Mark Watches ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’: S02E04 – Inca Mummy Girl

In the fourth episode of the second season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Xander falls in love with a mummy. It’s both just as bad and way better than that sounds. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Buffy.

The Official “Inca Mummy Girl” Score Card

• The idea that because Sunnydale High is hosting foreign exchange students, you should go to a museum: -10 points
• The realistic looking mummy: 15 points
• Xander still thinking it’s acceptable to act openly jealous around Buffy anytime she mentions she will be spending any amount of time with a boy: -25 points
• The mummy sucking the life out of Rodney and it being to goddamn creepy: 20 points
• Everyone’s increasingly bizarre behavior about foreign exchange students, as if they’re aliens from another planet: -10 points.
• “Oh, I know this one! ‘Slaying entails certain sacrifices, blah blah bliddy blah, I’m so stuffy, give me a scone.'”: 1,000 points.
• “One day I’m gonna live in a town where evil curses are just generally ruled out without even saying.” 25 points.
• Using braces on a mummy and having it not be the worst thing ever: 5 points.
• Xander immediately hitting on Ampata: -150 points.
• The episode at least having it be mutual and consensual: 50 points.
• Any character thinking that once you see a Latina, you should speak Spanish to them or assume they can’t speak English: -500 points.
• The very first appearance of the bodyguard and its unintentional hilarity: 100 points.
• The fact that no one seemed at all concerned that a man in a blouse hacked at them with a sword and then vanished: 100 points.
• The fact that shit in Sunnydale is so strange that it’s entirely believable that a man in a blouse with a sword is not alarming to the group: 500 points.
• The use of Ampata in a way that does not demonize her actions, but instead paints her as a complicated character who was unjustly sacrificed and just wants to have a real life: 1,000 points.
• Using that same story to parallel the life of Buffy, who is the same age and was forced into a role by other people and is struggling for the same thing: 1,000 points.
• Seth Green: 1,000 points.
• Breaking Willow’s heart onscreen: 0 points, only because I want to award -1,000,000 because I love Willow and how dare you, and because I want to award +1,000,000 for including a story line that forces her to face the fact that she isn’t going to get Xander to fall in love with her.
• “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.” “Good for you.” “Well, I didn’t choose yet.” 500 points.
• The idea that to celebrate other cultures, a bunch of white people should dress up as caricatures of those other cultures, fostering stereotypes in the process: -5,000 points.
• The fact that this idea was then executed on television without a single negative voice saying HEY YOU SHOULD REALLY NOT DO THIS AT ALL: -5,000 points.
• Willow choosing to dress in a parka: 50 points.
• The show setting up the idea that Oz things Willow is cute: 2,500 points.
• The entire scene with Xander and Ampata in that dark room, complete with Xander’s first real emotional kiss, and Ampata caring so much about Xander that she refuses to kill him, and all of the sudden feels I got from how well this was filmed and how sad I was that someone who mutually appreciated and liked Xander in the way he felt about her could never be in a relationship with him: 2,500 points 
• Xander telling Ampata that he would rather die than lose Willow as a friend: 500 points.
• The image of Ampata rapidly turning into a mummy and breaking apart in Xander’s arms: I can’t give this points or take away points because it still creeps me out.
• A visual and textual reference to the Man With No Name trilogy: 100 points.
• The general treatment of race in “Inca Mummy Girl”: -500 points.
• The general treatment of character development in “Inca Mummy Girl”: 260 points.

Final Score: 0 points. I felt good things, I felt bad things, and when you get right down to it, I am so conflicted in my sensations of joy and anger that they cancel one another out.