Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 4, Episode 3: The Harsh Light of Day
Angel: Season 1, Episode 3: In the Dark
Written by Jane Espenson; Directed by James A. Contner
In the Dark
Written by Douglas Petrie; Directed by Bruce Seth Green
The first official Buffy/Angel crossover (barring a brief phone call snippet in Episode 1 of each show), and it's a good one. The MacGuffin that binds the two of them together is the Gem of Amarra, a ring that makes vampires invincible. Spike, unsurprisingly, wants it, and when Buffy thwarts him and sends Oz off to deliver it to Angel in LA, the peroxide-haired one decides to follow him and reclaim it.
Watching the two episodes one after the other highlights the difference between the two shows. Buffy is all love and smoochies (seriously, at one point it's cross-cutting between three couples getting jiggy with it in one night), sunlight (the title of the episode is actually somewhat misleading, as, judging by the way it's shot, there's nothing particularly harsh about the light of day) and wacky quips. Angel, however, is about abusive boyfriends, skulking in the shadows, torture to the tune of Mozart's Symphony #41, and even a paedophile vampire. The quips are still there, but they're drier and more acerbic in nature. The latter actually ends up working a lot better, despite my overall preference for Buffy's lighter tone, although that's not to say that there isn't a lot of anguish going on in Sunnydale. Crucially, Buffy lets herself get used and abused by a slimy fellow named Parker, who pulls out the most pathetic speil about "living for the now" and "making a choice" you've ever heard. Oh, and Spike and Harmony are shacking up - just picture that.
The first half of the Buffy episode has rather too much of a soapy feel to it, what with all the rumpy-bump, lip-slurping and slow, melodic pop ballads, but once it gets going it's all good. The Angel episode, in contrast, pretty much hits the ground running, with only Angel's less than believable rationale for destroying the ring at the end sullying things.
Overall rating: 8/10 for The Harsh Light of Day; 9/10 for In the Dark.
Next time: Fear, Itself and I Fall to Pieces.
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