We’re done with season one, YUSSSS!!!!

Whoa, excuse me. I didn’t mean to sound that enthusiastic. But I am pretty excited to see what all the hullabaloo over season 2 is. “You’re gonna LOVE season 2,” they said. “It’s when stuff starts to get REAL,” they said. Well, I’m finally going to witness it. And if it’s anything less that one hundred percent pure badassery and awesomeness, I will FREAK. Because you guys have been talking up season 2 like it’s the second coming of Jesus. I’m half-expecting Buffy to turn water into wine and part the Red Sea! Wait, that was Moses. Whatever, it’s still pretty darn impressive. So I’m expecting it.

For the record, there will be two posts this week so that I can split up my reactions between both seasons and also because I hate myself and want to work more. Anyway, let’s begin shall we?

Season one has come and gone, so let’s reflect on a few things we’ve learned thus far:

  • Xander is Chandler Bing.
  • If you’re in Sunnydale, never be near lockers because you will DIE.
  • If you’re in Sunnydale and suddenly take an interest in Buffy, Willow, or Xander randomly one week, don’t do it… because you will DIE. Or “FOTEs Never Last.”
  • Calendiles is the best thing ever.
  • “The Puppet Show” is the best episode ever.
  • The show OBVIOUSLY takes place in the 1990s. But it somehow time traveled and makes future pop culture references.
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar took this job to prepare for Scooby-Doo.
  • The Master is The Little Mermaid.
  • And Buffy likes to suck on lollipops a lot. Or as Giles would probably call it, “a lolly.”

So to be fair that last one I haven’t actually said in the posts, but it’s true. There are at least three episodes in season one where it ends with Buffy sucking on a lollipop. Have you guys noticed this? And how come no one really sucks on lollipops anymore, in real life? Sometimes Buffy can be so deep, you know?

With the final two episodes of the season, we get to learn and experience more of Cordelia and have Buffy defeat The Master. I don’t really have any cheeky, cutesy stuff to say this time ’round. So I’m just going to dive in to the recapping part.

1.11 “Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight”

In this episode, objects are attacking people. And everyone’s pretty freaked out because, honestly, that’s kind of extremely creepy. The problem is that they broke the cardinal rule: NEVER BE NEAR LOCKERS. To explain this, let me introduce you to FOTE (Friend of the Episode) 1 of this installment:

This is Mitch. He’s Cordelia’s main squeeze, for the hour. And he’s really excited to get into her pants. Except Cordelia’s more preoccupied with not dying this episode or whatever. Anyway, while IN THE LOCKER ROOM (sigh) he gets beaten up by a flying bat.

Har har har! NO! Not like a vampire, real-bat. I mean a baseball bat. You funny kids! Anyway, so he gets beaten up and goes to the hospital. Meanwhile, zero people decide to get the eff out of this school and move the hell away by now.

So Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles try to figure out what’s going on. Long story short: an invisible girl is out for revenge. How did she turn invisible? She was just ignored a lot.

This is FOTE 2. Her name is Marcie and she had zero friends and no one knew she existed. Especially Cordelia, so she’s out to get her by slicing up her face. When Cordelia asks Buffy and company what’s going on, they sort of just nonchalantly tell her there’s an invisible girl in school out to kill her. And instead of reacting normally like so:

she responds, basically, with “Yeah okay so what do we do?” Proving, yet again, there’s zero reasons why Buffy can’t tell her mom about supernatural stuff. So the gang creates a plan to distract Marcie by having Cordelia continue to prepare for May Queen…or, I don’t remember what it was called, it was something. Like a dance. And Cordelia was getting her dressed fitted in school at like 9PM. Whatever, just go with it.

So Buffy decides to go with Cordelia and the other three go in an opposite direction, like, in a basement (ANOTHER NO NO!) — but Marcie locks them in there and turns on the gas so that they will die. Meanwhile, Cordelia’s changing and Marcie just…grabs her and takes her above the ceiling which is (A) HILARIOUS and (B) unfathomable because she’s just invisible, it’s not like she got special powers beyond that. This girl jumps from ceilings and can lift cordelia without any real support, it’s weird.

Anyway, 30 seconds later and Buffy and Cordelia are tied up.

And it’s actually REALLY creepy because her face is numb and she wants to just slash it. GAH! So everyone’s in danger! WHAT WILL THEY DO!??!!!

In the other scene, Angel comes in and saves everyone! And while I’m not entirely sure this is how it went down, I’m certain it was something like this:

Because OH MY GOD ANGEL SPEAK UP! Why do you whisper so damn much? Jebus! Whenever Angel is onscreen, I ALWAYS have to increase the volume.

Over at the torture scene, Buffy gets ahold of herself and starts to use her slaying skills and traps Marcie in a cloth! And then the FBI just come in like it’s nothing and take Marcie away. Literally, they have two civilians who know about invisible people and that there are other cases of invisible people and that the FBI is rounding up these people to use for special ops missions and the FBI is just like “yeah okay, bye.” They don’t even mention to keep it a secret or anything.

So Marcie goes to spy school.

Future Pop Culture References: A special operations subdivision of the FBI centralized on paranormal activities? Yeah, that’s totally

But it stays in the 1990s because a special operations subdivision of the FBI centralized on paranormal activities? Yeah that’s totally

And also because of this:

I mean seriously, flying objects and using a blackboard to write ominous messages? TOTALLY MATILDA!

Unmentioned FOTE that, as a minority, makes me sad:

The Grade: I actually think this is my favorite season one episode. It was the right kind of creepy and absolutely hilarious. I didn’t mention this, but seriously. I don’t know if I was meant to laugh, but I did. And I love how much I actually began to like Cordelia this episode, and it’s not because of the total BS “woe is me!” cry she gave about being alone (even Marcie saw through that trope), it’s just that she’s written amazingly hilarious. And I love her.

1.12 “Prophecy Girl”

So it’s the season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! We haven’t even really been on track with the season-long arc since “Angel,” really. But it’s in full force this time. This episode sees Xander still completely hung up on Buffy, which as I said got a bit tiring already but it’s part of the story so whatever. And Willow is still hung up on him, which won’t work out for…reasons. Anyway, we open up with Xander practicing asking Buffy out. Then we cutaway to a badass Buffy vampire takedown, and then this scene which was hilarious to me:

Giles finds out that Buffy gon’ die thanks to the codex Angel got for him last episode. But he decides not to tell her for about half of the episode. But not before we get another Calendiles scene!!!!

So anyway, Buffy overhears that she’s going to die and as you can imagine, she’s not okay with that.

And Angel is there, trying to comfort her (not really, he basically tells her she has to die end of story).

This scene (well, the whole episode) was direly important because it very bluntly showcased Buffy’s selfish attitude towards being the Slayer and her responsibilities that come with that. She’s just not exactly willing to die for the good of mankind (until later). But at the same time, I mean, who actually wants to willfully die? Especially someone who is sixteen years old? It’s not as if Buffy asked to become the Slayer. Somehow her gift to fight against the curses of evil is itself its very own curse.

And also, Sarah Michelle Gellar has to stop absolutely nailing these scenes because my eyes can’t take it.

So Buffy leaves, saying she isn’t going to face The Master because then she’d die. But if she doesn’t, the world goes to Hell. Issues! Joyce comes in to talk to her about all of these issues, but she thinks it’s just normal Girl Drama instead of fear of death and whatnot. Regardless, progress is made and she really thinks she’s helped out.

And then Cordelia and Willow went to the school to get equipment and set it up at the Bronze for prom (oh yeah the big fight is set to happen during prom because why not) in this extremely eery scene:

So Willow is traumatized and Buffy goes over to her house to talk about it. And FINALLY, in one of the best scenes I’ve seen Alyson Hannigan do — but I mean, not the only one because HIMYM has really good drama — someone is a bit upset about the murders.

At this point, Buffy is certain that she’s going to fight against The Master because she realizes that there are people on this planet who she cares for and doesn’t want them to die, either. When she goes to tell Giles, he tells her that The Anointed is just a little kid so beware and the first thing she sees when she walks outside of the school is the little kid.

And she goes! Wearing her prom dress! Not one person said “Uh, might want to wear shorts or something to kill THE BIG BAD GUY.” But anyway, this is the scene where I hope that there was some deeper meaning and we would know instantly that Buffy wasn’t going to really die. The entire season, The Master has been saying “And the Anointed will rise, and the Slayer will not know him, and she will die” blah blah blah, but she very obviously knew it was him in this scene. So I’m thinking the prophecy was defied in this scene right here. And also, what was the plan here? That he’d use his kid-like features to get Buffy to walk down in the sewers? All in all, confused.

And also, even the kid got Chandler hair! More Friends.

Xander isn’t happy that Buffy is walking into her death so he gathers up Angel, who Xander thinks is onboard but isn’t quite sure because he couldn’t hear if he agreed or not. Meanwhile, Buffy is with The Master and he’s basically kicking her ass, but not before she finds out that the only way he could leave the underground placemabob is if he drank her blood. And she’s like “Fuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh.” And then he bites her.

THAT’S WHAT KILLS HER RIGHT?

No. It’s a freakin’ puddle.

And so The Master leaves to wreak havoc! And Buffy is dead, oh no!!!! And that’s the end of the series.

Oh, wait, there’s more…? All right, so Xander and Angel enter and find a drowned Buffy, but Xander givers her CPR and then she’s alive and ready to kick some ass. And it’s a good thing, too, because everyone is about to die in the school, including Cordelia who just knows about this stuff now. So Buffy meets up with The Master on the school roof.

And then The Master scratches her boob, but he was totally just trying to cop a feel.

So she pushes him through the sunroof and he falls on some wood and then dies.

RIP? 1997-1997. Although his skeleton is still there which hasn’t happened to any other vampire. Dun dun dun! What will happen now!?

And finally, the gang decides since they saved the world they deserve to go dance.

And they do. That’s season one, y’all!

The Grade: It was a great emotional episode and the show sure does know how to trick you into thinking there were dire moments (the music!). But I felt a bit underwhelmed. I love the individual scenes, though, like Buffy not wanting to die or Willow realizing this world is dark, etc.

The Season Grade: Season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer IS a bit rocky, there’s no denying that. And truthfully, if I were watching on my own, I don’t know if I would have continued past the pilot all that much. I think the community and the fact that it’s 2012 have helped me continue watching and continue wanting to watch. I find myself saying, “Wish I could just watch the next Buffy right now.” But don’t because of the Monday thing. A lot of this season was about setting up the universe in which this show lives. There were basic vampiric rules we still learned during these two episodes and I’m sure there’s a lot more left (but much more interesting than just “rules,” I want deeper mythos).

What I’m hoping for next season (even though we watched the first two episodes): Calendiles.

Look for Part 2 later on this week and remember we’re watching every Monday at 9:30PM EDT, #BuffyRewatch!