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:
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.
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.
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!
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A typo happened. Whoops!
I really have come to respect "Invisible Girl/OoMOoS" episode since my first time watching it.
Now don't get me wrong, the whole "invisible villain" was just barely ok. But i feel the episode is not about some villain. its mainly about Buffy and Cordelia and their parallels. Its first real case of Cordelia GETTING Depth and thats awesome.
At the same time it also gives insight into Buffy herself and her life as Cordelia essentially IS what Buffy was before the entire sucky destiny(no pun intended) came to her.
"Prophecy Girl" is a whole different beast altogether. it nicely sums up the themes of entire season dealing with Buffy, Willow, Xander, Buffy/Xander/Willow, etc. It shows growth of Willow as she refuses to be Xander's comfort. It shows Giles emotional bond to Buffy.
And whats more it really develops Buffy.
"Prophecy Girl" is the episode were I really started to appreciate Joyce. She might be oblivious to the supernatural right now, but her advice and her mother-daughter time actually fits REAL WELL thematically.
Its encouragement.
Through retelling her own experiences, Joyce encourages Buffy to follow her heart. To do what Buffy thinks she wants to do no matter what, no matter how illogical it sounds. It brings a note of optimism to Buffy.
Joyce might nore realize that her daughter is facing idea of DYING, or the supernatural stuff, but she did really seem to get about what Buffy's identity conflict was during that time.
Going back to Buffy, this episode breaks my heart.
A lot of this show can be summed up by sentence Joss Whedon has said:
"Buffy In Pain, Show Better... Buffy Not In Pain, Show Not As Good"
This episode, the scene where Buffy breaks down at the idea of that death prophecy...its one of countless scenes that make me feel that SMG was snubbed at EMMY's back then when the show was airing. Again and again.
In that scene a LOT of her inner turmoil comes out - the way she views her life, her little illusion of "happy heroic adventure" breaking down. The nature of Angel's unlife. Giles and the nature of watchers "watching" while slayer "slays". It all just explodes as a 16 year old girl, with a huge terrible burden on her shoulders, is challenged by her own mortality.
Then her "death" breaks my heart yet again. You can clearly see hopelessness and fear in her eyes. For a first time in this show, Buffy is in role of damsel in distress.
There's noticeable change in her behavior after she gets CPR-revived. She is snarkier, more cynical, not as cheery. The illusion of happy childhood adventure has died with her. She has started to accept the idea that her job is horrible, that her job will be full of tragedies.
And whats more, she is challenged by idea of her own mortality. By idea that its not just some "comic book". That death is real and that its might as well be what awaits her in her job. Every second, every encounter.
Its clear to see on how much it devastates her for the rest of the episode after her "death". Its quite clear that the experience traumatized her in some way and that she will never be exactly the same as she was before this.
Her childhood has violently and suddenly ended and now the turmoil and uncertainty of teenager years remains, as the very foundations of what she wanted to be, what she thought of herself or pretended to be, are shaken and destroyed.
Overall I'd say the S1 is one big pilot episode. Its a miniseries, with some cool horror-movie references(like Master being designed after Count Orlok from nosferatu and nature of the master's demise paralleling Count Orlok.). It establishes main characters and some ships, but it does not really "get going" till the end portion of those 12 episodes.
And while S2 takes a few moments to "transition" from that into something...darker and deeper(which frankly happens with every episode with this show, because people love happy endings and Joss REALLY REALLY hates people),
I find it fascinating on how what was established about characters, what happened to them, remains relevant.
Stuff does not just get forgotten. the characters don't just go "oh hey new day" and get struck with case of amnesia, forgetting what happened before.
Everything builds up. The writers manage to build up from what happened in S1 and from what those characters experienced and EVOLVE the characters.
Those people in S2 no longer feel like they did in S1. They are more grown. They are shaped by what they experienced. Nothing stays the same.
Ever.
Because Joss Whedon hates status quo.
I actually really love Prophecy Girl. It's the only season 1 episode that captures a part of what Buffy is all about. Having said that, the only reason I recommend season 1 to anyone at all is because they always reference the death thing later on. And because the character establishments blah blah blah.
Season 2 is good but keep your expectations reasonable is all I have to say at this point.
I like it, too, but I think for pure entertainment reasons I just love episodes like The Puppet Show more.
And too late. I have HUGE INFLATED expectations :D
"Xander is Chandler Bing." I can't stop laughing.
It's the truth!
Buffy's speech (and the "I'm only 16" part especially) has me in tears every time. SMG did an amazing job. Best acting of Season 1! Can't wait to read S2 thoughts!! Also...is it Monday yet? I want to watch more!!
That line killed me. But the next line melted my insides: "Does it say how he's gonna kill me? Do you think it'll hurt?" ARUGHHH... oh the pain. The PAIN...
Stop! You're making my eyes hurt :'(
ROFL "At least I touched her boob."
Love your recaps. Hilarious.
I love Buffy. Season 1 was cheesy and sooo 90's. But it had a lot of good scenes. I remember the first time I saw the scene where Buffy finds out she's going to die. Some force reached into my chest and twisted my heart until it was no more.
But the way she dies cracks me up. I get the whole trance thing, but the Master, seriously? You get your fangs on some Slayer blood and you only take like two drops? Silly Master.
Okay thank goodness I wasn't the only one who was like "Really? Just a lil' nibble? And this is the death!?" Good. But I do love that scene so much. Curse you SMG!
What kills me is "I don't care!!!! …I don't care…" GAHHHH
It's not Fringe, it's The X-Files, obviously! ;)
Can't wait for you to go on with season 2, this has been so funny, and very interesting to see someone watch Buffy for the first time in 2012!!
It's all three!!! And thank you, I'm glad you've been enjoying the recaps :)
I love the lulz in the recaps. Although I feel like it'll be harder to be humerous in some later eps. We'll put you to work!
Season 1 isn't great as a whole, but as you said it sets up the world that we'll be in. IMO the show REALLY comes into its own partway through season 2.
LMAO @ Angel's low volume. I do tend to watch the show on a higher volume because of all the whispering.
RE: Prophecy Girl. I don't think it's showing that Buffy is selfish exactly, but just that she is so very young to have so many responsibilities thrust on her. At 16, no one is prepared to die to do something that they were told they are supposed to do.
And, onwards to Season 2. SO excited for Spike and Drusilla next week!
I'll try! But you're right, it's much easier when the episodes aren't as super amazing as season 2 has been talked about! :D
Seriously, Angel!!!
And about prophecy girl, the way I mean selfish is that she's just not all that willing to accept her…ugh, lack of a better term…destiny and accept the sacrifices for the good of mankind. But who can blame her? She's "16."
This is true. Accepting who you are is an ongoing theme, as well.
I really hope we haven't overly hyped up Season 2 so that it disappoints! :( Personally I DO think it's that good, but I'd hate to see a new watcher (heh) be let down because of our hype.
Rocky? It's my favorite season,
That's the best part about audiences and differing opinions. I think the first season was rocky a bit, and you love it! Just like some people think TVD season 3 is amazing and I think it was utter BS!
Those people are wrong, TVD season 3 was a mess.
And frankly, "rocky" is best way to describe first season of btvs as its quite clear that the show was still trying to find the right footing and that they were afraid to do too much of continuous story because of not knowing whether they will be renewed or not.
So you had these kind-of miniseries with some cool(and some not) horror movie references and character buildup.
Second season feels more "confident" from writers standpoint as one can clearly see connections between each episode, developing over-arching storyline, etc.
Pretty much every episode is important either thematically, character-wise or plot-wise, while Season One theoretically only has Pilot, Angel, Nightmares, Out of Mind and Prophecy Girl as episodes that are crucial
SMG is a jewel! Her speech in the finale is one of her best moments of the series. And she has the special "Buffy Eyes" where they get all glassy and unfocused, and they just rip my heart out. But wait til Hannigan gets the waterworks going in days to come. You'll need some serious antidepressants. #WillowFeels
Also, can Angel be Chuck Bass? I mean, with all the whispering and brooding and circular story lines?
I was seriously THISCLOSE to saying he went to The Chuck Bass School of Acting with this one!