Fun fact: While the Buffy movie used valley girl slang, the series actually created a lot of the slang they used on the show. So it wasn't 90's slang, it was Buffy writer's slang. There's even a book called, "Slayer Slang" published but Oxford University Press. I almost did a section of my MA thesis on constructed languages in pop culture. 😊
I was hoping someone would bring this up. I keep sort of wincing whenever I hear "oh it's so 90s that slang". But it reminds me how easy it is to lose where something came from. A lot of people incorporated that slang and speech pattern into their own and it spread and then ... "it's just 90s slang". Hee.
It's funny how there are so many wardrobe analysis videos on Buffy and the other girls on the show, but you guys are obsessed with always talking about Xander's outfits. I love it!
Oz definitely the coolest character in The Buffyverse. Nobody does laid back like Oz, his witty one liners and observations are brilliant throughout. When he says 'you're only interested in a girl who can walk or talk' reply 'she doesn't have to talk', the look on OZ's face. Inca Mummy Girl I thought was a fairly average episode of S2, Xander showing his complete innocence and gullibility. We all feel for Willow who at this stage in the show is so meek and quiet, always feeling looked over. We all seem to forget what an awful bully and generally horrible vacuous person Cordelia was early on in the show, totally putting down Willow at every opportunity throughout the early parts of the show, we see that again here. Looks aren't everything, and be careful as things are never what they seem. Jonathan gets a lucky escape here along with Xander also. Xander comes through at the end and saves Willow's life. Great foreshadowing again here with Xander and his 'taste in women'.
What I never thought about is that she's been a mummy all this time and aware of her surroundings. She knows where they take her. Imagine being trapped in a coffin and aware of it for 100s of years.
In 1994, I was on a school field trip to Washington, DC for 3-4 days. We were all on a bus on the way back to the airport when someone called out, "Hey where's _____?" and then around the corner, in the distance, we saw him running full tilt towards us. Thankfully, we stopped and he caught up to the bus. Poor kid. So yeah, the 90s weren't always super great about making sure all the kids are on the bus. Funnily enough, the chaperones had done head counts every single time we were on a bus, except that one.
As to the Dingoes ate my baby story, IIRC ( am not Australian) for years nobody believed her, they thought it was too far-fetched. She was convicted of murder (and he husband as an accessory after the fact) and they spent three years in jail, only released when their daughter's jacket was found near a dingo lair. But still, maybe she planted it there to support her story? It wasn't until 2012 that coroner took a second look and determined that yes, a dingo had in fact killed their daughter.
At the time the Dingoes ate my baby story resulted in the parents being tried and convicted of murder (for the mother) and accessory after the fact (for the father). It ended up being a sort of joke for telling an obvious lie to cover up something you did. It wasn't until years later that evidence came out that suggested the baby may have actually been taken and eaten by dingoes. When this show was on "Dingoes ate my baby" was a joke that came up in a lot of television shows because it was believed to be a lie told to cover a murder.
The dingo story is well known enough that it was made into a movie called "A Cry in the Dark" (1988), in which Meryl Streep played the mother. "The dingo's got my baby" was a hugely famous line from it that people knew and quoted even if they hadn't seen the movie (which could be the case for the band in this episode). Unfortunately, at least in the US, it was seen somewhat as joke -- perhaps more taking the piss out of Streep's performance and accent in the movie than the real-life story. (Nothing wrong with the movie or Streep's performance, by the way, but it's very distinctive and different, which is the kind of thing that frequently gets made fun of.)
At the time, I only really knew the reference from Elaine's impression of that line on Seinfeld. It's one of those things that I think got referenced and re-referenced far enough from the actual tragic story that people (in the US, anyway) didn't really think about how awful it actually was.
I'm fairly certain that the truth that the baby was actually killed by dingoes and not a ridiculous lie the mother was telling wasn't known yet when this came out. It was made fun of for years until it came out that the mother wasn't lying.
I have a suggestion: Sam’s Xander Fashion Slander (or a name less contentious) - A Season By Season Roundup. You can compile lists of the good and bad and create top 5 good, top 5 bad outfits per season.
It'd be cool to make actual fashion review vids cause I love the majority of 90s fashion and Sam doesn't but we both call out the bizarreness of some trends lol 😂 - Maria
8:05 A group of three of us got left behind by our bus at a trip out of state. Luckily, we got a different bus to contact our bus and they came back for us. 21:08 Some of the reasons that Xander has never been in the running for my favorite character. 28:50 I figure the mummy shoved Ampata's underwear in the top of the backpack when she put on his clothes. 31:40 There was a movie, made in the really late '80s, about the incident, which brought the case to people's attention in the US. For some reason, the bit about the dingo eating the baby seemed to strike people as particularly ridiculous and it was used as a joke in several popular shows in the early '90s. When the movie was made, the parents were still under suspicion in the child's death. I think that it wasn't until the 2010s that they actually concluded that it really was a dingo attack.
As an Australian I always struggled a little with the band name for the “Dingoes…”, especially since the mother was wrongly accused and convicted of murder, spending several years in prison before the convictions were quashed. Mind you, they couldn’t just call them The Dingoes, as that’s the name of an actual Aussie band from the 70s and 80s. I do find it curious there’s a throwaway line in a later episode referencing another Australian band.
That’s very understandable. I’m still struggling with this story. How people didn’t believe and mocked her… I can’t understand why it was such a stretch to believe that a wild animal attacked a human. Oh I see, interesting - Maria
For some context about the Dingo thing: the assumption at the time was that the mother killed her baby and blamed it on a dingo because it was so outlandish. This got a ton of coverage in America. When the family was investigated in Australia and it was revealed that a dingo actually did eat the baby, that part never spread to the US. This was before my time, but I've still heard a ton of jokes about it. Most people assume it came from a TV show and isnt real, and the few people I know who have heard the story still think the parents did it. Honestly awful.... But what else do you expect from the US?
This was actually the second time that Alyson Hannigan and Seth Green worked together. He appeared as her date in the so-cheesy 1980s movie "My Stepmother is an Alien" which starred Dan Akroyd as her father and Kim Basinger as the stepmother.
OMG, I vaguely remember watching that movie when I was around 12. That's 30 years ago and I never watched it again. I had completely forgotten it existed.
The scene with the luggage is SO FUNNY because like you said it would have made a thousand times more sense if the luggage had just been knocked over. Or like, maybe the kid's family member called to check on him and it was super obvious over the phone that he's meant to be a teenage boy? There would have been so many ways the scene could have been less awkward.
This is where, ‘Whedon made Xander a stand in for himself,’ something that later became common knowledge, really starts to make sense. Xander so far has been consistently chased by beautiful women (preying mantis teacher, Willow, Ampata). It’s like he’s Whedon’s wish fulfillment for his own youth.
That's pathetic if you really think about it. I mean, the guy earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing the first Toy Story film, and he polished the scripts of some hit films. That's success for anyone who got treated like shit in high school, and JW went to a boarding high school, not a public high school where there's bad cafeteria food and bullies. If you were the popular, lady-killing jerk who wasn't invested in their education back then, you ended up either as a barfly, a janitor, a used car salesman, or dead from AIDS as an adult. Somebody should have told JW that four years of adolescent bullshit isn't something to look fondly upon because it's a sign of immaturity if you accomplish something later and greater in life.
@@zenithquasar9623 It's more like self-pity without actually doing something worthwhile. In future episodes, we get to see that Xander uses Buffy as an escape hatch from his everyday problems,.
@@zenithquasar9623not necessarily. Xander craves the validation of girls. That’s the wish fulfillment. The girls often being the villain could be an unconscious resentment for not being more popular at that age. In each scenario Xander gets to be the one to reject the girls, not the other way around.
Here you go! Even with direct connection and being a translator, I would only be able to translate so much of Old East Slavic on the spot without actually specializing in it :D - Maria
People who are from that region in Peru have said that they still learn the native language, so it is still preserved by the natives of the region, and it isn't out of bounds to think that she could read it. I think something like 30% of the people of that region still speak the native language.
Xander has all his worse traits on display in this one - and many of his best traits. He's a ball of insecurity. 🙈 I love that Cordie's exchange student can speak English just fine - he just doesn’t bother with her because she's so awful to him. The best revenge he can take, honestly. From what I've heard of the dingoes story, there was some doubt about its veracity, and the mom was under suspicion about doing something to the baby. That's just awful to go through something like that and not be believed. 😢
I have to say, as someone who was in a school the same size as sunnydale high, we had 2 girls bathrooms in full. (Plus some in the gym locker rooms, but that was a different building.) And we had 3 floors. It was very annoying, but I never questioned why someone could wait at the toilet for you.😅
The Dingo's singer went on to write the screenplay for American Sniper. The real band is Four Star Mary. I was friends with them. Seth played Aly's BF in My Stepmother's An Alien about 10 yesrs earlier.
I love the parallel between Buffy and Ampada, but hardly anyone ever talks about the parallel between the "bodyguard" and Giles. Both men are playing out roles in a system that depends on a young girl being at risk/killed for the idea of a "greater good" and as far as that goes, the idea of the "bodyguard" actively trying to kill this girl is the most interesting thing about this episode to me. The modern fandom discourse likes to give Angel a hard time for being interested in a teenage girl as if to say that that's inherently harmful (and I don't necessarily disagree--I'm just drawing a contrast for the point of argument) but you could easily argue that Giles, as a figurehead of a system that depends on Buffy's eventual death--isn't any better. Our society is really good at vilifying sex, but we make a lot of excuses for violence. There's a lot of "the slayer has to do this for the greater good," but that's not actually true. If every person on the planet were made aware and given the knowledge and preparation that Willow and Xander get, we wouldn't need a chosen one--humans would outnumber and overtake the bad guys and demons pretty fast. I have a hard time believing that humanity becoming aware and being able to defend themselves (even if it's somewhat ineffectually) would cost more lives than the current one-girl-in-the-whole-world system costs. The existing fight-the-demons system is not a great system, and Giles's role in it often goes under-examined despite episodes like this drawing a pretty intriguing parallel between him and some quasi-abusive characters.
27:23 I missed that totally! Of course it's such a weird thing to offer to unpack someone's bags, like Buffy, do you have any sense of personal property? Even without the mummy, she could have toothbrushes, toiletries, or clothes, or a diary in that suitcase, you never know. It's such a weird plot device thing to say, but it passed over my head so many times. I agree with Sam the guard only exists in Ampata's vicinity, he's wearing an old fashioned shirt and appears to be mystical.
Never really thought about how weird it was that Buffy kept trying to unpack fake Empata's stuff tbh, but now that you mention it, yeah, pretty fuckin' weird. Like "do you need help unpacking" would be one thing, but she just straight up said she'd unpack her stuff
I was always under the impression that she had suspicions, and was doing it as part of her investigation. She'd been told to expect a guy, and a girl showed up. Checking her luggage is a good way to check whether he'd been replaced, which Buffy already knew the princess could do. And going straight for the underwear, because that's the fastest way to be sure.
Not only was her child eaten, but she was not believed and spent three years in prison (she was sentenced to life) before evidence was found that dingos really had killed the child and she was finally released. Also, the Australian TV series _The Newsreader,_ did an episode based on this. That might also be a good series for you to react to.
I feel like instead of Buffy so forcefully trying to go through Impata's things that they should've just made a bigger deal about Impata not recognizing the items. Then when Giles shows up, Buffy could recall that weird moment and rush to check "her" things. It would've accomplished the same thing without being weird at all. My biggest issue with the storyline connections here was that Buffy/Angel and Xander/Impata should've had a bigger parallel and been the turning point for Xander realizing why Buffy/Angel is a thing despite all the reasons it isn't good for her.
Seth Green doesn't know how to play guitar, but someone was hired to help him look like he knew what he was doing. I have to say he did a really great job. You have to respect that kind of attention to detail.
I'm with Sam. If the show runners/writers meant for it to be a surprise, they wouldn't put them in the credits. Plus, they would show them in the preview for the next episode because it helped retain people to watch the next week. After all, they had a year's worth of keeping your attention they had to do :) I know another reactor that likes looking at names in the credits too. It's amazing what commenters get upset over.
As we were discussing that I realised that I was so hell-bent on him experiencing things when they happen (not through spoilers in the comments), that I completely missed that classic feel of TV that I’m also used to and went into protective mode. I agree with what you said here 👍🏻 - Maria
Hello, fellow translator (😃) and Sam. I love your videos and subsequent analysis. As for this episode, I don't feel the episode is bad, just a bit boring and thus a bit forgettable. Also, the whole thing with "Dingoes ate my Baby": maybe we can rationalize that it was Devon who came up with the name and since he's a bit of an airhead, didn't care to know if it was referring to some event. Keep up the good work and wow, am I stoked to see some future reactions.
I love the matching lilac booties. & I really like the type of singing you hate esp.if the singing is good. Different strokes. But I like that you guys comment on the clothes :D
Fair enough. True true 😊 That’s good to hear! We enjoy commenting on it. The first three seasons inspired big parts of my style, so it’s a double joy for me ✨ - Maria
The thing is most Americans do not know the dingo thing was real, they just know the tag line which has been used in movies and tv shows so keep that in mind that it probably wouldn't have been chosen if they knew the actual story behind it
As an Australian who was a grown up back then, I'm just gonna contextualise the bad taste band name factor. Still all wrong, but back then, the mother had been convicted and the story thought to be false. Years later that verdict was overturned and the mother proven innocent. Still in terrible taste, but back then it was thought to not have actually happened that way. Not cool but.....
Yeah, I was definitely a child so you can see why my memory of the whole thing was a bit patchy 😆 Thanks for the extra context, I forgot about the whole wrongful conviction part, even tho it’s one of the most important aspects - Sam
This episode was turned into one of the Buffy novelizations. Oddly, I don't think it's canon. It's been so many years that I don't remember how many, if any changes there were. I remember more of a later episode developed into a novelization.
@Buffy8Fan never got to reading them after I went through Charmed books that were not good, to say the least. I do want to get into comics at some point, though I'm cautious as I know some of the storylines they did and I don't like them - Maria
@@Buffy8Fan I've read seasons 8-10 and while I don't think they're very good, they at least justify a bunch of stuff set up in the last couple of seasons. SPOILER SPACE Although the whole Xander/Dawn relationship makes me throw up in my mouth.
Thankfully these kinds of 'dress like other cultures' parties are not commonplace anymore in the US it was a failed way of reminding people of our nation's mixed cultural heritage, but ultimately only ended up disrespecting and insulting said cultures. Thankfully cultural awareness and respect in the US has come a long way, but there is still much to be improved on.
I agree, things have been improving even though there's more to do. Obviously, I don't live in the US, but I have close friends there and generally try to be aware of what's happening in the world - Maria
I personally didnt see anything wrong with what Xander said to Buffy about Willow being just his best friend, he thinks about Willow how Buffy thinks about him, he loves her but not as a romantic partner @25:00 lol my highschool had 1 toilet block that most students used & then only a couple other rooms with 1 or 2 toilets in them... luckily I had diabetes so I could use the sickbay toilet (there was 2 rooms each with an ensuite) much nicer, cleaner & private @31:40 in the 90s everyone thought that the mother was lying & had killed her baby, its only in recent years that people understand she was telling the truth For clarification, they were camping in the outback & the dingo took the baby out of the tent, nobody thought it made sense so they all accused her of murdering her kid & saying that for attention, wasnt until recently that it was found that dingoes actually do that...
This Fandom relentlessly hates hard on Xander..which brings out my defensiveness lol It seems like when willow says something petty its considered adorable, but anytime Xander says anything immature it's pounced on To be clear it's obvious he and all the characters are extremely flawed..part of this show that I love. You guys don't hate super hard on him..just saying 😅
@TheBuffSummer ohh I was referring to when buffy said impada was the mummy and willow said "good" . Honestly not a big deal or anything, they all have their moments and willow can be pretty close to perfection sometimes lol. IMO I just think the Fandom can be retrospectively tough on Xander( sometimes deserved, but often not). Just to be clear I don't find yall needlessly tough on him.
My opinion on Xander is that he's meh. He can be so annoying at times, and a lot of his gags are related to how horny he is or how jealous he can get, and it gets tired really fast. BUT that being said, he has his good moments, and when I say good, I mean like some really amazing lessons, some of my favorite in the show.
I’ll just point out that Willow keeps her “pettiness” to herself. (Or releases her “pettiness” to Buffy, in the case that you mention from this episode.) She NEVER makes it Xander’s problem. She even encourages Xander to take the mummy girl on a date because she knows that they like each other. Xander makes it Buffy’s problem that he likes her and constantly makes stupid petty comments about the guys in her life and potential or actual love interests. That is the reason people are quicker to hate Xander for his behavior than Willow.
I get where you're coming from. I think it's good that there's a character that have actual unattractive flaws and not superficial flaws to make them "seem real". ⠀⠀⠀ ❗SPOILERS BELOW ❗ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ I don't feel like people take Willow's bad sides as seriously as they like to point out Xander's. She was shitty as hell to Tara in really abusive ways. That was as much a pattern of behaviour as the shitty traits of Xander's character. She almost destroyed the world, too. Sure, she did stuff out of sorrow and anger, but that's not an excuse, only an explanation. I'm a huge fan of both Willow and Xander, and the show of course, no hate. I just don't like how Willow gets a free pass.
The music for Oz's band is by Four Star Mary. They are totally faking their performances. Seth Green learned to play guitar for this part so it would look real.
I just realized… she said “I don’t have any lipstick,” but we saw her putting lipstick on in the bathroom? Did she lose it when she fought the bodyguard guy or something?
The one thing I have to state is that you probably were the shitty teenager. I had a silly memory on how I was as a teenager. My mom showed me a VHS tape from a school play she took, documenting the 'behind the scenes'. To my discomfort I have to admit I had the bad manners and attitude of Willow and Cordelia without any of the positive ones. At least from what I saw on that tape. Admittingly, that was me judging myself as a nearly 50 year old and maybe I judged myself a bit too hard. But I think that is simply being a teenager. Luckily we grow and learn... at least some do :)
I think the band name is tongue in cheek, because many found the mother’s story hard to believe. It wasn’t meant to disrespect the baby, but to say, this statement is untrue. Kinda like, the dog ate my homework.
I get it but I can't really stand behind it as wild animals killing people is a very real and horrifying thing as opposed to dogs eating homework - Maria
@@TheBuffSummer australian media mocked the woman endlessly, saying dingoes would never do such a thing, and an australian jury convicted her of murder. all of this, especially the tenor of it, was picked up internationally.
@@TheBuffSummer Oh no, I don’t think it was funny or appropriate. I think they were trying to show the irreverence of the teens, but not his finest moment to include that, to do so.
Honestly, never watched this episode. Must have skipped it by accident and honesty, not that sad about it. Kinda funny how i missed the introduction of Oz tho. Now his moments in future episodes make more sense.
I remember Nicholas Brendon having a lot of emotional trouble with his character. No spoilers. At this point, which may or may not change, Xander was just urrrgh. Creepy, gross, entitled, stalkery - he's a 16 year old boy but the worst aspects of one, just with a better vocabulary. He's had great moments - like in this episode - but generally there's been a lot of ick. Imagine being in the cast of a show that is so well-liked, where everyone is cool or has their own thing going on, and you're just a dick. No powers, no cool, you're the straight man who reminds us that you are straight every five seconds by relentlessly hitting on or otherwise making a female character and/or the audience feel really uncomfortable. It's such a difficult role to play.
In movies, and tv shows with exchange students, the focus is always; This is America/American, they came to the US to learn about the US. And it fits in with American exceptionalism (propaganda's)
This is definitely not a favorite episode of mine, but I really do like a few aspects of it. I wish the explored them more rather than focusing Buffy's and Xander's issues again, especially since neither really went anywhere in this episode. I am now going to be foever distracted by the "button nipple" any time I watch this in the future.😆 I am American, but had my first Twinkie about 5 years ago. I did not hate it, but have no interest in eating another one. The writing concerning the seal and the luggage is so weird and lazy. The writers seriously could not think of a better way to do it. I already talked about it in the premiere for this video, but I thought (American) adults joking about the death of that baby was distasteful even as a young child in the 90s. I going to have to disagree with you two about Xander's and Buffy's outfits. They are not the best, but I like both. I remember shoes of the 90s being sucky so I guess I am used to it. I know this is not the most interesting episode, but I am still thankful that this video about it (and The Movie Budz video and livestream) was posted today. I needed some media to put me in a better mental space after some media unintentionally increased my anxiety. I was already familiar with the topics brought up in those three types of media, but the combination of them in less than 12 hours period just set me off for some unknown reason. I can't explain why a video discussion about a 2005 film that I last watched years ago, rewatching a music video released last year, and a news clip concerning a ban I already know about was still affecting me still 2 days after viewing them, but they were. It was weird because I have been aware that US politics is a dumpster fire situation for awhile. I know I rambled, but I again want to express my appreciation of your videos.
my 2020s lgbt view on things makes me read the whole empada is a girl feel like an accidentally trans story "i'm a girl for many years now" sounds so ominous and the fact she would wear masculine underwear because she feels more comfortable in them, the whole "i want to be like other girls/i'm just a normal girl" plotline, i don't have any lipstick, can i borrow some, the whole "if i date this guy he's ll find out who i am"
This episode is bloody awful...on so many levels. It's still my entry for worst of the season. (Yeah, yeah I know.) But damn, this screams of S1 reject. No Angel, no Spike and/or Drusilla. It's just a black hole of...suck. "I like this show but Xander is getting tougher to watch." Oh, you really have no idea....
@@TheBuffSummer It's just...dull. I think maybe you can argue "Reptile Boy" is worse but I'll be honest here...there are maybe two Xandercentric episodes that are any good and we've already seen "The Pack." And yeah, in retrospect, this episode introduces two fan favorites, OZ and Jonathon but it's simply not enough.
