobody booked her flight or set up an itinerary with arrangements for accommodation and meals.  I suspect that Zabuto took her to the Kingston airport and they improvised a plan for sneaking aboard
  • For him to communicate with London and wait for their approval seems at odds with the sense of urgency for Kendra’s mission.  Probably he sent her and then called in to advise someone of the project, and who knows how long it would take for that information to percolate up to whoever might be authorized to file the paperwork necessary to place a call to Giles?  And there are examples throughout the series indicating that the Council holds its counsel pretty close to the chest, even before they fire Giles, so that Kendra arriving unannounced is credible.
  • When Buffy drowns and is revived in Prophecy Girl (1-12), would Giles even file a report beyond entering the event in his diary?  If he did, how far up through the bureaucracy would the information go?  The event happened in late May or early June of 1997; five months later, Kendra drops into town and it’s then that Giles realizes that Buffy’s flirtation with death was rather more significant than anybody guessed.  Imagine Sam Zabuto in June ringing London: “Say there fellas, I seem to have an active Slayer on me hands all of a sudden.  What’s the story?”  Notice how nobody calls to ask Giles, “See here, any significant deaths lately?”
• Listener Voicemail
  • Jenny’s voicemail
• Thanks to everyone for tuning into another episode of the Hellmouth Podcast.
  • Remember www.hellmouthpodcast.com
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  • See you guys next time for the episode titled “Surprise” that’s right folks we have reached one of the most pivotal episodes in the series. To say that I am excited about the next episode of the podcast is an understatement. So be looking forward to that, thanks everybody, Stay Classy Sunnydale.

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