\m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/: Buffy the Vampire Slayer DeepWatch: Season 2, Episode 4: “Inca Mummy Girl” (airdate: Monday, October 6, 1997): Part 2 of 3

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15:01 – 30:00

Previously on \m/15-Minute Hellmouth\m/ . . .

The Cultural Exchange Program has arrived in Sunnydale, California. Many students, including Buffy Summers, will be hosting foreign exchange students for two weeks. Meanwhile, a South American exhibit, which includes an actual Inca mummy girl, arrives at the Sunnydale Natural History Museum. Ne’er-do-well Rodney Munson, one of those Sunnydale students we’ve never seen before, breaks a seal clutched in the mummy’s hands, which reanimates it. Costing Rodney his life, I should add. The mummy also consumes the life force of Buffy’s exchange student, Ampata Gutierrez, at the Sunnydale bus depot, assuming his identity and his place in Buffy’s house.

And then—all apologies to Lou Reed—he was a she.

As we were closing out Part 1 of our annotated synopsis of “Inca Mummy Girl,” we were introduced to two other new characters. Devon MacLeish is Cordelia Chase’s boyfriend-du-jour and the lead singer of local band Dingoes Ate My Baby. Daniel Osbourne, known simply as “Oz,” is the lead guitarist for the same band.

I still listen to Star Trek: The Next Conversation, a podcast co-hosted by Matt Mira and Andrew Secunda. On this side of the paywall they are now discussing every episode of Deep Space Nine. If you’re a Trekkie of any stripe, you’d probably like this podcast. Mira and Secunda are both experienced television writers. It was on this podcast where I first heard about writers getting some sort of creator’s credit residual if characters they created become regulars on a series.

I don’t know if this was true for Kiene and Reinkemeyer, who wrote “Inca Mummy Girl.” If so, they received some extra coinage for Daniel “Oz” Osbourne, Devon MacLeish, and—-believe it or not—-Jonathan Levinson (Danny Strong), who makes his first appearance in this episode and will continue on making appearances in the series until Season 7.

Of course, Joss Whedon may get all the credit for all of these characters. I don’t really know.

As we left our new characters last time, beside Oz’s van, Devon had asked his friend what a girl had to do to impress him. You see, Oz didn’t seem as taken with Cordelia as his friend is.

Oz responded, “It involves a feathered boa and the theme to A Summer Place. I can’t discuss it here.”

This is a funny first line of dialogue. A Summer Place is a 1959 movie I’ve never watched. The “Theme from A Summer Place” became a hit for Percy Faith and his orchestra in 1960, spending nine weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. I have heard the theme quite a few times. On Animal House, Con Air, and Ocean’s Eleven (2001), just to name a few movies. Buffy itself uses the theme in a later season.

You’ve heard it, too. It’s quintessential elevator music.

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Maybe not a reference you’d expect a high school senior in 1997 to make, but Oz is not your typical high school senior. As we will find out.

“You’re too picky, man,” Devon says. “Do you know how many girls you could have? You’re lead guitar, Oz. It’s currency.”

“I’m not picky,” Oz says. “You’re just impressed by any pretty girl that can walk and talk.”

Devon says, “She doesn’t have to talk.”

Oz just gives a sardonic smirk. But, speaking of walking and talking, that’s what Willow and Xander are doing when we cut to them. They are talking about Xander’s possible costume for the upcoming Cultural Exchange dance.

“No shirts with ruffles,” Xander says, “no hats with feathers and definitely no lederhosen. They make my calves look fat.”

“Why are you suddenly so worried about looking like an idiot?” Willow says. A beat. “That came out wrong.”

Xander’s not offended, however. He sees Buffy and the young girl we now know as Ampata arriving. Willow notices them as well. It’s mostly subtext, but we can imagine that she’s thinking: Great. Xander’s crushing on another girl who isn’t me.

Buffy tells Ampata that there’s someone at the school who’s dying to meet her. I don’t think she means literally dying, but you never know with this series.

She escorts Ampata to the library, of course, and introduces her to Giles. Buffy’s Watcher immediately asks Ampata if she can translate the seal only recently broken by the late Rodney Munson.

Ampta stares at the seal, incredulously. She looks nervous.

“Something wrong?” Buffy asks.

“Uh, no,” Ampata says. “Uh, it is . . . why are you asking me?”

In his usual stammering, Hugh Grantish way, Giles says, “It’s . . . well, it’s an artifact from, uh, your . . . region. It’s from the tomb of an Incan mummy actually. We were trying to translate it as a project for our, um . . .”

Willow says, “Our archaeology club.”

Giles looks grateful that Willow’s quick thinking bailed him out. “Very good,” he says.

“It is broken,” Ampata says. “Where are the other pieces?”

“That’s all we found,” Buffy says.

“It is very old and valuable.” Ampata holds the seal out to Giles. “You should hide it.”

“Is anything you recognize here?” Giles asks. “This chappy here with the knife, for instance?”

“I do not know exactly, but . . . I think this represents, I believe the word is . . . bodyguard?”

Giles accepts the seal back from the exchange student. “Bodyguard? Interesting.”

“Legend has it that he guards the mummy against those who would disturb her.”

Giles says that’s a good starting point for their, um . . . club. Buffy says that, as archaeology club president, she has a lot of dull stuff she needs to do, so she asks Willow if maybe she could—

Xander interjects. “Stay with Ampata for the day. I’d love to.” Xander sketches an awkward bow and smiles at the pretty former mummy.

She smiles back. “Yes, that will be fun.”

Xander does the “after you” gesture and lets Ampata leave ahead of him. He looks back at Buffy and Willow, exhaling loudly, and then follows her.

“Right,” Giles says. “I’ll continue with the translation. Buffy, you research this bodyguard thing, and Willow . . .” He turns around. “Willow?”

Willow is still staring after Xander and Ampata. “Boy,” she says, “they really like each other.”

We cut to Xander and Ampata, sitting in the bleachers at the football field. Xander shows her the proper way to eat a Twinkie, which is, naturally, stuffing the entire thing into your mouth. Ampata brushes the hair away from her face and proceeds to stuff most of her own Twinkie into her mouth. She seems to be enjoying herself.

“Good, huh?” Xander says, his mouth still full. “And the exciting part is that they have no ingredients that a human can pronounce. So it doesn’t leave you with that heavy . . . food feeling in your stomach.”

Maybe you remember when Hostess went bankrupt back in 2012 and Twinkies were unavailable in the US for a few months. A couple of private equity companies purchased Twinkies and other Hostess brands out of bankruptcy for $410 million, only to subsequently sell Hostess for $2.3 billion. Quite a return on investment.

Ampata laughs. “You are strange.”

“Girls always tell me that,” Xander says. “Right before they run away.”

Back at the library, Buffy is examining the seal under a magnifying lamp. She asks Willow if she thinks something matches, but Willow really isn’t paying attention. She seems to be playing with a stuffed frog.

Later in the season, Willow will confess to Giles that she has a fear of frogs. Like all phobias, this one has a name—ranidaphobia. We saw her dissecting a frog in Season 1’s “Witch,” where Xander was the squeamish one. Maybe her fear applies only to living frogs (and toads, one would assume). It doesn’t apply to plush toys, apparently.

Also in Season 1, in the appropriately titled “Nightmares,” Willow’s big fear seemed to be having to perform Madame Butterfly on stage. It is possible to have more than one phobia.

Just a reminder: Xander is afraid of clowns; Buffy is afraid she’s the reason her parents split; and, Giles’s worst nightmare is allowing Buffy to die on his watch. Anya, who you will meet in Season 3, is afraid of bunnies. Maybe that’s a good tip for all writers out there. Give your characters a fear, even a secret one, to give them a bit more depth.

Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes, after all. Or maybe he’s been cured after his immersion therapy in the Well of Souls. See? I can talk about more than Buffy and her crew. My nerdity is boundless.

Buffy says, “Hey!” to get Willow’s attention.

“Oh, yes,” Willow says. “I’m caring about mummies.”

“Ampata’s only staying two weeks,” Buffy says, understanding the source of Willow’s distraction.

“Yeah. And then Xander can find someone else who’s not me to obsess about. At least with you I knew he didn’t have a shot. Well, you know, I have a choice. I can spend my life waiting for Xander to go out with every other girl in the world until he notices me, or I can just get on with my life.”

What was subtext is now textual. Willow is still crushing hard on Xander, who seems to desire every other woman who pays him any attention but treats Willow like she’s his sister.

Giles wanders by and actually commends Buffy on doing a good job with the translation of the pictograms. Buffy’s wheelhouse is more in kicking and punching supernatural creatures and stabbing said creatures with pointed stakes and weapons. For her to impress Giles while Willow mopes over Xander means she’s the smart teenager in this scene.

“Yes,” Giles says. “This is most illuminating. It seems Rodney’s killer might be the mummy.”

“Where does it say that?” Willow asks.

“Well, here. It implies that the mummy is capable of . . . feeding on the life force of a person, effectively freeze-drying them, you might say. Extraordinary!”

Buffy says, “Then we just have to stop the mummy. Which leads to the questions: How do we (A) find and (B) stop the mummy?”

“The answer to that,” Giles says, “is somewhere still here. Or in the rest of the seal.”

We we return to Xander and Ampata, still sitting on the bleachers. The man cosplaying as a low-rent Luke Skywalker attacks him with his jungle machete. Ampata screams and she and Xander quickly separate as the so-called bodyguard’s long knife strikes the seat between them.

“You stole the seal!” Inca Bodyguard says. “Where is it?”

The bodyguard attacks Xander again, who rolls down a couple of levels on the bleachers. The attacker tries to stab him, but Xander catches his arm. Ampata screams again. That’s when the bodyguard looks at her. His eyes widen in recognition.

“It is you!” the bodyguard says.

Xander kicks him and the bodyguard rolls all the way down the bleachers to the ground. Xander and Ampata use the time-honored tactic of running away. Call it a strategic retreat if you want to spin it.

Back at the library, Giles brings Ampata a cup of tea. He places it on the table in front of her.

Willow says, “Why’s this guy so into us? I mean, what’s he want?”

“He said, ‘Give me the seal,’” Xander says

“Apparently,” Giles says, “this is more popular than we realized. I just don’t know what we should do with it.”

“Destroy it!” Ampata says, the vehemence of her reaction seeming to surprise Giles. “If you do not, someone could die.”

“I’m afraid someone already has,” Giles says.

Ampata says, “You mean the man with the knife killed someone?”

“Uh, no,” Buffy says. “Well, not exactly.”

Ampata looks at all of the Scoobies. “You are not telling me everything,” she says.

“You’re right, Ampata,” Xander says, taking her hand. “And it’s time we do. We’re not an archaeology club. We’re in—-”

Giles clears his throat. Buffy gives Xander a hard look.

“We’re in the crime club,” Xander says, thinking on his feet. “Which is kind of like the chess club, only with crime. And, uh, no chess.”

“Please understand me,” Ampata says. “That seal nearly got us killed. It must be destroyed!”

Ampata runs out of the library. Xander goes after her, calling her name. Buffy and Willow share a perplexed look.

It does seem like a bit of an overreaction on Ampata’s part. We all know that she’s the Inca Mummy Girl who killed the mischievous Rodney Munson and the real Ampata Guiterrez. But let’s say we didn’t. She is a sixteen-year-old girl from another country who was just attacked on the high school football bleachers by some machete wielding Steven Seagall. She could still be in shock.

On the other hand, define “destroyed.” Will breaking the big turkey platter into even smaller pieces somehow keep the Machete Jedi away? It was already broken, right? That’s how Ampata became a real girl again.

Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, according to the law of conservation of mass. I just hit you with some physics, y’all. Einstein’s special theory of relativity, introduced in 1905, did show that mass and energy are equivalent, however. Matter can be converted into energy, and vice versa. This led to the law of conservation of mass-energy, obviously.

I’m not saying that Ampata is suggesting that the seal be converted into energy. But I’m not sure how breaking the seal into even smaller shards would accomplish anything. It feels like misdirection to me.

Xander finds Ampata sitting on a bench in the hallway. She didn’t run far. Xander hunkers down beside her.

“Ampata, listen to me,” he says. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them.”

“Your investigation is dangerous. I do not want that. Just normal life.” Ampata flees again, but this time only as far as the water fountain. Xander follows her, but gives her her space as she drinks from the fountain. Willow comes out of the library and joins Xander.

“Is she okay?” Willow asks.

“Wigged,” Xander says, using one of my favorite Buffyisms. “I’m trying to convince her that our lives aren’t just danger and peril around here.”

“You should take her to the dance,” Willow says.

“That’s a good idea,” Xander says. “We’ll all go.”

“No,” Willow says, “I mean just you.”

“But you were psyched! And your costume!”

Willow gives her best friend a little smile. Bittersweet.

“I’ll see you there,” she says.

“You know what, Willow?” Xander says. “You’re my best friend.”

As Xander goes over to join Ampata, Willow says, “I know,” and walks off. I was sympathetic to Xander when he was shot down by Buffy in last season’s finale. I’m sympathetic to Willow because Xander is a self-centered jackass at times and is careless with his friend’s feelings.

Over in the library, where all the real work gets done, Buffy says, “I don’t get it. Why would the bodyguard have such a jones for a broken piece of rock?”

Rock? I thought it was pottery. Or ceramics, if that’s not just a different word describing the same thing. Stoneware, perhaps? It broke pretty easily for rock.

“Perhaps,” Giles says, “he needs to put it together with the other pieces.”

“If he has them,” Buffy says. “I mean, we didn’t find them.”

“And if he didn’t, then they’d still be at the museum.”

“Maybe we should go there and find them,” Buffy says. “And odds are he’ll show up, too. Right?”

“And hopefully we’ll be ready.”

“Hey, look at us!” Buffy says. “We came up with a plan. A good plan.”

“All right. We’ll meet there tonight after it closes.”

“No! Bad plan!” Buffy says. “I have other plans. Dance plans.” Giles gives her a harsh look. Buffy sighs, dejected. “Cancelled plans.”

Recurring theme moment. Buffy, not unlike the Inca girl who was sacrificed to a South American mountain god, wants to be a normal girl. But she has a duty. A calling. And a Watcher who’s always there to remind her of this. Even this early in the series, Buffy is sometimes painted as a rebellious teen. But she’s not a bad girl.

Not yet, at any rate.

Xander and Ampata reveal that they both like each other. He asks her to go to the dance with him, to which she happily agrees.

Xander says, “You’re not a praying mantis, are you?”

Which is a callback to the first season episode “Teacher’s Pet,” in which the teacher trying to seduce Xander turned out to be a giant praying mantis creature. Xander has a lot of luck with the ladies. Most of it bad.

Ampata excuses herself to go to the girls restroom. While she touches up her makeup, she sees the Machete Incan bodyguard behind her.

“I beg you,” Ampata says, turning to talk to the man face-to-face. “Do not kill me.”

The bodyguard has a wicked looking scar that snakes up the left side of his face from chin to temple.

“You are already dead,” the man says. “For five hundred years.”

“But it was not fair. I was innocent.”

“The people you kill now so that you may live, they are innocent.”

“Please,” Ampata begs. “I . . . I am in love.” Yes, Ampata is in love with Xander Harris. That was quick.

“You are the Chosen One,” the bodyguard says. “You must die. You have no choice.”

He stabs at Ampata with his weighty knife. She grabs his arm and pulls him towards her. He knows what’s coming when she pulls him in for a kiss.

You have no choice.

“Yes, I do,” Ampata says.

Her kiss does its thing and the bodyguard begins to turn into a quick freeze-dried mummy as Ampata sucks the life force from his body. When Ampata returns to the hallway, where Xander is waiting, the two of them talk about the dance some more and then walk down the hallway, hand-in-hand. Ah, Young Love! Of course, Xander knows nothing about the fresh corpse in the girls restroom.

Here is where make the turn from Act II into Act III.

Cut to: Buffy’s bedroom. Ampata comes to Buffy, asking to borrow some lipstick. Buffy has “Ampata”s luggage from the bus station, which sent it over to the Summers house. Ampata says she forgot all about it, but will unpack it later.

“No worries,” Buffy says. “I can do it.”

“But you must get ready for the dance.”

“I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“I have work to do. Crime club work. It’s really nothing for you to worry about.”

“Oh,” says Ampata, “I’m not worried, thanks to Xander.”

“He seems very happy around you.”

“I am happy, too.” She asks Buffy’s opinion about a shade of lipstick. Buffy says that one clashes, but thinks she has a gold one there on the desk that will do the job.

“Thank you,” Ampata says. “You’re always thinking of others before yourself. You remind me of someone from very long ago. The Inca Princess.”

“Cool,” Buffy says. “A princess.”

Buffy begins to unpack one of Ampata’s bags as she continues to talk, her back to Buffy as she puts on her lipstick.

“They told her that she was the only one,” Ampata says. “That only she could defend her people from the netherworld.”

Meanwhile, Buffy is closely examining what appears to be a pair of mens underwear that she pulled from Ampata’s luggage. She seems perplexed.

“Out of all the girls in her generation,” Ampata continues, “she was the only one—” Ampata starts to pull open a desk drawer containing holy water, a wooden stake and crucifix and other assorted Slayer paraphrenalia. Buffy notices this and closes the drawer before Ampata can get a good look inside.

“Chosen,” Buffy says, completing the former mummy’s sentence.

“Do you know the story?”

“It’s fairly familiar,” Buffy says. The parallels being drawn between Buffy and the girl who became the Inca Mummy Girl are pretty strong.

“She was sixteen, like us,” Ampata says. “She was offered as a sacrifice and went to her death. Who knows what she had to give up to fulfill her duty to others? What chance of love?”

“Who knows?” Buffy agrees. “I’ll just unpack the rest of your stuff for you.” Buffy crosses the room and begins to lift the lid of a huge old-fashioned trunk.

“No, really, let me . . .” Ampata begins, just as we are able to see that the trunk contains the mummified remains of the real Ampata. The doorbell rings and distracts Buffy, so that she doesn’t see the corpse.

“That’s Xander and Willow,” Buffy says. “I’ll get it.”

After Buffy exits her bedroom, Ampata puts the lock back on the trunk.

Buffy answers the door. It’s just Xander. No Willow. Xander is dressed as the spaghetti-western era Clint Eastwood.

“What culture are you?” Buffy asks.

“I’m from the country of Leone. It’s in Italy pretending to be Montana.” He notices Buffy’s distinct lack of cultural-exchange related costume. She’s wearing what appear to be blue denim overalls over a white t-shirt. “And where are you from, the country of White Trash?”

Buffy explains the change in plans. She and Giles are going mummy hunting while Ampata goes to the dance with Xander and Willow. By the way, where is Willow?

“She’s not coming,” Xander says. “With us.”

“Oh. On a date. Romance. Lips.”

Xander gallantly sweeps off his cowboy hat as Ampata appears on the staircase, smiling prettily at him. “Hello, Xander,” she says.

Xander is unable to string words together for a moment, he is so taken with Ampata’s beauty.

Joyce Summers, Buffy’s mom, appears suddenly from around a corner. She is silent and deadly, like a ninja.

“Ampata,” Joyce says, “Don’t you look wonderful?”

As Xander and his date leave for the dance, Joyce says, “Look at that. Two days in America and Ampata already seems like she belongs here. She’s really fitting in.”

Joyce heads back up the stairs. I think she got to clock out early that day.

“Yeah,” Buffy says quietly. “How about that?”

The dance is, of course, being held at the Bronze. We weren’t going to build another new set for this. Devon and Oz, the two new students we met earlier in this episode, are playing on stage with their band. Dingoes Ate My Baby. Still makes me chuckle. Devon is singing and Oz is hanging back and coolly playing lead guitar.

Cordelia enters the club wearing some sort of Hawaiian getup that bares a lot of skin. She sees Willow and says, “Ooh, near faux pas. I almost wore the same thing.”

It’s just Cordy being a mean girl, of course. Willow looks like a sad Nanook of the North, only her face visible in her furry, hooded big coat. We’ve arrived at the 30-Minute mark just as Cordy walks past Willow.

We’ll return to this scene in Part 3 of our annotated synopsis of “Inca Mummy Girl.” It’s beginning to feel like the Bronze is going to be where this story heats up even more. Will Ampata give Xander her special kiss? Will Willow die of heatstroke in her Eskimo outfit?

Stay tuned.

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