History Recap / BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E13TheZeppo

* IdealizedSex: When Xander loses his virginity with Faith. After some romantic snuggling in bed we SmashCut to Faith booting him out the door now she's finished making use of him.

* UnfazedEveryman: While this is Xander's general role in the show, this episode highlights it: The rest of the Scoobies consider Xander of not being helpful in their case due to lacking any special abilities. Meanwhile, Xander has his own sidequest with some undead classmates and just reacts to it as his usual misfortune instead of being especially surprised by it. Cordelia even compares him to Jimmy Olsen, the [[Franchise/TheDCU DC Universe's]] prime example of an Unfazzed Everyman, in the episode.

* UnfazedEveryman: While this is Xander's general role in the show, this episode highlights it: The rest of the Scoobies consider Xander of not being helpful in their case due to lacking any special abilities. Meanwhile, Xander has his own sidequest with some undead classmates and just reacts to it as his usual misfortune instead of being especially surprised by it. Cordelia even compares him to Jimmy Olsen, the DC Universe's prime example of an Unfazzed Everyman, in the episode.

* UnfazzedEveryman: While this is Xander's general role in the show, this episode highlights it: The rest of the Scoobies consider Xander of not being helpful in their case due to lacking any special abilities. Meanwhile, Xander has his own sidequest with some undead classmates and just reacts to it as his usual misfortune instead of being especially surprised by it. Cordelia even compares him to Jimmy Olsen, the DC Universe's prime example of an Unfazzed Everyman, in the episode.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: Played subtly straight and strongly backwards. While the rest of the Scooby Gang is busy taking care of a huge, horrific, wide-scale, apocalyptic, personally heartwrenching catastrophe, an undead delinquent jock who runs into Xander decides to blow up the high school for kicks. This would kill the Scooby Gang, and leave the Hellmouth open, ending the world. Xander, not wanting to risk getting the world destroyed by distracting his more powerful friends from their own disaster, decides to take care of the problem instead, after Faith screws his brains out he singlehandedly chases down and corners the jock; and by refusing to be swayed in the face of near-certain death, intimidates him into backing down. Afterwards, even though most of the episode revolved around Xander's feelings of inferiority, he feels no need to mention the escapade to his friends or stand up to Cordelia to prove his badassery, as it's enough that he knows what he did.

* BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork: Xander rather stupidly leaves Jack alive. Fortunately, werewolf Oz is there to devour him unalive.

* TheGreatestStoryNeverTold: How Xander stopped a zombie gang from blowing up the school. He decides not to tell Cordelia (and the rest of the group) that did it, feeling that knowing he did it is enough defense against Cordelia's AlphaBitch WhatMeasureIsANonBadass ribbing.

* WhatMeasureIsANonBadass: Explored InUniverse. Most of the drama at the beginning happens because Cordelia (and most if not all of the rest of the Gang, it seems) don't believe that Xander is badass enough to be helpful in their upcoming fight. Xander manages to do enough badass things throughout the night (including saving his friends from a threat that was totally unknown to them) that he doesn't think telling Cordelia is worth it.

* AnAxeToGrind:
-->'''Bob:''' Good for chopping.

* IronicEcho: "You the difference between us? Who has the most fear."

-->'''Xander''': You gave your knife a girl's name. How very serial killer of you!* IdealizedSex: When Xander loses his virginity with Faith. After some romantic snuggling in bed we SmashCut to Faith booting him out the door now she's finished making use of him.

* CoolCar: Xander tries to make himself cool by borrowing his uncle's light blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible.

* SelfParody: Whedon is poking fun at his own work here.

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Turned UpToEleven and parodied: The gang is fighting what is described as the worst threat they have ever faced, an EldritchAbomination bent on destroying the world. This is a barely-seen background plot. The main plot is Xander learning an {{Aesop}} about confidence. Double-parodied in that Xander's subplot is ''also'' an OffscreenMomentOfAwesome for all the other characters in a TheGreatestStoryNeverTold fashion, as he's running around trying to get out of the way of the out-of-context fallout from the main plot while chasing down a gang of undead juvenile delinquents bent on blowing up the school. He decides not to tell anyone else about this, as he now knows full well that he is made of awesome, without validation from anyone else.

* IdealizedSex: When Xander loses his virginity with Faith. After some romantic snuggling in bed we SmashCut to Faith booting him out the door now she's finished making use of him.

* KnifeNut: The class psycho/revived corpse Jack O'Toole.
-->'''Xander''': You gave your knife a girl's name. How very serial killer of you!

-->'''Zombie!Bob:''' Good for chopping.

* GeekyTurnOn: Cordelia is smirking over Xander's belief that his CoolCar will somehow make him cool when a hot blonde suddenly expresses an interest. Triumphant!Xander takes her for a ride, only to end up at the Bronze bored out of his skull listening to her rave on about engines -- [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness he's even happy to see Angel]] in the hope that Angel will call him away on some important Scooby business.

* ImprovisedWeapon: Xander topples a soda machine on Zombie!Bob, though why he didn't just use the axe in his hand...