Buffy: How did this show get popular?

Really? Even in Season 1? 'Cause there I'd say the season finale, "Prophecy Girl", was the best episode of the season, while the previous Story Arc episodes had been pretty lackluster.

Or the seaosn 2 and 3 finales? I like the schiz out of both the first parts, and love the actual finale in 2 a lot as well.

I can see your point with Season 4, which is such a shame. I wish they'd been able to keep a hold of Lindsay Crowse.

^ The Zombie Walsh reveal was spoiled on the dvd episode menu. Drat.

The fact that people have a bone to pick with Marti Noxon is news to me. Reminds me a bit of Jeri Taylor: an earnest writer who doesn't know how to position a female lead. This is all speculatory, but it reminds me of this post on Nostalgia Chick's blog about women in fiction.

Season 4 and 6 had the weakest Myth Arc finales: season 4 because the entire Initiative/Adam arc was very hit and miss (meaning it was hard to really care) and season 6 just because of sketchy writing, nothing in the season was going towards a true "end of the world" scenario but they threw one in the last episode just to raise the stakes. Seasons 1, 3 and 4 were just "really bad things" and not actual apocalypses, and keeping to that made it stronger.

The only problem with season 1, 2 and 5 is that there is only so much you can do on a TV budget and TV time frame, they were going for apocalyptic chaos and could never realistically show it. Season 1 fights in general were particularly stilted compared to the later seasons including Buffy's entire battle with the Master in the finale, season 2 was largely just an implied apocalypse ("If we don't stop the statue the world will end") and season 5 showed a bit of "the end of the world" coming but to me the final battle with Glory felt too short (True, Buffy had the god-hammer but after a full season of throwing her around Glory went down rather easy).

Season 3 also suffered from a budget issues and an inability to show the giant snake demon too much, but seeing the entire graduating class (at least 100+ people) toss off their robes armed to the hilt and then BLOWING UP Sunnydale High it still managed to be satisfying. The season 7 finale, due to being the Grand Finale, went all out and the result is a "Did they just DO that?" I always get chills when the potentials become full slayers, and collapsing the hellmouth and destroying all of Sunnydale Lord Of The Rings style gave a feature film quality to it.

The show always struggled with showing a budget apocalypse. Arguably the most effective attempt at it was in Angel, with Jasmine. Which was just acting, no special effects at all (outside that man on fire, and the occasional SFX on Jasmine herself.)

It was also hilarious, yet still creepy. And was largely sucessful because it was using elements from at least as far back as Season 3 of Buffy.

"I have 17 cats, and I've changed all their names to Jasmine!"

edited 4th Jul '11 12:09:41 AM by Nicknacks

Series 3 5 and 7 definitely had the best endings.

3 - the dramatic reveal of all the students covered head to toe in weapons and vampire-repellants, proving that they've got the drop on the Mayor rather than the other way around. Awesome stuff, and makes me want to have been there with them.

5 - did feel climactic, and Sacrifice is one of the saddest pieces of music I've ever heard. And Spike's reaction to it all is incredibly touching.

7 - I also get chills when I see the power awaken. I'm one of those who believes by the way that Buffy actually died again in that scene, and that she revived herself by tapping into the First itself. All the Slayers seemed to get much more powerful after that. Epic stuff.

Season 2 Finale is the only thing I'd call a proper climax. Everything else was...ok.

Keep in mind I still have not started to watch season 5 yet.

edited 4th Jul '11 7:28:17 PM by MrAHR

It's surprising what they managed to in Season 4 given the constraints. Like Mackey said, the budget apocalypse was laughable (and mostly off-screen), and Adam's scheme didn't really strike the right note of terror, to quoth Angelus. But the Initiative sets were cool.

Season 5 mostly went through the motions. The S.6 finale was so good that I watched it twice in a row.

edited 4th Jul '11 8:13:42 PM by johnnyfog

I've actually liked all the climaxes including season Four. Especially as Four's climax was far more interesting than the whole season.

Season's two was amazing and full of amazing conclusions for each characters. Season 3 was cool, but it lacked...something. I'd say that it's mostly because this was an end for many characters in an emotional level, yet the writing didn't raise to that ocassion. But it was still good, imo.

Season five's finale was god, six too, and seven was...ouch, I can't watch it again. So dull.

I liked them, I just didn't think they were appropriately climaxy. In a show such as this, it's kinda like a B+ on a report card of straight As.

Prophecy Girl was about as good as season 1 ever got.

Becoming was one of the best episodes of the series.

Graduation day was good, but not amazing.

Primeval was the best part of season 4, because season 4 was eh.

The Gift, wile not perfect, was still a very good episode.

Grave was one of the best episodes of season 6, in my opinion, and I'm in the minority of people who like season 6.

I haven't seen Chosen yet.

Though really, the main plots are probably the weakest part of the series for me anyway. I watch more for the characters and dialogue and development and such than to find out whether or not Buffy saves the day.

I actually thought all of the series finales were appropriately climaxy. Well, except Season 4, but that was kinda the point.

They also seemed really well constructed, with the exception of the Season 4 climax (total Deus Ex Machina, to the point that the only plot relevance of Restless is establishing why they can't use that specific spell again) and the Season 6 one (almost there, but even in Buffy, a world-ending MacGuffin needs some establishment). My personal favorite is the Season 5 ender. It is almost perfect, IMO.

I actually kinda wonder how you would make the climaxes any more powerful.

I've read where female fans have said they enjoyed the show particularly because Buffy was a strong, active heroine who wasn't sexualized up the wazoo. I'm sure that helped it's popularity, along with being genre savvy and (usually) cleverly written.

Didn't hurt that all the main female leads were really rather hot looking, even if they weren't blatantly sexualized. Plus Spike and Angel for the ladies, and some of the guys of course.

I don't know anyone who thinks Xander is hot.

Presumably the actor who played him.

They picked some out-of-work plumber to play Xander, who in turn was based on Joss Whedon. It makes sense that he's not a beefcake.

By today's standards he's gargoyle ugly, but then that says more about the media than his looks.

I always found Bt VS more interesting in abstract than in reality. It has a lot of things about it that sound like it should be interesting, but I always found actually trying to watch it to be a bit of a slog. It was a very silly show that took itself too seriously. That's something that can often be charming, but the show was too self aware for that.

Also, the dialog is highly overrated. A lot of the "witty" lines are ham-handedly set up and there isn't a lot of variety in the voice.

It's definitely a show that wanted to be bigger than it was but couldn't quite get there. A lot of the make-up effects and costumes were subpar, very few of the episodes were genuinely scary.

And even by todays standards Xander/Nicolas Brendon is more "nerdy-handsome" than macho-handsome, which of course has nothing to do with real world standards but for Hollywood it worked well enough.

edited 11th Mar '13 12:48:32 PM by KJMackley

Ouch. Can they even show that on TV...?

It also avoided the ever present 90's anti-hero trope. Seeing a cute 5'2 blonde girl beat the shit out of vampires and monsters was something fresh compared to the infinite number of monster/horror movies in the 80's and 90's. We don't see it now because all of the horror movies now are more situational horror than thing killing everyone horror.