Go Fish

Something is skinning the members of the Sunnydale High School Swim Team - who are winning this season for the first time in many years - and eating them alive, bones internal organs and all. Only the skin and clothes are left behind. Then Xander runs into the monster right after one of the killings. The monster looks as close as you can get to the Creature from the Black Lagoon without Universal Pictures being able to sue Warner Brothers.

So, Buffy decides to follow the surviving best member of the swim team around to see if the monster strikes again. That monster doesn't appear, but Angelus does and attempts to eat said swim team member as he leaves The Bronze. However, there is something revolting to Angelus about the guy's blood because he releases the guy and begins to spit out his blood. Complications ensue.

This episode has nothing to do with the character development of the main cast or the progression of the season story arc involving Angel/Angelus. Outside of the short appearance of Angelus trying to eat the swim team member, David Boreanaz is not even in this episode. It was obviously made just to fill the quota of 22 season episodes in the run up to the big season two finale.

That doesn't mean it's lacking any good points. There's Willow trying to scare Jonathan into confessing (the Scoobies think he may have conjured up the fish monster as revenge for the swim team members bullying him) and failing badly. And most importantly, Cordelia shows more empathy than I thought her capable of when she thinks that something bad has happened to Xander and she might have been the cause. Finally, there is Xander in speedos.

Sunnydale is a town with a school sitting on something that is basically both a sealed portal to Hell and a magnet for all sorts of evil creatures. Does a thing like that need attention? It does. And there is this system in place for humanity to secretly deal with such stuff. The system is old and goes like this. In every generation there is a girl destined to stand against the forces of darkness, a "slayer". She has two things to help her. First, physical strength you wouldn't expect from someone her size, or from any human, for that matter. Second, an experienced "watcher" meant to act as her teacher, one that does the research, not the fighting. Should a slayer be killed, another one will show up as fast as possible. With her life instantaneously and drastically altered. That's how Buffy Summers became the slayer. And there is something she has that makes her different from any other slayer. Not only does she have the strength and a watcher, she also has friends. And they prove vital. Now, with the second season drawing to an end, with the main villains having attempted something huge more than once already, and with an apparent another attempt just around the corner, something distracts Buffy and her company from the big baddies. They have been dealt with more than once and will be again. For now, though, they are in the shadow, plotting and preparing. But that does not mean the good guys can rest. In "Go Fish", the heroes face an unknown danger. But even so, the general thread of the season and the show thus far is solid. Not only is it not damaged, but used in a way that helps our heroes do their job.

The episode can be both scary and funny exactly at the right moments. The monster effects are satisfying. The creatures themselves prove more difficult to deal with than vampires. The importance of friendship and team work is once again pointed out. What else is pointed out and should be brought up here is how what you see is not necessarily the truth. If you're witness to an event, be careful. That event may be the result of a chain of other events resulting in you misunderstanding it all. Be careful and scientific! Isn't that what school is supposed to teach all of us?

It's tough to stick a monster episode toward the end of the season when we're dying for more Angel-Spike-Drusilla stuff. If this were a season 1 episode, it'd be one of the better ones, but it's a late season 2 episode, so its placement hurts it. But overall, I found it quite funny and fun and entertaining. Love the scene where Cordelia thinks Xander is a fish monster!

//Also, I think that this may be the only time that we see a vampire tasting drugs in someone's system. Why is that never mentioned again? Is Angelus tasting the monster-y fish thing that's about to emerge or the steroids themselves? If vampire's can really taste drugs, then it's a shame Spike doesn't test Buffy like that when she thinks that she's in a mental institution in season six's "Normal Again." Or when Riley's all pumped full of super-pills in season four's "The 'I' In Team." Just a thought.//

Actually, in "School Hard" Spike bragged that he'd been at Woodstock and fed of a flower person, and then spent the next six hours watching his hand move. Hm. This doesn't tell us if he TASTED the drugs or if he merely got affected by them. Perhaps it wasn't the taste of drugs that made Angelus spit out the blood, because, you know, maybe these swimmer boys had changed so much from the "drugs" that they no longer had human blood. Human blood, fish blood, pig blood... big difference.

This episode is nothing special, I would probably rate it a 6 but Willow's line "really? Me? I'll crack him like an egg" makes the whole episode. It's the little things :)