The Pack

Hi Laurel here...This was a weird one.  Super good, but weird.

The episode starts out with a field trip to the zoo.  A pack of mean kids who pick on everybody break into a quarantined Hyena exhibit, dragging the school wimp with them.  Xander follows them in to save the wimp, and they all get possessed by Hyena spirits (except for the wimp who ironically escapes unscathed).  From there they all basically turn into human Hyenas - first feeding on a baby pig (the super cute school mascot) then progress to hunting humans.  And acting like huge assholes every chance they get.

The other kids were assholes to begin with so you don't care as much that they are acting like jerks, but Xander's transformation is pretty extreme.  He's so mean!  It was a great episode but I sort of hated it because Xander was such a dick.  He's especially mean to Willow which is sort of heartbreaking.  He tells her he's dropping geometry class so that he won't need her help with math anymore because he's sick of looking at her "pasty white face", then laughs with his hyena buddies and walks away.  Nicholas Brendon the actor who plays Xander does a really good job of being mean, which made the episode that much creepier.

The worst part is that the hyena kids EAT PRINCIPAL FLUTIE!  I'm bummed I was really getting into him, his character was starting to be really endearing and funny.

Mark here...I agree with Laurel, a very scary and good episode and creepy.  Xander's transformation here is really good.  We also get some development in the sort of love square going on...Willow likes Xander who likes Buffy who likes Angel.  Though Willow is the one with hurt feelings here.

There's a nice twist at the end in terms of who's orchestrating the animal transformations, although the whole thing is resolved a little too quickly.  The story does move the character dynamics on though, which is nice.  I'm still not sure the love dynamics all make sense, but I guess its high school so they don't need to.  In any case, there were some good scares.

The killing of the principal was a bit of a shock, a reminder I guess that Sunnydale is not the safest place!

Laurel here...In the end it turns out the zookeeper is behind it all, he wanted to become some kind of supreme Hyena human, but his plan is thwarted when Buffy throws him into the Hyena pit and he gets eaten by real Hyenas.  Ironic, no?