ANGEL
S5x09 –
Harm’s Way
Review by Terry J. Aman
I liked this
one. It was silly. 
Just like in "Life of the Party," Joss opens his story with one image
-- the 1950s-style orientation video -- and morphs into another image -- how does
a single girl vampire-on-the-go start her day? -- and then ... roll credits.
Following Lorne around on his frenetic morning was at least as interesting as
following Harmony through her paces -- alarm goes off at 7 a.m., tuned to a pop
music station. She checks her lack of reflection under a chirpy,
self-motivating "Be Your Best!" heading, brushes both her corpse
teeth and those of her demon manifestation -- harking back to her comment from
"Conviction," i.e. "Who needs dental more than us?" --
selects an outfit -- so very Harmony -- and ... now, where did that other shoe
go? Ah yes -- practical, real-world applications for her demon strength.
And then she dives into the sewers, because she's a vampire.
I really wish they'd shown her getting to work. Harmony trotting with
confidence through the sewers in open-toed heels from her apartment to work
would be interesting, at the very minimum.
Not to mention that dry-cleaning she picked up. Because a vampire coming up
through the sewers into the dry cleaners would be bizarre at best. And then
trucking it back into the sewers and getting it to work unmarred would
be a job of work.
Backtrack a second, tho. Harmony had minions in Sunnydale. She had no minions
in "Disharmony," but she was clearly something of a joiner. So to
find her living all alone -- looking like that -- without an undead
paramour ... I mean, she was so popular in high school. And just like Spike, I
mean ... William was such a nebbish, weak, non-obtrusive spirit. This
soulfulness, the inner torment of the poet, the weak mama's-boy non-extension
of his personality -- seemed to shackle his demon once he was sired.
Such seems to be the case with Harmony. She was such a sheep, a nontrospective
surface-dweller that when she was sired, her very dimness seemed to be a
serious hamper on her animating demon. The demon was probably evil incarnate,
but her very lack of depth seemed to make her ... unavailable to it. It
was like having all the controls but they didn't seem to be hooked up to
anything. She was still this sweet, vapid, sycophant seeking desperately for
approval.
She kept telling us she was evil, but came down to it, she was only semi-evil.
She was the margarine of evil. The best she could manage was treachery,
and Angel saw that coming from miles away (though I suppose we can be
happy for her that she got a little without going all bloody-eyed).
So Harmony is a vampire. She has a backstory with Spike, her Blondie-Bear, who
does somehow still matter to her although he's cultivated this sick lust for a
Slayer well beyond the sex games of their S4 relationship.
By the end of the episode, she's allowed maybe more of the subtext in their
relationship to become text than maybe
she meant to. Like Fred at the end of "Smile Time," she was giving a
signal. That however badly Spike had treated her in the past, she still
basically loved him.
Is that interesting to anyone else? The poetic, weak-kneed boy who was sired by
a crazy girl and loved her at first sight but still couldn't run off with her
without first siring his mother -- so as to end her suffering -- falls
in, after whatever personality twists he gained from hanging with Angelus for any
length of time -- falls in with a vampire who is so much the vapid high school
bimbette she has to wear a T-shirt to remind anyone that she's actually
a blood-sucking creature of the night?
What is the depth of shallowness, Joss? Is it an evil unto itself? Is the
quality of being self-involved at a Harmony level akin to the quality of
self-consciousness we find in William the Bloody Awful Poet? Is it such that
active evil can't gain any sort of foothold?
Never mind that. I'm still trying to get my head around any of the vamps Buffy
battled straight out of the ground -- the ones who seemed to invariably pick up
all those martial arts skills -- settling for scuttling around butcher shops
after hours for pig's blood day after day and being proud of typing 80 words a
minute and having very pleasant phone voices.
Again, Joss is slyly hinting that the events of S4 never took place -- or at
least that Cyvus Vale's mind control extended well beyond Team Angel. Sambuca
...
Tamika: TAMIKA!
Whatever. Just like in "Life of the Party," where W&H's Halloween
party wasn't anything like as good as last year's -- suggested that
she'd been working at W&H for five years. Lilah said the Beast got everyone
-- even those who called in sick or were having a day off. I.E.:
The Beast: DING-dong
W&H Employee: Yes?
The Beast: * kills them *
So maybe she only thinks she's been there for five years. Or maybe she
only thinks that she has a very pleasant phone voice. I mean, who knows?
If she has been there for five years, she must've played havoc with
those vampire detectors everytime she reported for work, but then at one point,
Lindsey made a distinction between reports of hostile vampires on the
property, so they must be pretty well calibrated.
But can anyone imagine Holland putting up with that?
Holland: Tamika, where is that memo?
Tamika: Type it your damn' self. * bites him *
The zero-tolerance policy was well illustrated. But Harmony is so frantic for
approval she forgot that before Eli got beheaded, there was at least some cursory
investigation. But with the pressures of the conference, Harmony (the
"right-biter" -- G-d, that is such a fun aspect of vampire
life to discover fully 12 seasons into the 'verse, isn't it? Some vamps must
prefer the deoxygenated blood coursing down the jugular while others must get
their jones on for that fresh gurgly carotid krovvy) testing positive for human
and the at least circumstantial ties between her and the demon activist (um,
Harm, no wonder he told you he was an astronaut. How can he explain his real
job to most anyone he meets in a bar?) she was right to assume she'd fit
in Monk's dustpan once he found out -- especially when the demons were
demanding an eye for an eye.
But it was so unfair. She'd done her homework! She was so ready with what they
ate! I've gotta believe whoever she called was used to catering W&H
affairs, tho.
Caterer #1: Now they need a camel.
Caterer #2: Again?
Caterer #1: Must be a board meeting.
Her grand swath of destruction -- the blood guy we've never seen before, Lorne
(who looked positively malevolent under his duct tape) and Fred tied up in the
broom closet -- was interesting, especially since she managed to abduct Fred
from a reasonably busy lab situation. Before that, when she was demonstrating
how she was a right-biter, it was so "Waiting for Guffman" cute.
And her bonding scene with Fred in the bar was so wonderfully Harmony (and set
us up for the two rolls of electrical tape of Illyria's costume with Fred
"not having a lot up front").
Joss must've been itching to set up a conversation between Harmony and
Fred.
"What great ones do, the less will prattle of." -- Shakespeare
Ah, the ST:TNG "Below Decks" aspect of this show was one of my
favorites. To have the staff hanging out in the conference room talking about
our heroes the way we do in our chatty rooms was delicious. Especially:
Harmony: I
think Wesley is totally crushing on Fred.
W&H Employee: Mr. Wyndham-Pryce? Everyone knows he's ... muffins!
The knock-down, drag out between Harmony and Tamika was cool -- nearly as cool
as Gunn calling Angel a "man whore" in demonese. Why was W&H so
interested in this again? Oh yeah -- reputation. You know what is reputation,
yes? People talking. With Eli, however, Angel's reputation is not people
talking. Angel's repuation is fact. To the point that people are ending up in
broom closets with their autoclaves running. Did she ever get to turn it off?
Not that it was on, so much, as it was near her -- what was she going for? A
stake? A cross? A beaker of holy water? I don't remember Harmony ever smoking
-- even in Sunnydale. It'd be an interesting look for her.
But I digress. Harmony was so bent on making this conference happen without a
hitch that she bursts through the wall of the conference room -- again, is this
entire law firm constructed just about as sturdily as any set in
community theater? -- and stakes the real killer with chopsticks -- and after
such a cool exchange of barbs and blows. The dust effect on Tamika was
half-hearted at best, but it was fun to see. And Harmony did, ultimately -- and
hardly meaning to -- saved the day.
Backtrack to her conversation with Angel at the very beginning. Generally, the
camera is following Angel around so we've generally got all the context for
what he's saying. Harm's exchange with him right at the beginning gave us a
little insight into what life must generally be like for her -- people come up
and they're speaking a completely different language. They mostly don't know
who she is, and of course that's sad -- I for one, having watched this episode,
am quite interested in what she's been up to since Cordy let her go at
the end of "Disharmony." And yet there are seething jealousies among
the staff. Harmony can't fit in -- she's almost certainly being paid more than
all the other staffers so her saying she wants a raise doesn't impress anyone,
and they all want her job or resent her presump-tuousness. And they make fun of
her look. That's so unfair. I think she does a fabulous job for a person with
no reflection.
She's a complicated girl -- despite Spike telling her "Keep it simple --
it suits you." She doesn't have a soul, although that would've been so
easy for Angel to arrange. She tries not to bite people although she got really
wistful when that giraffe-necked lady walked by after she'd had some human
blood. She mostly comes in, does her job -- sometimes with a little too much
verve -- and otherwise deals with her very ordinary existence as a not terribly
enthusiastically evil creature of the night.
One surrounded by unicorns.
I don't know that this episode merited her inclusion in the opening
credits, but it was a big step toward getting her there. We saw glimpses of the
treachery we would see in "Not Fade Away," tho again, for an evil
being, she's not especially convincing. But for a Harmony-centered episode,
Mercedes McNab carried it off brilliantly.
It's just, at the end of the day ... it was just the end of the day. The lives
of the underlings have little impact, in the long haul, on the lives of the
superiors. Things are unfair, demands are made, and for the most part, everyone
goes home to brood.
That being said, however ...
Someone get Harmony a little umbrella for her drink.
She's so totally earned it.