BtVS Season two: School Hard & Inca Mummy Girl

in School Hard two new characters come to Sunnydale, making an extremely dramatic entrance. William the Bloody (aka Spike) and his eternal paramour Drucilla. their story is a long and twisting tale that's revealed over the course of the series. the salient points for this episode are: 1. Spike has, over his 200+ years, killed 2 slayers. 2. he, Dru and Angel have a history together, and 3. Drucilla is somewhat, shall we say, bugnuts.
Spike (James Marsters) and Drucilla (Juliet Landau) are the main villians of season two, along with... erm, a friend of theirs (more about him later), and between the three of them they make things tough for the Slayer.
much like Jenny Calendar, Spike & Dru were intended to be one shot characters, but were (and still are) so adored by the fans, they became solid citizens of the Buffyverse.
this is the episode i mentioned where Spike fries the "Annoying" One (as he calls him) while shouting "from now on we're going to have a little less ritual around here... and a little more fun." which is no doubt a line gleaned from one of the studio execs of the series.
Joyce (Buffy's mom, played by Kristine Sutherland. note: no relation to the actor Donald Sutherland, she got her stage name from her cat... which she named Donald after the actor) takes an active role in her daughter's slayer duties by whacking Spike in the head with an ax, telling him "no one lays a hand on my daughter." now we see where Buffy gets her moxie. also revealed in this episode we find out that Principal Snyder is just a little less clueless about what goes on at Sunnydale High than everyone thinks. after Spike and his vampire cohorts wreck parent teacher night he's seen speaking to someone, presumably the chief of police or possibly the head of the school board. together they decide telling the media it was a gang on PCP rather than the truth is a prudent idea. kinda makes you wonder just who all knows what's really going on in Sunnydale.

Giles Report: possibly one of the few episodes where no harm befalls Giles at all. though not for long.


Inca Mummy Girl is another episode of first appearances. two more significant characters show up, though one is much more subtle than the other.
first we have Oz (Seth Green) lead guitarist for the band Dingoes Ate My Baby. i first noticed Seth on a little watched show back around 1989 called Byrds of Paradise costarring with Jennifer Love Hewitt. even then, as young and unknown actors i could tell both of them were bound for stardom.
without revealing too much too soon, i can say that Oz is, from the first time he sees her dressed in her cute eskimo outfit, smitten with Willow. however they don't actually meet for 5 more episodes. like proverbial ships in the night the two keep crossing paths but somehow manage to keep missing each other.
also in this episode, Xander (once again) falls for the wrong girl, the title character Ampata (Ara Celi) aka Inca Mummy Girl who sucks the life out of anyone she kisses and leaves them a freezedried husk. this seems to be a trend for Xander all through the series, but we'll get into that later.
Giles Report: okay, Giles had his one episode to rest up from being conked on the noggin. in this episode Mummy Girl tries to strangle him, but is interupted by Buffy so she throws him into her mummy coffin sending him to lala-land for the rest of the scene.

earlier i mentioned that two new characters were added this episode. Oz being the main one and Jonathan (Danny Strong) being the second. however, when we first started watching the series, Jonathan was pretty much anonymous until season 3 when he takes a gun up into a tower in the episode "Earshot" (which was pre-impted at the time due to its resemblance to the Columbine incident, which occurred at about the same time). though occationally mentioned by name before that, Jonathan makes many more "cameo" appearances where he either has just one line or no lines at all. therefore, along with the Giles Report i'll now be doing the...

Jonathan Watch: in his debut episode appearance Jonathan gets taken backstage at the Bronze by Ampata, where he very nearly gets turned into dehydrated beef jerky. the reason i'm giving Jonathan his own spot here is because Danny Strong's portrayal is one of the funniest of the series. Danny himself is an extremely talented actor who has, in my opinion, star potential. plus, like looking for Alfred Hitchcock's appearances in his own movies, it's kinda fun.