Episode 1x02 : The Harvest
This article contains spoilers for the second episode of Buffy and the one before that (we don’t spoil the following ones though).
Tellington: Buffy 1x02! In the end of the previous episode we left our heroine in a bad situation, with the strong Vampire Luke about to, well, kill her.
Vallantyn: Oh, oh! I know that one, then they fall in love and start a throuple with a werewolf?
T: Yes, that’s… wait, NO!
V: Checks notes… Oh, right, wrong blog. Some pages got stuck together. Yes, something something the Slayer is about to be slayed. Carry on.
T: But she’s being saved by… her necklace?
V: The SILVER necklace. A cross gifted to her by dark’n’handsome.
T: I’m not sure it’s silver, or if it is it’s not important. Silver is for repelling werewolves!
V: Hmm you might be right, maybe it’s just because it’s a cross. That will be important later in the episode! Anyhoo, tension untensioned quite fast there. Luke backs off and… disappears.
T: Buffy is then able to save Willow and Xander, but not Jesse, who gets taken by Darla or someone.
V: Then back to the Master (I think?), who’s upset because someone “tasted” Jesse (Darla I believe). But is rejoiced quite fast learning there’s a Slayer in town.
T: Yup the Master does not like to be treated like “a faithful dog”, being fed scraps.
V: Well, if someone told me they’d bring me snacks and bit them on the way I wouldn’t be too happy either, especially after a big nap.
T: I’ll leave it to you to humanize the vampirests of Vampires. But back to Buffy: she joins Giles in the library with her two new sidekicks.
V: Ahem… “Sidekicks”. They want to help, but Buffy tells them to back off. Too dangerous.
T: She’s headstrong about getting Jesse back alone. They think hard about where he could have been taken and decide it must be underground. Willow then blows everyone’s mind by fetching a map of the sewers on her computer (something that the city definitely didn’t make public, but we have a big hacker here).
V: They mention that it’s public, but there’s a long time to get it through the official channels. Willow’s way is faster.
T: In a way that could count as foreshadowing, she’s getting hooked on speed (not the drug) (I won’t go further to avoid next seasons spoilers).
V: Right. So, next, they need to figure out a way to get to the sewers… but there’s not an obvious entry point. Unless…
T: Buffy has a flashback from her encounter with Luke and realizes he came from inside the mausoleum, thus there must be an entry there.
V: Well then, let’s get to it. She’s about to leave school, but…
T: She gets caught by the principal! He tells her she’d better not leave school grounds while she should be in class, and he closes the gate.
V: Oh no, that’s dreadful! What can she do about it?!
T: Well, a mere fence (although two meters high) is no match for Buffy jumping ability. That girl would kill it in basketball.
V: That would be cheating, but ok. Or you would need a Slayer on the opposing team to even the odds.
T: Don’t get me started on Slayers basketball, now that’s a sport I would watch.
V: All right, I won’t scribbling something for later. So, jumping over the fence, to the graveyard we go.
T: To death we go, to the graveyard we go… Wait, wrong show again.
V: The rythm is a tad off too, but 1 point for the reference.
T: I’ll argue the rythm is perfect but ANYWAY…
V: Did we mention we have ADHD? Or is that becoming obvious?
T: Focusing back on Buffy… she finds the enter of the tunnels and gets exploring. But I believe she’s interrupted by someone.
V: Before she gets to exploring even, she also shows us another of her Slayer skills. But yeah, dark’n’gloomy is back. It’s kinda getting annoying that he just pops on and off like that.
T: But this time we get his name, and yes, that is Angel!
V: Who’s that? Should I know him?
T: Oh, noone of importance.
V: Right… Anyway, the interaction between those two is bordeline flirt. Heavily implied “Would they? Won’t they?”.
T: No matter that he looks like a grown adult and she’s a junior in high school.
V: Right.
T: But yeah he’s like “I’m too much of a coward to do anything, so please go do it for me”, and when she asks him to wish her good luck he waits until she’s gone to do it. So annoying.
V: I don’t get it… Also worth mentioning: it seems that Angel and the Master’s “crew” know each other. And they don’t like him very much. The gate to the tunnels was closed, but Buffy just rips the chains off…
T: So then she gets exploring. But she gets interrupted by someone else if I recall correctly.
V: You do recall correctly m’dear. A wild Xander appears! Which is intriguing, because I’m pretty sure he can’t jump over the school’s fence.
T: Call that a plot hole, or maybe since he’s been in the school for longer he know another way out.
V: A poetic license.
T: Xander’s like “I couldn’t let you face the danger alone! Jesse’s my friend!” And talking about Jesse, they find him rather quickly (did we mention he got “upgraded” from meal to bait earlier?).
V: We’re so bad at this, there was a few funny quotes to do, and we missed the first one! But yeah, after the snack drama, and the Master learning there’s a Slayer in town, they start to plot, and Luke says (referring to Jesse)…
T: I think he’s talking directly to Jesse, and tells him something like “Congrats boy, I thought you a mere meal, but you just got upgraded… to bait!”
V: Back to the present, where our courageous heroes find a Jesse in chains, and yeah, rather quickly. Not fishy at all.
T: To be fair, Jesse tells them the Vampires are expecting them and he’s being used as bait.
V: He’s being a poor bait.
T: They’re escaping together, but they’re hunted by the Master’s crew. Thanksfully (or not) Jesse is guiding them.
V: That’s why you shouldn’t tell the bait they’re bait.
T: Except, of course, if you turned the bait into a Vampire. Which they did. So Jesse is leading them into a dead-end then turns on them and into a vampire (I love a cool zeugma.)
V: What’s a zeugma? Is it contagious?
T: Dork. (If you really don’t know, it’s this figure of speech where you use the same verb with two different, uh, prepositions?)
V: I kinda wanna be dorky about prepositions too, and a penguin, but I’ll refrain. And yeah, I really didn’t know.
T: A penguin? Am I having a stroke? Are you?
V: That’s a reference to Hannah Gadsby second special, where she talks about a misadventure with prepositions. There’s prepositions, a box, and a penguin who may or may not be made of boxes.
T: Oh, right. I’d be doubling down on “dork”, but I actually love Hannah Gadsby. Did we get sidetracked again?
V: We did. But our protagonists did not. They’re still facing Vampire Jesse. And a bunch of other Vampires.
T: Buffy barely (and with Xander’s help) closes the door on them, leaving them trapped in a small room. Or are they? Slayer abilities strike again when they realize there is a vent. And despite being no impostors, they climb up the vent and to the surface, with Vampires on their heels (the door only held them back so long).
V: If anything, Jesse was the impostor there.
T: True. And it’s then Jesse-less that Buffy and Xander get back to the library.
V: So… mission failed successfully. In the meantime, Giles & Willow did not sit on their respective thumbs. They looked into “The Harvest”. Learning that the dreadful event is…
T: Incidentally, “The Harvest” is the name of the episode. But yeah, it’s tonight.
V: Title checks out.
T: Thanks to Giles explanations and a little view of the Vampires’ lair, we understand what the Harvest is: an event only happening once every 50 years (or something) where the Master has the opportunity to break free and unleash Hell on Earth. Like, literal Hell. But he can only do it if his “Vessel” feeds on a lot of people that night. The Vessel being, obviously, Luke.
V: And Xander has a good idea of where that might happen: The Bronze.
T: Who would resist all of these yummy young people dancing? Besides, it’s like the only cool place in Sunnydale.
V: Fair enough. So… that leave our heroes close to no time to prepare for what will probably be a big battle.
T: They get to the Bronze… but not before the Vampires, who rounded up everyone and blocked the entry.
V: That’s not looking good.
T: I think Buffy and the rest of the gang part way: Giles, WIllow and Xander are tasked with finding another entry and evacuating the crowd, while Buffy just does a whole lot of slaying.
V: Eventually, the rest of the gang faces off with Vampires too, obviously Xander ends up face to face with Vampire Jesse.
T: Epic moment where Jesse is like “stake me if you dare” and we’ll never know if Xander would have done it because somebody jostles Jesse, who impales himself on Xander’s stake.
V: He died (again?) how he lived. Stupidly. Cue in Buffy vs Luke, an epic battle for the eons! checks notes… oh no.
T: Is that the moment where Buffy startles him with “sunshine” that is really a neon?
V: Precisely. She throws something at a window, behind which there’s a warm colored light, and tells Luke it’s sunlight. Who BELIEVES it and starts to panick.
T: It’s quite a funny moment. He’s like “oh nooooooo it buuuurns” then realizes… it doesn’t.
V: “Sun’s not up until 8hrs, dummy” or something, Buffy says.
T: Is that how she kills him? I can’t remember.
V: Pretty much, she stakes him in the back.
T: In the meantime we saw the Master getting stronger and stronger with Luke feeding, and he is a few souls away from getting out… but then it’s like “nope”, because Luke is dead.
V: See you in 50-ish years, maybe.
T: Or maybe earlier, because as Giles states : “You stopped the Master today, doesn’t mean he’s gonna stop trying.”
V: They never can get a rest, can’t they?
T: They can’t. But they’re gonna try anyway. Cue Giles seeing that a bunch of teenagers is in charge of Mankind’s destiny and he says that thing I have on a shirt: “Earth is doomed.”
V: Teenagers with attitude (There’s a reference there.).
T: I don’t have it.
V: And this time I’m not giving the answer :) I believe we reached the end of the episode, but we missed a few things on the way. Like Giles being too British, or Willow being a Vengeful Geek.
T: The Vengeful Geek moment was amazing. Cordelia is badmouthing Buffy during Computer class, so when she asks how to save Willow tells her it’s “deliver”. Cordy looks at her keyboard and she’s like “oh, right, DEL for deliver!” and deletes her entire work.
V: Because that’s how it works. Giles being too British was a bit before that. We’ve been acquainted with Willow’s computer skills, and when they need to find some information on the Harvest and such, he asks her to “Look on her dreaded Machine”. Even he acknowledges that it was probably a “bit too British”.
T: Not the last time Giles is being British. Or old, regarding computers.
V: And I’m here for it! Globally I felt a lot happens in that episode, we quickly get out of the previous situation, and quickly there’s an expedition to (fail to) save Jesse, we learn about the Harvest and there’s the “Final Battle”. But that kinda checks out with the fact that it happened on the same day. It concludes the 2 parts pilot, gets the gang together and sets us off for the rest of the season. Can’t wait for the next episode!