My wife and I just started a watch-through of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It took a few appearances before I noticed, then had to look it up. The shows overlapped for about 2 years.
Is buffy (still?) good? I’ve never watched it, but everyone around me at the time was into it.
It mostly holds up.
Some of the tropes it started seem less interesting than they were when it was on the air, but not too bad.
Some of the too glib slang usage is a bit more immersion breaking when binge watched, but I think that would be less intrusive for a new viewer compared to one of us old farts that were watching it over years.
There’s high points and low points for sure, but getting any two fans to agree on which seasons/episodes were high or low is difficult lol. I’d say that it’s pretty consistently good overall, with its worst episodes and arcs being better than anything else of the era. It’s high points were and are amazing, even when I’ve seen them dozens of times.
The first season stayed closer to the vibe of the movie, which can be confusing to people that have heard about the series as a whole because the tone and style evolved massively during the second season. The movie, btw, is pretty damn awesome in its own way, but it’s not the same character almost. The vampires are also a lot different.
I always tell anyone asking what you did that it’s worth watching the first two seasons for sure. You kinda have to watch both because the changes by the end of the second season are more like what the rest is like, but you can’t just jump into the second season and the characters/setting make sense.
But, if you aren’t hooked by the second season, you’ll never like the rest.
It’s a little hard to get into because the first season is pretty weak in my opinion. But if you like the characters and stick with it I think you will fall in love. It gets a lot better later when they find their groove and start telling stories with long arcs.
I had a crush on Alyson Hannigan as a kid, so I’m not sure how I never watched Buffy. I can push through a bad first season, I think.
Buffy (or rather Willow) was the reason I had my crush on Hannigan.
Angel is a pretty decent spin-off as well! Generally a bit darker though.
If you enjoy Star Trek you sure can deal with bad first seasons and some camp, so have a blast!
The writing is very of its time but for all his flaws, Joss Whedon has a knack for funny dialogue. I think the earlier commenter did much better justice to the show than I could though.
That’s quite a lot of flaws, stories have came out about how actors were abused on Buffy specifically. It also makes things like Tara’s death even more suspect if he was really a POS the whole time
I still regularly go back and watch at least “Once More With Feeling,” (the musical episode) if not the whole show, once a year.
This is the only episode of Buffy I ever watched, and it was only after I saw Repo the genetic opera.
And ‘boss Nox’ in SG-1
(Yes the character probably had a name. No I don’t remember it)
Antaeus, for anyone curious.
How the hell could i never notice that?! I watched that episode easely 30 times. I guess because they used different voice actors for Quark and Antaeus in germany and i only watched it in original a couple of times. Times for a rewatch then :)
I know Principal Flutie would have said, ‘Kids need understanding. Kids are human beings.’ That’s the kind of woolly-headed, liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.
Probably my favourite principal Snyder quote.
I love that one episode where Sisko is, like… Seeing the past where he was a writer at a magazine or something in the 50’s on Earth. You get to see pretty much every alien cast member without the alien makeup. Including Jeffery Combs as random FBI Agent.
JG Hertzler as the illustrationist was delightful
Still counts as a new role for Jeffrey
It’s REAL!
I had a similar reaction on my second playthrough of Bioshock when I realized Andrew Ryan was also Quark.
Shimerman has said (this isn’t an exact quote) that the worst week of his life was filming his final episode of Buffy because he was filming “What You Leave Behind” the same week.
