AlsExGal

Andy sees an incriminating picture of Helen, taken in 1959, in an old newspaper. He calls the newspaper and asks their research department to find out what is behind this picture. A call comes back and says Helen Crump was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, working in an illegal gambling operation, and being in the company of a known gangster. An aside - I'm not sure how this last thing is a crime. In the United States we have the right to free association, but I digress.

Andy asks for more information regarding how the charges were adjudicated, which the research department of the newspaper says will require several more days. So Andy waits. But the real problem is Goober's mouth. Incidentally, Goober knows about all of this, and not because Andy took him into his confidence. Goober, who loves to gossip, ends up telling the entire town. Complications ensue.

Andy showed very bad judgment in this thing. As Opie says at the end, all of this drama could have been avoided by Andy simply ASKING Helen about it. These two have been going together for four years, for crying out loud. I also have to wonder just how close they really were. Anybody who has been married for any length of time knows all of the stories of the other person. You'd think that Helen, at some point, given the fact that Andy is in law enforcement himself, would want to tell him all about this story that turned out to have a logical explanation.

I will give kudos for the interesting plot. I haven't been this engaged by an episode of the Andy Griffith Show since Don Knotts left.

In health class, all of the students are given an egg to care for as though it was an actual baby. The lesson is meant to drive home the unintended consequences of sex. But the eggs are not chicken spawn. Instead they are the eggs of the bezoar demon living in the basement. When they hatch they attach themselves to a host and make that human host a servant of the mother bezoar demon.

Only Buffy and Xander escape this fate. Buffy does, because she manages to kill hers before it attaches - being the slayer gives her practice for this sort of thing - and Xander does because he cheated by boiling his egg so that it would be less fragile, killing the hatchling inside.

Meanwhile, everybody who is possessed by the bezoar spawn heads to the basement with pick axes breaking up the concrete - for what reason I have no idea - and harvesting more bezoar eggs. Complications ensue.

This episode was not as bad as I remembered, but it did have some aspects that bothered me. For one, the Texas vampires Lyle and Hector Gorch don't seem to have much purpose here. You could have erased them from the plot entirely and lost nothing. Also, Buffy's mother, Joyce, seems to have reverted to pre "School Hard" Joyce. This was after she saw her daughter handle herself in a crisis but before she knew she was a vampire slayer. So in this episode she goes back to thinking that Buffy is a troublemaker and nothing more. Finally - where did that bezoar demon come from and how did it come to live in the high school basement? Nothing's explained.

On the other hand it's tightly edited and has some very clever Cordelia/Xander lines as they come to terms with their mutual - and so far secret -attraction. I also liked seeing Buffy handle herself well in a crisis with little to no backup. Having watched Double Meat Palace yesterday, and having seen Buffy panic in the face of a much less intense crisis, it was a welcome change.

Finally, this is the last chance to see Buffy and Angel just be happy together before the angst of the second half of the season kicks into high gear starting in the next episode.