Well, I’m two days late but it’s better late than never…
On March 10, 1997 a little show named Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB. I didn’t watch it. In fact, I think the first episode I ever saw was somewhere in the middle of season 2 and I watched it with such irregularity throughout seasons 2 and 3 that I really didn’t pay attention to what I was watching. The show was nothing more than a time-killer for me.
Fast-forward to the end of May, 2002 and I stumble upon this article on Salon.com. (This makes it feel like it happened even longer ago as now Salon.com is unabashedly pro-Liberal on everything that it hasn’t been fun to read for a while.) Anyway, even though I hadn’t watched the show in years I still found that article to be shocking; not because of the subject matter of the episodes in the review but because the show and the characters had come so far. I mean, Willow, the destroyer of worlds?
Luckily, the first two seasons were on DVD and Fox re-ran episodes on Sunday nights which enabled me to be fully caught up for when the final season (season 7) began. Like any really great show the direction its characters and story arcs took began to go into really great places (some funny, some really dark). It’s very easy to say that the monsters of are metaphors for life, but the writers consistently churned out ground-breaking stuff and the actors were able to rise to the occasion almost all of the time. Some of the best episodes of Buffy are also some of the best episodes of anything I’ve seen—there are a handful of episodes that simply have no competition with any other show. Here’s my Top 10 (in no particular order):
“The Body” — The only episode in which a main character dies of natural causes is one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen in which a show dealt with the death of a loved one. The scene in which Anya (a former vengeance demon with no comprehension as to why humans die or how to mourn their death) snaps at everyone to explain to her what the death means is one of the best scenes in the show’s history.
“Once More, With Feeling” — Every show, whether a drama or a sitcom, reaches that point in a story arc where everyone is unhappy with their friends or has a secret they’re dying to tell others but can’t or some other device in which characters are kept in the dark about certain things. How does Buffy handle this? With a musical. And they pulled it off.
“Conversations With Dead People” — Probably the best serious episode of the final season, it centers around Buffy meeting a former high school classmate turned philosophical vampire; Dawn seeing her mother; and Willow meeting a recently deceased student with messages about Tara. Excellent balance of humor, philosophy, death, and horror.
“Innocence” — The idea that guys change once they have sex with a girl takes on a literal context as after Angel and Buffy have sex Angel becomes the soulless murdering vampire he was previously.
“This Year’s Girl/Who Are You?” — One of the greatest philosophical episodes, this two-parter has Faith switching bodies with Buffy and ultimately realizing how fragile she is when she hears others talk about her. The scene of her as Buffy mimicking the line “Because it’s wrong” in front of the mirror is almost as profound as Faith (again, as Buffy) trying to beat the crap out of Buffy (as Faith) while screaming, “You’re nothing! Disgusting! Murderous bitch!”
“Tabula Rasa” — One of the funniest episodes in which Willow starts a spell designed to make Tara forget about a fight which leads to everyone forgetting everything because their mind has been erased. Giles and Spike believing themselves to be related, Buffy referring to herself as “Joan,” Giles swordfighting with a skeleton amidst a green cloud and bunnies, and everyone screaming in terror at the sight of vampires all equal up to good times.
“Hush” — An episode in which the majority of it is dialogue-free deserves a short review: Excellent.
“Storyteller” — By far, the best humorous episode of the final season. Andrew decides to shoot a documentary-style movie capturing the behind-the-scenes drama of the plan to destroy The First. His reasoning dictates that if they fail maybe someone will find the tape and use it as historical data. In between all of this, we catch glimpses of how deluded he is (“In my plan we will not wear belts!”) until he ultimately is forced to confess that he has killed his best friend.
“The Gift” — The season 5 finale was pitch-perfect: The final showdown between Buffy and Glory (my personal favorite Big Bad–”Did anyone else know the Slayer was a robot?”), and the culmination of what I thought was the best season. Buffy fully realizes what being the Slayer means, how certain forces are always at play against Slayers (excellent foreshadowing by the earlier episode “Fool For Love”) and what she needs to do to save the world and Dawn. And, in the end, “She saved the world a lot.”
And these episodes don’t even fully capture the brilliance and creativity throughout its 144-episode run. This was a show wherein a Halloween episode made everyone become the costume they were wearing; a Thanksgiving episode in which a native American Indian resurrects and wreaks havoc on the Scoobies; an episode in which Buffy takes on Dracula (“Dracula? Get out!”); an episode wherein each character has a dream where they die, and a whole season where the arch enemies are three dorks who call themselves The Trio and drive a van with a horn that plays Star Wars music. This also doesn’t take into consideration all of the brilliant second- and third-tier characters such as Anya, The Mayor, Trick, and Drusilla, just to name a few.
Happy belated Birthday, Buffy! God love you Joss Whedon!