Blog 13: Teacher's Pet

The beginning of the fourth episode in season 1, ‘Teacher’s Pet” begins abruptly with Xander saving Buffy from a vampire for a twist. Throughout all the previous episodes the other characters seemed virtually powerless to fighting other vampires. After this he even more abruptly plays a guitar solo and kisses Buffy. The viewer finds out this is all a dream and I really like this technique for an intro they used. In the previous episodes the introductions seemed to much more foreshadow, quite clearly, what would be the conflict and resolution throughout the episodes. So I was already more interested than in previous episodes.
Quickly though, the viewer is introduced to what is obviously the antagonist in this epsidoe, a new teacher ‘Natalie French’. She seems to have an unorthodox fascination with Praying Mantis’ - and although this may not be obvious - I quickly inferred that she would be a Praying Mantis like monster which would then feed on individuals throughout the episode, unless Buffy could save them. My theory became more obvious as there was an obvious over exaggerated attraction from all the young boys to this new teach ‘Miss French’.
The next part of the episode followed the same formula as the previous episodes where Buffy encounters incidents in which she confirms the antagonist, but there is no other character there to confirm it.
She identifies this monster as the “She-Mantis”, which does indeed prey on young boys to eat, much like a vampire. They use then a character introduced earlier, which is a vampire. Even this vampire fears the Praying Mantis, which I though was odd. As the title of the show is focused around Vampires, and they still fear the next monster to be introduced in the episode.
The other unique attribute of this episode was the interaction between the character Angel and Buffy. Angel gives Buffy another cryptic warning, and also offers her him his jacket. After this there are several clues that Buffy has an attraction to this character Angel.