7.15 Get it Done

[Clare]

7.15 Get it Done - Episode #137
The gang is rocked by a suicide within their ranks. After raging at everybody, Buffy leaps through a portal on a quest for knowledge and Willow must use magic in order to get her back.

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

[partcynic]

7x15 “Get It Done”

Episode Rating = 2

After I finished rewatching this episode, I was confused as to what I actually made of it. Unlike the failed attempts at progressing the arc that were “Bring on the Night” and “Showtime”, by the time “Get It Done” was finished, it felt as though something had legitimately happened. However, the steps forward that we got were predominantly motivated by characters either acting unpleasantly or completely unlike themselves, and the potentially fascinating idea of revealing the true origins of the Slayer was spoiled by discarding depth in favour of a simplistic metaphor and some male-bashing. These things come together to make “Get It Done” a very frustrating and unsatisfying episode, though I do give it tenuous points for effort.

What I Liked about “Get It Done”:

- It was fun to watch Buffy take Wood on a tour of her home. The encounter with Andrew produced a neat reference to “Dr Strangelove” (though the rest of it was the same old stuff), and I smiled at Willow’s attempts to create reasons for the potential army and her armful of weapons. Wood’s aside to Buffy about her almost destroying the world was pretty funny, and I thought Kennedy worked well in her drill sergeant role (despite not liking her nastiness to Chloe).

- The sequence with the shadow puppets was really good, and the most memorable in the episode. It built up a decent amount of suspense, and was somewhat creepy too. Plus, it was pleasing to be shown something the series had never done before.

- It was aesthetically gratifying to see Spike fetch his old leather jacket and then express true glee as he killed the exchange demon, and the writing for him in those scenes managed to believably channel the Spike of S2.

What I found to be a mixed bag about “Get It Done”:

- The idea of bringing back the First Slayer was an excellent one, but if the show was going to go to the effort of arranging for the original actress to return, why not do something substantial with the character? There was a huge missed opportunity here – the show had the chance to dive in deep and really build upon/develop what we saw in “Restless”, and I think that if this ep had been helmed by Joss, that’s what we would have gotten. As is, it was all very basic and surface-y , and came nowhere near fulfilling its potential.

- Flowing from that last point, the scenes with the Shadow Men needed much more explanation and depth. There are so many interesting questions that could be asked, yet none were addressed. Who exactly are the Shadow Men? Where was the place Buffy went to? Was it in ‘our’ time, or in an isolated area somewhere else? Have other Slayers done this in the past? If so, what were the benefits and drawbacks? How were they able to get back to our reality if they didn’t have friends to hunt and capture the exchange demon? Does the origin of the Slayer have anything to do with some of the aspects of Slayer psychology we’ve had pointed out to us? And was it really worth devaluing the show’s entire mythology for a poorly developed rape metaphor?

- Dawn didn’t whine and was somewhat funny when she teased Buffy about school, but since when could she translate Sumerian? You can study a foreign language to degree level and beyond and still not be as instantly skilled as she was. Research has gotten much too easy.

- The ending with the Turok-han army was fun on first viewing, but less so when you know that the deus ex machina scythe that can instantly kill them all is going to pop up any episode now.

What I Disliked about “Get It Done”:

- There are far too many potentials; to the point that they all blur into one. It’s hard to feel dread at the Slayer line being down to its last ‘handful’ when that handful is increasing episode after episode.

- Where’s Giles? A line explaining his absence was necessary.

- Spike and Anya’s scenes were filler and didn’t include any development or plot progression. We’d already heard jokes about them hooking up in “Sleeper”, so the repeats were unnecessary, and the demon hitman stuff was an uninteresting facsimile of the start of “Him”. Then we had the irritating bit with Anya moaning at Spike for not just slaying the monster – did this ep’s writer think there was some time to kill?

- Principal Wood and Spike’s confrontations are an unwelcome reminder of bad things to come. Watching them stare suspiciously at each other makes them feel more like huffy 10th graders than grown men, and their hostile chat in the Summers basement is overdone.

- Chloe’s death was a total nothing. While I am glad that we won’t have to see her again, her death was badly written, and it was impossible to care about what happened to her. Given that she’d appeared in a grand total of one prior episode (where she did nothing but sit around and whine), I had no emotional connection to her, and I didn’t have the chance to see her form ties with any other characters. All I was left with was ‘oh, the annoying girl is dead’, and I don’t think that’s what was intended. Away from the death itself, we also had that dull scene of the First blathering on, where (for some reason) Buffy et al decided to stand there and listen to it, when they know it’s only going to say nasty things. Slamming the door in its ‘face’ would have been a more fitting response.

- Buffy’s speeches have been a continual seasonal low point, and her ‘everyone sucks but me’ rant was second only to the end of “Bring on the Night” in awfulness. The scene went on and on, yet in all her raging, Buffy said nothing that had a point. Instead of criticising people for not doing enough, why didn’t she suggest things that they could be doing? It sounds like she gave half a talk – and we needed the other section.

- The characterisation is questionable, across the board. In this episode, everyone’s negative aspects (or average but negative in excess) were taken and blown up. Usually forceful and protective characters like Buffy and Kennedy became ridiculously obnoxious and foolhardy; centre-of-attention types like Xander and Anya interjected witless comments for no reason, and calmer characters like Willow became wholly passive and incompetent. It didn’t feel like I was watching the characters I’d come to know over the past six-and-a-bit seasons, and that hurts the quality of the episode.

- If the Slayer emergency kit has been passed from individual to individual (most likely at the Council’s behest), why didn’t the Watchers make sure it was moved on to the Slayers after Nikki Wood? Something tells me that the Council wouldn’t really care about whether the young Robin wanted to keep it or not.

- Why did Buffy just leap through the portal after her ‘let’s be violent’ speech? It’s not like the gang couldn’t have set up the casters again once they actually knew what they were doing.

- If Buffy could easily break free from the chains that were binding her, why didn’t she just do that right away?

- The Willow-must-do-magic material was a bore, and repeated things we’ve already heard before. There was nothing there in terms of either her individual development or relationship development with Kennedy, and Kennedy’s reaction to the life-sucking spell was silly. If the writers were going to have her be so alarmed, they needed to have shown us a few episodes of her not being able to comprehend obvious things – or basic English.

- The incidental music was irrelevant. It’s been unimpressive and forgettable throughout the season, though I’d rather have that than the bad Eighties power-rock we got during Spike’s fight scenes.

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

I still think it’s a poor episode, but it didn’t bother me quite as much as it did the last time I saw it. Looking at my previous ratings, I couldn’t quite justify giving this the same score as “Bring on the Night” and “Help”, so I’ve upped it ever so slightly, to a low two out of ten.