estepheia | Buffy - 7x10 - "Bring on the Night"

I'm shocked. I actually enjoyed Firefly-episode "War Zone" more than the latest installment of Buffy. Why?
The reason is this: Mutant Enemy gives a shit about time frames and their own vampire mythology.

Why, oh why, Mutant Enemy?
In CwDP we were given a specific date, namely November 12, 2002, 8:01 PM. "Sleeper" covers the following two days, NLM covers the day after those. The episodes are strung together like pearls, events occur in short succession. The characters aren't given a breather. "Bring on the Night" shows the aftermath of NLM, Xander sweeping up the glass from the broken windows, Buffy and Dawn run into Principal Wood after his stint of nocturnal digging.

On that same day the 'Potential Slayers' arrive. Then Buffy leaves with Giles to check out the Christmas tree place out of "Amends". They walk through a Sunnydale that's decorated for the holiday season. Buffy even mentions that it's suddenly December (but if we count the days it should still be November). It's night but there are still shoppers out on the street.

Then she gets into a fight with the Übervamp and suddenly the sun rises - just in time to let her escape. Are they trying to tell us, Buffy fought with that thing for 12 hours or what?
Am I the only one who thinks wonky timelines like that suck? (I'm still having issues with "Wrecked") How stupid do ME think their viewers are?

What else was sucky? Spike gets tortured by FE, asked to chose sides. If FE is such a know-it-all, why bother? And why torture a vampire who doesn't need to breathe by drowning him? How lame is that!

And why is FE all insane when playing Dru? Especially when Spike tells FE that he sees through the deception? So, what's the point? Just so we get a nice guest appearance?

And why does Dru call Spike Daddy all the time?

Giles never touches anything, so one wonders if maybe he isn't corporeal, but it's annoying, not intriguing or frightening. It has red herring written all over it.

Joyce's appearances are confusing, because they use yet another modus operandi. And if confusing the heck out of the audience and Buffy is all that's supposed to be accomplished by these guest appearances, that's pretty shallow.

All in all, the episode appears thrown haphazardly together.

There ARE a few good bits:

Xander's opening lines
Andrew and Xander talking about comic books
Andrew talking about redemption (some more Star Wars drivel)
Buffy's pep talk
Willow's apology to Buffy regarding her non-use of magic
Willow's double take when one of the potential Slayers tells her not to hog the covers

I expect some Spike fans will enjoy the shirtlessness and will also enjoy feeling sorry for him and the definite echos of "Intervention." But the way Spike tells FE that Buffy believes in him, is just so heavy handed. Not the acting but the writing. It wasn't touching. It was cheap. We all know that he holds out because of what she said. Saying it out loud lessens the impact.

I also expect some fans will enjoy seeing Buffy beat up. IMHO that's pretty cheap, but maybe it will help some people get some of the Buffy hatred out of their system. Maybe, when ME is through punishing the characters for this and that, maybe we can go back to action, adventure and comedy?

All in all, I think the episode was sloppily written. Or maybe it had to accomplish too many things at once. IMHO it's not as good as the last few episodes we saw.

I reluctantly give it a 3 out of 5 because of several amusing lines.