Bungle Jerry
Orthopedic Pants
In this episode, the Mayor gives a speech that goes on, almost entirely uninterrupted, for 250 words. That's an amazingly long time by TV standards. Yet Harry Groener is just so amazing that he makes every single word gripping. I would argue that Joss Whedon has maybe never worked with a classically better actor. As the cliche goes, the man could read the phone book and make it compelling entertainment.
Fraught with rage at Buffy and longing and fear for Faith, he looks 100 miles beyond the students in the audience to say, 'some people who should be here today, aren't." Lets that emotion sink in for a mere beat, then shakes it off, brings it back to his own naked ambition and to the graduating class, smiles and brightens up to say "But *we* are." It lasts barely a second, but it's some of the most brilliant acting I've ever seen.
And of course the other main footnote connected with Graduation Day, pt. 2 is that, like "Earshot", it was actually pulled from the normal broadcasting schedule because of Columbine. But where "Earshot" made sense, pulling "GDp2" made no sense at all, and left viewers unintentionally cliffhung for months.
Fraught with rage at Buffy and longing and fear for Faith, he looks 100 miles beyond the students in the audience to say, 'some people who should be here today, aren't." Lets that emotion sink in for a mere beat, then shakes it off, brings it back to his own naked ambition and to the graduating class, smiles and brightens up to say "But *we* are." It lasts barely a second, but it's some of the most brilliant acting I've ever seen.
And of course the other main footnote connected with Graduation Day, pt. 2 is that, like "Earshot", it was actually pulled from the normal broadcasting schedule because of Columbine. But where "Earshot" made sense, pulling "GDp2" made no sense at all, and left viewers unintentionally cliffhung for months.
