Buffy Observations Upon Third Viewing on Tubi

I heard so many good things about this show, so I tried to watch it.

Couldn’t get through one ep.

What episode is Wentworth in. Buffy used to be my shit yo. First 4 seasons is amongst the best scifi television of all time.

R1 what? Blasphemy. Was it the quality of the graphics. I don’t know why the quality looks so cheap in reruns. It didn’t look like that when it was out. They need to convert it to HD or something.

I loved this show when it was on but I have to imagine it hasn’t aged well.

It helps if you're a nostalgia watcher. DFX were PRIMITIVE at best, especially for TV. But I remember it fondly and get sucked in if ever flipping through channels and it's on. Insane, IMO, that it's actually on one of the MTV brand channels on weekdays.

I'm a HUGE Buffy fan but you couldn't make me watch the first three seasons again (with the exception of certain select episodes) because they're so dated at this point. I know the story still holds up well but man, those visuals and references...

I still watch it from time to time when I run across episodes streaming live on the Comet station and it still holds up for me. Season 4 episode Hush is still a masterpiece.

Quality of camerawork picks up substantially with the fourth season, it's like they got brand new lenses or something. It's like a jump from the '90s into the '00s overnight.

R8 lol. But it didn’t look poor when it was out, even in syndication in the early aughts of the early seasons cuz that’s how I really got into Buffy. It’s something they’re not doing with those 90s shows that were filmed on maybe cheaper type lenses or something. They aren’t converting them properly, probably because of such low viewership.

Yeah, everything looked great on those shitty cathode TVs back in the day. Plus your youthful imagination did a lot of the heavy lifting, compensating for any lack in production quality.

R2, here’s the Wentworth Miller episode.

Angel rejects biting him bc he’s got sea monster dna, but the scene with the near miss is kind of hot.

R6, season two had the return of Angelus and season three featured the mayor and Faith. The finales of both were fantastic.

The look of the first three seasons is dark and grainy on contemporary screens, but the stories win out over the images for me.

I do love season six, though I’m one of the few. Dark Willow!

For OP:

Drusilla front and center!

[quote] Buffy used to be my shit yo.

Good grief, have you no shame?

So embarrassing.

R14 Bruh Imma talk how I want to talk. Get off me. Block me. Do what you need to do. Yall are getting older. The world is changing.

A ranking of all the Buffy episodes.

[Quote] [R1] what? Blasphemy. Was it the quality of the graphics.

Shut up Defacto. Nobody wants to talk to you about anything.

R17 Bruh. It’s 430 on the west coast. Where are you at? Cause it’s late. You still haven’t eaten. Why is you still so hungry?

I would pay good money to travel back to 2004 and re-experience the excitement of renting season two of Buffy on VHS, four episodes at a time. (I got into the show after it ended.)

[quote]because they're so dated at this point

How on earth is this show "dated"?

Murphy Brown? Sure - dated as hell. The jokes, the references, the wardrobes, etc. Still can be entertaining, but certainly a product of its time.

How is a show about a Hellmouth, vampires, and the supernatural dated? Not like these things were 90's specific.

If you are referring to the practical effects ... I do not know that I would take today's over reliance on CGI (especially for lower budget shows like Buffy), than what they did.

R20 It’s not dated at all. Buffy set the foundation for long story arcs in non soap opera shows. It invented the concept of the Big Bad which all these sci-fi, fantasy shows implement today. Put some respect on Joss Whedon’s name.

Season 1 is very quirky and high schoolish. But 2 on is very good, compelling TV. Watching it now for the first time. I didn't know how good it really was.

If a show like West Wing or The Sopranos had done an episode like The Body at that time, it would have been showered with Emmys. I do wonder if it being a WB/UPN show made the critics thumb their noses, but it was nice that Hush received a nomination.

R22 oh most definitely. None of those shows on UPN/WB got Emmy nods. They blocked them out. Hell Moesha should have got an Emmy nod. Monique’s big ass should have gotten Emmys nods for her acting.

One summer I was down south and my cousin and I were watching those black UPN shows. That shit came on Fox on Saturdays. They didn’t have UPN lol.

Hush was mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time.

Ranked first here. Rightly?

Seasons 2 & 3 of Buffy are some of the best television ever. The show began a slide into mediocrity in Season 4, culminating in the unwatchable seasons 6 & 7. But I still dust off 2 & 3 every few years to relive that magic.

I would read a behind-the-scenes account of Buffy and Angel in a heartbeat.

Among other things, there was a behind-the-scenes war between the stunt coordinator and I think the set designer, which ultimately resulted in the former's firing.

More: Angel was cursed by gypsies just like Barnabas Collins was cursed by gypsies in Dark Shadows.

A young skinny Pedro Pascual just popped up. He gets bitten and becomes a vampire. Kal Penn also in a bit part.

Here’s a rundown of most of the notable guests stars.

R27, is there a link that details this intriguing conflict?

I don't know. I read it as it was happening on the show's official posting board back around 1999-2000, but that was nuked ages ago.

Pedro Pascal loved his very brief turn on Buffy.

I catch Buffy repeats on Fuse tv or channel whatever.

Seasons 1-3 are fantastic. Season 4 sucked and season 5 was one of the best. Glory was a formidable enemy.

I thought Glory was funny, but not all that scary.

The Master managed to be both funny and scary.

But Angelus was the scariest of all the Big Bads.

This quote from r33's article made me laugh:

[quote]Besides Pascal, the coming-of-age drama also featured appearances from actors who went on to become stars in their own right including Amy Adams, Rachel Bilson, Clea DuVall, Nathan Fillon, Wentworth Miller and Shane West.

I don't know about the rest, but I'm pretty sure Fillion was a star in his own right before his roughly half dozen episodes in Buffy. He was had just finished the highly-acclaimed but short-lived Firefly, another Joss Whedon-driven series. Prior to that he was in something called Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place for 5 years.

His Buffy villain, Caleb, was super creepy. Another very good "bad" was Mayor Harry Groener, and not evil bad, but still bad principal played by Armin Shimerman, who was probably better known as Quark from a couple of the Star Trek series.

There were a handful of really good and innovative episodes, a bunch of good episodes, lots and lots of decent ones, and some that were absolute crap. I hated weepy angsty Buffy, and loathed the "Buffy suffers and dies for your sins" eps.

A TON of really good lines. Dark Willow flays serial killer Warren alive with the words "Bored now." and a gesture. Pretty damn dark for a network tv show of that time.

The flaying of Warren was quite shocking.

I think Vampire Willow said the “bored now” line as well. Any completists care to verify?

[quote] The flaying of Warren was quite shocking.

It was, but the insta-flaying somehow killed him immediately, which it oughtn't have. I guess that aftermath would have been too gruesome. It was bad enough watching him suffer a bullet enter his chest in slo-mo, as he struggled with his mouth sewn shut.

Vampire Willow said "bored now" first, in season 3, r37. VW was accidentally summoned from an alternative universe by Willow and Anya. VW says it just before kicking the ass of a jock who thinks he is menacing Original Willow.

Cissy was a bitch

Vampire Willow’s sadism was also quite shocking.

And kinda fun. So good they brought her back for a second episode.

It’s a stroke of genius to make, among all the creatures and entities created, a human (Warren) the biggest and most wicked villain.

I never took the Master or the Mayor or Glory or even Caleb (Nathan Fillion) too seriously. But Warren? Scared the shit out of me.

Only “The Gentlemen” come close. Someone above mentioned the episode HUSH. — it’s a perfect episode. Legitimately scary and gruesome (that poor half-naked college guy — I really thought that was a bit much). But, it’s brilliant.

Warren brings about Dark Willow and it’s a fucking rollercoaster of a ride. She’s awesome.

There’s another perfect episode: the one with the 1950s high school murder. That’s all I’ll say about it, other than it’s a perfect episode.

I’m also rather fond of The Zeppo, where poor Xander is left out. And ends up having his own wild night. Xander is a character who didn’t grow the same way that Buffy and Willow did. I wish they’d given him some arc of development like they did Buffy. Yeah, yeah, one of the points was to show how strong women are and can be. The female characters are so much more complex and interesting (except for Dawn who nearly ruins the entire series for me). But I really liked Xander and wish there was more at stake for him than an eyeball.

Dawn is the Jar Jar Binks or the Poochie of the series. I fucking HATE her and the “actress” who played her.

I cannot get enough Druscilla.

The only thing dated about the show is The Bronze and the music it featured.

Lindsay Crouse is … breathtaking in her cuntdom.

Professor Walsh was shaping up as an excellent Big Bad in season 4. A great foil to Giles and a sharp secular threat. When they had Adam kill her and he assumed the mantle of the chief antagonist, the season tanked.

Rumors have floated that Crouse demanded off the show, but I’ve never heard anything solid.

Again, we need that tell-all!

Any Angel fans here?

In a way, I like this series even more than Buffy, especially when Angel suffers an existential crisis.

Also, season five is superb. Having him assume control of Wolfram & Hart was a stroke of genius.

Meh. I hated what they did with Cordelia on Angel. I also loathed Fred and the actor who played Angel's son.

I just tuned in to the last season where Spike moved to LA.

Never saw the show before that.

Angel picked up some dangling characters from Buffy and completed their arcs. Darla gets a whopper of a renaissance and Faith earns her redemption (before heading back to Buffy for the back end of the final season).

Willow and Oz make guest appearances, and Harmony and Spike join the main cast in Angel’s final season, which has a fantastic series finale.

If you enjoyed Buffy, you’d probably at least like Angel.

I don’t get the hate for season 4 and Adam as the big bad. I like him as it’s not a vampire and a modern take on Frankenstein. The whole season at college is a lot of fun.

Adam’s rise came at the cost of the Initiative’s fall. They’d set up this great “occult vs secular” rivalry with Giles and Professor Walsh as rivals. Adam wasn’t as interesting to me as everything that set him up.

I also liked the college season better than most, but it had some major bomb episodes like Beer Bad, which turned Buffy into a beer-swilling Cro-Magnon, and the truly dreadful one where Buffy and Riley became possessed and nearly fucked themselves to death.

Also, Riley wasn’t milquetoast. Getting rid of him was a most welcome subtraction.

I did think the episode where everyone thought Buffy was overreacting to her horrible roommate, who turned out to be a demon from another dimension was rather funny.

And Hush was superb.

Lots of replies from one troll here. Sad ass.

R51:

Drusilla was a hoot. Her weird accent didn't matter because she was psycho all the time. David Boreanaz's attempt at an Irish accent in the historical episodes was pretty lame.

They gave up on making David Boreanaz attempt the Irish accent, which should rank in the top ten of television’s all-time worst.

He made this list.

Just went on YT and I can't believe how many convention appearances James and Charisma have done and to a lesser extent Amber and Emma. I wonder what they get paid per gig. Is this their primary source of income ft job?

I'm fascinated by the lives of these actors who work the convention circuit, R55. All the travel, all the obsessive fans vomiting their feelings onto you for hours, attending the panels and answering the same questions over and over sounds like torture. But I've read that they make an obscene amount of money selling merch and autographs, all in cash. Someone should make a documentary about it.

They probably enjoy the adoration, r56. They go to these conventions, everyone drools over them and they collect a check.

[quote]Among other things, there was a behind-the-scenes war between the stunt coordinator and I think the set designer, which ultimately resulted in the former's firing.

If it's the same story that I'm thinking of, the stunt coordinator, who was also married to Sarah Michelle Gellar's stunt double (who really looked very little like SMG, which is best shown during Buffy and Angelus' sword fight in "Becoming" where it's VERY obvious when it's not SMG and Boreanaz). They did a spread in Entertainment Weekly after the third season, and he basically called SMG anorexic and got himself fired.

I mean, she probably was but, don't say that about your star.

Emma has MS, so I don’t think she can participate in many activities. Also, she was kinda done with Whedon and the whole show after it was over.

I hate to say it, but Buffy feels extremely dated now. At the time, it was great, but decades later, SMG's acting is cringe-inducing. The other actors consistently outperformed her, which is especially evident in the episode "Who Are You." Dushku's performance really shines in that episode, while it seems like Sarah didn’t put in much effort. And although the idea of Dark Willow is awesome, Hannigan's lines just seem silly now. I'm conflicted b/c I am/was the biggest Buffy fan, but maybe I've just gotten more cynical.

Honestly, "Angel" holds up better upon rewatching. It’s a darker show, but it doesn’t come across as cringeworthy after so many years. Moreover, the finale of "Angel" bars NONE.