7.09 Never Leave Me

[Clare]

7.09 Never Leave Me - Episode #131
While Spike is voluntarily chained up in the Summers’ basement, Willow encounters Andrew, who ends up as another Summers' house captive. However, the gang is attacked by Bringers and Buffy realises that the evil she’s fighting is in fact the First.

Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.

[partcynic]

7x09 “Never Leave Me”

Episode Rating = 4

Watching this again, I was left with a similar impression to the one I had viewing “Lessons”. While obviously not a great (or even particularly constructive) episode, “Never Leave Me” is the kind of show that manages to get by through working on a moment-by-moment basis. There wasn’t anything here that really made me sit back and say ‘wow’, but there was some minor arc and character development, a little bit of humour, and some believable emotion in the Buffy/Spike conversations. Of course, it would have been much better if all of that could have occurred within the context of episodic plot development (as the show used to do so well in S2/3), but what we got here was certainly acceptable, even if it feels like this ep could be chopped from the season with no loss of impact.

What I Liked about “Never Leave Me”:

- For a dialogue-heavy edition with no real plot or structure, it was paced fairly well. Unlike a lot of later house-based episodes, the omnipresent Summers scenery wasn’t annoying, and there was a nice sense of unpredictability in where the story was going. Admittedly, some things dragged or didn’t made sense, but there was enough happening (Spike and Buffy dealing with the fallout from their relationship; Buffy realising what she was up against; the return of Andrew; the mystery with Principal Wood; the First kidnapping Spike and summoning the Turok-han) to keep me engaged.

- Though it was cold and would have made more sense two years ago, Willow offering to kill Anya and feed her to Spike was funny, and I guess it was cute to be reminded of the frosty relationship between the two.

- Andrew trying to kill the pig was humorous, as was his nonchalant attempt at buying a mass amount of blood. The “she-witch” conversation he had with Willow once she caught him was also effective, and it was nice to get a mention of Tara, as well as seeing Willow’s reaction upon hearing her name.

- Xander and Anya worked well playing good cop/bad cop. I absolutely loved Anya slapping Andrew (I reckon most people have wanted to whack his annoying self at some point), and Xander’s conversation about Anya punishing a guy by leaving him with a ‘black heart’ managed to make him sympathetic despite its high potential for cheesiness.

- It was cool to see the Watcher’s Council again, and an excellent touch that so many of the characters from “Checkpoint” were reprised. Travers was as good (in his own, love-to-hate way) as ever, and while the explosion was incredibly stupid (hasn’t anyone tried to attack the Council headquarters before? Shouldn’t they have some sort of security measures there?), blowing them all up at least dealt with some lingering plot threads.

- Buffy and Spike’s conversations were fine. They weren’t particularly well-written, but they were watchable, and dealt with material that had been in dire need of explanation. Their new dynamic makes sense now, and they’re more compelling and emotional here than they were in almost all of the prior Spuffy scenes.

- The group combat at the end of the episode is decent. There are some good fighting moves here and there, and Buffy using Andrew as a human shield (and then knifing the Bringers with their own weapons) was clever and funny.

What I Disliked about “Never Leave Me”:

- This episode is about forty minutes long, and had a ‘previously on’ segment that took up over two minutes. Seeing how a lot of the info it included wasn’t necessary to understanding the plot, why was it dragged out so much?

- I have to give a thumbs down for the poor arc development. Let’s look at what have we’ve learnt so far in the season: something evil and bad is coming. It’s totally evil and awesomely bad. Ooh, the big bad evilness of this big bad evil. Um… did I mention that it’s evil? The writers are taking a lot of time to try and make the First some kind of terrible foe unlike anything anyone’s seen before, but it just isn’t working. All it’s done so far is attempt a few half-baked psychological attacks; make Spike sire a few vamps; and have Andrew kill Jonathon – none of which is interesting, intimidating or frightening. It doesn’t help that a group as well-versed in monsters as the Scoobs are acting terrified over something that is a big nothing compared to Angelus, the Mayor or Glory. This is going to be an issue with every subsequent First-focused ep in the season, and is a key contributing factor in lowering its quality.

- While I did like some of the character development, a lot of it is honestly stuff that should have been dealt with at the end of S6. And did we really need two whole episodes dedicated to the mystery of why Spike was killing? In terms of meaningful content, there’s about a quarter-hour of worthwhile stuff between the two shows – and certainly not enough for a combined eighty minutes.

- The lighting and cinematography are unimpressive. Most of the scenes were poorly lit and the ending sections (the fight) looked darker and murkier than when the show was being recorded on inferior film in S1-2. The camera angles and positioning were also sub-par, and the scenes aren’t being shot in ways that would make them effective.

- Anya and Xander’s character development is continuing to fail. While it’s good that they’re not at each other’s throats all the time, their palling around was hard to buy. Can you really see Anya (who’s not exactly the most accepting or quick-to-forgive character on the show) happily joking about with a man who utterly humiliated her not that long ago? There are some important points here that are being ignored, and they’re ones that have been in need of examination since “Hell’s Bells”.

- The early scenes with Principal Wood ran too long. The sequence with him talking with the two students was dead time (what was it there for?), and followed by the unfunny scatological humour with Dawn. Does anyone think a 15-year-old would talk to her Principal about her sister’s vomiting and bowel problems? On top of that, there was the stuff with Jonathon. What was it that compelled Wood to head down to the basement, and why did he decide to bury Jonathon’s body? I get that he might not have wanted the police sniffing around, but I don’t see how his behaviour here slots in with what we’re told about him later.

- Why does Buffy decide to tie Spike (a supernaturally strong being who is currently prone in bursting into violent, animalistic rages) to a chair that most ordinary humans could probably break? Why didn’t she just put him in the basement chains from the start?

- Andrew was funnier here than he was in S6, but Tom Lenk’s acting is still poor. He wasn’t able to convincingly sell any of his scenes, and the sci-fi references are as sterile as ever.

- Parts of the big fight are silly. Why don’t the Bringers actually try to kill the Scoobs? Willow not attempting to use her magic is a little inexplicable (note that the writers had to have her knocked out quickly because of this), and the other characters are also strange – those priests must be pretty unskilled if even Dawn can stand her ground against them. I also wasn’t keen on the cliched approach of a character approaching a ‘dead’ foe, only for said foe to still be alive.

- The Ubervamp’s ‘birth’ was mediocre. It was cool the first time this ep aired, as you could have the hope that he’d bring something interesting to the show, but it’s less fun when you know he’s just a generic, slobbering monster. Still, it’s cool to have a vampire adversary on “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”, and his make-up/facial prosthetics looked good.

Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?

I liked a few things more and a few things less, leaving my opinion stable. For a S7 arc episode, “Never Leave Me” is comparatively decent; but compared to what “Buffy” was once capable of, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s also annoying knowing that we’re sinking back into the S6 approach of simple stories dragged out forever, and I do miss having solid episodes as opposed to connectors – but at least this connector was relatively easy to watch. Therefore, I’ve decided to keep my old score of four out of ten, though this one’s probably the lowest within that rating’s sub-group.