The Secret Lair

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.
— Buffy the Vampire Slayer, intro voiceover.

…one girl in all the world…
— Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), explaining Slayers to Xander and Willow and somehow not breaking into song.

When people ask me why I’m watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer now, thirteen years after the series originally aired, I say it’s because I want to retain some Geek Cred amongst Whedonites, but really I’m just tired of not “getting it” when my friends compare me to Xander.

Episode 102: “The Harvest”
Original Air Date: 10 March 1997

When last we left our Slayer-in-denial, she was on the losing end of a fight with Luke (Brian Thompson), apparent leader of the vampire clan¹ attempting to raise The Master from torpor or whatever long nap vampires take in the Buffyverse, and that’s just where we find our hapless heroine at the beginning of episode two. Luke’s got Buffy at a distinct disadvantage: she’s in a sarcophagus with a skeleton and he’s looming over her, all ferocity and fangs and facial appliances, and…ACTION!

Buffy is spared an untimely demise by her cross pendant,² which is revealed in her struggles with Luke and sends the vampire running for the Neosporin.

Buffy exits the mausoleum just in time to save Willow and Xander from more vampires. Unfortunately, she’s batting a less-than-stellar .333³ and only one of the trio of bloodsuckers gets staked. To make matters worse, Jesse seems to have been abducted by Darla, The Little Blonde Vampire.⁴ Cue theme music, roll opening credits.

Regrouping at (where else?) the high school library, Willow and Xander get a little lesson in the history of the Earth⁵ and how vampires came to be. Thankfully, the whole “vampirism-as-blood-disease” bit wasn’t in vogue back in ’97, so Whedon’s vamps are the good old supernatural kind, born when the last demon left the Earth eons ago. Xander comes across like Joey Tribbiani in this scene, something I’m really hoping he grows out of in the near future; preferably right around the next episode.

Meanwhile, in the Hall of Justice beneath the cemetery, Jesse’s in a bit of a tight spot. Darla and Luke⁶ offer Xander’s best bud to The Master⁷ as a sort of warm-blooded petit four. Unfortunately, Darla’s had a taste of what Jesse has to offer and The Master isn’t interested in sloppy seconds. In fact, he’s downright torqued; “three score years” of waiting in a hole haven’t left him particularly cheery. Darla is saved from The Master’s wrath by the revelation that the rest of his intended victuals were saved by a girl who just might be a Slayer.

Giles recruits Willow to help him research The Harvest and Xander mopes around feeling useless and inadequate while Buffy sets off to save Jesse. Principal Flutie isn’t at all keen on Sunnyvale’s newest student skipping class and leaving school grounds on her second day, so he locks the campus gate.⁸ Not a problem for the superhuman Slayer; Buffy just leaps over the gate and scampers off to the cemetery, where she has an encounter with the Mysterious Stranger (David Boreanaz). Mr. Stranger introduces himself as Angel and tries to talk Buffy out of walking into the vampires’ lair. When it’s clear she’s going in anyway, he provides some directions and then offers to come along and help her rescue Jesse. Well, except for the whole “offers to come along and help” bit. I don’t know if Angel is a vampire⁹ but he knows an awful lot about the bloodsuckers. Maybe he’s the vampiric analog of Casper the Friendly Ghost or something.

Naturally, Buffy soon learns that Xander has followed her¹⁰ but there’s no point in trying to talk him out of helping, because Xander is in full-on Bros Before Hos mode and it’ll take more than one Slayer to turn him back. Either that or Buffy has a soft spot for Joey Tribbiani wannabes. In any case, they stumble across Jesse, chained to the wall, who tells them that he’s been left as bait. Buffy super-strengths Jesse’s leg iron and then bait boy leads them right into a dead end, where he reveals that he’s been…dun-dun-DUNNNNNN…turned!

Buffy throws Jesse at the approaching mob of vampires and she and Xander escape through a grate in the ceiling. They rejoin Willow and Giles, who have dug up the straight skinny on The Harvest, and it ain’t pretty. The short version: The Master is stuck in a hole between dimensions and tonight happens to be his once-in-a-century opportunity to not only get unstuck, but to unleash all kinds of bad on Sunnyvale. That’s what you get for moving to a Hellmouth.

The Master performs a ceremony¹¹ to make Luke his Vessel, then sends Ye Vampirick Container out to get filled to the brim with blood. Did I mention that vampires love nightclubs? Because they do; everybody knows it. Luke and his long-toothed posse head to The Bronze¹² and the Vessel starts to chow down on the locals. Buffy and crew show up just in time for the showdown. Willow douses Darla with holy water, Xander (accidentally) stakes Jesse, and Buffy dispatches Luke. Giles…well, Giles watches. Because he’s a Watcher.¹³

The meddling kids have won the day, but Giles cautions that The Master will likely try again, and there will be other supernatural terrors to deal with as well. That’s what you get for moving to a Hellmouth.

The second episode is about on par with the first. My major complaint (apart from some rather stilted dialog) is the awkward fight sequences. Action Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t terribly convincing, and anytime the shot switched from Flipping Buffy or Spin-kick Buffy to Fighting Stance Buffy I felt like I was watching one of the Naked Gun movies, with Leslie Nielsen’s obvious stunt double leaping behind a couch and Leslie popping up a half-second later. Still, I’m entertained; I’ll give the second episode a solid three cross pendants out of five, and you can expect a recap of the third episode next week.

1. Surely we can come up with a better name for a group of vampires than “clan”. Crows have an infinitely cooler group name than vampires, and that’s just sad. Alas, “a murder of vampires” isn’t terribly catchy, nor does it get at the meat of the matter. Perhaps “a vein of vampires”. [↩]
2. As regards the cross pendant, I’m compelled to digress for a moment to address a common misconception: a cross is not a crucifix. A crucifix is a cross with Jesus Christ nailed to it. The word “crucifix” literally means “fixed to a cross”; without the crucified, there’s no crucifixion and, thus, it’s not a crucifix. In this instance, Buffy is saved by a cross pendant, while I am being a crucifix pedant. [↩]
3. Great for baseball, not so much for vampire slaying. [↩]
4. Julie Benz, featured more recently in Showtime’s Dexter. [↩]
5. Millions of years ago, the earth was a molten mass… [↩]
6. …up in a tree, S-U-C-K-I-N-G… [↩]
7. Octomus? [↩]
8. Perfectly legal, right? [↩]
9. If he is, I’d like to know how the hell he manages to get in and out of the mausoleum in broad daylight; the door leading into the lair is chained and locked, which leaves only the front entrance. [↩]
10. Did he leap over the campus gate, too? Worst. Gate. Ever. [↩]
11. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board… [↩]
12. It’s Ladies’ Night. [↩]
13. But not the creepy, hanging around in the hedge outside your bedroom window kind. [↩]

Tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 8:15 am and is filed under Featured Articles, Monologuing, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.