How many apocalypses for us now? Six or seven at least.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first airing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I didn't get into it until Season 4, but caught up quickly and it's still one of my favourite shows. Smart, funny, feminist, scary at times, heartbreaking at others, utterly ridiculous sometimes, with a fantastic ensemble of characters and cast. So much more than "ditzy blonde kills vampires."

She saved the world. A lot.

[Kim]

It's one of the few television programmes I mostly managed to keep following during the dark years of the late 90s.  I wouldn't describe myself as a fan, particularly^[1], but the characters were interesting and there was something refreshing about the writing.  The Scooby Gang were using pagers to coordinate their demon-fighting back when Mulder's phone would reliably lose signal in the first 5 minutes of every episode.

It brought the term BuffySpeak to the world, and the associated renaissance in wanky pseudo-paganism was good for a giggle, too.

They should have quit while they were ahead and skipped those last couple of apocalypses.  Could really have done without the Dead Lesbian Syndrome and subsequent story arc in Season 6.  And Dawn was just annoying.


_{[1] Although I should confess to a large poster of Spike covering the tatty bit of wall in one of my student rooms.}

[ian]

Now I feel old.

One of my favourites. Dawn was a bit Scrappy-doo, but I didn't mind so much. I quite liked the arc, and the fact that somewhere in the proceedings everyone grew up but you never really noticed it happen. Which is what happens in real life. For most of us.

We re-watched it all (and Angel) a year or three back. It's stood the test of time. Razor sharp scripts and though the acting took a little time to get going, it turned out to be perfectly cast. And like all entirely robotic boys, I had a thing for Willow.

For some reason, we had a friend record one of the seasons but she somehow managed to do so without the sound. So rather than take the easy option, we downloaded the scripts from the internet and acted along. It took beer but we had a fantastic time and I'm so glad Youtube hadn't caught on. I think they copied the episode Hush from that (and that episode was one of the best and scariest pieces of TV ever). My wife, who's seen every musical ever (thank god all our friends are gay), rates Once More With Feeling highly in the genre. Even I confess to occasionally listening to the album.

And yes, she saved the world. A lot.

[Kim]

ZOMG I'd completely forgotten about Hush.  I must re-watch it.

[Ashaman42]

Hush and Once More With Feeling are great.

Funnily enough I was just debating buying all of Buffy and Angel the other day (along with Stargate, Andromeda and Farscape) as whilst I've seen lots of them I don't think I've seen all and certainly not in the right order.

I suspect once I'm done studying there will be a lot of boxsets to be consumed.

And I'm still in love with Willow and want to be her when I grow up.

[ian]

You've made me want to watch it all again. We binged it over a Christmas holiday concurrently with Angel. There are some truly standout moments of TV and it effortless veered from comedy (too many to mention) to very dark (The Body).

And it gave us bored now. And so many others.

[redshift]

I borrowed the DVD box set from a colleague last year and watched it all.  I realised that there was more than I remembered so I clearly missed some the first time round.  It was both better and worse than I remembered.

I was also surprised by the amount of crew in it.  Then I found that Joss Whedon has had no control over the transfers from the original 35mm film.  He shot for cropped 4x3 transmission, but whoever supervised the TK transfers either didn't know that or didn't care, and has transferred for widescreen, 16x9, with the result that many sequences contain grips, rails, vignettes, bounce boards, flags and other artefacts of construction.  In some ways that made it even more watchable, but that's probably just for me.

And yes, bored now is genius.  It's a phrase I should resurrect at work.

[mattc]

There are some truly standout moments of TV and it effortless veered from comedy (too many to mention) to very dark (The Body).

Perfectly put.

And yes, bored now is genius.  It's a phrase I should resurrect at work.

I know people who use that - it's never gone away. In fact I'd totally forgotten the source. So Buffy has become like Shakespeare.


And, yes Dawn. Hmmm ... OK, she was terrible. But the story-line that introduced her; that is one of the most original things I've ever seen. If anyone has seen the same trick before, please don't shatter my illusions! If you've seen it copied, I'm interested 

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

She was only terrible in season 5. Everybody was terrible in 6, and she was ok in 7.