"" is episode 15 of season 2 of ''
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ''. See also
List Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes .
Willow is worried because Oz hasn't tried to make a move on her yet. Xander and Cordy are making big with the smoochies in her car, when they suffer a case of lupus interuptus. There's a werewolf in town, and tracking it is Gib Cain, an unreconstructed great white hunter. That night, Buffy and Giles track the wolf, but run into Cain instead. He tells them the werewolf is attracted to sexual tension, so Buffy goes to the Bronze to try and capture it. There, she sees the beast, but it escapes. It goes to the woods to sleep, and awakens the next morning as a bemused Oz. Larry complains of being bitten by a huge dog the previous week, which makes the gang think that he is the wolf, so Xander confronts him, but finds out instead that Larry is gay. Willow is still concerned that Oz doesn't like her, so she goes to his house that night. He wolfs out and chases her, but Buffy arrives with a tranquilizer gun, which Willow shoots him with. Willow and Oz (later, as a human) finally kiss.
Starts with by a dog.
After some research, Giles finds out that a werewolf is a wolf for three nights — this night would be the second. Since the werewolf is human the rest of the month, it would be wrong to kill him. This, however, is not what werewolf hunter Kane thinks, whom
Buffy and Giles meet while looking for the animal in woods where Xander and Cordelia were making out: Kane is out for his twelfth pelt. Though the two groups do not get along, mainly because Kane is a rampant chauvinist, Giles and Buffy do learn that the werewolf will be attracted to places were teenagers hang out — it is the
"sexual heat" that draws it.
Buffy and Giles rush to the Bronze, where Cordelia and Willow are busy complaining to each other about their men when the werewolf crashes the party. Buffy tries to catch it with a chain but fails. Kane joins them and points out that it will be Buffy's fault if the werewolf kills anybody. In fact, a body does turn up the next morning — Theresa, one of the students that Larry was tormenting. Buffy is not the only one to have feelings of guilt. Oz wakes up in the forest, buck naked and confused after changing back from his wolf state before our eyes. Recalling the bite he got, he calls his Aunt Maureen, and bluntly asks if his cousin is a werewolf. The answer is yes.
Xander figures that Larry is the most obvious suspect because of the bite and his aggressiveness. When he confronts Larry alone in the gym locker room, it turns out that he really is hiding something — his homosexuality. Xander unwittingly helps Larry out of the closet, who is left with the impression that Xander is gay, too.
Buffy and Xander realize that the reports of Theresa's body don't mention any mauling. They get to the funeral home in time to watch her rise as a vampire. Theresa has time to hit Buffy where it hurts the most, when she passes along greetings from
Angelus before Xander stakes her. It wasn't the werewolf that killed her.
Back in the library, Buffy suggests to Willow that she might have to make the first move if she wants to speed things up with Oz, and Willow goes to his house right before sundown. There, Oz is about to chain himself up but lets Willow in the house. Her rant about the mixed signals he is sending is interrupted by him changing into a werewolf right before her eyes. She flees the house screaming, the werewolf in pursuit. Kane hears the wolf's cry and joins the hunt. Willow escapes and gets Giles and Buffy, who are about to start the hunt for Oz with a tranquilizer gun. All parties meet in a clearing in the forest, and in the scuffle, it is Willow who shoots Oz, saving everybody. Buffy bends Kane's gun with her bare hands to make a point about girl power and tells him to leave the city.
The next morning, Willow and Oz finally get together, with the push coming from Willow who points out that she is not fun to be around three days out of the month, either. Oz and Willow share their first kiss, leaving Oz a "werewolf in love".
A frequent plot element in ''Buffy'' is the Scooby who has a traumatic experience or goes through major changes but will not tell his friends and family. Other examples include
Tara in ''
Family '' and Xander in ''
Once More, With Feeling ''.
It seems unlikely that Willow can outrun a werewolf.
"They might not look it, but bunnies can really take care of themselves." -- ''Oz starting the theme of violent bunnies that
Anya will perfect''
Willow is again shown using an Apple
PowerBook , her computer company of choice.
The cuffs Oz takes out of a cardboard box to chain himself up on the third night and Willows troubled reaction are one of the many references to
BDSM throughout the series.
German title: "Der Werwolfjäger" ("The Werewolf Hunter")
Buffy's reference to Kane as "mein Furrier" — a pun on "mein Führer",
Adolf Hitler — is censored in the German version (DVD audio version):
:"We just have to make it there before 'mein Furrier'".
is translated as:
:"Wir müssen nur dort sein, bevor unser Trapper dort aufkreutzt."
which translated back to English would roughly be:
:"We just have to be there before our trapper shows up there."
References to Hitler,
Nazis , and the
Shoah in U.S. films and TV series are routinely cut out by German translators. See "
The Witch " for another example in ''Buffy''.
- In the opening scene, Oz remarks on the moving eyes of the cheerleader statue, a reference to '' The Witch ''. No fear, it will be destroyed along with the entire school.
- After a chase through many episodes, Willow and Oz finally are a pair, their love strong enough to withstand the discovery of Oz's condition. The Scooby Gang have their own special powers and problems that will be explored in later episodes. Xander remains obsessed with Willow, though, setting the stage for '' Lover's Walk ''. Angelus continues to torment Buffy, strengthening her resolve to kill him.
- Though Larry's homosexuality is used more as humorous plot device, he does prepare the way for a homosexual main character.
- Stories that take place around the same time in the Buffyverse:
