Sports On TV: Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s 20 Greatest Sports Moments

(Guest contributor Kelli of Wear The Cheese)

Episode: "Witch" (season 1, episode 3)

What Happens: Buffy, still new at Sunnydale High, tries to reclaim some of her former high school glory by trying out for the cheer team. During tryouts, she meets Amy, another teen desperate to make the team. Despite their efforts, the two girls make alternates on the team. Suddenly, current cheer members experience variety of misfortunes - yes, this includes spontaneous combustion. The Scooby Gang deduces that a witch is behind it all. As Buffy discovers Amy's mom is the witch, she is struck deathly I'll. Her friends come to her aid and help put an end to the witches ministrations, trapping her in a cheer trophy and freeing Amy.

Key line: "You have a sacred birthright, Buffy. You were chosen to destroy vampires, not to... wave pompoms at people. And as the Watcher, I forbid it."

Cheerleading is serious business. Like, deadly serious. This episode is one of my favorite because it has great comedic moments as well as real drama centered around the pressure everyone feels to live up to expectations. Buffy wants to live up to her old popular high school persona. Amy wants to live up to her mom's past. And Amy's mom wants to relive her prior glory. This episode epitomizes the path of athletes - aspiration, accomplishment, and continuation of glory. While the tumbling and cheering might be habit dated, the issue of living up to expectations is timeless And universal - especially in sports.

I am not ashamed to admit that I teared up when I saw the mom trapped inside the very object that represented her former glory. She was literally stuck in her past.

Also,

Episode: "Some Assembly Required" (season 2, episode 2)

What Happens: Buffy gets concerned when her cemetery patrol turns up an open, empty grave. Giles thinks somebody's trying to raise an army of zombies, but when Cordelia and Angel stumble upon a dumpster full of body parts, the pieces come together (cough) and ... well, it turns out that science fair champion Chris has brought his dead jock brother back to life and has been trying to cobble together "the perfect woman" as a suitable mate a la Bride Of Frankenstein. They realize that f**king Charisma Carpenter goes to their school, so they just kidnap Cordelia, which leads to Buffy saving the day and burning said Frankenstein to death with a bunsen burner.

Key line: " So, both coffins are empty. That makes three girls signed up for the army of zombies." "Is it an army if you just have three?" "Zombie drill team, then."

I've done a lot of Sports On TV columns for shows you wouldn't think of when you think "sports show" -- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and Glee among them -- so when I told people about the Buffy Sports On TV, their response was almost always, "did Buffy have a lot of sports? All I can remember is swimming and zombie football players." This episode features a zombie theory and reanimated football players, but he is very clearly a FRANKENSTEIN football guy, not a zombie. A Frankenstein.

Also, there's a great moment where the zombie Frankenstein is walking under the bleachers at a football game, looking out wistfully at the teams having fun, and all I could think on the re-watch was how awesome it'd be if 'Friday Night Lights' had a zombie B-story.

Episode: "Ted" (season 2, episode 11)

What Happens: John Ritter never died. It turns out he's a robot from the 1950s, built by a wormy 1950s sci-fi inventor who tried to win his wife back by creating Jack Tripper with an endoskeleton. Buffy runs into him here because the robot's mission has been to find, enslave, and ultimately kill any woman who looks like that guy's ex-wife. He gives Buffy shit about her miniature golf etiquette, but that's before they know he's a robot. Anyway, John Ritter, robot. I thought that would make you feel better.

Key line: "So far, all I see is someone who supposedly has a good job, and is nice and polite, and my mother really likes him." "What kind of a monster is he?"

"Ted" has always been one of my favorite episodes of Buffy, not only because of John Ritter, but because of all the wells Buffy went back to (something equals drugs, Buffy getting sexually assaulted, etc.), 50s science fiction homages weren't one of them. The idea of a robot created with love who goes crazy and secretly kills ladies after badgering them their children to death with condescending advice is amazing, and way more interesting to me than whether or not Spike can have buttsex with an invisible lady.

Also, Buffy playing miniature golf is great. She just rears back and destroys the ball. She should've attacked the clown hole with her putter, then should've taken off her skate in the ice skating episode and tried to stab someone.

Episode: "Him" (season 7, episode 6)

What Happens: Quick, raise your hand if you want to read the synopsis of a Dawn episode.

Key line: "Xander, be honest. You didn't, you know, think about slipping that jacket on a little bit?" "I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it didn't fit."

Okay, sorry. Season 7 Sunnydale High starting quarterback R.J. has a magical letterman jacket that makes every woman on the show fall in love with him, including Dawn, Buffy and Anya, who is inspired by passion to rob a bank. It also causes Willow to do this horrible, against-character thing where she's in love with R.J., but has to turn him into a woman because she's gay, which sorta devalues the connection she had with Tara where she loved her for who she was and not for what equipment she had and turned it into a jokey thing about how lesbians hate men, but whatever.

The episode does have a pretty spectacular conclusion, which is just Xander and Spike jumping the kid, stealing his jacket and burning it in a fireplace. Some monster stories have a pretty straight-forward endgame.

In a related story, every time I see this episode's title, I get sad that it's not this HIM.

/gets to work on Powerpuff Girls Sports On TV

(Guest contributor FembotDanielle)

Episode: "The I In Team" (season 4, episode 13)

What Happens: Habitual shower masturbator Carly has a passionate and seductive love affair with Zeke, unaware Zeke has secretly wired the apartment building with hidden cameras and he has been watching the lives of each tenant living in the apartment building, including her. No, wait ... that’s the plot to Sliver. Ehhhh, close enough.

In this episode, Buffy begins working with the government-backed Initiative. Professor Walsh feels that Buffy is a threat to both the Initiative, as well as her semi-secret plans to create a series of bio-mechanical demonoid super soldiers. The mother-son relationship between Riley and Professor Walsh also takes a turn for the squicky as Walsh does her best Billy Baldwin impression, “monitoring” Riley as he and Buffy have aggressive post-demon hunting sex. Beepers are still a thing, Willow and Tara get closer, and the Big Bad for season 4 is revealed. Oh, and Walsh sets up an elaborate scheme to kill Buffy because she wants to take a train to Bone Town protect Riley.

Key line: "I implore you, Neisa, blessed goddess of chance and fortune, heed my call: Send to me the heart I desire ..."

This is one of those episodes that’s written so you can basically learn all you need to know about each character before the theme song even kicks in. I picked this episode because “Anya playing poker” was the description, and hey, who doesn’t want in on that action? My choice was immediately followed by a frantic email asking to trade once I remembered which episode it actually was. Buffy is at her most obnoxious, Riley exudes the charm and sex appeal of a stick of unsalted butter, and Professor Walsh gives us all a firsthand lesson in psychoanalytic theory by illustrating the dangers of a Jocasta Complex. Were this an entirely different Brandon column, it would read: Best - Anya learns to play poker and alludes to enjoying moderately kinky sex. Worst - Everything else.

At this point I should address the “sport” of poker playing, but I have to admit that I am not actually good at it, and do not 100% know the rules. I am the person who has a cheat sheet of what hand beats what next to them, but still takes all of your money because I am both very good at bluffing, and also I forgot that sheet so why wouldn’t I realistically think my pair of eights can beat you? I also Googled ‘poker related puns’ because I don’t know enough to make them myself. So really, the only things I can take away are that Anya and I have more in common than I should be admitting on the internet, and that when Vampires play poker, they play HIGH STAKES. Get it? Get it? Thanks to the internet and an extensive knowledge of Vampires in popular culture, I do!

Episode: "Revelations" (season 3, episode 7)

What Happens: A few episodes into season 3, Faith and Xander realize that Angel (the guy who spent the second half of the previous season trying to torture and murder everybody) is still alive. To handle the news, Xander goes to The Bronze, the sports (and music, and rafters anal, and everything else) epicenter of Sunnydale to work out his frustrations with some ANGRY ASS BILLIARDS. It's my favorite pool-related moment on the show, right ahead of that moment in "The Wish" where the vampires strap their human victims to the tables, and every other episode of 'Buffy' where somebody at the Bronze gets a pool cue smashed across their bag or jabbed into their heart.

Key line: "She says he's clean." "Yeah, well, I say we can't afford to find out. I say I deal with this problem right now. I say I slay." "Can I come?"

Every good show needs a confrontational billiards scene. 'The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air' had Uncle Phil breaking out 'Lucille,' 'Full House' had Danny pool-sharking Uncle Jesse, 'The Brady Bunch' had Bobby Brady hustling everyone in his family ... hell, even 'Boy Meets World' had Eric Matthews be a legit (?) Mexican billiards champion.

'Buffy' didn't have any pool hustling moments, but it did allow Xander to suddenly be masculine and good at sports when he needed to show anger. My theory: Faith/Eliza Dushku was so hot circa 1999 that anyone standing near her became the f**king Dos Equis guy. But yeah, poor The Bronze, always having to replace their pool cues. Maybe they had it in with the billiards impresario of southern California or whatever, and that's how they were the only bar in Sunnydale. That city had an AIRPORT and only one bar? And it's full of TEENS? Come on.

Episode: "Graduation Day, Part One" (season 3, episode 21)

What Happens: In her first appearance (in "The Wish"), Anya was the vengeance demon Anyanka, sent to destroy Xander Harris for his relationship wrong-doings. By "Graduation Day, Part One," Anya is a powerless mortal, and she'd kinda like to go on a date with him. She tries to entice him with a little conversation about sports, but he's too concerned about the whole "Mayor of Sunnydale ascending at their graduation ceremony, becoming a pure demon and murdering everybody in town" thing and blows her off. But still, she's pretty right-on about the sports.

Key line: "Men like sports. I'm sure of it."

Xander's response is typically Xandery: "Yes. Men like sports. Men watch the action movie, they eat of the beef, and they enjoy to look at the bosoms. A thousand years of avenging our wrongs, and that's all you've learned?"

This is only tangentially-related to the moment, but real-life Anya (Emma Caulfield) married, then divorced a guy named "Cornelius Grobbelaar." I didn't run that through a Harry Potter character generator, that is his actual name. There is no way a dude named Cornelius Grobbelaar likes sports. "Yeah honey, I'll be back later, I'm gonna head up to the sports bar and have a few drinks and eat a few wings and watch the Steelers game with f**king CORNELIUS GROBBELAAR."

So maybe she was totally wrong about the sports. Or maybe she just has terrible taste in men.

(Guest contributor FembotDanielle)

Episode: "Earshot" (season 3, episode 18)

What Happens: Buffy slays one of two mouthless demons, only to be infected by its phosphorescent special effects blood. The infection, besides causing a nasty rash that Buffy really shouldn’t be picking at, eventually causes part of the demon to manifest itself in the host. Is it horns? A tail? A demon penis? Nope, just telepathic powers that seem fun at first, but would eventually drive her to a life of insanity and total seclusion. Oh, if only we could only be so lucky. We get to hear Sunnydale student and faculty’s innermost thoughts, affirming that teenage boys only think about sex, Wesley’s character started out super creepy, and a bunch of characters we’ve never seen before have thoughts that will never be important ever again. There is a pep rally for the school’s basketball team, Buffy does some crazy parkour moves in broad daylight, casually betraying that she was just another boring regular kid, and, most importantly, there’s murder afoot! Also, Angel rips out the heart of a demon and feeds it to Buffy because romance.

Key line: "Oh right, ‘cuz the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that's a crippler."

This was a significant episode, the more minor of the reasons being the confirmation of past events through character exposition (apparently enough people couldn’t figure out that Giles and Joyce had sex in Band Candy), and the obvious being the subject of a potential school massacre being addressed on television in 1999. Originally the episode was set to air just a week after the tragic and shocking events at Columbine High School occurred. Obviously the episode was pulled, and eventually it aired, out of order, in September prior to the premiere of season 4.

As the internet is constantly reminding me, I can no longer talk about things in the nineties assuming that everyone will know what I’m talking about, or was alive when it was happening. For those of us who were in high school when this happened (including the KMFDM listening, all black wearing, unpopular kids such as myself), it was a legitimately terrifying event with ripple effects across school policies, television and music broadcasting, and of course, the oft-overreacting media very publicly capitalizing on the moral panic over subcultures and the social dynamics of teen outcasts. Music was viewed as a weapon, video games an instigator, and television, the same medium that broadcasted the events with as much detail as possible as they happened and repeatedly in the days that followed, was heavily censored. For something that has come to be viewed as part of the American vernacular, Columbine was a confused, sad, and fearful time for so many people. School shootings were hardly unheard of at that point, but there’s a reason why 13 years later, it can be argued that more people know the word ‘Columbine’ than can remember the name Kip Kinkel.

Jane Espenson, the writer of Earshot, has penned quite a few of my favourite Buffy episodes. I’ve always loved her deftness at writing engaging tertiary characters, her ability to portray Xander at his best and most realistic, as well as the way she can inject a sense of humour and humanity into serious issues without turning them into a campy, thinly-veiled PSA with a supernatural plot device. Yes, the episode culminates in a funny little Xander side adventure involving jello and a crazed lunch lady looking to poison the students, but the actual theme of the episode follows the investigation into students who could potentially commit mass murder. There’s a meaningful (and generally unusual) cross-section of students whose characters and stereotypes go beyond ‘unnamed goth kid,’ ‘fat nerd,’ and ‘mean girl smoking in the bathroom.’ While some of these characters don’t actually appear again, there are enough high school archetypes to get the point across that anyone could be sad, or bullied, or have enough issues that they could surprise everyone and lash out.

Jonathan is eventually found in the clock tower, and Buffy assumes that he, angry, ignored, and overwhelmed, is going to attempt to murder his fellow students. In reality, he was going to commit suicide. Initially it seems that Buffy is going to pass along another insipid, self-righteous speech, but there’s a little gem of dialogue that helps set this episode apart:

"Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening."

It sounds weird to say that such a heavy episode was refreshing, but after months of people trying to find a place to lay blame, subcultures being singled out, and media fear-mongering, it was a much needed reminder that anyone can be depressed, or feel marginalized in our society. In the end, rather than be suspicious or afraid of someone who might seem a little different, we’d all do best to show a little compassion and understanding for everyone, and most importantly, we need to listen. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

(Guest contributor Em Rowley of Progressive Boink)

Episode: "The Zeppo" (season 3, episode 13)

What Happens: In the episode’s cold open, the Scoobies (plus Faith) battle some blue witchy girl-demon things. After dispatching them, Xander crawls out from underneath the pile of rubble into which he was thrown. The rest of the gang points out that, as usual, he was well-intentioned buy mostly useless. The next day at Sunnydale high Xander, in some attempt to get his groove back, harasses a random jock to include him in his game of catch. He manages to screw this up as well, and the ball lands in the lap of school heavy Jack O’Toole.

O’Toole is also, we find out later in the episode, a sentient zombie. But he’s eating lunch when the ball hits him, so I guess he’s a lunchmeat zombie? Anyway, then Cordelia shows up to mock Xander about how worthless he is, leading him on a quest to find his “thing” that makes him important. It goes as well as expected.

Key line: "I happen to be an integral part of that group. I happen to have a *lot* to offer.”

I hadn’t watched this episode in years, and it was interesting to revisit it as an adult rather than a teenager. Man, Nicholas Brendan sure was adorable. But MAN, he sure wasn’t much of an actor. Even more jarring: why the hell would Cordelia, of all people, even know who Zeppo Marx is? Does she strike you as a big Marx Brothers fan? I write about pop culture on the Internet. Know how I learned who Zeppo Marx is? THIS EPISODE. It would be like Dalia Royce from 'Suburgatory' suddenly making a Fatty Arbuckle reference. And even that is somehow less strange than the fact that Cordelia is for some reason dressed like The Good Wife in this scene.

Episode: "Chosen" (season 7, episode 22)

What Happens: There can only be one Slayer per generation. What this episode presupposes is... maybe that's not true? I mean hell, we saw three Slayers in the same generation in the first three years of the show. But yeah, Buffy and The Gang have to defeat THE FIRST EVIL~, a loosely-defined and totally-not-rushed shapeshifter thing, and their secret weapon is the Mastadon Axe the Black Ranger used on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. If you do MAGIC to it, it can activate all of the potential Slayers in the world at once, creating an army of Buffies to quip and yell at their friends and stab bad guys in the heart. It can also, I'm assuming, command a powerful Zord.

Anyway, every potential Slayer in the world becomes one, including Millie from 'Freaks and Geeks,' a woman being domestically abused, and a girl who is afraid to swing a baseball bat until HISTORY CHANGING MAGIC helps her be confident enough to ... I don't know, use super powers to win a baseball game? They don't really explain it or show where it goes. Are there any baseball scores in the season 8 comics?

Key line: "From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer. Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Can stand up, will stand up. Slayers, every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?"

And that's how season 7 of 'Buffy' ends ... with every girl in the world becoming powerful enough to hang out in graveyards and stab dudes to death. In real life, we call this "women I know in southern Virginia."

Being the Slayer doesn't really help you in sports. It didn't make Buffy a more coordinated cheerleader, or help her do anything beyond basic ice skating, or stop "throwing like a girl." Maybe that's why the scene ends where it does. Maybe she hits a home run, but maybe she swings too hard a la Buffy on the miniature golf course and strikes out. Then she goes home, says "nuts to this" and practices that thing she can do now where she backflips, and then the camera cuts away and she's standing on top of a moving semi truck.

That sounds way better than being able to get a base hit, doesn't it?