The Harsh Light of Day is a crossover with the Angel episode, In the Dark.
While a lot of it seems like an echo it represents an interesting paradigm shift for the show
in a number of ways, just as you might expect personally during your own first year of college.
If it weren't for my irrational protective feeling for Buffy (she is us after all) I
think The Harsh Light of Day might actually be one of favorite episodes in Season 4.
The Scoobies are hanging out at the Bronze and Buffy is keeping a watchful eye on the
status and location of Parker throughout the bar.
1:14 "Buffy is looking at Parker.
Who it turns out has a reflection so big plus there."
As Dingoes Ate My Baby are packing up in the parking lot when Willow runs into Harmony
for the first time since Graduation.
Which, if you remember…
Harmony vamps and attacks but Oz gets her away.
On the walk home Parker notices Buffy's neck.
"You have a scar."
- "Angry puppy."
On the walk home Parker opens up about his home life and asks Buffy to a party the next
day.
Xander and Giles the displaced Scoobies, are spending an evening organizing Giles home
and Anya stops by.
7:30 "So where is our relationship going?"
- "Our what?"
Meanwhile back at the dorm Parker and Buffy are about to kiss when Willow and Oz show
up and let her know in Scooby code that Harmony is now a vampire.
9:00 "She must be dating the most tolerant guy in the world."
10:20 "Hi baby.
I'm back."
Spike and Harmony have a gloriously adversarial relationship.
Spike is digging for something but Harmony is too bored to sit around and begs to be
taken to a party.
At the party in question, Parker and Buffy run into Spike and Harmony, carrying a snack
between them.
Buffy and Spike fight and Harmony, new to being a immortal bad guy, tries her hand at
taunting.
101 14:30 "As soon as we have the gem of Amara
you're going to be so…"
Xander is sprucing up his mom's basement with a disco ball and Anya shows up to continue
trying have things develop
*drops dress *juice box
Back at the party Parker lays a line on Buffy I want to circle back to and Buffy kisses
him.
The next day she wakes up in bed alone.
I adore the echo here.
Waking up in bed with Parker gone.
Waking up in bed with Angel gone.
The visible scar.
I was amused by how much of a slob Parker appears to be but regardless he returns with
coffee and has a new unfortunate line for Buffy.
24:00 "I'll call you."
And after a night of carnal pleasures, every one of our couples awaken into the harsh light
of day.
Spike finally manages to hurt Harmony's feelings.
Parker doesn't call and Anya is upset that Xander is fine with her being over him.
Spike finds the crypt containing the gem of Amara, a gem said to make vampires unkillable
but Harmony won't stop talking.
At Giles' house the gang is still researching the location of the crypt.
33:00 "Hey everyone Giles has a TV.
He's shy like us."
Willow defending Giles here by saying maybe the TV doesn't work is an adorable reminder
of her crush on him, which we covered a bit in season 3.
The whole anti-TV sentiment is a very meta writer's joke, coming from a television
show like Buffy.
Buffy stumbles on Parker in the quad laying the line about his Dad on a new girl.
Parker is standoffish and somehow manages to get Buffy to apologize to him.
36:00 "I didn't mean to mis...I'm sorry.
We'll double back on this part in just a moment.
But this scene is CRUSHING.
Spike attacks and when Buffy is most emotionally vulnerable.
During the fight he picks at her emotional wounds.
39:30 "Did he play the sensitive lad and get you to seduce him?
That's a good trick if the girl is thick enough to buy it."
201
We've had some great fights this season already but this fight is not one of them.
And it may actually be the harsh light of day that is the problem.
James Marster's is incredibly lean and makes his stunt double look like a linebacker by
comparison.
And there are long direct shots of his double's face.
Buffy gets the ring off his finger and Spike flees into the sewers.
Buffy decides the Ring should go to Angel.
Oz says he has a gig in LA and will take it to him.
And the episode ends with Buffy with Willow, trying to figure out what she did to make
Parker not like her anymore.
41:30 "Am I repulsive?"
I really enjoy the structure of this one.
You have three women on a parallel track exploring sexuality in their relationships with three
very different but very complex men.
Well okay.
Two complex men and a Parker.
Of course I hate Parker but I want to be very careful when I say, to give Parker all the
credit for the events of the episode - as in Buffy never would have if he wasn't a
lying manipulative poop-head - is to sell the complexity of Buffy's character short.
Parker's manipulation exposes in Buffy a vulnerability when it comes to matters of
men and love, but I think it's less about being naive than meets the eye.
There are obvious callbacks to what happened with Angel here
34:00 "Is everything okay."
- "Sure it is."
Innocence "Was I not good?"
- "You were great.
I thought you were a pro."
In Innocence this story was subtext.
In The Harsh Light of Day the douchey boyfriend story is literal and at the end of the episode
she asks Willow:
"So does this always happen?
Sleep with a guy and he turns all evil."
Thing is, she and Parker spent about an estimated week's worth of time together.
Angel and she spent a year and half.
Parker performed the ceremonial dance of intimacy but the key is it was a one sided performance.
In all their scenes together it was Parker talking about his life and his beliefs and
his dreams.
He rarely shows any curiosity towards Buffy and her passions.
Real intimacy flows in both directions.
This is empathy peacock's feathers.
And while Parker is a manipulative poop head performing for a change at sex, his actions
have exposed a vulnerability in Buffy that she'd have had to discover for herself at
some time or another.
301
I've read that Sarah Michelle Gellar took issue with the idea of Buffy jumping into
bed with someone so soon after Angel but for a few reason's I found Buffy's actions
totally believable.
First of all, Angel is the one who broke up with Buffy.
Whether it was for sensible reasons or not it's still much harder to be the rejected
than the rejector.
Second the persona that Parker was playing represented everything that Angel was not,
and both Buffy and Willow go out of their ways to highlight that fact.
Parker is sensitive.
Thoughtful.
He talks about his feelings and most importantly, he has a reflection.
Third, as Whedon said, college is a time where a lot of people experiment.
I think Buffy ended up in bed with Parker because she wanted to believe him, not because
she believed him.
Don't forget the song she's been tortured by for the previous two episodes: "Do you
believe in life after love?"
He's still a misrepresenting manipulative douche bag yes.
I'm just suggesting the signs were there and there were two people making decisions.
Again, to give Parker all the blame is to sell Buffy short.
This is something she's going to have to deal with for a few episodes (we see her struggling
with it in the end) but her reaction in future episodes makes more sense to me if Parker
is really the avatar for the insecurities she's developed about all her past relationships
to this point.
Not just Parker specifically.
Anya and Xander's interactions set up an important detail about her character, and
that is that she's been a single minded vengeance demon for so long she's forgotten
how certain basic aspects of being human work and may need to relearn them.
In this case that banging the object of your affection isn't a suitable way of expunging
them from your system.
And at the far end in the other direction we have Harmony.
Who when she can't get Spike to pay attention to her or treat her properly engages Spike
on a sexual level to keep his interest.
401 "Being a vampire sucks."
One of my favorite aspects of this episode IS the sexual experimentation, despite the
experiments failures.
I think we did better when we talked about Season 2 but it would be tempting to look
at it as the show, in some way, demonizing sex.
What with the numerous metaphorical portent's leading up to the fateful moment and the sex
seemingly causing the departure of Angel's soul.
But we know that the season isn't really about that.
And if you watch carefully, it isn't the sex that causes Angel's loss of soul.
There's a cut after the scene of an unknown length of time.
And we come to Angel laying in bed with the woman he loves.
No place to get to but this moment.
No cares.
No concerns.
Nothing but the fingertips of the storm outside on the window panes.
This is true peace.
This is home.
*Angel wakes up*
Still it's refreshing to see the show take a more liberal attitude here towards sexuality
as something to not be afraid of - rather something that needs to be handled with a
little bit of care and honesty to be done well.
It's common knowledge that Whedon touched most of the scripts for the show and if that's
the case here, I feel like it's Parker's speech in the club.
It's easy to dismiss his lines because of the Parker sucks but consider their content
in the context of the show and all the philosophy we've talked about rather than as a tool
to manipulate Buffy.
In fact, let's give them the same treatment we gave the Mayor's graduation speech at
the beginning of the season:
"There's something amazing about these huge events that when you dig down into them
they're all about people."
501
I love this.
It's as if Whedon decided that if he HAD to bring Parker into Buffy's life.
If he was going to go that route he may as well give Parker dialogue that was going to
speak to her heart.
There are a ton of other fun details in this one as well.
Parker noticing Buffy's scar from being bitten by both Angel and The Master.
And Buffy saying she was bitten by an angry puppy.
This is not the first time he's been referred to like that:
*Scene from the Wish
Conclusion This review has been a kind of a difficult
line to tow for me.
I'll be honest, my first instinct when it comes to Buffy is a protective one, not a
rational one.
When I first watched this episode I did, and I still do want to throw Parker off a roof.
But I think our interest in these discussions is in character.
What do we do after we fall.
We pick ourselves up and keep asking that question: where do we go from here?
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