Bored Now does the complete Buffy 1997-2003

Episode 1.02 The Harvest



Picking up the pieces from Welcome to the Hellmouth, The Harvest opens with Buffy seemingly at the mercy of Vampire Luke (Brian Thompson) inside a tomb.  However, the cross on Buffy's necklace when striking Luke forces the Vampire to recoil or face the threat of being burnt into dust.  After over coming that hurdle Buffy rescues her new found friends Xander and Willow from more demons, only for the future Scooby gang to discover that friend Jesse (Eric Balfour) has been taken.

Indeed, Darla and Luke deliver Jesse to The Master (Mark Metcalf) for feeding on, however the Master who is planning on a Harvest was planning on something a little more juicy.  When Luke informs him about his encounter with the Buffy, the Master identifies her as the Slayer, and so Jesse gets up graded from food to bait.  Despite the concern of Xander, Buffy insists that she will go to rescue Jesse solo.  Things get complicated when Xander shows up for the fight, and soon the whole of Sunnydale gets drawn into the battle.

Personally, I prefer The Harvest to the previous episode, mostly because the pacing is better, and you start to get more into the characters.  I like the pre-titles shot of Buffy's look of concern for Jesse, and this aspect is sold really well, that even though Buffy barely knows Jesse, as the Slayer she is concerned about any human life being placed in danger at the hands of demons.  Its also indicates the strong bond which Buffy will development towards Willow and Xander who of course are close friends with Jesse. Once again I enjoyed the interaction Giles has with the gang in the library, and his history lesson concerning the hellmouth, and the harvest, him spinning the globe is a slick visual segway also.  The episode foreshadows Willow's resources and how her computer skills will come in handy in future missions, not just this season but over the next few.  Xander's anxieties around his masculinity and Buffy and Willow's concern for him being placed in harms way are also hinted at for the first time.  Without giving too much away about Jesse's fate, it is a sign of things to come, that so early on a seemingly central character is placed in such danger. Throughout Buffy there are countless number of fine supporting characters, or fine cameo performances.  Here Balfour (later to appear in Six Feet Under), and Thompson (of X-Files fame) do stellar work injecting their respective characters with life.

On the downside, despite campy it the Master up for all its worth, sadly over the course of this season character actor Mecalf is strait jacketed in the part, and the character overall just feels too cartoonish. Some of the jokes fall flat too, such as Fluttie's remark to Buffy about the Royal Family, which didn't even seem a joke to me.  The best gag of the episode being when Willow tricks Cordelia into thinking that the delete button on the computer actually means deliver! That was an original joke, and nicely sets up Cordelia's naivety throughout the debut season, as well as to demonstrate how Willow is able to use her smarts to rebel against her rivels' bulling.

One uneasy aspect of these early episodes are Buffy's exchanges with mystery man Angel (David Boreanaz).  This in part is because of how wooden Boreanaz is at this early stage, both actor and character develop greatly in the years to come, but at this point he Angel is very one note, and played unnaturalistic by Boreanaz.  The dialogue between Angel and Buffy is too cheesy, and because of the nature of Angel's character as a mystery man who seems a little too interested in Buffy's life, as a result he comes off as a bit creepy.

Of course highlighting these early flaws is something I am happy to do, as it will allow me to relish even more when the series really hits its stride later on, and makes for some of the most thrilling viewing anyway on television.