Buffy the Vampire Slayer

[Ayen]

You all can probably guess by my avatar that I'm a Buffy fan, or at least a Willow fan. Who else watched the show?

I grew up on Buffy. I can still remember being a kid and seeing her crash the Bronze at the end of "The Harvest" when it first aired. I can't remember much of what I watched of Buffy beyond that before reaching Season Five. I lost interest around that season and only tuned in later because I heard she died, and then to see how they revived her. I didn't get super invested into the series again until the musical in Season Six, and then I started re-watching a bunch of the older episodes. I have the whole series on DVD now. I also have a T-Shirt, a couple of the toys, and a couple of the video games. I even saw the 1992 movie! Caught some of the comic books, too, but lost interest near the end of Season Eight.

I watched Angel, as well. I thought Season One and Two were good. Lost interest by Season Three, but like Buffy, I got interest again during the episode in Season Four where they all think they're seventeen again. That when trout really hit the fan with the introduction of the Beast, return of Angelus, Faith, and a whole bunch of other stuff before Season Five came along with the addition of Spike. I still need to collect the Angel seasons on DVD. Mom only has Seasons One, Two, and Five since she didn't like Three or Four.

Discuss.

[jodymcdougle]

I got into the show for a little while. I remember when the movie came out! really liked it. then the show came out and it was pretty good! they lost me towards the end of the series though. the first couple of seasons were pretty awesome! my brother is a HUGE buffy fan. the game that was released a few years back was pretty good too!

[Psychotic]

I still think the series should've been called Giles the Librarian.

[Freya]

I watched this when it aired. My mom loved the show so I grew up wit buff. I think it really influenced me as a young girl. Seeing Buffy being a kick ass female was a really inspiring. Being feminine didn't mean you couldn't kick ass.

I love Buffy. We have all the seasons of both Buffy and Angel on Dvd

[Raistlin]

I never actually watched this show until I was in my early 20s. Except for the first season, I thought it's aged pretty well (except for the occasional, obscure cultural reference), and I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Spike is obviously the best character.

I still think the series should've been called Giles the Librarian.

There's a US Supreme Court case called Giles v. California that I stumbled upon a couple of years ago for work. I liked to think that it was the case of Rupert Giles being charged for having public sex on a police car (twice).

(the actual case is a lot more boring)

[Ayen]

Spike is obviously the best character.

And with this lead in, let's talk about our favorite characters. Mine are:

Buffy
Xander
Willow
Giles
Wes
Oz
Angel
Spike
Anya
Faith
Dru
Darla

Angel is hit and miss with me. When he was first introduced he had that "mystery" thing going on for him and I liked his earlier back and forths with Buffy before they got all lovey dovey. After that, he didn't become interesting again for me until Angelus. I thought he started coming into his own when he got his spinoff series and pushed that one vampire out of a window asking, "Can you fly?" But then he had a kid...

S1 Darla is the best. Proof?

Buffy: *holds up crossbow*
Darla: Ooh, scary. *draws twin pistols* Scarier.

Gets me every. single. time.

Also...

The Beast: *smug*
Wesley: *pulls out shotgun*
The Beast: *smiles vanishes*

Joss always knew the best time to pull guns into the picture.

[louby_4eva]

I love Buffy Best TV show ever. I think having Buffy as a role model shaped me as a person. I'm forever thinking 'what would Buffy do?'. I'll be watching that show until I'm 90 and it will still give me chills when Giles shows up in Season 6 ^_^

[Big Ogre Umaro]

My wife and I are going through Buffy for the first time and just loving it. Season 1 has some issues, but it's actually more solid and consistent than the first seasons of shows like Star Trek TNG or The X-Files.

When I was a teenager, I caught the impression that sci-fi, fantasy, and other "geek stuff" was a domain for lonely males who couldn't get girls to pay attention to them, and I think that that's a pretty widely-held belief even now. There's this conception that Girl Geek stuff is kind of new, like Twilight and The Hunger Games opened the doors for young women to finally see what our whole Sci-Fi thing was all about. But you can't watch Buffy and still believe that. Women and girls are empowered, informed, and challenged by the same fantasy worlds that men/boys are, and they always were. This gender-segregation of geek culture has always been self-imposed, and the faster we can tear down the walls the better our fantasy worlds will become.

I can't spend too much time in this thread because we're only on season 2, but holy hell "Innocence" is an amazing episode. It's so rare to see such a perfect distillation of the tone of a show. Everything that's good about the show to that point went into that episode: the goofy continuity jokes from earlier episodes now have real plot consequences, the vampire boyfriend allegory is taken to its logical conclusion in such an emotionally honest way while ceding none of the fantasy abstraction...the set-ups, the payoffs, the action, the plot-twists... It's as good as a finale but it's right smack in the middle of the season.

Like, this is a show that has helped people. This is a show that has straight-up created feminists. I could probably have skipped a few asshole years if I had kept watching this past season 1 when it aired.

[Aulayna]

I loved this show when I was growing up. I had all the seasons on VHS and then later got them all again on DVD. Buffy and Willow were the best, and it had so many gut hitting moments like Innocence, The Body etc

I also loved Angel, it was certainly more darker in nature but it hooked me just like Buffy did. Plus Winnifred Burkle I might have to break out my Fred set again sometime.

[McLovin']

I enjoy the show quite often on Netflix. They have some very interesting concepts for episodes that are really cool. Hush was my favorite so far where the whole episode had no dialogue and I'm on like episode 6 of the 5th season now. Still got my attention.

[Mercen-X]

I watched almost the entire series. I kind of started to lose track during the "Slayers" arc. I watched the entire Angel series though. I love the finale. Gunn, Ilyria, Wesley, Angel, Lorne, and they even recruited Lindsey to kick some ass. I was kind of miffed they killed him off (again) as I didn't really think he deserved that.

It surprises me they never created a third spin-off series. I feel the Buffy universe is like the Marvel universe and could just go on and on.


EDIT: As for Willow, witches are neat, but I'm not sure how much I would have liked her if she hadn't been portrayed by Alyson Hannigan.

[Ayen]

I watched almost the entire series. I kind of started to lose track during the "Slayers" arc. I watched the entire Angel series though. I love the finale. Gunn, Ilyria, Wesley, Angel, Lorne, and they even recruited Lindsey to kick some ass. I was kind of miffed they killed him off (again) as I didn't really think he deserved that.

It surprises me they never created a third spin-off series. I feel the Buffy universe is like the Marvel universe and could just go on and on.


EDIT: As for Willow, witches are neat, but I'm not sure how much I would have liked her if she hadn't been portrayed by Alyson Hannigan.

I know Joss wanted to create a Faith spinoff after Buffy, but Eliza Dushku felt that Buffy's shoes would be too big to fill.

Alyson Hannigan is the bomb!

[Del Murder]

I watched this for the first time only recently. It was a very good show. Buffy is a total badass female lead and I really liked her. I was also pretty fond of Spike, Anya, and my favorite character Giles (actually it starts as Giles and switches to Anya at around season 5). There were some pretty awful characters too though, like Dawn. She was the worst.

My favorite big bad was Angelus. He's much cooler than Angel. Season 2 was the best season. It went downhill after they left high school.

[Calliope]

I was the target audience for this show, and I watched it in high school, and several times since. While the show was great, I wouldn't say it is without criticism in regard to how it portrays women, sex, etc. Actually, I don't think I would say that it is feminist at all, other than it has a woman in the lead role (and that is supposed to be empowering). It's still fun though - I watched the series again last year, and realized I was getting old because now I have a crush on Giles.

When I worked at a comic convention I had to look after the actress who played Glory for a day, and that was fun, but then all "comic convention work" is fun.