Saturday, May 14, 2011

Buffy Blogthrough: 1.2 "The Harvest"

Most mornings, to warm up my brain I write & edit 150 words on yesterday's entertainment — a TV episode, movie, news item, or whatever. Now that I've got Lady Hotspur watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've decided to post these exercises so you & she can enjoy them too!

1.2 “The Harvest”

broadcast: March 10, 1997
writer: Joss Whedon
director: John D. Kretchmer

This episode can't stand alone as easily as Part 1 did, mainly because it gets bogged down in exposition and resolution. An okay comedic beat at the climax (“You forgot about sunrise…”) undercuts a sense of Buffy's triumph. And the low point has her trundle through tunnels while the vampires simply lurk in longshot. The pleasures of “The Harvest” are in its supporting characters. The cast fills their roles out nicely, especially Nicholas Brendan as sidekick Xander, who delivers the episode's best lines with great timing. The Master, Buffy's arch-villain, makes a good impression: his origin is Lovecraft and his look is Nosferatu, but his style is as casual as the teens'. And the show all comes together when Buffy's mother grounds her, saying, “Everything is life-or-death when you're a 16-year-old girl”. Then Buffy pulls her slaying paraphernalia from a closet stash and sneaks out the window to save the world.
 

2 comments:

M-core said...

(1) I always felt bad for Xander and Willow’s friend, Jesse, who misses out on all their subsequent adventures. I wonder if they ever thought about him.

(2) I also delight in appearances by grunt actor, Brian S. Thompson, known for his roles as the X-Files’ Alien Bounty Hunter and a Jem’Hadar soldier in one Deep Space Nine episode. Too bad Patrick Kilpatrick never appeared.

Aaron Grunfeld said...

Based on the fact that they never mention Jesse again, I guess they didn't think about him much!