1x02 The Harvest (2)

[7.5/10] “The Harvest” takes a number of pages out of the George Romero zombie playbook, and it’s an appropriate tack for the second installment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and its progeny were nominally amount the creeping monsters who used to be your friends and loved ones and the boilerplate horror of them attacking, but they were also stand-ins for any number of real life issues. Racism, consumerism, militarism, and much more were addressed through those reanimated corpses. It fits, then, that BtVS embraces its cinematic forebear in doing the same with its own set of undead villains.

To the point, the Real Life Problem™ this week is Buffy having to sneak out of school and then her house because of parents and school adminstrators alike worrying about her falling back into trouble. In lieu of genuine bad behavior, the actions that get Buffy crosswise with her assorted authority figures, whether it’s the principal or her mom, are her slaying duties. But it still has the tone of the rebellious teen surreptitiously getting out of the house to go down the local hangout.

That “supernatural as a stand-in for the real issue” setup works with the more literal call outs to Night of the Living Dead as well. The sequence in the sewers pays direct homage, with Buffy and Xander trying to hold the door up against grasping hands, and a mob of lurching creatures emerging around every corner to flush them out. It allows Whedon & company to create an appropriately tense atmosphere and action set piece in the show’s early going, with the vampire creating the same creeping sense of dread while they advance on our heroes that their zombie counterparts do.

But “The Harvest” also addresses one of the oldest and yet most salient tropes in the zombie genre – the notion of something you have to kill that still resembles someone you care about. Xander’s struggles when facing Jesse, and Giles’s warning that the scoobies are not fighting their friend, but rather “the thing that killed him” play in the emotional difficulty of having to take out a creature that, however much you rationally tell yourself is evil, still looks and sounds like your old buddy. The episode wrings a bit of power out of that, and it sets up something important for Xander.

As the painfully written and acted scene where the newly-dubbed Angel gives Buffy some tips portends, BtVS will play around with the idea of “good vampires,” or at least less-bad vampires running around. But Xander is always the slowest to adjust, the most likely to resist accepting them or helping them. While there’s rational reasons for that – even the best vampires in the show’s universe have killed and can be unpredictable – in retrospect it feels like an emotional response to this first killing. Xander is pained and upset that these creatures took his friend; he’s angry that they not only turned someone he cared about into another monster but that they made it so that he was a snack to his old buddy and had to kill him himself. Xander harbors a resentment for that which rarely, if ever, seems to leave him.

Jesse’s turn in the episode also plays in that “real issues brought to life with monsters” space. His transition is a dark-edged version of the Teen Wolf movie (which, in hindsight, seemed to represent the tone the director of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie was going for, over Whedon’s objections). Jesse suddenly has the confidence to go after Cordelia in earnest after being consistently rebuffed by her, and despite some pushback, she actually seems receptive to the new him. There’s some semi-uncomfortable commentary there, draped in nice guy vs. alpha male rhetoric, but maybe it’s just a critique of Cordelia who’s not exactly put up as a laudable person to woo here.

His turn also plays on one of the things “The Harvest” and BtVS does best, which would quickly set the show apart from its brethren – subversion and surprise. It’s easy to forget it when you know how the episode goes, but the twist that Buffy and Xander think they’ve rescued Jesse, only to discover that he’s been turned and leading them to a trap, is a nice little reversal that catches the audience off guard.

By the same token, Buffy’s confrontation with Luke at the bronze uses some generic genre action beats. The villain takes over, monologues for a little bit, only to be upended by a quip from the good guy, and a scuffle ensues. But it’s the shape that scuffle takes that makes it novel and interesting. Buffy faking out Luke by exposing him to “sunlight,” only to distract him enough with the ruse to take him out the old fashioned way, is a clever way to end the fight, and shows the inventive bent Whedon & Co. take to classics and clichés.

The nuts and bolts of the episode are a microcosm of the things the show had figured out and the things it was still nailing down. It’s impressive how well-formed the dynamic among Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles is already. Their banter in the library is, perhaps, off a half-step or so, but very recognizable and amusing. The world-building and description of the hellmouth are a little rote, but offer a solid enough setup for The Master and the events to come, which fit into a “here’s the ancient problem, now let’s find a solution” blueprint the show would return to repeatedly.

On the other hand, the show can’t always escape the orbit of its clichés and sillier bits. The scene with Cordelia and Willow in the computer lab is pure 80s teen comedy material. The same goes for most scenes featuring Cordelia and Angel, the former sounding a little too stereotypical in her takedowns of Buffy (to Harmony!) and the latter still generally unable to act his way out of a paper bag. And The Master is a mixed bag himself. Sometimes his friendly malevolence suggests the show laying the groundwork for a certain big bad yet to come, but sometimes he hams it up with bad puns that recall a maligned scene from the recent Rogue One film.

Still, in just its second outing, BtVS is much more assured and confident than in the pilot. Borrowing from the greats like Romero, whether its in direct references, familiar tropes, or the general spirit of genre-as-subtext, helps boost the episode and give it more focus and potency. There’s still growing pains, but “The Harvest” is a good introduction to what the show could do well, if not the best realization of its potential.

On Balance, a 7, but my subjective experience was an 8

I take the approach of initially skipping the first season of shows like this and Star Trek: TNG since they're still finding their footing, or have production turmoil hampering their growth, and then go back to watch the first season since it takes the pressure off of having to feel like you have to "get through the rough parts". Instead, it helps to experientially frame it like you're seeing bonus content, so it's novel as you see the show and actors and creatives finding their footing, since you already know what it will become.

These first couple of episodes definitely have a "prototype" feel, since Angel's personality and place in the show is quite different, the directing is a bit stale and overly reserved for the quirky Joss Whedon-y comedic bits, and the rest of the principal cast are still finding their footing. Except Giles and, but that's to be expected. And Cordelia, but that's because the Scoobie gangs' minor awkardness is due to lack of time to get a feel for playing against each other, and Cordelia's whole thing is that everything she says or does is characterized by a total lack of empathy, so she's always talking at other people from a place of narcissistic self importance. You can still tell they're all good actors, though. Except David XD. And the Master is lame as hell.

The standout from the baddies is Brian Thompson, who really doesn't get enough focus in most things I've seen him in. He may look like a typical muscly henchman, but he's a legitimately great actor and he adds a lot of flair and imbues the camp with much more gravitas than Metcalf, who just isn't threatening at all. Darla is also clearly in a prototype state, and was developed later along with Angel.

The showdown at the Bronze was where the action turned from 90s semi-horror series into the playful grrl power campiness, and I was just waiting for Sarah's one-liner as she entered the fray, and was not disappointed. Also, special accolades to Charisma Carpenter's scream. To me, screaming in horror media is like fighting in adventure shows-- it's kind of boring and annoying... unless it's done well. And Charisma's scream shows off some beautiful pipes, and it's kind of hilarious, and is very clearly her own scream, and probably not even ADR.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

ps. great props work, too! The sewer escape props look and behave entirely convincingly, and that's the type of thing that is often not up to snuff and is only noticed when it fails to convince.