Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"Where The Wild Things Are"

Airdate: April 25, 2000

I should've known better. I saw the promo last week for "Where The Wild Things Are" and said to myself, "Finally, Self, another scary episode! Something to be creeped out by! A return to the Buffy I knew and loved!" As it turns out, whoever put together the "Where The Wild Things Are" commercials took their cue from the Mission To Mars advertising crew and learned a valuable lesson: If your product sucks, at least package it well. I'd be much happier watching the commercial for "Where The Wild Things Are" than watching the episode again.

In this new episode of The Buffy and Riley Snugglebunny Hour -- er, I mean, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the entire plot (such as it is) is triggered by Buffy and Riley suddenly becoming crazed sex maniacs. They have sex a lot in the Lowell House (where Riley lives), which awakens some sort of poltergeist. The Lowell House was formerly a home for children, and apparently the matron was a bit stern about the youths suppressing their sexuality, and somehow this manifested itself in a bunch of evil.

Anyway, all the sex makes the house angry and hungry and probably a little jealous. So when Buffy and Riley go to make the beast with two backs during a party, it locks them up in their room and compels them to keep having sex so it can feed off of the energy they're producing. And if the rest of the gang doesn't save them, they'll die.

But what a way to go, right?

Anyway, there's a bunch of strangeness, some vines, a game of spin the bottle, an orgasm wall, and a bunch of weird-ass little kids. In an attempt to free Buffy and Riley from their... uh... whatever, Tara, Willow, and Giles distract the poltergeists with a spell while Xander attempts to hack through the Sleeping Beauty-style vinery to get to the bedroom. Then finally he opens the door, the spell is apparently broken, and thus proceeds what is quite possibly the biggest anti-climax in the series' history that leaves you saying, "It's over? Okay, so... what in the hell was that?"

The episode's high points included Xander and Anya's sort-of-break-up, Spike getting his kicks by mugging kids outside the Bronze, a bout of bonding between Spike and Anya, and a lovely rendition of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes", as performed by our own Anthony Stewart Head, who just happens to be one hell of a multi-talented guy. The fact that Giles singing had nothing to do with the "plot" is incidental, really, because that part was actually entertaining.

Unfortunately, the up sides of the episode are overwhelmingly outweighed by the deluge of lameness. Spike quickly and inexplicably gets past the fact that the Initiative will do worse than neuter him if he's caught again, and he wanders around the party at Lowell House -- soldier-boy central -- with little regard for his safety, putting his ass on the line, and it's far too fine an ass to risk like that. One of the walls in Lowell House spontaneously begins granting free orgasms... oh, and when I have my own home built, remind me to have those orgasm walls installed in every room.

Anya gets a sharp vine run right through her hand -- which I hope is foreshadowing on some demon-related plot point, because she didn't seem to feel much pain there. Tara has suddenly become a full-fledged Scooby, which I'm betting happened during the New Episode Drought, which subjected us to reruns. (But I don't like to talk about those dark days.) Whatever problems Faith may have caused between Buffy and Riley in "Who Are You" are suddenly gone, too, and for some reason they chose this time to become super-sex-fiends.

In fact, Buffy and Riley did almost nothing but shag like crazed bunnies on PCP through the entire episode. It was a little nauseating even to me, and I like Buffy and Riley. Sort of. Anyway, it got old fast and got very boring even faster. You know you're in trouble when what plot you have is based around two main characters having sex and not being able to stop.

So what did we learn from all this? Well, the opening scenes showed us that Buffy apparently can't handle slaying on her own anymore and needs her snugglybear to come along and help. Now we know that Giles can sing. We know that Xander and Anya have enough sex to make a nympho madly jealous. We know that Buffy and Riley have uncontrollable hormones. (Though you'd think she would've gotten a lot of practice in restraint with the whole Angel thing.) We know that Spike suffers from random bouts of stupidity. And we know now, once and for all, that we should never, ever get our hopes up for an episode just because the commercial's cool.

-- Lisa Kincaid

Buffy the Vampire Slayer airs at 8pm EST, Tuesdays on the WB.

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