The Glade 4.0

It's been over 11 years since the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV.

I have, over the last year and a half, re-watched all of Buffy on Netflix(and synchronized it with the first four seasons of Angel, and plan to continue with Angel season 5 over the summer.)

The Internet has not been kind to BtVS seasons 6 or 7, with a lot of fans decrying the last two seasons as somehow inferior to the first 5.

After the incredible peice of television that was Chosen, I must respectfully disagree.

Buffy seasons 6 & 7 were, for me, the two best seasons of the series. The show never "jumped the shark." Its two weakest seasons were 1 and 4. It seems based on individual episodes, the public generally agrees, they just don't realize it. The average episode rankings by the same fans on IMDB that "hate" seasons 6 and 7 are as follows:

Season 3: 8.23/10
Season 6: 7.86/10
Season 7: 7.63/10
Season 2: 7.10/10
Season 5: 6.86/10
Season 4: 6.36/10
Season 1: 5.33/10

The series finale was simultaneously triumphant, gut-wrenching, hillarious, definitively final, and yet somehow still left plenty of room for more stories to be told. In fact, Buffy finished off in such an epic way, with the same snappy dialogue and incredible plot-writing that it maintained throughout most of the series, that I have been curious as to how it has aged so well. I even enjoyed Angel season 4 this time, and I previously found it unwatchable (to the point that I realized this is the first time I've ever been able to finish it.)

I believe i now understand why this is:

These shows are not written in a way that is always friendly to episodic TV watching. I had a hard time waiting a week or longer with the plot and characters in an untenable and unacceptable situation. Too often they seem to go off track and drastically changed the show's paradigms, before ultimately fixing them. This actually works fine when binge watching, and able to see what happens next, immediately. But when you've got to wait weeks or months for a situation you hate to be resolved, it can drag on viewership. Buffy and Angel have aged wonderfully (with the exception of some of the costumes and makeup on the demons. Hell, Oz's werewolf-form was bad from the beginning. Budget can matter.) Everything still works. It never lost a step.

I'm heading up north this week to the land of trees, lakes, mosquitos and insufficient Internet access. I've got my tablet loaded up with Buffy Seasons 8 & 9 comics.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I still feel like season 7 had a little bit too much of the of out-of-nowhere plot contrivances.
The Scythe, the women-watching-the-watchers, the Amulet Spike takes out the Hellmouth with. I won't go so far as to call it a deus ex machina, but its pretty close to that line.

On the other hand, Season 6 is probably my favorite, and I quite enjoy watching season 7 even with these plot problems

Must have had some kind of brain fart. Season 6 is good, but Season 5's Fool for Love and The Body are some of my favorite episodes of any TV series ever.

The Body is soul crushing the first time you see it.

_________________
Raell Kromwell

My favorite Buffy episodes (don't ask me to rank these ones in relation to each other):

Passion (2)
Becoming, Parts 1&2 (2)
Band Candy (3)
Graduation Day, Parts 1&2 (3)
The Initiative (4) - if only for the part where Spike tries to eat Willow. Funniest moment in the series.
Hush (4)
Fool for Love (5)
The Body (5)
Once More With Feeling (6)
Tabula Rasa (6)
Selfless (7)
Conversations with Dead People (7)
Chosen (7)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

You really have a yen for killing off characters and deep despair;-)
How many of those episodes have someone dying or being ex'd off? 5? (Passion, Becoming, Graduation Day, The Body, Chosen) with Fool for Love, Selfless being about a death wish of a main character.

The Zeppo is by far my favorite of all other Buffy episodes. An episode with a normal Buffy world-ending plot, but one that isn't really shown in the foreground. Instead, we follow Xander and his feelings of uselessness. And many dramatic, emotional standard Buffy crap suddenly interrupted by humor.

And by the end? "The world will never know how close it came to ending last night." And the gang will never know how close they came to having their lives ended, and thus not saving the world.

Go Xander.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

The four part arch of Seeing Red > Villains > Two to Go > Grave also came within inches of making my list.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Also tempted to add "The Pack" (Season 1) to my list.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So in that new batch you kill of 3 more characters (Warren, Tara, Principal Flutie) and one character who wants to kill not only themselves but the whole world.

I suppose, yes. I wouldn't call Warren (a villain) or Principal Flutie (a redshirt who lived 5 episodes longer than expected) particularly surprising, though. I also would posit that the episodes where someone died tended to be the best written episodes. They were thought through and either written by, or closely collaborated with, Joss Whedon, and carefully planned to fit into the continuity. You rarely kill off a recurring character in a throw-away monster-of-the-week episode.

Still, your point is valid. Multi-episode characters who die in the lists I've provided:
====================================
Principal Robert Flutie
Jenny Calendar
Kendra Young the Vampire Slayer
Harmony Kendall (Vamped)
Principal R. Snyder (dangerous job)
Mayor Richard Wilkins III (Villain!)
Joyce Summers
Tara Maclay
Warren Mears (Villain!)
Cecily Addams/Halfrek the Vengeance Demon
Caleb (Villain!)
Amanda the Vampire Slayer
Aud/Anyanka/Anya Christina Emanuella Emerson-Jenkins
"Spike" William "the Bloody" Pratt (again. And he got better!)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Don't forget Angel (Becoming) (sent to hell), Nikki Wood (Fool for Love) in there too since she has appearances in at least 2 later episodes. (though admittedly as flashbacks/The First), and Faith is put in a Coma (Graduation Day).

In fact, Graduation day sees the departure a huge number of characters from the series as regulars/semi Regulars (though obviously we see Wesley, Cordelia, Harmony, Faith, The Mayor, Jonathan, Angel again in one form or other)

Angel was both already dead (which kinda rules out Spike) and wasn't killed/comes back almost immediately. Nikki Wood died decades earlier and that was just a flashback. Her death is actually the first time we see her.
Faith is both a villain, and survives and is redeemed, which is a bit of a soft ending for her.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Taly gets off on suffering. People dying makes her nipples hard and her panties moist.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Giles's reappearance at the end of "Two to Go" is my favorite Big-damn-heroes moment of all time.

Oh hell yeah, and the credits fakeout by keeping his name out of the intro! So great.

My "crowning moment of awesome" for Giles was in The Gift.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I loved the Buffy Season 8 comics dealing with Faith & Giles.

_________________
When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?