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Wacky Watches: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

The only reason I didn't watch it was because in my brain, if I didn't watch it end, it never ended.

I bought it to watch it, but never quite could bring myself to do it.
 
I Robot, You Jane - Talk about aging badly. I mean obviously we can laugh at how PRIMITIVE the internet stuff is, but I'm sure even at the time this episdoe must have been really stupid and bad. Giles talking about the EVILS OF COMPUTERS is really weak. It's kind of a Willow episode except she disappears for half of it. Hannigan is always good as Willow but even she can't make the "hitting a robot with a fire extinguisher" moment good. Oh yeah there's a shitty robot that was a demon on the internet that was a demon trapped in a book or something. Some guys in labcoats made the robot but none of them speak so I don't know why. This is a bad episode, guys. Jenny Calendar is hot though.

The Puppet Show - Well, at least it's better than the last one. Snyder is introduced and Armin Shimerman is good so this is good. The stuff with Buffy not knowing if the dummy is alive maybe goes on a bit long but the Dummy is kind of funny. Maybe. It's no Smile Time.
 
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Nightmares - This is good! Finally! This episode has a more involving story, humour, actual scary stuff and is a lot closer to being the actual proper Buffy we all love (while still being a cheap looking season one episode.) The scene with Buffy's nightmare dad is particularly effective. It's also good at see a bit more of the Master as Mark Metcalf does a very good job. Also you can remember Buffy being scared of being buried alive and Willow being scared of appearing on stage when they come up again in later episodes.
 
Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight - This one isn't so good. It's the first episode where Cordelia gets to do a bit more than just show up for a scene and say something bitchy. Snyder continues to be amusing. But the story is meh. Like the girl disappearing because people ignore her actually has nothing to do with the Hellmouth? It's just a thing that happens? That's silly! Some government guys show up at the end and take the invisible girl away and Buffy's okay with this and we never see them again. Which is probably for the best as the final scene is awful. The part where Willow and Xander laugh when they remember something is good. I'll note that! Also I found out that Mercedes McNab (making her second appearance as Harmony here) is ten years younger than Charisma Carpenter even though they're playing the same age here. So that's interesting at least!
 
Prophecy Girl - This is the best episode of the season and the one that feels the most like a complete Buffy episode. It brings back a lot of the elements we've seen building throughout the season (though of course it's been a short season so it's nothing compared to later finals) and pays them off and develops the characters and everything! The scene where Willow and Cordy find the dead students is the best scene with dead students so far. On the other hand, the scene where the theme music starts playing and SMG says "oh look, a bad guy" is really cringey ("I might have died but I'm still pretty" is nearly as bad.) SMG's acting is generally very good but not so much here. But hey, it's a good episode! And I'm pretty happy to have season one over with.

Giles knocked out count: 3
 
When She Was Bad - Buffy's back! With NEW HAIR! It's season two and it all feels more confident than seaon one. The writing feels tighter and funnier. And new hair. That helps. The thing I remembered about this episdoe before re-watching it was Buffy's sexy dance with Xander. And it was definitley a sexy, mean dance! It was good. This was a good episode. Bad things: Mark Metcalf wasn't available I guess so they have some other guy playing The Master and he's just not The Master. And Angel's line "why are you riding me?" is lol. (Buffy asking Angel if he's ever wondered who'd win in a fight between them is foreshadowing, right?)

Giles knocked out count: 4
 
Some Assembly Required - And now it's like we're back in season one. Well, it's a bit better than the weaker season one episodes as there's more character stuff going on, but on the whole this is dull and silly and the monster is lame. The evil nerd is kind of a prelude to the Trio, I guess. But not as good. This isn't good.
 
It's funny, I always hear from Buffy fans how the later seasons were SO BAD OMG compared to the GOLDEN AGE with Angel etc.

I'm starting to think the Golden Age was maybe one season tops.
 
Eggs Mayonnaise said:
It's funny, I always hear from Buffy fans how the later seasons were SO BAD OMG compared to the GOLDEN AGE with Angel etc.

I'm starting to think the Golden Age was maybe one season tops.
Click to expand...

Here's the Buffy season tier ranking:

4>2>3>>5>>7>>>6>1

"Golden Age" would be seasons 2 through 4 or 5.
 
I can understand Tomtrek preferring 5 to 4 or 2, but it's not an okay opinion for literally anyone else to hold.
 
4 has probably the worst arc in the series IMO. The whole initiative thing didn't work for me and Riley was an annoying muppet. I still enjoy season 4 but I like season 5 more. Glory was great plus it had some classic episodes interspersed in there as well. To be fair I was only underwhelmed by seasons 6 and 7 which in turn still have their bright spots. I have a nostalgic glow about season 1 so between seasons 5 4 and 2 I am pretty high on all of it. Season 3 is clearly the GOAT season though and surpasses them all.
 
Season 4 is a tricky one, as it has by far the weakest arc of all of the seasons, but it also has by far some of the best episodes the show ever did.
 
This is true. Episodes like Hush, Superstar and Restless were excellent. Also, transitioning Spike in to series regular role worked really well in Season 4 and it could have fallen flat on its face. There is no getting away from how dumb The Initiative arc is though and Riley is just...well.
 
Season 4 is great because it's a very focused and very dedicated exploration of the concept of identity, and it's a mission the season takes seriously with its monsters of the week, its Big Bad and Little Bad, and the personal arcs of the major characters. It's a really successful Project for the season, and it never really calls attention to itself, but it makes me appreciate S4 a hell of a lot. Other seasons have central themes, but none of them exploit them as successfully and thoroughly as S4 does.
 
(EDITED - I responded to the last post on the previous page (SAUSAGEMAN'Z) without seeing all these other posts on pg 2)

To me, any time a show brings in some conspiracy-theory-level shadow organization, it's shark-jumping time. (Revenge almost lost all of its audience doing this in season 2.) However, I agree that Whedon managed to squeeze out some of his best episodes while making us cringe through The Agency In The Cellar and Polite Killbot Adam.

I was a late bloomer as a rabid fan, so I wasn't binge-watching until the post-Angel years. I always took shit for liking/defending the later seasons. (I'm not blind, I saw the flaws, but it was new to me, and the first couple of seasons were so rough-looking by comparison)

SHOULD WE SPLIT THIS INTO A WACKY WATCHES BUFFY DISCUSSION/LEXICON THREAD LOL?
 
It's still page one for me! I think the default has been set to 30 posts a page but you can change it in your profile. And NO don't split the thread, I WELCOME DISCUSSION.

School Hard - This epsidoe is (rightly) remembered for being the first appearance of Spike and Dru and they're pretty great right away. Okay, Marsters hasn't really got the accent right yet, but Spike already seems like a dynamic character. I'll confess that the first time I watched Buffy (YEARS AGO) I wasn't a huge fan of Dru at first just because Landau's acting is...a bit...campy? I don't know. Her accent never gets any better, put it that way ("Spoike".) Watching it back I like her way more because I know what to expect, but I'm still not sure if she's exactly a good actress. But that doesn't matter, really, becuse she's intriguing! Her relationship with Spike feels real, like there's a proper history there. Right away they're the two best villains who have appeared in the show so far. And don't get me wrong, I loved the Master thanks to Mark Metcalf but he never went beyond "badass old vampire" whereas Spike and Dru feel like characters who could be around for a while (right until the end of the spin-off in Spike's case!) right from the start.

The school plot is good too with good use of Joyce and Snyder. The scene with Snyder telling the cop to use the usual story about the vampires being "teenagers on PCP" is the first hint that others in Sunnydale are aware of the weird stuff going on (you could even stretch it to be the first hint of the Mayor's involvement?)

It's a good episode, but it's the ending that's really excellent as Spike murders "the Annoying One" and makes a declaration that it's time for a little less ritual and a lot more fun. I know it's been said that the Anointed One was killed off because the actor was "aging too fast" and he was orginally going to be the Big Bad for seasn two but I don't really buy that? I mean they MUST have known when they cast a young boy a vampire that aging would be a problem. The same with casting Walt as a regular character in Lost and then saying in season two "he aged too fast we had to get rid of him!" Do tv casting people not know that chldren grow pretty fast? But anyway this has nothing to do with anything. This is a very strong episode.
 
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