The Pack

[Updated April 29, 2013]

Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo.

I watched BtVS because my then-nine year old daughter wanted to watch and was worried that it would be too scary. I thought the first few episodes were cute and funny, oblivious to metaphors or growing up or anything else. The Pack was the episode which made me sit up and think there might be something more to this show. It’s really a dark episode – the male lead, someone we like, actually attempts to rape the heroine. Now, it’s done in metaphor, there’s an excuse given, and Buffy euphemizes Xander’s attack by calling it “felony sexual assault”, but I saw it as a daring and dark episode for a show which seemed so light in the beginning. I mean really – they ate the nice Principal Flutie?

Buffy will get darker and darker as the series continues; this was the first real hint of something deeper.

Let’s consider Xander’s actions in the context of the show. We learned from Giles in The Harvest that a vampire “isn’t a person at all”. Rather, a demon sets up shop in the human; the person is “infected by the demon’s soul”. That sounds a lot like Xander’s situation. He was infected by a hyena, but the net result was pretty much the same. Jesse became infected by a demon, but his basic view of the world remained very similar to what it had been before: he went to the Bronze, he wanted Cordelia, he resented not getting what he wanted. It seems that the demon may be in control, but that elements of Jesse’s memory and personality remained. Only the moral restraints were lifted.

Similarly, Xander became cruel to others, but like the human Xander he remained obsessed with Buffy. Let’s face it – hyenas don’t sexually assault human women. That came from Xander, not the demon possessing him.

This raises all kinds of interesting moral issues. It is, for one thing, a comment in metaphor about the evil potential inside all of us. Xander isn’t a bad person. He just has dark sides to him which he keeps in restraint and which we’d never have seen if the demon hadn’t released them. Given Xander’s “Everyman” role on the show, this seems like a commentary on all of us. And it probably is more true than we’d like to admit about ourselves.

So does this mean Xander was at fault, that he was morally culpable for the attack on Buffy? I have my own view of this, though I won’t give it now. But you should be thinking about it because this same issue is going to arise at critical moments throughout the show in some of the very best episodes.

Since I’m of the view that every episode is all about Buffy in some way, I need to explain how I think that factors in to an episode which seems to be very much about Xander (like Teacher’s Pet). There’s an interesting fact about hyenas: they are female dominant. The reason why they’re female dominant is even more interesting: the females produce an unusually high concentration of androgens (male hormones), including testosterone.

The way I see the episode is that Buffy is the dominant character. She’s stronger than everyone else and she’s in control in some ways even when she’s taking Giles’ advice. Thus, the message for Buffy seems to me a simple one of “this (Xander) could be you”. It’s not about bashing males for “testosterone poisoning” or anything superficial like that, it’s about not abusing a position of dominance, about caring for the weak (as Buffy does in the dodge ball game) rather than preying on them.

I should add that I thought this episode used a number of dramatic devices to add to the effect. The silence of the Pack, interrupted by laconic phrases and cruel laughter; the power walk; the image of Willow watching the documentary so that we don’t actually see them eat the pig. And Nick Brendan was terrific as the possessed and dangerous Xander.