Season 2, Episode 12 | Aired: 12 January 1998 | Written by: Marti Noxon | Directed by: David Greenwalt
A sex-education assignment involving eggs that turn out to be parasitic alien organisms — because of course they do. Bad Eggs is often cited as one of the season’s weaker episodes, and that’s fair: it’s a functional creature-feature without much metaphorical weight, running between a more significant run of episodes. Even so, it does its job.
What Happens
Health class assigns everyone an egg to care for as a parenting exercise. The eggs contain Bezoar hatchlings — parasitic creatures that attach to hosts and control them. Most of the school comes under control, including Joyce. The Bezoar’s mother is living beneath the school basement. Buffy kills the mother; the hatchlings die; everyone is freed. Cowboy vampires (the Gorch brothers) appear as a concurrent threat and are mostly comic relief.
Buffy and Angel’s relationship is developing; they’re stolen moments in the stack room, a relationship conducted entirely in secret and partial darkness. The episode makes good use of this atmospherically even if the main plot doesn’t reach for much.
Key Moments
Joyce under Bezoar control is the most unsettling element — a parent as threat, her warmth replaced by blank compliance. It’s brief but effective.
The Gorch brothers (Jeremy Ratchford and James Parks) are a missed opportunity — two cowboy vampires from the frontier era, arriving with a backstory that sounds interesting and departing without it being used. One returns in Season 3.
Monster / Villain
The Bezoar and its hatchlings — parasitic creatures using the school’s students and staff as hosts. A practical body-horror threat without much depth beyond it.
Notable Quote
“It’s not an egg. It’s an egg.” — Buffy, not at her most articulate. The egg is, in fact, a problem.
Where It Fits
Bad Eggs is the season’s lightest episode, sitting between the darker work of The Dark Age/What’s My Line? and the devastating run starting with Surprise. Worth watching in sequence; easy to skip on a rewatch if you’re moving fast.