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Inca Mummy Girl
5V04


Sunnydale High is boasting a new cultural exchange program --students from other countries being hosted by local families, and a celebration of culture's dance is being plan. Everything is swell until Xander finds out that Buffy's student is a guy. At a school museum trip, a 500-year-old mummy, holding a cursed seal which serves as a warning to any who wake her, is on exhibit. When everyone leaves, dimwitted student Rodney tries to take the seal. It breaks, and the mummy arises, grabs him, kisses him and mummifies him. When Rodney turns up missing, Buffy, Giles, Xander and Willow go to the museum to look for clues and find him mummified, and a man with a knife jumps out at them. Giles tries to decipher what's left of the seal, but they are ancient pictograms.

Buffy's exchange student arrives at the bus station, only to meet the same fate as Rodney. From this latest kiss, the 500-year-old mummy transforms into Ampatta, a beautiful Peruvian teenage girl who pretends to be the exchange student. Xander goes gaga over her and Giles asks her to help him decipher the seal. She says the picture of a man with a knife represents a bodyguard. As Xander hangs out with Ampatta, the knife guy shows up again, looking for the rest of the seal. Ampatta, shaken, tells Giles to destroy it, but Giles wants to go back to the museum to find the missing parts. Knife guy returns in the ladies' room, and Ampatta finally kisses and mummifies him, too. Xander takes Ampatta to the school dance, and Buffy discovers the real exchange student's mummified corpse in her trunk. She and Giles realize Ampatta's the mummy. It seems she was in a similar situation to Buffy's -- she was chosen to defend her people, and was killed at 16. Meanwhile, things are getting hot and heavy at the dance with Xander and Ampatta, but she is starting to turn back into a mummy. She must kiss someone quickly or it will be too late. She runs away from Xander and goes to the museum to try to break the seal that Giles is about to restore.

Buffy saves Giles before Ampatta kisses him, but gets thrown into the tomb. When Willow tries to help, Xander intervenes and offers his own life instead. Buffy escapes from the tomb just in time to pull the now-mummified Ampatta off of Xander, and the poor guy's dance partner breaks into pieces.

More Information

There seem to be a few too many elements in 'Inca Mummy Girl', which uses the 'Buffy' setting to breath fresh life into a very tired stock theme. The story is overcomplicated, and might have been better focused if one entire thread had been eliminated (perhaps the whole sub-plot involving Ampatta's bodyguard?). This episode is a good example of how throwing a disruptive element into the mix can generate some friction between the regular characters without doing any long-term damage. In this case Ampatta's arrival causes each of the main characters to reassess their relationships with each other (particularly the tentative one between Willow and Xander). Matt Keine and Joe Reinkemeyer's witty script contains a lot of sharp dialogue which acknowledges that the audience is usually a couple of steps ahead of Buffy and the gang.

Trivia

Oz and his band make their first appearance in this episode, and Oz notices Willow for the first time.

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