Episode Trivia
ABC Game Shows
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In 1.16 The Ring, when talking about Wesley, Cordelia says:
“Oh, I know. Every night it’s Jeopardy, followed by Wheel of Fortune and a cup of hot cocoa.”
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune are both game shows aired on the ABC network.
In 4.06 Wild At Heart, Giles watches Jeopardy as he eats breakfast, shouting out the answers:
Giles: “The Peace of Westphalia.”
Contestant on TV: “Yalta?”
Giles: “Oh, you moron. That dinette set should be mine.”
Asian Dan
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In the season four DVD commentary for 4.06 Wild At Heart, Seth Green, Joss Whedon, and Marti Noxon mention the frequent appearances of the extra they call “Asian Dan”. He can also be seen in the episode 3.18 Earshot.
Big Bad
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‘Big Bad’ is Buffyspeak for a villain who is tough to beat (though not unbeatable). The Big Bads on the show were usually the main villains of each season (The Master, Spike and Angelus, The Mayor, Adam, Glory, Evil Willow and The First) but the phrase was also used for other non-standard villains, such as Caleb. The phrase was first used by Spike in 4.06 Wild At Heart when he said, “‘Cause the big bad is back”.
Big Bad is gone
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Spike makes his final appearance as a vampire who is able to kill in 4.06 Wild At Heart. From that episode on he’s disabled by either a chip or love.
Bye, Seth
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Seth Green left the show after the episode 4.06 Wild At Heart. He was due to leave a little later in the season but a heavy work schedule made him pull out earlier than expected. The relationship between Oz and Veruca was therefore supposed to go on a little longer than it actually did. He returned for two further episodes: 4.19 New Moon Rising and 4.22 Restless. After leaving Buffy, he filmed Knockaround Guys in Canada, and supplied voices for the fantastic cartoon Family Guy. He later appeared in the movies Rat Race and The Italian Job.
Cibo Matto
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The band Cibo Matto played their songs ‘Sugar, Water’ and ‘Spoon’ in the Bronze during 2.01 When She Was Bad. The band features Sean Lennon, the son of John Lennon. Xander and Buffy danced together to the song ‘Sugar, Water’. There is a Cibo Matto poster on the wall behind the Scoobies as they talk at Buffy’s locker.
We see in 4.06 Wild At Heart that Oz has a Cibo Matto poster in his room.
College wiccans
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There’s a Wicca group on UC Sunnydale campus which Willow looks into joining in 4.06 Wild At Heart. She meets Tara there in 4.10 Hush, and they bond over the fact that their fellow Wiccans aren’t interested in spells. Amy Madison joins the group in season seven, seen in 7.13 The Killer In Me when Willow goes to the group for help.
David Lynch
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In 6.13 Dead Things, Buffy says:
“So that’s why time went all David Lynch?”
Lynch is the director of many films including Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, The Straight Story and Mullholland Drive. He also created the cult TV show Twin Peaks. Lynch has a very distinctive style. He has an unusual way of portraying time, framing shots and using sound.
The season four episode 4.06 Wild At Heart is the same name as another Lynch movie.
Eight Stops Seven
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Eight Stops Seven’s song “Good Enough” (from the album In Moderation) plays in The Bronze at the start of the episode 4.06 Wild At Heart.
Elvis Presley
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The following dialogue is from 4.06 Wild At Heart:
Veruca to Oz: “Number one? No. I gotta go with hound dog.”
Willow: “Me, too. That’s a great song. I mean, Elvis, what a guy.”
Veruca to Willow: “You a big Elvis fan?”
Willow: “The biggest. Well, I mean, after Dingoes, of course.”
In 5.08 Shadow, we see Willow wearing a shirt that says ‘Elvis Lives’.
Cordelia references Elvis Presley when she says to Xander in 2.16 Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered:
“Damn it Xander what’s going on? Who died and made you Elvis?”
In 1.18 Five By Five, Cordy references the King of rock’n'roll again when she says:
Cordelia: “Oh, and we should pick up the tab for lunch. Nothing says success less than splitting the bill.”
Angel: “I didn’t bring any money with me.”
Cordelia: “Okay, Elvis, when you’re a big star, you can get away without carrying cash.”
Gunn says to Angel in 2.08 Shroud Of Rahmon:
Gunn: “Don’t give me orders, Elvis!”
In 4.03 The House Always Wins, Angel references Elvis and his wife, Priscilla:
Angel: “Oh, now I remember that room! Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding reception, 1967. Yes! Alright. It’s not like I was, you know, really invited. They just put me near the dais.”
Giles in the Bronze
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Giles goes to the Bronze in 4.06 Wild At Heart and the gang react with shock. He was there previously in Welcome to the Hellmouth when he was looking for Buffy; and in 2.13 Surprise, at Buffy’s birthday party.
Giles the animal
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In 4.06 Wild At Heart, Oz says that he has seen Giles’ record collection:
“Don’t scoff, gang. I’ve seen Giles’ collection. He was an animal in his day.”
This occured in The Harsh Light of Day. The TV Giles watches in 4.06 Wild At Heart was first discovered in the same scene.
Habitrail
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In 3.21 Graduation Day (Part One), Willow worried that she couldn’t turn Amy the rat back into a human. Oz assured her that:
“you got the swinging Habitrail going. I think Amy is in a good place emotionally”.
Habitrail is a company who specialise in different designs of rodent cages, including the Habitrail Home (”A comfortable Home Sweet Home offering spacious living quarters and play activities for your hamster”), Habitrail Park, Habitrail Safari (”The new Safari range features a radically new design and colour-scheme, bring a fully themed adventure to your hamster’s life”) and for the more refined hamster - the Habitrail Villa.
In 4.06 Wild At Heart, Veruca calls Oz’s wolf-cage a “Habitrail”.
I remember
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Oz tells Willow he knows how she feels after seeing him with Veruca. He’s referring to 3.08 Lover’s Walk, when he saw Willow kissing Xander.
Jerry Garcia
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Oz says about his wolf-look to Willow in 4.06 Wild At Heart:
“I don’t know about tonight, unless the extreme Jerry Garcia look turns you on.”
Jerry Garcia was the hairy lead singer of the Grateful Dead.
Military man
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In 4.06 Wild At Heart, Buffy and Giles talk about the soldiers she saw in Fear Itself:
“The thing is, I saw some guys dressed exactly like him on Halloween night. I just assumed they were in costume but maybe they were working.”
Oz on acid
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In the 4.06 Wild At Heart commentary by Joss Whedon, Marti Noxon and Seth Green, Seth mentions that the stage direction for the scene when he is in his cage in the cemetery, waiting for the sun to go down and Veruca walks in was:
“I want you to act like you’re just about to come on to acid. And you know that it’s coming and you feel all that tension and anxiety but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Oz’s cage
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As the school library was blown up in Graduation Day, Oz’s new wolf-cage, seen in 4.06 Wild At Heart, is in an underground crypt in one of the local cemeteries.
Oz’s Japanese T shirt
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The t-shirt that Oz is wearing at the Bronze in 4.06 Wild At Heart when Veruca’s band is playing has two Chinese characters which read (in Japanese) as “taihen” meaning ‘terrible’.
On the DVD for the episode, there is a running commentary by Joss Whedon, Marti Noxon, and Seth Green, and they comment on the character’s t. shirts. Joss notes it as a “Japanese thing going”, but they don’t remember what it meant, or that it even had any significance so it obviously wasn’t put there by Joss or Marti.
Paige Moss
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Paige played the werewolf Veruca. She appeared with Seth Green previously in the 1998 film Can’t Hardly Wait. Paige has also been in The Ranch, It’s All Relative, Beverly Hills, 90210, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, ER, The Ranch, Diagnosis Murder and ‘The Muffin Tops’ episode of Seinfeld.
Quieting Willow’s busy brain
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In 6.03 After Life, as Willow and Tara settle into bed, Willow points to her head and comments “It’s just kinda … noisy up here tonight, you know?” Tara snuggles up to her and asks if that’s better, to which Willow replies. “Yeah. I think it makes things quieter in here.”
We learned earlier, in 4.06 Wild At Heart, that snuggles are just the cure for Willow-brain quieting. When Oz comments on how busy things always are in Willow’s brain, she snuggles close to him and says “Not always. A few things shut my brain up completely.”
Role model
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When discussing how Willow will deal with Oz’s betrayal in 4.06 Wild At Heart, Buffy says,
“Yeah. I ran away and went to Hell and then got through it. I’m kind of hoping she doesn’t use me as a model.”
She’s referring to when she ran away from Sunnydale in Becoming, Part Two and went to a hell dimension in 3.01 Anne.
Tender Sarah McLachlan love
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In 4.06 Wild At Heart, Xander describes sex as “tender Sarah McLachlan love”. Sarah McLachlan’s songs have been used on the show in a couple of season finales: Becoming, Part Two and Grave.
THC
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The name of Veruca’s band is Shy, but the music is actually perfomed by the real band THC. They play the song ‘Overfire’ in 4.05 Beer Bad. George Sarah, who can be seen on the piano in Shy’s performances, is actually THC’s songwriter. He collaborated with Anthony Stewart Head on his album ‘Music For Elevators’. Shy play ‘Dip’ and ‘Need to Destroy’ in 4.06 Wild At Heart.
In the Angel episode ‘1.02 Lonely Hearts‘, when team Angel arrives at the club we hear “Girlflesh” by THC.
The Rolling Stones
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In 4.06 Wild At Heart, Buffy says, “if the Stones are still rolling, why can’t Giles?”, referring to aging rock band The Rolling Stones, who are still touring. In 6.07 Once More, With Feeling, Spike says “Get your kumbya-yas out”, referring to both the popular hymn ‘Kumbya’ and the Rolling Stone’s ‘Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out’.
Veruca
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Veruca was a confident singer with band Shy and student at UC Sunnydale. She flirted with Oz, making Willow jealous. Even the fact that her rival was named after a fungal foot infection didn’t help Willow’s cause. Oz discovered she too was a werewolf, though they felt differently about their condition - Veruca embraced it and he didn’t want to harm anyone. Oz locked the two in a cage before they turned one full moon, and Willow discovered them naked together the next morning. Veruca intended to hurt Willow but Oz ended up killing her when he was a werewolf.
Why Seth left
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Seth Green spoke to Jenelle Riley at Backstage.com on April 11th 2006 about why he left Buffy. He said:
“I’m a big fan of the show and enormous fan of Joss Whedon–I love that man. It was a hard thing to walk away. But when I signed on to that show, it was as a recurring character. That first season I was on, they gave me a bunch of great stuff to do, but there was a lot of promise about what the character was going to become. Because they wanted me to be a series regular, they had to write me into every episode. My whole second season, the plot line they wanted to do had so little to do with me that they were forcing me into every episode like a square peg in a round hole. And it left me feeling like I wasn’t getting the creative satisfaction that I was being offered elsewhere. I would essentially work 12 to 18 hours a day. There were forced calls all over the place, which means you don’t get your 12-hour turnaround, which essentially means you don’t get to sleep. I did Idle Hands the same time I did Buffy, and I would go in about 6 o’clock at night and work until 5 in the morning and then have to be on set at 6 a.m. on Buffy and sit through hours of makeup and work 12 hours, then go back to work on Idle Hands. I had a couple of 48-hour days and I thought, “This is insane.” I literally couldn’t do anything else in my life, like make a dentist appointment, see a friend of mine, have a birthday.
It just became a claustrophobic type of schedule. And that’s all fine and well if you’re getting some type of creative satisfaction. Joss and I talked about it at the end of my second season, and he said he had some great ideas for me for the next season, and I told him I would be happy to do it in a recurring capacity but being a series regular, it just didn’t work. All the writers were trying to fit me in, and I’m winding up spending five days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, so I can sit in a crowded room of a multicharacter scene and say, “I think Buffy’s right.”
We left it on pretty good terms; I came back and did two episodes after I left. It just, creatively for me and I think for the show, didn’t make any sense for me to be there. I know a lot of people were upset, and I so appreciate they connected with me and the story line.
I’ll confess something to you: At the time I left Buffy, I was the least-paid person on the show. I had been in far-more-successful stuff and found that unbalanced, as well. I understand it was an upstart show on a fledgling network and they just did not have the money to pay. But it did not make sense to me to be killing myself with no social or personal life, missing opportunities in other areas, and physically depleted because I was working so hard.
Wild cuts
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The following lines were all cut from the episode 4.06 Wild At Heart:
Willow: “And I don’t want to be the kind of girl who freaks every time my boyfriend notices somebody else”… (the next lines were cut from this scene) “…even if she is throwing herself at him like a twenty dollar ho.”
Buffy: “Please. Ten dollar ho. Fifteen, max.”
Maggie Walsh continues to talk about the ‘wild dogs’ which attacked her:
Professor Walsh: “I know how it sounds. But crazy is my specialty. And I definitely saw what I saw.”
A line of Buffy’s:
Buffy: “Clearly we need to get you kicking some monster bootie, stat.”
More lines of Veruca’s to Willow:
Veruca: “Go ahead and cry – but you should have seen this coming. You can’t tame a wild thing. He’s not yours any more. He’s in you, he’d be thinking about me. No. Not thinking. It’s deeper than that. Why don’t you just try to relax now? In a minute or two it’ll all be over.”
And finally, a nice line from Xander:
Xander: “Love. It’s a logic blocker.”
Wolf memories
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Veruca implies in 4.06 Wild At Heart that when a werwolf is in human form it eventually begins to have memories of its time spent as a wolf, though Oz hasn’t reached that phase yet.
WP (Widespread Panic)
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A black and white oval sticker with the letters “WP” can often be seen in Sunnydale. The sticker is for a band called Widespread Panic. Examples of episodes in which this is seen include:
- 2.04 Inca Mummy Girl: behind Xander when he says to Ampata, “Why’d you run away?”.
- 2.06 Halloween: next to Cordelia when she’s dressed as a cat and talking to Oz (on Oz’s locker door), and when Willow walks into the library when she’s a ghost, there is one on the bulletin board to her right. There is also a sticker on the bathroom wall, seen behind Buffy’s right shoulder when she an Willow look through the book.
- 2.05 Reptile Boy: at the beginning of the episode, behind Xander’s left shoulder in Buffy’s room.
- 2.12 Bad Eggs: behind Jonathan’s right shoulder on the locker when he is being attacked.
- 2.13 Surprise: on the locker behind Cordelia when she is talking to Xander and behind Xander when he calls Giles a party weasel. A colourful Widespread Panic poster can also be seen behind Joyce in Buffy’s dream.
- 2.15 Phases: when Buffy is in the Bronze looking for the werewolf, a WP sticker can be seen on a pillar behind her right shoulder.
- 2.16 Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered: poster in Xander’s room and behind Xander when Harmony tells him he should learn a second language so more girls can reject him. A sticker can also be seen on the locker behind Cordelia when Harmony is telling her off for breaking up with Xander.
- 2.22 Becoming (Part Two): at the beginning of the episode, when the cop is arresting Buffy in the hall, you can see a WP sticker on the lockers behind her.
- 3.02 Dead Man’s Party: on a guitar case behind the drums during the party.
- 4.12 A New Man: behind Giles when he’s at Buffy’s party.
- 4.06 Wild At Heart: a colourful WP poster (not the sticker) can be seen to the right of Oz’s bedroom door.
- 4.20 The Yoko Factor: in Buffy and Willow’s dorm room.
- 5.03 The Replacement: on the payphone that Xander uses to call Buffy.
[Goof] Safety pants
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When Willow goes to Oz’s cage to wake him with breakfast in 4.06 Wild At Heart, she finds Veruca in the cage with him. If you look closely while they’re still asleep, you can see the flesh-coloured underwear on both Oz and Veruca. When Veruca awakes, she is wearing pants and a bra, but when she stands up the bra disappears. It reappears when she walks out the cage door, then goes again when she puts her jacket on.