YMMV / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S3 E13: "The Zeppo"

• Bizarro Episode: The episode can be seen as this, diverting from the building plot threads of that season to tell a completely zany, full-out self-parody of every Buffy trope in the book.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Faith screwing Xander's brains out while he singlehandedly stops a plot to blow open the hellmouth? Funny and awesome. When it's revealed men are less than nothing to her? It stops being awesome. When Willow finds out and is in the bathroom crying? It stops being funny. And Faith later sexually assaulting, then trying to kill Xander makes it this trope.
  • The fact that this whole episode revolves around trying to show that Xander is a badass in his own way feels odd considering that a very important plot point of the final season is Buffy going on a total Alpha Bitch-fest that would make early-series Cordelia tell her to calm down because she doesn't consider anybody badass enough by her standards, and while she learns to be more of a "general" the other Scoobies get a near-fatal case of The Complainer Is Always Wrong when they try to do what they can by themselves.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A younger Michael Cudlitz guest stars as one of Jack's friends, a zombie who is first shown rising from the grave and who is killed by Xander when his head is crushed. Years later, Cudlitz played Abraham on The Walking Dead, who fights zombies and dies when his head is crushed, though given the circumstances of his death he does not reanimate as a zombie.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Cudlitz later goes on to portray Abraham Ford on The Walking Dead.

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