Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S1/E06 The Pack

Series:Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode: Season 1, Episode 6 Title: "The Pack" Previous: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Next: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Recapper: onesmallpigeon

"Willow: Why couldn't Xander be possessed by a puppy? Or some ducks?"

We open on a school field trip at the zoo. Buffy is harassed by four mean kids, but she brushes them off. The mean kids move on to harass some nice but nerdy kid, but Principal Flutie breaks it up. The mean kids decide to take the nerd to visit the hyenas, who are off limits for some reason. Xander goes after them to try to rescue him, but Buffy and Willow get stopped from entering the Hyena cage by some creepy zookeeper who says some creepy stuff about hyenas. Then the mean kids and Xander look into the green glowy eyes of the quarantined hyenas and get possessed by them. This all has something to do with Africa, as we learn from the insistent African-sounding soundtrack that goes on whenever the hyenas are around.

Xander doesn't seem quite right after that. First off, he doesn't like croissants anymore, and also he is mean to Willow and laughs at mean jokes. He seems to be in with the mean kids now, which is also very un-Xander. It seems that the metaphor might be that mean cliques act like a pack of hyenas, preying on the weak. There follows an epic dodgeball scene and an adorable scene where Buffy holds a piglet, but soon the episode goes from there to quite dark actually. The pack surrounds and eats the adorable piglet, and then Xander goes after Buffy and tries to rape her (she hits him in the head with a desk.) After that, the pack (minus Xander) gets sent to the principal's office where they eat the principal.

Let me repeat that. They. Eat. The. Principal.

Buffy, Willow, and Giles enlist the zookeeper's help to transpossess the students(put the hyena back in the animals rather than the humans) and Buffy lures the pack back to the zoo. However, the zookeeper turns out to be planning to take the spirits into his own body. He knocks out and hides Giles, performs the ritual(with a knife at Willow's throat) and then nearly rips Willow's throat out. Xander tackles him and the zookeeper is thrown into the hyena enclosure. They haven't been fed.

Later, Xander asks the girls what he did while possessed and freaks out at the idea of eating the piglet, and is relieved to hear he was uninvolved in eating the principal. Buffy decides not to tell him about the Attempted Rape. Once the girls are gone, Giles arrives and tells Xander that he can't find any record of post-possession memory loss, then promises that the secret is safe with him.

Tropes
"Willow: Oh, my God, Xander! What happened? Buffy: I hit him. Willow: With what? Buffy: A desk."
 * Are You Insane?: Flutie's Famous Last Words.
 * Armor-Piercing Question / It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Buffy brushes off the taunts of the mean kids, but Rhonda's "Were you this popular at your old school? Before you got kicked out?" comment clearly hits home.
 * Attempted Rape: Hyena!Xander on Buffy, unfortunately. She fights him off.
 * Bait and Switch Comment: Hyena!Xander appears to be making a Love Confession to Willow, but then he cruelly humiliates her.
 * Battle Discretion Shot: Buffy drags in an unconscious Hyena!Xander.

"Giles: Xander's taken to teasing the less fortunate? Buffy: Uh-huh. Giles: And, there's been a noticeable change in both clothing and demeanor? Buffy: Yes. Giles: And, well, otherwise all his spare time is spent lounging about with imbeciles. Buffy: It's bad, isn't it. Giles: It's devastating. He's turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. Course, you'll have to kill him."
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?

"Giles: I've been reading up on my animal possession and I cannot find anything anywhere about memory loss afterward." Xander: Did you tell them that? Giles: Your secret dies with me. Xander: Shoot me, stuff me, mount me."
 * Evil Detecting Pig: Herbert.
 * Exit, Pursued by a Bear
 * Faking Amnesia: After Buffy and Willow save him, Xander tells them that he can't remember a thing and hopes he didn't do anything "too embarrassing". Giles, however, sees right through it.

"Buffy: I cannot believe that you, of all people, are trying to Scully me. There is something supernatural at work here."
 * Fetish Fuel: Hyena!Xander
 * Gory Discretion Shot: The pack jumps on Principal Flutie and the camera pans to his photo on the desk, then cuts to Willow watching a documentary showing hyenas feeding.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: The zookeeper is eaten by his own hyenas.
 * I Ate What?: Xander isn't happy hearing that he ate raw pig.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Poor Principal Flutie.
 * Infant Immortality: A woman with a baby stumbles across the pack, but they're too busy digesting their last meal to chase her.
 * Oh Crap: Buffy looking in the book at what hyena possession leads to. The Scoobies realising the pack will go to Xander, and Willow is alone with him.
 * Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Or, maybe hyena possession does.
 * Perverted Sniffing
 * Power Walk: By the Pack.
 * Self-Disposing Villain
 * Scully Syndrome: Lampshaded by Buffy to Giles.


 * Talking Your Way Out: Hyena!Xander tries talking Willow into letting him out of the book cage; fortunately Willow isn't as naive as she acts.
 * Teens Are Monsters: Kyle, Tor, Heidi and Rhonda are already mean prior to the possession.
 * Weirdness Censor: Flutie was "eaten by a pack of wild dogs".
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: There's no word on what happened to the bullies after they're de-hyena'd, and now that they have to deal with the memory of eating a living human being.
 * Supplementary material reveals that all four of them survived until Graduation, though, and one of the girls ended up becoming a vegan.