Beauty and the Beasts

These snapshots may contain SPOILERS for the entire series, so if for some reason you haven't yet seen some of the episodes and do not want to know what is going on, read no further.
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On the night of a full moon a student is found savagely mauled in the woods, and the gang worry that Oz may have escaped from his cage.  However, Buffy discovers that Angel has somehow escaped Acathla's hell dimension and returned to Earth. Because time moves differently in hell, he has had to endure a century of torture and is now little more than a wild animal. Now Buffy must find a way to tell the gang that Oz may be innocent and to keep them from killing Angel.
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Faith: [about Scott] But you like him. When you think about him you get that good, down-low tickle, right?
Buffy: Yeah, I guess... how low?
Faith: You tell me!


Good character development, OK dialogue and an OK plot.

Monsters/beasts abound in this episode. Oz, Angel and the MOTW Pete. I'm refraining from going down that whole abusive boyfriend metaphor in this episode, since it's pretty self explanatory. We all have the beast within us, but its how choose to deal with it that defines us. Oz is in his infancy stage as a werewolf and cannot control the animal within. So he turns control over to others. Angel, in his non-feral state, can control himself, and by the end of the episode regains a portion of that control. Pete doesn't want to control himself and turns over control to the beast.

Its interesting that both other beasts fight the out of control monster before the end of the episode. Oz fights Pete to save himself with some degree of success. But its Angel who conquers the beast, both inner and outer by the end of the episode.

I liked the whole Call of the Wild quotes bookending this episode. The opener is about the tame animal feeling the wild urges within. The end quotes appropriately shows the integration of instinct with civilization, and how to live with both worlds in balance.


My views/status of characters;
Buffy - like
Willow - like
Xander - like
Giles - like
Cordelia - like
Spike - absent
Angel - neutral
Oz - like

Overall I consider this an average episode compared to the rest of the season.