Overall Rating: 4.0
It's been done before. Many. Many times. Both the metaphor itself (the deep and creeping negatives a child feels when their biological parent is "replaced" by a new romantic interest of his/her spouse) and the actual object (OMG! It's a ROBOT!!!). The plot is boring, and the message it sends is questionable at best. And frankly, the acting was rather weak as well.
Plot Synopsis:
Sunnydale is missing its lead villains. With Spike and Drusilla MIA and the Order of Taraka no longer hunting Buffy, she's a little bored. She takes care of Angel, who is taking his sweet time recovering from the funky mojo Spike worked on him to revive Dru. But Buffy's boredom turns into horror when she catches her mother snogging with a strange new man whom she introduces as "Ted." It seems Ted brings home the bacon selling computer parts and met Joyce while upgrading her art gallery's mainframe. Buffy is not even remotely pleased. An interloper has arrived to replace her father? Not cool. For a little while at least, she promises to try to work through her Daddy issues and put up with Ted (she does like seeing her mother happy again - just not this way!), but on a miniature golf outing, Ted catches her cheating and goes bananas, threatening to "smack that smart-ass mouth right off." Yes, there really IS a reason not to like this guy.
Unfortunately, no one...not even her friends in the scooby gang...believes her story. In fact, Willow and Xander are uncharacteristically trusting and happy with Ted and Joyce has fallen for him awfully quickly. Wigged, Buffy tries to talk some sense into her mother and gets sent to her room to think about her bad attitude. She sneaks out looking for some vamps to pummel, and when she gets back, she discovers Ted snooping around in her room. He's found out about her secret life of slaying and threatens to tell her mother if she doesn't behave. Buffy tries to rip her diary out of Ted's hand and he punches her in the jaw - her anger boiling over, she kicks him down the stairs and apparently kills him. The police arrive, but determine that the killing was likely self-defense and do not press charges. While their investigation is ongoing, Buffy continues her schooling, but can't concentrate with all the rumor-mongering and the crushing guilt she feels for having taken a human life.
While discussing what they can do to help Buffy recover from these painful events, Xander eats one of Ted's delicious cookies and then becomes euphorically happy (this is not a joyful time, obviously). Willow runs a spectral analysis and determines that the cookie is laced with small doses of a tranquilizer that can have hypnotic affects. Ted was drugging everyone, likely including Joyce! They head off to investigate Ted's apartment and discover the bodies of four other wives of his hidden away in his closet. Joyce was going to be next!
Meanwhile, Giles is out patrolling in Buffy's stead and actually encounters a vampire (it figures...as soon as the slayer is out of commission, something evil finally shows up). Jenny shows up in an attempt to reconcile with Giles and inadvertently shoots him in the leg with a crossbow. He still manages to dust the vamp and he and Jenny head off to the hospital, agreeing that they should give their relationship another try. Buffy has been out walking around and thinking about her horrible crime. But when she returns to her room, she finds her window nailed shut and Ted reappears! He threatens her again and she fights him, eventually stabbing his arm and revealing his mechanical parts. His work nickname is accurate...he really is "the machine." He knocks Buffy unconscious, but not before her little stabbing manages to screw up his speech just enough that when he tries to run away with Joyce, she is suspicious of his vocal stutter. He's about to knock her out and make off with her when Buffy reappears and bashes his head in with a skillet, revealing his mechanical cranium and deactivating him once and for all. The real Ted was, apparently, a small little man whose wife left him because he didn't pay enough attention to her. So he constructed a robot version of himself and that version spent the next 50 years trying to get her back over and over, even after killing the first version.
Writing: 3.0
Unsubtle is the best word to describe this one. David Greenwalt and Joss Whedon have the writing credits for this one, which stuns me, because usually Joss and David are both a lot more three-dimensional in their plot and character building. This episode reads like junky second-class live-action version of a Saturday Morning cartoon. Even the usually snappy dialogue suffers this week. Ted, for example, is written in this un-serious, clonky way...it reminds me of the Outer Limits episode called "Valerie 5"...maybe they were trying to capture that mechanical quality, but for the big reveal to work, we needed to actually think Ted was a person...we didn't. From about his second line, I was thinking "oh look, it's a robot." FAIL, Joss. FAIL. I'm sorry, but an episode featuring Buffy committing apparent murder should have gotten a much bigger reaction from me than it did.
Acting: 6.0
Sarah Michelle Geller actually does a credible job trying to make something good out of a cow pie of a script, but she gets no help at all from John Ritter (Ted) or the usually solid Kristine Sutherland (Joyce), both of whom had (a) ZERO chemistry (b) this awkward and mannered portrayal that made the whole episode feel off-pace and (c) a rather laughable lack of secondary acting (reaction takes, performance depth, off-focus acting, etc)...there are a few moments when I am wondering if Ms. Sutherland in particular is thinking "why the hell am I supposed to be doing right now?" You can blame the script at least in part, but the acting doesn't exactly help. The rest of the cast is OK, so it's not like the show is dreadfully hackish...it just isn't what I've come to expect from Buffy.
Message: 3.0
What really annoys me about this episode beyond the well-traveled topic of whether a complete consciousness can be created so convincingly with artificial means is the idea that a little tranquilizer can make someone fall in love head over heals. I'm sorry, but that's not how love works. LOL You can hypnotize someone into being open to suggestion - you can make them carry out physical acts (like sex or physical labor) with the right combination of drugs, but you cannot make a person express love the way Joyce does in this episode. Love always comes somewhere much...much deeper. You can't even generate genuine lust with drugs. Joss, here, shows an uncharacteristic lack of understanding of human nature. In future Buffy episodes, we'll see love displayed in much more convincing ways, but not in this episode.
Highlights:
BUFFY: Vampires are creeps.
GILES: Yes...well...that would be why one tends to...slay them.
BUFFY: I mean, people are perfectly happy and getting along, and then vampires show up and they kill the people and take over their whole house and start making these stupid mini-pizzas and people are like "Oh I like your mini-pizzas!" but I'm telling you -
GILES: Uh, Buffy...I think the subtext here is rapidly becoming...text. (heh)
XANDER: You're seriously lacking evidence, Buffy. I think we're entering Sigmund Freud territory here.
WILLOW: He's right. Separation anxiety? The mother figure being taken away from you? Conflict with the father figure?
BUFFY: He's not my father figure.
XANDER: Whoa, Buffster...seems like you're having some parental issues.
BUFFY: I am not...
XANDER: Come on, Buffy, admit it. (sing-song mocking complete with finger pointing and dancing around like an idiot) You're having parental issues, you're having parental issues! (Willow glares) What? Freud would say the exact same thing. Except he might not have done that little dance. (LOL)
CORDELIA: (regarding Buffy's crime) But she's like this super-chick or something. Shouldn't there be different rules for her?
WILLOW: Sure, in a fascist society.
CORDELIA: Yeah! Why can't we just have one of those? (heh...Cordy...you're so delightfully clueless)
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