Angel "Harm's Way"
Season 5, Episode 9
Tara I. – TwoCents Staff Reviewer
tara@thetwocentscorp.com
Angel Broodometer: 9
This episode is all about Harmony: Harmony's job; Harmony's love life; Harmony's potentially murderous tendencies. Harmony ends up in the frame for murdering a human just when Angel has decided to clean up W&H by beheading any murderously inclined employees.
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ReplyDelete"Harm's Way"
Season 5, Episode 9
Tara I. – TwoCents Staff Reviewer
tara@thetwocentscorp.com
Angel Broodometer: 9
This episode is all about Harmony: Harmony's job; Harmony's love life; Harmony's potentially murderous tendencies. Harmony ends up in the frame for murdering a human just when Angel has decided to clean up W&H by beheading any murderously inclined employees.
We start the episode with an advertisement for the "new" W&H. They're kinder; they're gentler; they'll only kill you, if you kill someone else! Literally. Angel will chop your head off with a sword. Well, he's certainly a hands-on CEO.
We go from advertisement to montage. It's Harmony's life! We see her getting ready for work; being ignored by her neighbor; being yelled at and underappreciated by her grumpy boss; and being hated by her co-workers. It clearly isn't good to be Harmony.
And things just get worse. W&H is hosting a critical demon peace summit--the success of which will show the world that W&H still has game, even if Angel is their CEO. The demons are incredibly picky, though, so Gunn has brought in a famous demon negotiator. Harmony, in an attempt to help, brings in a live camel, which Angel is supposed to sacrifice in front of the demons for lunch.
Angel is not impressed. He's such a jerk to her that Fred feels compelled to try to make Harmony feel better. Harmony leaps on this gesture of friendship and asks her out for a drink.
Over some awkward bonding, Harmony reveals that no one likes her. Fred suggests that she try reaching out to people...people like the attractive guy at the bar. Harmony agrees and all seems to go well until she wakes up the next morning with him in her bed, sucked dry of blood, and no memory of what happened.
Harmony panics. She wraps the body in her sheets and shoves him in the dumpster. Naturally, this doesn't work, especially when she arrives at W&H to discover that the dead man was actually the demon negotiator. Oops. Angel wants to know who is responsible and so do the demon clans. They demand the killer be sacrificed in front of them.
Just to make her life worse, Harmony gets waylaid by the local W&H blood tester and tests positive for human blood. Harmony doesn't remember killing the demon negotiator, and when Fred reveals that he was bitten on the right, Harmony is sure that she's not the killer, because she's a left bitter.
Fred is not convinced by this information especially when she sees Harmony's blood test results. Harmony knocks her out and puts her in a very crowded maintenance closet—Harmony’s already knocked out the blood tester and Lorne.
Determined to prove her innocence, before Angel cuts off her head, she figures that one of the other W&H assistants must have spiked her thermos with human blood. She's right. It turns out that a disgruntled vampire from the steno pool, who resents Harmony for being promoted to the top job, hatched the plot to steal Harmony's job. Harmony's not giving up without a fight though. A fight to the death with chopsticks! Ha!
Harmony wins by staking the woman in front of the warring demon clans. Fortunately for her, they are both happy with that result. Problem solved! Almost. Angel wants to know why she didn't come to him with the problem. Harmony tries to explain that he's a giant grump who ignores her, but her point is lost on Angel.
A depressed, although still employed Harmony, retires to a bar where Spike joins her. Spike had earlier decided to leave town and head to Buffy's side, but upon reflection realized that his grand gesture would be less grand if he were no longer dead. Harmony is sad that she doesn't matter to anyone, but Spike is able to cheer her up by pointing out that the steno killer really hated her, so Harmony obviously mattered to someone. A cheery Harmony agrees.
I really enjoyed this episode. It was also one of the episodes from this season that I hadn't seen before, so I was pleasantly surprised. Angel was less broody and more grumpy, but still annoying, so Broodometer is at 9 this time.
What did you think? Was a day in the life of Harmony a fun way to pass the time or just filler? Write your Two Cents below!
This was exactly how I like my Harmony: in very intense, brief doses. I had also forgotten that Mercedes McNab has great timing, and completely adores the Spike/Harmony chemistry.
ReplyDeleteReally loved this ep.
A fight to the death with chopsticks... got to love it!
ReplyDeleteI also love Harmony in brief intense doses. This was a great episode.