A brutal killing occurs in Sunnydale, and Oz-wolf, who escaped his cage, is the prime suspect. Meanwhile, Buffy discovers that Angel is back from Hell in an animalistic state, which makes the Slayer fear that he’s the killer. The Scoobies then realise that the bad guy is actually a classmate called Pete. He attacks Buffy and is killed by Angel, who’s in an animalistic state.
| Airdate: | 20 October 1998 |
| Writer: | Marti Noxon |
| Director: | James Whitmore Jnr |
| Cast: |
Cordelia: "Pete was a monster? Where have I been?"
Behind the Scenes Trivia
Beastly title
The alternate title for the episode Beauty and the Beasts is “All Men Are Beasts.”
Eliza hits Sarah
In Beauty and the Beasts, Buffy walks up to Faith, who is listening to headphones. Faith whips around and hits Buffy in the jaw, thinking she’s an enemy. Eliza said of the scene:
“In one scene I had my walkman on, and Buffy came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder to get my attention. I was supposed to flip around, but I was so down with dancin’ that I turned around and socked Sarah in the jaw! I yelled, ‘Cut! Cut! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?’ She was like, ‘Yes, yes. You could’ve gone on.’”
To kill or not to kill?
Deleted scene from Beauty and the Beasts:
Scott: “Stable. Okay. Topics to avoid. The little men that live in your teeth…your compulsion to paint circus clowns…”
Buffy: “But if God keeps telling me to kill – it just seems snotty not to, you know?”
Cast and Crew Trivia
Danielle Weeks
Danielle Weeks played Debbie, the girlfriend of Pete in Beauty and the Beasts. She has also been in Bewitched, What Women Want, Taco Bender, The Day Before, The Weird Al Show and Charmed.
John Patrick White
John Patrick White played Pete in Beauty and the Beasts. He worked with Seth Green before in the 1998 movie Can’t Hardly Wait. He has also been in Galaxy Quest and the TV version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (with Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee in Joss Whedon’s Firefly).
Phill Lewis
Phill Lewis, who played the school counsellor, Mr. Platt, in Beauty and the Beasts, has also been in City Slickers and Heathers. He also played Steve in Friends.
Character Trivia
Debbie
Debbie was a friend of Oz, who attended Sunnydale High seen in Beauty and the Beasts. Her boyfriend, Pete, used a concoction of drugs to chang his personality. He beat Debbie badly but she stood by him when confronted by Buffy and Willow. Debbie was killed by Pete, and her body was found by Buffy.
Mr. Platt
Mr. Platt was a cool school counsellor who smoked like a chimney. Buffy visited him as a requirement for being allowed back into Sunnydale High. He was killed by Pete in Beauty and the Beasts, whilst doing what he did best: smoking.
Pete
Pete was a friend of Oz and boyfriend of Debbie. He used a concoction of drugs which changed his personality. He beat Debbie badly, as he was jealous of any contact she had with other men, but she stood by him. He eventually had a massive fight with werewolf Oz and Angel and was killed in Beauty and the Beasts.
Continuity
Angel’s jacket
The first true hint of a chemistry between Buffy and Angel developed as he gave her his leather jacket in Teacher’s Pet - much to Xander’s annoyance. Buffy wore the jacket in several subsequent episodes (such as The Pack), even as late as the third season (Beauty and the Beasts).
Dead guys
In the scene where Buffy has ‘broken’ Debbie in the bathroom in Beauty and the Beasts, a poster can be seen near Buffy which says, “Most women are not attracted to dead guys”. Very apt for the Slayer!
Hell time
In Beauty and the Beasts, Giles remarks that time moves differently in demon dimensions, Buffy says, “I remember”. She is referencing the time she fell into a hell dimension in Anne.
Manacle sharing
The manacles at Angel’s mansion were used on Angel in Beauty and the Beasts, Faith in Consequences, and on Buffy in Enemies.
Saving Jenny
In Beauty and the Beasts, Giles says he dreams that he saved Jenny, who was killed in Passion.
Smoking bad
Mr. Platt’s smoking in Beauty and the Beasts reinforces the shows clear bias against smoking, as every character in the show who has smoked has been either evil (Spike and the evil Angel) or doomed (Laura in Nightmares; the prostitute who was Angel’s first kill after re-losing his soul; and Sheila in School Hard). The same theory applies to alcohol too.
Music Trivia
Teenage Hate Machine
Faith listens to Marc Ferrari’s Teenage Hate Machine on her headphones in Beauty and the Beasts.
Mythology Trivia
Exploring Demon Dimensions
Giles mentions his book Exploring Demon Dimensions in Beauty and the Beasts.
Full moon
In Beauty and the Beasts, when Xander comes to relieve Willow on “Oz watch”, she explains that Werewolf Oz is more managable on the “second night”, but on the “third night…the real full moon” he is even more “wolf-y”. The problem with that is that the three nights of a full moon are (1) the night before the full moon (the “waxing full moon”), (2) the actual full moon, and (3) the third night, or night after the full moon (known as the “waning full moon”). So, in point of fact, one would surmise that Oz would be most “wolf-y” on the second night, which is the actual full moon.
Mystery of Acathla
Giles mentions his book Mystery of Acathla in Beauty and the Beasts.
References
Beauty and the Beast
The title of the episode Beauty and the Beasts comes from the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.
Call of the Wild
In Beauty and the Beasts, Buffy reads quotes from Jack London’s 1903 novel The Call of the Wild. The story is told from the point of view of Buck, a dog who is stolen from his home and forced to become a sled dog in the Alaskan wilderness. He is mistreated and becomes wild and vicious, and eventually joins a wolf pack.
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
The episode Beauty and the Beasts is an obvious homage to Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, in which the main character can change into an evil persona after drinking a concoction of chemicals. The German title of the episode is actually ‘Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde’ (hail the subtlety there). Willow references the book when she says, “Mr. Science was doing a Jekyll/Hyde deal”.
Manimal
Manimal was a TV series about a college professor who could change into any type of animal. It ran for eight episodes in 1983. The show is referenced by Faith in the episode Beauty and the Beasts.
Monopoly
Faith says in Beauty and the Beasts, “Get out of jail free, huh?” This is a reference to the board game Monopoly, which has a card which allows the player to leave jail. In Blood Ties, Buffy tells Dawn she has a “get-out-of-jail-free card”, and in Lies My Parents Told Me, Anya says, “Spike’s got some sort of ‘get out of jail free’ card that doesn’t apply to the rest of us”.
In Real me, Monopoly is one of the games that Anya brings when she and Xander babysit Dawn.
Rorschach test
Buffy says to the counsellor in Beauty and the Beasts, “Look … I know that I have to do this, and I’ll cooperate and look at your ink blots and everything.” This is a reference to the Rorschach test in which a person’s interpretation of a series of ink blots is supposed to give the examiner insight into their psyche.
Scooby Doo
The cartoon Scooby Doo has several ties with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xander calls Buffy’s group of friends the “Scooby Gang” for the first time in What’s My Line? (Part 1) as they have similarities with the young crime-fighting sleuths in the Scooby Doo cartoon. He says to Cordelia, “C’mon, Cordelia. You want to be a member of the Scooby Gang you gotta be willing to be inconvenienced every now and then.”
In Out of Mind, Out of Sight, Willow wears a white Scooby Doo t-shirt in this episode and in Beauty and the Beasts we see that she keeps her forensic tools in a Scooby Doo lunch box. In When She Was Bad, Xander wears a red Scooby Doo t-shirt.
Sarah Michelle Gellar appeared in two Scooby Doo movies, and Seth Green (Oz) appeared with Sarah in Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed. Sarah’s Buffy stunt double, Michele Waitman, also doubled for Sarah in Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed.
More Buffy/Scooby Doo trivia: In the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back there is a spoof scene of Scooby Doo’s gang. The part of Fred was played by Marc Blucas (Riley Finn), Shaggy was played by Matthew James (who played the demon Merle in Angel) and Velma was played by Jane Silvia (who played the “conservative woman” in The Freshman).
The English Patient
In Something Blue, Willow calls Spike “the undead English Patient”. She’s referring to the 1996 movie The English Patient, starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas. Kristin’s sister Serena appeared as Gwendolyn Post in the Buffy episode Revelations. In Beauty and the Beasts, Faith says that even your average, “Mr. I-Love-The-English-Patient”, has some beastly qualities hidden somewhere. Apparently a love of The English Patient suggests masculine sensitivity!
The Full Monty
In Beauty and the Beasts, Xander and Willow discuss how to shield Oz’s nakedness when he wakes up after being a werewolf. Xander says, “I can handle the Oz Full Monty. I mean, not ‘handle’ handle, like ‘hands to flesh’ handle.” The Full Monty was a British film made in 1997 about a group of Sheffield steelworkers who became strippers.
The Sound of Music
After being possessed by Eyghon, Jenny says to Giles in The Dark Age, “I mean, I’m not running around, wind in my hair, ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ fine, but… I’m coping.” This is a quote from the title song of the musical The Sound of Music (1959) written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. It was made into a movie starring Julie Andrews in 1965.
Buffy also mentions the song in Beauty and the Beasts when she says, “Three-dimensional, Sensurround, The Hills Are Alive…”
In That Vision Thing, Lorne says, “You’re Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”
Goofs
Seen at 05.52 minutes:
The Scoobies think Oz-wolf may have escaped, and killed - do they really believe that Oz, in werewolf form, escaped through the open window in the library, killed the student, and then climbed back in the window to be there in the morning?
Seen at 08.22 minutes:
When Buffy first sees Mr. Platt, there are several shots of her in which her cardigan is sometimes open and sometimes almost buttoned up.
Seen at 13.15 minutes:
When Buffy finds Angel for the first time, he’s wearing just a pair of trousers. Buffy then chains him up, but when she returns to visit him later in the day, he is wearing boots. Where did he get them from?
Seen at 24.52 minutes:
Buffy goes to the counselor to secretly tell him about Angel - so why did she leave the door open when any of her friends could hear her talking?
Seen at 35.15 minutes:
During his fight with Pete, Oz changes quickly into werewolf form. What happened to the long, drawn-out throes that Oz went through in the process of turning into a werewolf in Phases? And where did his clothes go to?
Seen at 40.54 minutes:
When Cordelia says, “now I’m going to be stuck with serious thoughts all day”, Xander’s bag strap is over his collar. In the next shot, it’s underneath the collar.
Quotes
Xander: "Private Harris reporting for Oz watch."
Xander: "Uh, no worries. I can handle the Oz Full Monty. I mean, not 'handle' handle, like 'hands to flesh' handle."
Giles: "Right. It's good to see you. Um, no need to panic."
Oz: "Just a thought. Poker: not your game."
Xander: "We're doing crime here. You don't sneak up during crime."
Buffy: "Oh, he definitely... marches to the beat of his own drummer. Actually, I think he makes his own drums."
Cordelia: "Pete was a monster? Where have I been?"