Buffy

you're usually not, which makes it awkward when you are, later (xpost)

the trio are essential for being the show's internalization of the worst part of their natural audience of sci-fi geeks.

think its worth it just for the episode where they have jet packs tbh.

marti noxon didn't ruin buffy. joss spreading himself too thin and not really having a PROPER EVIL VILLAIN for two seasons killed Buffy. Hell she wouldn't kill the trio because of humanity and the first evil was incorporable - so being able to slay things became p fucking redundant.

the trio are essential for being the show's internalization of the worst part of their natural audience of sci-fi geeks.

― j., Friday, May 13, 2011 5:58 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

it was a bastardization of the show's mythology and mood in so many ways. They made a fucking RAY GUN ffs. And for what? So the writers could have a laugh at some of the show's fans? It was narcissistic, juvenile and ridiculous.

I remember episode 3 or 4 of that plot line when I was like "holy shit, they really are this season's big bad aren't they?" and I quit cold turkey.

the whole "mocking our audience" thing seemed especially hollow since they turned Spike into the show's Fonzie in large part to satisfy the appetites of slashfic authors.

ummm junkie willow and spike were the actual big bads of s6.

well ya see, I quit watching...

junkie willow was truly awful.

"Season 6
The main villains in Season 6 were the Trio - Warren Mears (portrayed by Adam Busch), Jonathan Levinson (portrayed by Danny Strong) and Andrew Wells (portrayed by Tom Lenk) - followed by Willow (known in this phase as Dark Willow), portrayed by Alyson Hannigan. Series creator Joss Whedon stated on the Season 6 DVD that the true Big Bad was life itself, and how as time goes on, it becomes more and more people's worst enemy"

Caleb was totally a major villain. They even made a point of his ultimate indestructible powers, which he frequently invoked to not kill Buffy, and which failed him when he turned out to be easy to dispense of. Same with the uber-vamps. The First Evil ... I don't know what the fuck that was supposed to be.

Not all of the Big Bads could be as good as the Mayor, who was best of all time imho. The First / Caleb was maybe poorly executed but that sort of cosmic disembodied capital E-vil was kinda necessary given that everyone knew the show had to wrap up and it's not like Buff beating up a baddie for the millionth time was gonna be a suitable end to the series.

I thought the Trio was actually good fun, in a way that kept a lot of silly banter & popcult references in the show as it got more "serious."

Also the whole point of the Trio was worthwhile in that they kind of embodied the a more realistic, even human side of evil pretty well. I mean Warren was the only villain to ever use a gun, which broke the supernatural convention of the show in a way that was ultimately really effective.

That's sort of one reason I tell people to stop after season 6. It beats around the bush less re: ultimate, real, non-fasntasy evil, whether it's Warren actually using a gun, to kill, or Willow's gruesome revenge, driven entirely by pure emotion and grief (and making good on hints dropped really early in the series). And of course it makes the Big Bad not just one of the Scoobies, but a Big Bad powerful enough that you actually believe the fate of the world is at stake. After all that angst and pain and death, the S7 Ultimate Evil shit was just a non-starter.

OTM. Also, the penultimate (or possibly 3rd-to-last) episode of season 6 has the best HOLY SHIT NO WAY! ending.

spoilersssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

the thing that happens w/ warren?

Of all the Big Bads I think that Adam -- the human-demon cyborg dude? -- was probably my least favorite.

xp SPOILERS AHOY!

No, I was actually thinking about the return of a character.

great/annoying meta-commentary on that in the insane asylum episode

― Gukbe, Friday, May 13, 2011 4:59 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

haha yes

Yeah, Adam was totally worthless. I just couldn't really deal w/ the big bad not being supernatural - again where the trio is failing. It enters that realm of reality where you're actually questioning the believability of all this... it just makes them so much less threatening.

But .. but ... Adam was part robot, part DEMON! That's totally supernatural.

Also, he was part lame.

also part boondoggle

The only redeeming part of the Adam storyline was how he was defeated in Primeval, which was pretty awesome imho.

Ha, I think I already ragged on it upthread but ugh
http://images.wikia.com/buffy/images/c/c2/PrimevalBuffy.jpg

I mean, guys, I mean, the fuck is this
http://www.whedon.info/local/cache-vignettes/L254xH450/buffy-primeval-diamond-figure-20272.jpg

in many a ways i consider my own opinion invalid b/c i saw, and continue to see, nothing wrong with season 1

giant lol @ doves

lmao.

kel: nothing wrong? incl. 'i robot you jane'? i <3 s1 but i also totally understand how it can feel dated and all over the place and hard to get into etc. I guess the characters haven't been fleshed out yet (would you ever guess giles was a punk warlock with velvet underground records*?)

*and yet he admits that the bay city rollers was more his style in 'the dark age'. crazy rupert.

Finally finished the series!

Not sure where all the hate for season 7 stems from - it was definitely sloppy, but contained some much much much needed lol's so cruelly absent from season 6.

Now admittedly the whole inclusion of Caleb at the very end seemed...desperate? weird? unnecessary?... and I'm still a little unsatisfied that the method of beating the Big Bad involved, basically, a magic axe that conveniently appears when all hope is lost. It's nice that Whedon is conscious of these things - when Rupert admits to never having known a thing about it - but it def feels like getting gipped of a *real* ending, something worthy of having spent 7 years watching a show.

truth said, i've never really felt satisfied w/ any of the season endings apart from season 3... and it just might be b/c it reinforces some trope i'm used to as a logical end to all things (big boom).

***spoilers***

1 (Prophecy Girl - Buffy dies v. Master), 2 (Becoming - Buffy & Spike & Willow v. Dru & Angel & Rock), 3 (Graduation Day - Faith omg also big snake), 4 (cheese man, prophecies and giles singing) and 5 (buffy v. glory for dawn) all have perfect endings imo.

lolll cheese man

yeah that is a weird criticism to make of this show in particular

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/10/15/1008591/violentacrez-buffy-the-vampire-slayer/?mobile=nc

have not read this but will post it so i read it later

predicted? not a bad article though, it suffers a bit by somewhat ignoring the whole andrew and jonathan were kinda gay thing

One of the great things about season 2 is that you can really feel the show stretching and straining to become a bigger show in real time.

One of the biggest mistakes I've ever made as a parent is forgetting to skip season one, forcing myself to convince the kids that yes, it does get a lot better, and quickly, too!

I binged all of How to Get Away With Murder last month and was looking up a bunch of the actors and saw that Frank was on many Buffy episodes. He surprisingly was Ben! Maybe not surprising since I blocked out most of that season.

Soon to be repeated from the beginning on E4

which saves me digging out my DVDs

however, the clip they showed was 16:9 but the show was 4:3 for the first 3 seasons, which makes me wonder if they are going to show the apparently terrible HD remaster

One of the biggest mistakes I've ever made as a parent is forgetting to skip season one, forcing myself to convince the kids that yes, it does get a lot better, and quickly, too!

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, February 14, 2019 12:47 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hey Josh, I just started watching Buffy with my daughter a couple weeks ago. We did not skip S1, but she liked it a lot, with a few exceptions at some obviously dud episodes.

How old were your kids when you watched it with them? My kid is 9 and - not having actually watched Buffy in almost two decades - I just now kinda realized that there are upcoming storylines involving sex. For instance, last night was Reptile Boy, which is a metaphor for date rape, and then the whole Buffy/Angel/soul thing is coming up in a few episodes. And I'm kinda thinking that there are some points in the series where I might want to skip episodes or at least have serious discussions that I think she might still be a year or two too young for. It's a bit of a jump from Scooby Doo and such. But at the same time, she's super into it right now and the last thing I want to do is ruin the fun.

I actually posted basically this same question to the Buffy subreddit earlier this morning and received a decent reddit mixed-bag of responses. But when I came back here and saw that you watched it with your kids, it was obvious that ilxor opinions are what I really need. Anyone else can weigh in too; it doesn't have to be just Josh.

Hmm. I want to say when we first dipped in to the show both my daughters were old enough for the subject matter, though the younger one was older than 9, iirc. So yeah, your daughter could be a year or two too young. However, neither of my kids particularly liked the show, mostly because it was "old," so if your kid is into it it might be good to just go with it. And if there's something you need to talk about with her, that could be good, too, seeing how it would be a conversation sparked by a thoughtful, clever show.

Sometimes when I ask questions like the other ones you're asking Ialso have to remind myself that this was prime time network TV in the '90s. So any sex (and violence) is going to be pretty mild, relatively speaking. Like, compared to "Stranger Things," with its language, gore and teen sex stuff, "Buffy" might as well be a Disney deal.

This is way the hell down the road, but in the last season there's that fairly graphic for network TV montage of numerous characters giving into desire and having sex before a battle with the First.

I like Season 1 too! A few dud episodes, sure, but I like the way the show starts on such a small, high-school scale, lets you get to know the characters, and then builds. And Prophecy Girl is so great I can't imagine skipping it.

I still remember watching the Angel/soul storyline for the first time as a teenager and how emotionally heavy it was - not specifically the sex part of it, but Evil Angel's ongoing emotional abuse of Buffy and the murder of Jenny Callendar. It was hard enough for me to process at that age; I can't imagine watching it for the first time at age nine.

Thanks for the responses, all! This will be helpful to me in my approach.

Maybe see what your kid thinks of Lie to Me? That kind of functions as a prelude to the heavier parts of S2, and basically tells the audience that things are going to get a bit more serious and there might not be a happy ending. If she finds it a little too heavy or upsetting it would probably be wise to wait on the rest of the show for a year or two.

This is way the hell down the road, but in the last season there's that fairly graphic for network TV montage of numerous characters giving into desire and having sex before a battle with the First.

― "...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, 24 July 2020 19:03 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Season 4 has some pretty explicit scenes, there is an episode where iirc Buffy and Riley basically get cursed with needing to sex each other (Where the Wild Things Are? It’s been a long time since I’ve watched it). I can’t remember when it happens but doesn’t Spike try to rape Buffy too?

I’ve been rewatching since it went on Channel 4. Jenny Calender’s death just happened and it’s still incredibly shocking, one of the most heinous and heartbreaking deaths I’ve ever seen on television. It may be a bit too much. I don’t think most of the murder and violence is as bad, it’s still all a bit cartoon-y but there is also the mess at the end of Season 2. Actually I think Season 2 and Season 6 are by far the most emotionally vulnerable and real and may be worth a wiki before hand.

Despite having not watched the show for about 10 years, I guess I watched it way too much as a teenager that I can remember it so much. Angel also has a load of land mines.

I think if there's a particular challenge to Buffy it's that the characters are so well conceived/written that you actually care about them, which makes it a lot heavier than the typically soapy TV stuff. That's what makes something like "The Body" so effective and/or uniquely powerful.

Am enjoying these (twice) nightly repeats, forgotten how well written it all is and just how much of an ensemble cast is involved (Anya turned up yesterday, albeit not in human form...)

Jenny's death, and Giles finding the body afterwards absolutely gutting, yes. But worst of recent episodes was Oz and Cordelia walking in on Xander and Willow and the fallout from that. (Cue Anya and the first of the alt universe episodes).

Season 4 has some pretty explicit scenes, there is an episode where iirc Buffy and Riley basically get cursed with needing to sex each other

I forgot about that one! But, yeah, Where The Wild Things Are.

OK, here's a Buffy challenge for fans. I know my daughter will be a fan of this show, but there are some uphill factors out of my control, that it's "old" but mostly that there are 22+ episodes a season, which is a big commitment (even if that didn't stop her from mainlining "The Office"). Now, I've seen every episode myself, many years ago, and generally I know which are considered the best, or which are fan favorites, but my memory is not good enough to know exactly which episodes are musts and which can be skipped. Thus the challenge: can anyone with a better or fresher memory come up with a truncated must-see distillation of the second and third seasons that would be good enough to hook my daughter without sacrificing major plots turns or myth/character building? I figure if the best and most important of those two season don't hook her then nothing will, and if she does get hooked she can always go back and watch the episodes she skipped.

(fwiw, she's already seen "Hush," so knows the show can be great)

I think it actually has a similar trajectory as The Office in that there's a subpar, short first season (though Buffy's is probably better!) and then it gets much better real fast. I say let her have at it, this isn't Star Trek: The Next Generation