15 years after Buffy the Vampire Slayer departed our screens – yes, you are that old – Hollywood has set a reboot (or possibly a continuation) into motion, with series creator Joss Whedon on board as an exective producer and writer Monica Owusu-Breen (Lost, Fringe, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD) in charge.
The prospect of a revival got us, and many others, feeling all nostalgic about Whedon’s ground-breaking original. So many tears. So many laughs. So many vamps dusted.
Across a seven-year run, the series never stopped daring to be different and while it wasn’t always 100% successful in everything it attempted, even a bad season of Buffy stands head and shoulders over most other television drama.
That being said, by the show’s own high standards, which seasons slayed, and which kinda sucked? Here’s our take – certain to be the most divisive thing in Buffy fandom since Buffy / Angel vs Buffy / Spike.
7. Season 7
This was a tough choice, but something has to come bottom of the list and, for our money, Buffy‘s final season suffered from the same joylessness as the show’s sixth year, but unlike its predecessor, lacked a standout instalment of the quality of ‘Once More with Feeling’.
The whole thing’s just a bit uninspiring. It’s both dull and disheartening to watch Buffy get beaten down again and again, while far too much time is spent on establishing the potential Slayers and on uninspiring sub-plots like Spike’s quest to reclaim his soul.
Nathan Fillion’s deranged preacher Caleb is a fine final antagonist, but the Turok-Han inexplicably shift from unvanquishable terrors to puny posers as soon as the plot requires it. Oh, and then there’s Kennedy.
‘Chosen’ is a decent-enough finale (bar Anya’s ignoble, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it demise), but it can’t totally eradicate the feeling that this is a somewhat underwhelming final lap for a truly epic show.
6. Season 6
With the exception of the spectacular ‘Once More with Feeling’ – Buffy‘s musical episode, a concept which could’ve badly misfired but ended up producing one of the show’s all time-greats – season 6 is again a strangely sombre outing.
It was always a note-perfect blend of humour and heartbreak that made Buffy soar at its best, something that the final two seasons lost sight of (and that ‘Once More’ briefly recaptures perfectly).
The main thrust of the season, Willow’s descent into dark magic, is also a mixed bag. Alyson Hannigan does strong work, while her final face-off with oldest friend Xander (Nicholas Brendon) is wonderful. But the dissolution of her relationship with Tara, and Tara’s subequent death, leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, as do the increasingly dark and deranged activities of The Trio.
It’s far from a complete write-off, though: the musical’s not the only standout, with memory-wipe episode ‘Tabula Rasa’ also a hilarious highlight. (“Randy Giles? Why not just call me ‘Horny’ Giles, or ‘Desperate for a shag’ Giles?”)
5. Season 1
Opening and closing strong (with, respectively, the two-part premiere ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’ / ‘The Harvest’ and the excellent finale ‘Prophecy Girl’), Buffy‘s first, 12-part season is less sophisticated than what followed, and has dated far worse, but remains a whole heap of fun more than two decades on.
Episodes like ‘Witch’, ‘The Pack’ and ‘Out of Mind, Out of Sight’ all serve up entertaining twists on the “high school is literally hell” gimmick, while the perfectly-cast regulars gel from the off, with a fantastic chemistry that helps carry even the weaker episodes. (Yes, we’re looking at you, ‘I, Robot… You, Jane’.)
4. Season 4
Yes, yes, season 4 has the dreadful Adam (George Hertzberg) as its Big Bad, and the dull Initiative storyline drags things down, and ‘Beer Bad’ is a serious misfire, and the character assassination of Oz (Seth Green) is an actual crime. (Werewolf genes or no werewolf genes, the old Oz would never have treated Willow so shabbily!)
But while the larger arc has its problems, there are some terrific standalones here: the Buffy / Faith body-swap two-parter is superb drama, while ‘Something Blue’ (Buffy and Spike end up engaged after a spell goes wrong), ‘A New Man’ (Giles is transformed into a demon) and ‘Superstar’ (Magic transforms nerdy Jonathan into the coolest guy in town) all deliver both big laughs and serious pathos
And then there’s ‘Hush’ – an episode played out with almost zero dialogue after a curse leaves the whole of Sunnydale quite literally speechless. It’s an absolute masterpiece, one of the greatest episodes not just of Buffy but of television ever. (The Gentlemen still give us nightmares. Brrr.)
3. Season 5
Though season 5 saw Buffy unleash some of its most heartbreaking material yet – the whole Joyce illness arc, and especially, of course, ‘The Body’ – it avoided the misery-porn potential of what followed by striking a tonal balance.
Alongside the trauma of ‘The Body’, we were served tongue-in-cheek romps like ‘Buffy vs. Dracula’ (“Vun, two, three… three victims, mwahahaha.”), and ‘The Replacement’ (double the Xander, double the fun) and a delightfully offbeat antagonist in Glory (Clare Kramer).
Season closer ‘The Gift’ also provides maximum emotional pay-off to the Buffy / Dawn sister relationship, more than justifying the latter character’s risky late insertion. It would have made for a far better series finale than ‘Chosen’.
2. Season 2
It says something about Buffy‘s overall quality that a run of television as exemplary as season 2 doesn’t land the top spot.
Fine-tuning its winning formula, the show’s second year brings whole new levels of fun (Xander’s brief spell as Sunnydale’s most eligible bachelor in ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’), wild and wonderful fantasy (the gang’s personalities are shaped by their fancy-dress costumes in ‘Halloween’) and emotional intensity (Buffy’s betrayed by an old friend in ‘Lie to Me’).
The second season also saw Buffy give us its best ever version of its most famous trope, using the supernatural as an analogy for teen angst: Buffy sleeps with Angel for the first time and the experience transforms her seemingly perfect boyfriend into a soulless monster.
The entire Angelus arc is practically note-perfect, especially the tragic demise of Giles’s love Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte) in ‘Passion’, with one-offs like ‘Killed by Death’ and ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ expertly weaving the arc into their otherwise standalone storylines.
You’d have to go some way to beat that.
1. Season 3
It had to be this.
Buffy‘s dizzying peak comes with its happy, sad, mad and brilliant third season, as the Scooby gang are pitted against the show’s best ever villains: Sunnydale’s maniacal Mayor (an outrageously good performance from Harry Groener, chilling and funny in equal measure) and Faith (a fantastic Eliza Dusku), a troubled ‘dark’ Slayer who serves as the perfect foil to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s virutuous hero.
The stakes – no pun intended – were never higher than in this deftly-structured season, which, through a perfect mixture of powerful arc episodes and supreme standalones (alternate reality outing ‘The Wish’ and its semi-sequel ‘Doppelgangland’, school shooting episode ‘Earshot’, Xander getting his moment to shine in the playful ‘The Zeppo’) builds to a huge emotional pay-off.
As the Mayor is defeated, Faith falls and the gang graduate, the emotional wrench of leaving high school and friends is represented by Sunnydale High’s total obliteration in a rousing final battle. (And just try not to sob when all of Buffy’s heroic efforts are finally recognised by her friends and peers in ‘The Prom’.)
The only downside is David Boreanaz spending most of the season hanging round like a lovesick puppy, waiting for his spin-off to launch. But given how good Angel ended up being, we can forgive that.
Now, how would we rank that show? Hmm…
Source: Read Full Article