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Bring on the Night
Been thinking about vids and then last night I watched Bring on the Night and it struck me that this episode works more like a vid than a straight piece of drama.
First, the structure, which is song-like. The main plot shows Buffy gradually being beaten down, Spike’s been captured, the Potentials arrive, then the Vampire that can’t be staked, Anabelle gets killed, the Turok-han almost kills Buffy herself. Spike’s beatings, coming at regular intervals like a chorus, serve as a counterpoint to all this.
Second, the episode is littered with visual quotes: Spike’s baptism like Buffy’s in Bad Girls; Buffy struggling out from the First’s underground lair as she escaped from the Master’s in The Harvest and, most striking of all, the Scoobies finding her broken body on a pile of rubble recalling The Gift. As well as individual scenes, images from the past recur in the form of the Vampire-that-time-forgot and the shades of Joyce and Drusilla. Giles too seems but a shadow of his former self.
Third, while much of the dialogue comes across more as a series of insincere soliloquies, the characters’ states of minds are revealed in their body language. Giles in particular, it’s not just that he’s not physically touching anything, he’s not even making eye contact with people. The character’s separation from each other is also, I think, conveyed by the editing in the way they seem to be shown always in single shots. Most jarringly in the scene in which Buffy is comforting post-possession Willow. We never see them together in the frame and the eye-lines are off. It looks as though Buffy is speaking to someone else even while she’s cradling Willow’s head in her lap.
Finally, on a slight tangent to the vidliness of this one episode, let’s hear it for the actual music. Rob Duncan’s scores were a big part of why the season worked for me.
First, the structure, which is song-like. The main plot shows Buffy gradually being beaten down, Spike’s been captured, the Potentials arrive, then the Vampire that can’t be staked, Anabelle gets killed, the Turok-han almost kills Buffy herself. Spike’s beatings, coming at regular intervals like a chorus, serve as a counterpoint to all this.
Second, the episode is littered with visual quotes: Spike’s baptism like Buffy’s in Bad Girls; Buffy struggling out from the First’s underground lair as she escaped from the Master’s in The Harvest and, most striking of all, the Scoobies finding her broken body on a pile of rubble recalling The Gift. As well as individual scenes, images from the past recur in the form of the Vampire-that-time-forgot and the shades of Joyce and Drusilla. Giles too seems but a shadow of his former self.
Third, while much of the dialogue comes across more as a series of insincere soliloquies, the characters’ states of minds are revealed in their body language. Giles in particular, it’s not just that he’s not physically touching anything, he’s not even making eye contact with people. The character’s separation from each other is also, I think, conveyed by the editing in the way they seem to be shown always in single shots. Most jarringly in the scene in which Buffy is comforting post-possession Willow. We never see them together in the frame and the eye-lines are off. It looks as though Buffy is speaking to someone else even while she’s cradling Willow’s head in her lap.
Finally, on a slight tangent to the vidliness of this one episode, let’s hear it for the actual music. Rob Duncan’s scores were a big part of why the season worked for me.
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