The Freshman (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

The episode starts off with Buffy and Willow waiting in a cemetery for a vampire to rise while they are reading and discussing possible college courses. As the two of them are sitting and talking, the vampire crawls his way out of the grave behind them and begins to approach them with a grin on his face, ready to attack. But when he sees the crossbow and other weapons on the ground, he reconsiders and wanders off unbeknownst to them.

Buffy, Willow and Oz begin attending the University of California at its fictional Sunnydale campus. Whilst the others are enthusiastic, Buffy finds the new situation overwhelming. Willow is excited by the bigger library and the opportunities to advance her learning, while Oz seems typically unfazed. Meanwhile, Giles is a retired "gentleman of leisure" now that the Sunnydale High School library has been destroyed, and Xander is out of town on his much-anticipated cross-country road trip.

Buffy and Willow go to the campus bookstore for supplies, where Buffy accidentally knocks a pile of textbooks onto the head of Riley Finn, who introduces himself as a TA for Professor Walsh's "Intro to Psychology" class. Buffy, who is seemingly attracted to him and embarrassed at what she has done, fumbles the conversation, and Willow takes over by discussing Psychology topics with him, and she and Riley walk off together.

Buffy then goes on to her new dorm in Stevenson Hall, where she has already moved in and her new roommate Kathy is in the process of doing the same. Kathy expresses her belief that the upcoming year will be "super fun", but Buffy is unconvinced when she sees Kathy hanging a poster of Céline Dion on the wall. During the night Buffy has trouble sleeping because Kathy snores, laughs, and smacks her lips in her sleep.

On the first day of classes, Buffy is humiliated at being ejected from a class by a bullying professor of pop culture, in front of dozens of other students, and in the next class she feels overwhelmed by the heavy workload promised by Professor Walsh. Feeling increasingly lonely and isolated on campus, she is relieved to strike up conversation with a fellow freshman named Eddie (who is also taking Psychology with Professor Walsh) when they are both lost on campus at night. They discuss the need for a "security blanket" in unfamiliar surroundings, and he says that the novel Of Human Bondage serves this purpose for him. After Buffy and Eddie separate, he is captured by a group of vampires, who then go to his dorm room, steal his belongings, and leave a fake note from Eddie claiming that he decided he couldn't handle the stress of college and went home. Later, when the vampires are talking and going through some of Eddie's things, he is seen dead on the floor and awakens as one of them.

The next day, Buffy is disappointed to find Eddie missing from class. She goes to his dormitory, finding it empty except for the note and the novel "Of Human Bondage", which is still in his nightstand. Considering their conversation of the previous day, she does not believe that he would leave the book behind, and goes to Giles for advice. When she arrives at Giles' apartment, Buffy meets Olivia whom Giles introduces as an old friend, although they appear to be having an affair. Buffy assumes it is not a good time to visit but Olivia leaves the room, leaving her and Giles to talk in private. After she briefly expresses her disgust toward Giles for having a relationship with a woman somewhat younger than him, he asks Buffy to explain her situation and he feels that she is capable of handling it herself.

That night, during a patrol, Buffy comes across Eddie in a deserted part of campus and is surprised to realise he is now a vampire, and dusts him quickly when he attacks. The vampires that turned Eddie are watching and begin to surround her. Buffy is beaten up by their leader, Sunday, who injures Buffy's arm and causes her to flee. Buffy's confidence is greatly shaken by this encounter, and she decides to visit her mom and some familiar surroundings. Joyce did not expect to see Buffy home so early in the semester, and because of this she has been using her daughter's room as extra storage space for the gallery.

When Buffy returns to her dorm room on campus, she finds all of her belongings missing and a note similar to that found in Eddie's room. Buffy goes to The Bronze and mopes around, feeling even worse when she sees a man with a pronounced physical likeness to her former boyfriend Angel. She is greatly cheered, however, by the appearance of Xander, who reveals that his tour of America never happened because his car broke down in Oxnard and he spent the rest of the summer washing dishes at the "Ladies' Nightclub" to earn money for repairs. Now he has returned home, where he lives in the basement of his parents' house and is expected to pay rent. Buffy tells Xander that a vampire brutally took her down and she expresses a fear that she cannot adapt to the college experience with her duty of having to slay vampires. But Xander greatly moves her by describing her as "my hero" and explaining that he always thinks "What would Buffy do?" whenever he is in a bad situation. They then agree to track down the vampire lair and reclaim Buffy's stolen belongings.

Using the college computer system, the pair locate the vampire gang in a disused fraternity house. While Buffy angrily watches the vampires using and abusing her things through the glass roof of the house, Xander leaves to round up the assistance of Willow and Oz. Unfortunately, the roof breaks and Buffy lands on the floor in front of the vampires. She and Sunday begin to fight and Buffy is once again losing, in part because of her sore arm from their previous encounter, but seeing Sunday damage the Class Protector award she was given at her senior prom angers Buffy enough to regain her confidence and fight back soundly. The others show up to fight off and kill the rest of the vampires although two of them escape, and Buffy takes out Sunday with a backhand throw of a broken tennis racket. As Buffy and friends are returning to the dorm with her belongings, Giles makes a belated appearance with weapons, apologising for his earlier dismissal of her fears and promising that they will fight the evil together.

Meanwhile, one of the vampires from Sunday's gang, fleeing the scene, is hit with a taser by three masked men in camouflage fatigues.

• The yearbook seen in this episode, the Sunnydale High Yearbook, was released as a tie-in product after this episode aired.
• The college vampires have a tally of Gustav Klimt versus Claude Monet posters they have stolen from the freshmen they kill. A poster of Klimt's painting, The Kiss is found in Eddie's belongings.
• This is the first episode not to feature Sunnydale High, the school having, of course, been destroyed at the end of Season Three.
• When Buffy sees the back of a man's head who she thinks might be Angel, the man is actually played by David Boreanaz until his face becomes visible.
• Starting with this episode, Buffy was filmed in 16:9 widescreen; this would be the case for the next three seasons. However, Joss Whedon never intended for it to be shown this way, so while the widescreen version is shown on Sky One in the United Kingdom, all American showings are in 4:3. DVD releases of the final four seasons have followed the same pattern, with European (Region 2) discs displaying the episodes in 16:9 widescreen format and North American (Region 1) discs not.
• Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) and David Boreanaz (Angel) are no longer series regulars and have been removed from the opening credits.

• Planet of the Apes – Oz quotes the famous line "It's a madhouse. A madhouse!" in the beginning of the episode to describe the crowd at the college. The line was previously quoted by Xander in "When She Was Bad".
• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace – During the pep talk Xander gives Buffy at the Bronze, he uses Yoda's "Fear leads to anger..." quote, and mangles it several times.
• Scarface – Xander also attempts to quote Scarface during his pep talk, but he stops himself before finishing the quote.
• The Avengers – Xander further makes references to the Avengers when saying "Avengers Assemble" referring to getting the gang together to help Buffy. It's a line that goes unused in The Avengers, also directed and written by Joss Whedon.
• The David Bowie song "Memory of a Free Festival" plays in the background as Buffy enters Giles' apartment.
• A Gentleman of Leisure - Giles' new definition of himself, according to Willow - is a Gentleman of Leisure; P. G. Wodehouse wrote a novel of this name.
• When Buffy meets Giles in company with a lightly dressed Olivia in his flat, she compares him with Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Enterprises.

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• "The Freshman" at IMDb
• "The Freshman" at TV.com