Hush

Watching my first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer made me realize how much the show focuses on monsters and vampires in an everyday surrounding rather than outer space like Firefly and Star Trek. In this episode, not a lot of words are spoken because the entire town has lost their voices to "The Gentleman". This caused actions to be the main focus of communication and activity. What I found to be intriguing was the fact that "The Gentleman" were so quickly identified by Giles. This allowed for them to educate the people who mattered about them and create a plan of action on how to stop them from killing everyone in the town. Finding out how to stop the gentleman so early probably saved a lot of lives since they only showed one other person being killed. I thought "The Gentleman’s" idea of taking away everyone’s voices, which disabled them from screaming while being murdered, was very cynical, but also very smart. The writers did a nice job on this one with taking something metaphorical and turning it literal. This is evident in the beginning of the episode when Buffy says that there is no way that she can tell Riley that she is a vampire slayer. She ends up never having to tell him since her voice is lost, but she ends up showing him as they are fighting side by side to save the town. I thought this was a very clever move by the writers and helped make this a good episode even though very few words were spoken.