Anyway, last weekend I threw on an episode of Buffy one night, and my new roommate Matt came in and asked "what's that?" I told him, and when the episode finished, he was interested enough that he wanted to watch the first episode. Now, as I stated in the title of this post, he's hooked, and we've been watching at least a couple episodes every night. Tonight, we finished up Season 1 (12 episodes) and started on Season 2. It's been a while since I last sat down and watched through the series, so I'm enjoying it too. Since I can never get enough of writing about the entertainment I love, I thought this would be kind of a cool chance to write about the series as I watch through it again. Most of you will not care about this, but frankly, this blog is a lot more about me processing my thoughts and exercising my compulsion to write, so I don't really care if anyone wants to read this :).
So, I'm gonna be writing about the show as we make our way through it. That's probably going to slow down a lot once the semester really starts going, but we'll see how it goes. I also note that I'm writing these with knowledge of where the show is going, so if you haven't seen it but want to (and you really should. As previously mentioned, it is great), beware that there may be spoilers here. So, with that out of the way, now that I've assured that essentially no one will read this, here we go:
It's been a while since I revisited any of the Season 1 episodes except for "Prophecy Girl", the season finale. As such, I had a dim picture in my mind that these episodes were pretty bad, the stuff you had to mire through to get to the good stuff in Season 2 and beyond. Of course, I'd forgotten that once upon a time, it had been these episodes that had captured my attention enough to get me completely hooked on the show, despite my skepticism going into it. While it's true the first season doesn't quite measure up to the show that Buffy will eventually become, it surprised me how good these episodes are.
Immediately evident when watching Season 1 is how much more fragmented the episodes are. Clearly, Joss Whedon and his writers hadn't quite figured out exactly what the show was going to be yet. Instead of the more serialized show Buffy is from Season 2 onward, we get a lot of stand-alone, monster-of-the-week episodes. We also get several end-of-episode tags that never do get returned to (Amy's mom in the cheerleader statue, the bug monster's eggs, the invisible girl taken away by the FBI). It's interesting think what the show could have been if they hadn't taken it in another direction, although I'm glad they did, since season-long arcs are something the show does incredibly well in later seasons.
Another thing I'd forgotten is how quickly the show established that essentially anything was fair game, nobody was safe. The pilot kills of Xander's friend Jesse, who was no more obvious a target than Xander and Willow at that point. Then episode 6 opens the gate wide open, by having a pack of possessed students literally eat the principal of the school (I think it was at this point that Matt was really won over, since he said something like "This show will kill anyone"). The next episode, "Angel", has Buffy's mother being attacked and Darla, one of the few recurring vampires so far, bites the dust. We very quickly learn that this show is willing to off just about anyone, and it's a tone that will persist throughout its run.
The most surprising thing is perhaps how fully realized the characters are right off the bat. Buffy herself might be the one who feels most erratic early on as the show was finding its footing, but Xander, Willow, Cordelia and especially Giles feel fully formed right from the get-go. It's no stretch at all to believe that Willow and Xander are life-long friends, and Xander's inability to see that Willow has feelings for him yields some genuinely heart-breaking moments in both "The Pack" and "Prophecy Girl" (I was also surprised to see that seeds of the future Xander/Cordy pairing are very much there in these early episodes). Giles really is the standout of Season 1 though. Right from the start, Anthony Stewart Head perfectly embodies this awkward, old-fashioned and very, very British watcher/librarian. It's these characters that make the show worth watching even at its lowest moments.
That isn't to say that it's all good though. The show is VERY 90s. It feels extremely dated a lot of the time, and it certainly has its fair share of corny moments. There's also "I Robot...You Jane", which is, without question, the worst episode in the series. Basically, a demon gets scanned into the computer and now...controls the internet? It's pretty painful, especially watching it now with all its talk of this newfangled "web". Also, the more fragmented nature of the season takes some of the punch out of the finale. The Master is a pretty cool villain, aided by some really great makeup work, but he just isn't featured enough and we don't know enough about him to make his final confrontation with Buffy as dramatic as it could have been. "Prophecy Girl" is definitely the highlight of Season 1, but it pales in comparison to later season finales because it didn't have the build-up of a whole season-long arc behind it.
Despite its flaws, the show really began to find its footing near the end of the season, and the last 3 episodes are all pretty solid. They begin to bring in Cordelia and Angel more, and Mrs. Calender gradually gains a more prominent role. "Prophecy Girl" is a legitimately great episode, between Buffy's breakdown, her realization that she has to fulfill her duty, and then a legitimately scary showdown with The Master, it's got a lot of really powerful moments. All in all, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Season 1, which I had really written off. It isn't great, but it does a good job setting the table for what is to come, and it's a lot better than I had remembered.
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