Inca Mummy Girl

_*½

Buffy's mother takes in a foreign exchange student who turns out to be more than she appears, but will Buffy and Willow be able to uncover the truth behind her past before Xander falls in love with her?

The review for "School Hard" can be read here.

It's always difficult for Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends to induct someone new into their group, not necessarily through their inability to relate to those that are new, but due to the dangerous nature of their lives. What's worse is when Buffy finds herself empathizing with someone's situation, only to later have to face them on the battle field.

The depiction of teenage jealousy in this episode feels very authentic, starting with Xander's (Nicholas Brendon) complaints when he learns that Buffy's cultural exchange student is male, worried that having another man in her life will lower his own chances of getting closer to Buffy, but feeling completely different about the subject when Ampata (Ara Celi) is revealed as a beautiful young woman. Willow (Alyson Hannigan), on the other hand, has the complete opposite journey, feeling very open to the idea of Buffy's male student and, on meeting the female in his place, feeling completely threatened in regards to how Xander treats her. Romantic triangles in television often are tiresome, and this one is no exception, but the way they treat each other feels very real given who they are and how they relate to one another, and it's refreshing to see that they react accordingly to their previously established emotions.

Buffy has great empathy for Ampata's situation, herself being chosen for a higher calling that very directly involves her own death. On learning that Ampata was a teenage princess, chosen as an offering to the Gods and buried alive in a tomb for all eternity, she notes that "[Ampata] was just a girl and she had her life taken away from her," questioning how different her own life might be were she not forced to fight vampires and demons every night. At no point does Buffy try to depict Ampata completely as a villain, but she never allows her circumstances to act as an excuse for her actions; Buffy, better than anyone, understands that a higher calling, a sworn duty, can be incredibly oppressive, and while she herself has been able to carry on with a semi-normal life, Ampata was robbed of that entirely, and to write her off as a monster would ignore the fact that she's a victim of circumstance and is simply trying to do what she has to in order to survive, feeling remorse over the fact that she needs to kill her peers.

At one point Buffy and Xander have a discussion about Xander's feelings for Willow, Buffy encouraging him to pursue a relationship with her, and as Xander explains why he doesn't feel in any way attracted to her, Willow walks in only to feel more rejected than she already had. The close of the previous season did a fairly capable job of closing the romantic tension between these characters, and it seems as though the writers are reaching in their efforts to create interest between these characters when they should have moved on by this point.

Ampata and Buffy are shown to be sharing a room, but the fact of the matter is that Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) had been expecting a boy as her exchange student. It's incredibly unlikely that Joyce would have had her daughter sharing a room with a strange boy, and it's strange, given how small Buffy's room is, that they would go to the trouble of moving Ampata's bed into her room when a separate room would already have been prepared. It makes no sense given any stretch of logic, and is necessary only narratively in order to have Buffy discover Ampata's secret. This may be a small detail, but it's incredibly distracting in the bigger picture, and it only detracts from an already lackluster outing.

It would be facetious to claim that anyone here is giving their best efforts, but it's likely that everyone involved is doing what they can with the material they've been given. There are certainly moments when a good performance shines through, but there are so many cringe-worthy and embarrassing deliveries throughout the hour that no one's acting gets a pass here.

Ellen S. Pressman directs this episode with what appears to be a lack of effort, and her misstep here appears to have infected those working for her. First of all, the effects in this episode, especially those in relation to the mummy, are terrible, and they become more of a distraction than they would have were they simply unused. The actors seem largely lost throughout the story, with Ampata (Samuel Jacobs) hearing his name but not calling back, the band clearly having no idea how to play their instruments, and everyone questioning the life choices that lead them to this script. The pacing here is incredibly stilted, with scenes thrown into the mix for no real purpose, including the introduction of Seth Green's character and the scene of Xander and Ampata eating Twinkies, and it feels like there's a lot of filler here. There are a bunch of cutaways to other story lines with extremely different tones that serve only to slow down the narrative, only to cut back to the previous scene creating a large distraction from the story being told. There's a montage of Xander and Ampata dancing that is likely meant to show their growing attraction, but is instead slow and without purpose.

Written by both Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer, this script has something of a split personality, constantly incapable of deciding what story it wants to tell. The plot is poorly executed here, and when it's a joke that leads the characters to the meat of the episode, it's clear that the narrative structure is in danger of collapse; Xander jokes that one of the students awakened the mummy, with Willow and Buffy adding that it rose from it's tomb and attacked him, only to realize that that is, indeed, exactly what happened, but it's poorly delivered from all parties and clearly written as a way to speed along the plot because the writers couldn't figure out how to organically connect their first act to their second.

Though they never meet in this episode, it's clear that Oz (Green) will help Willow get over her unrequited feelings for Xander, and while Xander's jealousy over the men in Buffy's life seems as strong as ever, his ability to displace his feelings for her onto other women indicates that he, too, may soon move on.

The review for "Reptile Boy" will be posted on January 2nd.