Season 1, Episode 4 | Aired: 25 March 1997 | Written by: David Greenwalt | Directed by: Bruce Seth Green
The show’s first real Xander episode, and a fairly gleeful piece of B-movie horror with something genuine underneath it. A giant praying mantis disguised as a substitute teacher is hunting virgin males. Xander is in considerable danger. He handles this about as well as you’d expect.
What Happens
Dr Gregory, the science teacher Buffy actually likes, is found dead — decapitated. His replacement is Ms French, a substitute who immediately has every male in the school transfixed. She’s warm, she’s attentive, she singles out Xander for special attention. The other boys think he’s lucky. Giles is suspicious. Buffy notices that Angel recoiled from Ms French in a way that suggests something is very wrong.
The truth: Ms French is a She-Mantis, a creature that takes human form to lure virginal males into mating with her — after which she bites their heads off. She’s already captured Xander and another student, and she’s holding them in her house while she prepares her eggs. Buffy tracks her down, destroys the eggs, and dispatches the creature. Xander is rescued before anything irreversible happens, and quietly never mentions the virgin part again.
Key Moments
Xander’s fantasy sequence at the start of the episode — where he imagines himself as the heroic rescuer of a grateful Buffy — is played for comedy but it establishes something real: his longing to be more than he is, to be useful, to matter. The episode then systematically humiliates that fantasy, which is either cruel or honest depending on how you read it. Probably both.
The bat sonar solution — mantises are vulnerable to the sounds of bats, which Giles uses to disorient and weaken her — is exactly the kind of specific, researched detail the show uses to make its mythology feel grounded. It doesn’t matter that it’s made up; it feels like it could be real.
Monster / Villain
Ms French / the She-Mantis (Musetta Vander) — a giant praying mantis in human form hunting for mates. One of the more straightforwardly body-horror creatures of the season, and effective on those terms.
Notable Quote
“Let’s hear it for the Slayer.” — Xander, quietly, watching Buffy do what he couldn’t. It’s an underplayed moment, but Nicholas Brendon makes it land.
Where It Fits
Teacher’s Pet is one of the lighter entries in season one, and it knows it. But it does useful work establishing Xander as someone who wants to be the hero of his own story and keeps finding that story doesn’t work that way. That tension drives his character for years. The episode also demonstrates how the show can run a pure creature-feature premise and make it feel like it’s about something.