7.04 Help

[Clare]

7.04 Help - Episode #126
On her first day as Sunnydale High’s new counsellor, Buffy meets a student who predicts her own death.

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

[partcynic]

*New review for 2011*

7x04 “Help”

Episode Rating = 1

What is it with S7 and building my hopes up, only to dash them soon after? At only four episodes in, we’ve already had two instances of promising stories being immediately followed by material that’s among the show’s worst, and it’s sad to think that this early section is still considered the better part of the year. A typically weak episode from Rebecca Rand Kirshner, “Help” combines badly-written, repeat plots with a juvenile theme and no character development. I’m actually baffled as to how anyone could have greenlit the central concept of this story, and though I understand why it’s here (as an early lesson for Buffy not to get too involved in the life of a single individual, which she couldn’t afford to do with the potentials later on), it’s still “Buffy” at its most oversimplified – and if the show ever got the ‘For Dummies’ treatment, this episode would be the perfect candidate.

What I Liked about “Help”:

- The early student meetings had a little humour to them, with the highlight being Amanda. I liked her character much more than I did Cassie, and I’m pleased we got to spend more time with her later in the season. Some of the other teens were also acceptable (the guy who tried to ask Buffy out), and the mini-reveal with Dawn was cute.

- I liked Xander’s hammer analogy when he was walking with Willow, as well as the subsequent reveal that they were at the cemetery. Watching Willow at Tara’s grave was very emotional, and I was glad we got an acknowledgement that Willow was dealing with a major bereavement, instead of all that ‘I’m afraid of magic’ stuff. I’ll also give plus points for the subtle way we were shown her observing Jewish custom, which was a lovely bit of attention to detail.

- There are a few good lines in the first research scene, with Willow discussing teen angst and fanfic before informing Xander that she’s over him.

What I Disliked about “Help”:

- The teaser was superfluous. It added nothing to the theme, plot or character arcs (okay, Buffy mentioned being nervous about her first proper day, but that’s it), and made little sense. If Buffy was going after a single vampire, she could easily go on her own – if anything, having Dawn and Xander tagging along would just make any necessary hiding that much trickier. And after “Bargaining”, shouldn’t she have been a little disturbed by having to lie inside a coffin? I can imagine that creeping out anyone, let alone an individual who was once buried alive.

- I know that the episode lampshades this, but Buffy’s counselling role with vulnerable teens is unbelievable. I appreciate that the writers were astute enough to give her a job, but it makes no sense given her lack of qualifications, and there’s no way she’d pass a criminal background check for working with vulnerable minors (thanks to her arrests, history of violent behaviour and proximity to a number of homicides). It’s also ironic that the most self-centred character on the show is the one who’s expected to deliver advice to others.

- It’s a bit much that Buffy is flooded with people on her very first day (aren’t teenagers often guarded about their problems?) And would anyone go and speak to someone about potentially sensitive personal issues in an open-office cubicle with people walking around nearby?

- Most of the attempts at jokes were embarrassing. There were a few respectable lines scattered about, but nothing was witty, and multiple scenes had flat dialogue. The ep’s humour was mainly a procession of tired gags (Buffy almost swearing and suddenly pulling back; the racist assumption that Principal Wood was from ‘the hood’) or stuff that was bizarre (why was Dawn talking like a film noir detective in that research scene?)

- There’s zero originality or creativity in the plotting. The ‘A’ story (character predicts own death) is 1) a straight pull from the Greek Cassandra myth and 2) something the show had done better before (“Prophecy Girl”), and the ‘B’ story a blatant redo of “Reptile Boy”. The demon-summoning-for-wealth scheme wasn’t that great then – did we really need to see it again? This problem is so obvious and large that it overshadows almost everything else in this already-bad episode.

- Cassie was a very poor character. I got the impression that she was supposed to be some kind of darkly romantic, vaguely gothic girl, but Azura Skye’s acting didn’t convey any of that (nor did the general dialogue). Almost everything with the character sucked, though I can’t necessarily say whether it was due to the actress, the director, or the script not giving her anything to work with. For this episode to have even the slightest chance of succeeding; you have to care about Cassie – but all she did was mope and spew out emo-teen clichés, meaning that I ended up hoping her deathly prediction would come true quite a bit sooner than it did.

- The scenes spent with Dawn getting to know Cassie were a waste. They had no bearing on the specific plot or Dawn’s character development, so they’re dead time. The voiceover sequence with the second poem was also gratuitous – was it inserted to artificially increase the episode’s length?

- The visit to Cassie’s father is one of the worst-written in the show - would anyone speak those lines as they were penned? On top of that, the deductions Buffy and Xander made about Cassie and her father were head-scratching in their non-logic. Why would Mr. Newton’s not having custody of Cassie that weekend eliminate him as a suspect? If you suspected that someone would kill their own child, would you be so forthcoming with the benefit of the doubt? Couldn’t he get into a drunken rage and hurt her while she was with her mother (after all, they live in the same town)?

- What was Cassie doing outside of her father’s house? Doesn’t she live some way away? Ignoring that silliness, her subsequent ‘I want to live’ speech was terrible – it settled for tossing a bunch of cheap, melodramatic platitudes at the audience instead of striving for emotional depth. To see this thing done properly, watch the “I quit” scene in “Prophecy Girl”, which is superior in every conceivable way.

- The little dregs of plot were poorly tied together. The coins happening to fall out of the snitch’s locker while Buffy was standing nearby was contrived, and it was weird that no-one noticed Buffy amongst the robed figures. It’s not as though she looks masculine. And since only the leader seemed shocked that she was there, did the others all know? If so, why did they freely discuss the crossbow booby trap in front of her? Doesn’t that defeat its purpose?

- The demon was generic and died too easily. There was also the issue of Spike magically popping up with a flaming torch at just the right moment (how? Where did he come from?)

- Buffy has Cassie’s medical records and is supposed to have gone through them, yet nothing was mentioned about a history of family heart problems?

- There’s a lot of bad acting here. I already mentioned Azura Skye, but most of the teens are questionable (especially the snitch and the cult leader), and Sarah Michelle Gellar is off throughout the episode (was she unwell at the time?) I was also unimpressed by Michelle Tractenberg’s emoting at the end, which came across as fake.

- The ending and theme are way beneath the series at this point. It could have worked if this ep occurred early in S1, but by S7, the Scoobs have saved many lives, yet have also lost a huge number of people to tragic and unpreventable circumstances (Jesse, Jenny, Joyce, Tara, school and college classmates, even Angel in “Becoming”) – enough to already know what to do when you can’t help. Just now non-introspective are they? And what about the fact that the gang spent more time weeping and angsting over Cassie (someone they’d just met) than they did Tara (a friend of two-and-a-half years)?

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

Less. This is the point at which the 0-10 scale becomes limited, because while “Help” is a definite nought in terms of quality, I’d still rather watch it than “Older and Far Away” (or a couple of zeroes I’ll likely be handing out later in the season), and don’t feel that grouping those episodes together would be entirely fair. As a result, I’ve decided to be lenient and stick with my old grade of a very low one out of ten, earned by Amanda and the Willow cemetery scene. However, make no mistake – this is still a mess in my eyes, and yet another potential contender for the worst “Buffy” episode ever.

[cyclica]

You forgot to mention the lighting.

May I ask- why are you retyping everything if you're making the same points you did in the last review? I appreciate you giving an extra bit at the end saying if you liked it more of less than before, but why not copy n paste the bulk of it?

[partcynic]

I have copied and pasted the bulk of it. I just re-worded a few parts to get the points more effectively.