Buffy

i miss the days on ILX when you could be ostracised for having the wrong opinions on season 4

so sad now

Only a couple of weeks until LOST starts again and the thread shoots back up into new answers for another year, so don't worry too much.

I'm rewatching the entire series and got the GF addicted to it. Seasons 5-6 having way more resonance now that I'm in the appropriate life stage.

You feel like you understand yourself and the world you live in, everything seems really clear. and you step off the platform......then you crash back on the ground and everything feels out of joint and you feel wrong and you don't really understand anything after all and you have to build a new map from scratch.

Damn that makes me sound super depressed I'm just sayin I get it in a way that I didn't before.

"Please don't forgive me" is a heavy fuckin line.

Anybody have thoughts on S6?

I liked them, in a partially camp way. Though I did enjoy both those season's efforts to do more "real world" depressing non-fantasy angst as in schizophrenia, rape, drug abuse, financial struggle, family death, plummeting self-worth and annihilation, social disconnect, all that fun stuff. But I ask you, who really builds anything up again? I kid. Season 6 had less hope to it, even by the end. Friendship and love doesn't save the world every time! Possibly I sympathize with what you're saying about seeing those at the right time re: appropriate life stage.

OH NO

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i666afabc28491e6a5d5861d83ae30855

i would like to know who is going to see this goddamn movie.

uh have you seen the orig movie it is total suckass

"Everything has its moment. Every movie takes on a life at some point, and this seems like the moment to do this."

I know, man -- if they think they're going to successfully translate and re-launch Buffy to some mass audience, they may be kinda fooling themselves.

(Without Whedon & company, tbh, I'm not sure the concept/franchise are all that great of a thing -- any step turn toward a more conventional hot-young-chick-fights-vampires product will majorly suck it up)

xpost - yes, the above was a lot of the problem with the original movie -- it was like it didn't actually trust Whedon's tone in the script ... if you watch it after enjoying the show, you can actually hear solid Whedony stuff in there that just gets stepped on and pulled back and misdelivered

^ hence my suspicion that a Buffy product put together under any other type of vision will just be ... well, lame, because the central idea is actually not amazing (and there's no mass-culture Buffy image to "reboot" like you can with something like Star Trek, and even if there was it's only been like 6-7 years or something)

do any stans consider season 1 to be among the show's best? imo it was watchable but kinda unbearably corny, want to decide if i should keep going or not

no it is by far the WORST... it doesnt really get good until disc 3 of s2

haha ok great that's exactly what i wanted to hear - i want to keep watching but can't put up with much more of this RL stine bs. hopefully zander and willow get eaten by a giant dandelion or something, god they suck (so far)

series 2+3 are the best tho

Out of sight, out of mind, Witch the first two episodes, Angel and Prophecy Girl are some of the greatest episodes of any television ever imo. Can live without the evil internet demon etc. though.

Witch*,* the

wait ,yeah, witch is pretty next level

basically the vampire episodes were pretty good, the invisible girl one was really good, and the finale was pretty great. maybe i "had to be there" but most of the other ones with the internet demon, praying mantis, etc were so eyerollingly corny. also idk if this is challops but the dialog is pretty awful across the board

As everyone says, this show gets a lot better very soon, so keep it up. S1 is the second weakest season (S7 being the worst, but if you get that far you'll stick it out). Every other season ranges from pretty watchable to great.

word, will buy s2. thank you ilx

also buffy is v v pretty

i miss that sarah michelle gellar something fierce

yeah kev s2-6 are better than the wire imo and u know i dont trust white ppl who dont love the wire so

top two tv shows of all time

1. buffy
2. the wire

hoos otm upthread about how the later seaons (well, not 7) are a lot better when you watch them as an adult.

get your fill of SMG's looks now, she was way cuter in the earlier seasons

I don't even want to get into that one, but I think we could maybe agree that that's probably a matter of individual taste, especially with regard to what temperature you prefer her to look like she's at

Also, you know, not much the point

it really comes down to short skirts vs leather pants

top two tv shows of all time

1. buffy
2. the wire
--horseshoe

I am basically this except in opposite order. Buffy does get extra points for teaching me about what a TV show was capable of doing, since I started watching this in high school, before I had any understanding of like, narrative. I actually only started watching around S2 because I thought Sarah Michelle Gellar was v v v pretty in 1998. (The later unnecessary weight loss, especially between S5 and S6, kinda stung.) I stuck around because it was a little bit life-changing, though.

I know nobody agrees with this so I'm probably just wrong but I like season 7 better than 5 or 6.

no 'probably' about it. season 7 doesn't have tara, ergo sucks. also buffy makes a bunch of shitty speeches that last forever and don't really say anything. also the first is a lame cop out. 'Selfless' and 'Storyteller' are the only episodes that are worthy of the Buffy canon, whereas almost all of season 5 is, and 6 has the rubbish geek villains, Never Again and Once More With Feeling...

Man I haven't talked about Buffy in ages, the Whedon stan in me has been repressed for too long.

Selfless is a thing of majesty though. Anya is probably the most underrated character in television history.

I know nobody agrees with this so I'm probably just wrong but I like season 7 better than 5 or 6.

I would never go that far, but 7 is nowhere near as bad as the haters would have us believe. I thought it was pretty good, if a bit fluffy compared to what came before. It's severely decompressed, though, so watching long stretches of the season works better than watching single episodes in isolation. I think I watched the whole thing in, like, two weeks, so I thought it was kind of a blast.

Season 8 has had a couple of interesting moments but is generally unfocused and disappointing.

Well, the actors' hearts really haven't been in it for the duration of season 8. The cinematography has really lost its lustre, as well.

also buffy is v v pretty

Yes, v., v.

Where's she been, anyway?

i think she had a kid. she's going to be in some tv series on usa, according to imdb.

I'll give Season 7 this - I never watched the series in order, mostly in pockets on cable reruns later on, but the episode that really hooked me into the show was "Conversations with Dead People".

(The later unnecessary weight loss, especially between S5 and S6, kinda stung.)

so otm

Ha, to be fair, something did happen to her between seasons 5 and 6 ...

It's funny, though, the changes in her appearance really fit the arc of the whole thing, and not just in terms of age -- she starts off all soft-featured and glowy and chipper, and then by the end, after all the grim and serious stuff, she comes off more like a very pretty, very sharp knife carved out of some form of ice and 100% ready to cut you

the first ep with spike + ethan is one of my favourites, the halloween one, s2 i think

also buffy makes a bunch of shitty speeches that last forever and don't really say anything.

but it's such a great lol when Andrew stops videotaping her because of this

also Season 8 feels insubstantial when you just go to someones house and read a years worth at once, I wonder if the small banter moments are treats enough in the glacial, barely-sketched plotlines that it's more fun keeping up month-by-month?

in the last series stakes angel kicked buffy's ass

last three eps of angel are total classic imo

Joss Whedon might be an abusive narcissist but at least he didn't foist Zach Braff upon the world?

it all just sucks

i was a huge fan of every whedon show, esp buffy - for a while i even lurked on the messageboard they reference in the vulture piece

now it’s like i can’t even rewatch an old episode of buffy without thinking of him & all of his bullshit. i dont always struggle separating art from artist but so much of him & his voice is in these shows that it’s almost impossible to even revisit them anymore

and to be clear i’m not saying this in an “oh poor me” way - it’s more just, i’m fucking mad that he has ruined my enjoyment of these shows that i genuinely loved. and that i never knew he was actively ruining them the whole time

I had a class with the professor they mention in the article who started Whedon Studies. He wrote a book about Bukowski!

now it’s like i can’t even rewatch an old episode of buffy without thinking of him & all of his bullshit. i dont always struggle separating art from artist but so much of him & his voice is in these shows that it’s almost impossible to even revisit them anymore

I can see that and it sucks indeed. I have less trouble with it myself as there were so many other people involved in the end products, especially the cast who also separate the art from the artist: see, for example, this which happened very recently. Several cast members -including Charisma Carpenter- fondly talking about the show and their characters.

Has managed to avoid the Whedon-stink more than Firefly for me, put it on today and skipped S1 still just pure fun.

SMG’s memorable smackdown of Whedon makes me retroactively like her performance a bit more

Realise I’ve never seen the second season - jumped on at S3 and never bothered with the first two

second season probably has the best overall season arc, and by far the best spike scenes, but the episode-to-episode execution was the best in season 3

you should def watch season 2, is what i'm saying, but maybe start with the episode called "school hard"

Booo the first episode of season 2 is great, don’t miss it. Also I recommend Welcome To The Hellmouth, The Harvest, Angel, The Puppet Show and Prophecy Girl from Season 1, all quality TV.