[Our regular reviewer, a Mr Andrew Cocker, is currently suspected to be in Tasmania. Hopefully by the next episode we will have found him — until then, I’ll take over — Tom]

‘Help’ has it’s good points. A firm grounding in the real world. More of the wonderfully insane Spike. But it has it’s bad points too. Buffy‘s trademarked ‘villains with no clear or sensible rationale who we just chucked in coz we couldn’t be bothered’ for a start. And a painfully over-sentimental ending.

The girl playing Cassandra Newton does a fairly good job. The cute foretellings are fun, especially Cassie’s comment to Spike.

Tsk. Who am I kidding. I haven’t seen this episode in ages. Andy’s supposed to be doing this. Bloody Tasmania. What makes him so special that he can just go flitting about the continent whenever he wants to? Huh?

Ahem. Anyhoo.

Er… Buffy’s character — y’know, if anyone really cares about her character at this point — undergoes a bit of a maturing here, as she comes to terms with the fact that she can’t save everyone, but that shouldn’t stop her trying. Didn’t Angel work that out two years back? Couldn’t he have emailed her or something? Ah well.

In the end, the episode is ok, but displays a bit of the subtle preachiness that occasionally posesses this otherwise intelligent show — such as in ‘Beer Bad’, for a really on-the-nose example. Still, the sensitive issue of teen suicide is dealt with, um, sensitively, which is good. Though this episode doesn’t really explore the issues to the extent that season two’s ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ did.

I give it 2 rushed reviews out of 4.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Monday, March 10th, 2003. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.