7.11 Showtime

[Clare]

7.11 Showtime - Episode #133
As more potentials arrive in town, Buffy begins to suspect that one girl is not all she seems and in an attempt to inspire some morale among the group, Buffy stages a fight between herself and the Turok-Han.

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

[partcynic]

7x11 “Showtime”

Episode Rating = 1

Like when I reviewed “Smashed”, watching “Showtime” again left me feeling more positively about it, though sitting down and thinking about its actual content made that promptly vanish. As with “Smashed/Wrecked”, “Bring on the Night/Showtime” is a two-parter in all but name, and this ep got lumbered with the cleanup from its weak predecessor. To give it some credit, it did manage to be 1) more watchable on a scene-by-scene basis and 2) suffer mainly from the ongoing faults of the season as opposed to brand new ones (with a single, massive exception). That said, being better than “Bring on the Night” isn’t exactly saying much, and that can’t doesn’t elevate “Showtime” much when considering the show as a whole. S7 is moving very slowly at this point, and it feels like the material from these two eps could have been covered as a ten-minute sub-plot, rather than spread out as mercilessly as it has been.

What I Liked about “Showtime”:

- The dialogue was a little better than the season’s typical standard. Buffy’s “welcome to the Hellmouth” comment in the teaser was cute, and Xander, Willow, Anya and Beljoxa’s Eye provided one relatively amusing moment each.

- Kennedy was mostly good. She’s being overly pushy and infantilising in her approach to Willow, but her behaviour elsewhere was fine. In the annoying early potential scenes, she was the only one whose behaviour made sense, and I appreciated her pointing out that all the others did was whinge. Later in the episode, she struck a good balance between deferring to Buffy’s leadership and making her own suggestions, and was the only potential with a discernable personality.

- The climactic battle between Buffy and the Turok-han was relatively exciting, and parts were nicely choreographed.

- Seeing that the Turok-han was simply a Neanderthal vamp instead of anything interesting, it’s good that it got killed.

What I Disliked about “Showtime”:

- The first half of the episode (with Eve and the other potentials whining) was a total bore. Why do TV shows always portray teenagers as self-pitying moaners? Would any of us who were with the show from Day One have kept watching it if Buffy, Xander and Willow had acted that way when they were 15/16? More to the point, watching characters whine wastes time, as it eats up space that could be used to show them doing or saying things that are engaging/interesting. The ‘Eve is actually the First’ idea (nice reference with her name) worked passably on initial viewing, but it falls flat on repeat plays – knowing the First’s big scheme, there’s no reason for it to bother psyching Buffy et al out anyway. What would making a bunch of already-scared teenage girls slightly more scared really achieve? And if it did learn some valuable info about them, what did that info help it accomplish? There really needed to be some payoff here.

- How unthinking have the Scoobs become in recent years? They know that the First is incorporeal, so why don't they simply touch those who come into the house to make sure they're real? And given that the Summers residence must now be unbearably cramped (housing Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Xander, Anya, Giles, Andrew, Molly, Kennedy, Vi, Chloe and Rona), it’s hard to believe that no-one bumped into Eve (or failed to notice her inability to interact with anything) during her time there.

- There are too many potentials; which is a problem that’s only going to get worse with time. I think it would have worked better if Giles’ statement that “only a handful remain” had been adhered to, with literally three or four girls remaining. It would have made the situation graver, permitted the show to develop the individual potentials further, and encouraged the audience to feel connected to them. As is, we have so many girls that the threat to the Slayer line seems minimal, and they come across as generic, one-dimensional cannon-fodder rather than people.

- Why does First-Eve tell Buffy that she’ll be sending the Turok-han after them that evening? Wouldn’t it be better to maintain the element of surprise?

- The plot thread with Beljoxa's Eye was sub-par. The Eye’s explanation was a tolerable attempt at developing the story, but it just wasn’t workable. Logically, the weakness in the Slayer line should have occurred back in “Prophecy Girl” (when Buffy died and was revived, leading to Kendra’s activation and two Slayers existing simultaneously), and even if you do accept the rationale presented here, it doesn’t change the fact that the First should have been killing potentials for a good year and a half by now – and yet no-one bothered to contact Buffy during S6 and give her a heads-up. It’s also problematic that Giles and Anya never told anyone what they’d learnt – this issue needed to be dealt with, and it hurts the season that it wasn’t. Finally, I have to give another thumbs down for the introduction of a fairly-accessible oracle that we’ve never heard of before (couldn’t it have helped out with info on Glory a couple of years ago?), as well as the appearance of yet another demon business owner. The writers keep on adding extra bars/establishments, and Sunnydale is getting harder and harder to believe in the process.

- Spike’s scenes were dull repetitions of things we’d seen in “Bring on the Night”, and the character needs to be given something to do besides limp around with his shirt off. The First could have taken the time to really mess him up (as it did with Angel in “Amends”), and it’s disappointing that it settled for posing as Buffy and endlessly chatting with him.

- Andrew is getting more and more painful to watch, and his scenes aren’t conducive to any development. While I did like Dawn’s line about him having murdered his only friend, the rest of his stuff sucked – the character keeps on repeating the same joke over and over, and is a black hole sucking the life out of any sequence he’s in.

- The telepathy reveal with Buffy was one of the most illogical things the show had ever done (has Willow been teaching her on the side, or did she retain the ability to read minds from “Earshot”?) How could she initiate the conversation when she doesn’t have any magical power? Why not just make eye contact with Willow and jerk her head towards the kitchen, suggesting that she walk there so they could chat in peace? And if Willow is so terrified of using magic, why’s she okay with using it for trivial purposes?

- The Buffy voice we hear in the scene explaining the telepathy sounds like someone doing a Sarah Michelle Gellar impression rather than the actual actress (and indeed, it’s not her). Was SMG ill and unable to come to post-production, or did she just not care?

- Buffy's plan makes zero sense. After nearly being killed by the Turok-han, she arbitrarily decides that she’ll fight it in front of all of the potentials, assuming of course that she can get it to the right location, that it won't go for the near-defenceless SITs at all, and that she'll actually be able to win - with no weapons, no pre-planned trap and no assistance, against an enemy she barely touched before. But she tries really hard, so she wins. I don’t even know where to start on this mess, so I’ll leave it there.

- Why did the Turok-han engage in combat with Buffy when the First specifically instructed it not to? Why not at least try to shove her out of the way and go for the potentials?

- The speeches this season have all been poor – the emotional quality is way off, and they choose bombast over substance and meaning. Granted, Buffy's talk after slaying the Turok-han was way better than the awful one that closed “Bring on the Night” (and the connection with “Fool For Love” – ‘here endeth the lesson’ – was neat), but it was still false and over-the-top (“I’m the thing monsters fear”).

- More elaboration was needed for Buffy’s Spike-rescue. How was she able to find him? Where was the First, and where were its Bringers? Why would losing a Turok-han – which the First knows it can easily summon more of – make it leave Spike wide open for capture?

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

Scene-by-scene, it didn’t bother me so much, but that doesn’t change the fact that its first half is a whiny bore and the second predicated on unbelievable twists and bizarre characterisation. Overall, this ep adds very little to our understanding of the First arc, and it doesn’t provide much in the way of wit, insight or character development. Taken with all of those glaring problems, “Showtime” is obviously a low-quality episode, though I’ll be slightly lenient and award it a high one out of ten as opposed to “Bring on the Night”’s bottom-rung one.

[Twisted Slayer]

Rating is 10

What I Liked About Showtime:

1) The new baddie that is more powerful than Buffy, but she pulls through. Plus the big fight at the end!

What I Disliked About Showtime:

1) Nothing

Do I like This Episode More or Less Than the Last Time I Watched It:

1) Way way more!