IvanF's Uninformed Reviews of the First Season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996-1997)...

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- IvanF's DVD Boxset, No-Name Review of
The First Season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996 - 1997) -
(Buffy moves to Sunnydale, Giles becomes her watcher, Willow and Xander join the Scoobies, Angel goes all unnecessarily evil, Buffy dies)

I've always hated the first season. And I probably always will hate the first season...

It's really that damn bad... I mean, how the hell could I ever love a season, where Buffy Summers wears the most absolute awful clothes she has ever donned in the entire damn series? And her hair?... umm... just not very flattering with the eyes...

But seriously, the main problem with the first season of Buffy, was that it took itself far too damn seriously... Joss Whedon had a dream, of creating a show of cheesy plotlines with cute dialogue and trippy love triangles in between... And he certainly got the cheesy plotlines part of it down pat... Teacher's Pet, The Pack, I Robot You Jane, and The Puppet Show will all infamously go down in history as having some of the most lame-ass plotlines ever conceived... on purpose, no less... and that's what's really scary in this new "horror comedy" genre of his...

The problem was, all of these episodes sucked. They really, really, ridiculously sucked... They did deal with the love triangle, with Willow loving Xander, Xander loving Buffy, and Buffy falling for Angel... And for episodes like Witch and Angel, the passion and chemistry between these characters actually worked... But for most of the episodes of the season, the real relationships between these four just felt flat compared to just how damn bad the plotlines really got at times. There's only so much of evil Praying Mantis sex demons and Cybermonsters in the internet that a person can take without going out of his mind and changing the goddam channel...

My absolute biggest gripe of the season, was that the clever and witty dialogue that would define the series in later seasons, was almost missing from every single episode in the first season... In Welcome to the Hellmouth and Witch, Buffy Summers established herself as an absolutely adorable character. Her lovely little quips and peppy little puns were exactly what television needed at the time... But was this completely forgotten by the second half of the season? In place of clever banter, were cliche vampires and really, really ridiculously dark rooms that were supposed to be so damn low budget that it would actually turn out funny...

... and I'm sorry... yes, I know that sometimes bad plotlines are just so bad that they actually turn out funny... but not in the first season, where every single episode has its own set of Bad Eggs... quite literally with the Praying Mantis lady, mind you...

None of the characters really developed that much in the first season... Buffy just fell into her romance with the ever useless Angel. And it wasn't even a romance I could believe. They just fell into each other's arms and that was it, like a cheap ass erotica book... Xander finally got the guts to ask Buffy out. But that went nowhere. And unfortunately Willow's love for him went nowhere in the series either... Cordelia was barely even in any of the episodes. And when she was, she acted completely one-dimensional without her klik of a Melody group... Giles was perhaps the only truly great character in the first season, next to those few shining moments where Buffy was as irresistible as ever... Joss Whedon bringing in a father figure (and a British one at that) was perhaps his greatest invention with his new Buffy series. A show about teen angst really did need a parent to tell everyone just how stupid they really are... too bad no-one told Joss just how dumb he was being with all his goddam puppetry of the penis plotlines...

So yes, I do hate the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's bad, bad, very bad episodes simply outweigh even the goddam negatives of the series, let alone the positives... But I will say one positive thing though. The first season of Buffy really did show potential. And I'm just proud that Mutant Enemy finally got the formula right by the third season of the show... otherwise I never would've had my first ever television crush...

... sigh... Sarah Michelle Gellar... when she got decent hair and clothes, at least...

Notable Episodes: Welcome to the Hellmouth, Witch, Angel, Prophecy Girl
Best Episode of the Season: (... no comment...)

Giles was about the only decent thing about the first season of Buffy, and he showed it to Welcome to the Hellmouth... His introduction as a British, caring book worm was exactly what the series needed. And for the time, his big revelations of werewolves and demons all being true were pretty remarkable... Looking back, his speech about The Old Ones has a lot more meaning now than it did back then. And you gotta love his rapport with Buffy, considering she really didn't seem to want a new Watcher...

Sarah Michelle Gellar may have had awful fashion sense in the first season, but she was still the same Buffy I've always loved. She may not have had many jokes this episode, but she still was really sweet, seemingly scarred from her first year as a Slayer... I really could've done without the whole Angel thing in the first season though. It just looks ridiculous now, knowing that Angel spent 100 years of eating vermin, only to act like a total jackass around Buffy in this episode. The misdirection for his character may have worked for the first season, but absolutely made his relationship with Buffy just plain painful to watch in later years...

Willow and Xander were introduced along with Cordelia, and none of the characters really did anything. The former two were nerds, the latter loved LA. Nothing big, and nothing remarkable ever happened (although this was Cordy's only funny performance of the entire first season). The characters didn't really have chemistry with each other yet... Probably the only scene I actually enjoyed this entire episode was the sight of Buffy picking out a vampire in the Bronze. The banter between Giles and Buffy that scene would define their characters for the rest of the series, and that was definitely the kind of banter I enjoyed...

I definitely did not enjoy how boring and cliche the vampires were this episode, or how serious The Master and Luke were taken... And Darla? What was wrong with Darla? Not only was she dirt ugly (how the heck did they manage that?), but she had no personality either.

Plotwise, Welcome to the Hellmouth was a pretty bad series premiere. But the episode did establish the show as a true horror comedy... and it was the comedy part that did eventually win me over, even if it took another two seasons to do so...

The Harvest was just a bad episode... The only thing memorable was the sight of Xander accidentally staking his dear ol' friend. His useless friend at least... Joss had wanted this guy to survive half a season before being vamped. But since he only got half a season to do his show, he settled for vamping up the second episode of the series...

The episode simply took itself too damn seriously... You have the Master, ranting like a loony about being able to escape. You have talk of the Apocalypse in just the second episode of the series, when the only thing really going on is a vampire feeding. And Luke was perhaps the most cliche and one dimensional vampire in the history of the show... I'd complain about Darla too, considering she got beaten down by just some Holy Water, but at least she got to redeem herself in a later episode...

While Welcome to the Hellmouth at least had the fresh feelings of meeting Giles for the first time, of Xander finding Buffy's lost stake, and of Buffy being her tried and true witty self, what did The Harvest have?... Except for maybe a few moments of Xander, Willow, and Buffy talking about what it means to be a Slayer, this episode just didn't have the witty comic dialogue that the Buffy series really needs to be enjoyable. Instead, we just got a super serious episode, and some really bad lighting in the underground sewer scenes...

... well, at least Harmony was introduced... although hitting the DEL key does not delete a whole computer program... I'll hold that against this episode too... along with Angel being an unnecessarily evil jackass yet again...

Chalk the first one up for Buffy... She always claimed throughout the series that she would never kill a human. Yet here was the first one... although it was only by accident, and really it was more of an eternal curse than a kill, but still...

Witch surprised me the second time I watched it... It was actually a pretty good episode, and probably the most overall enjoyable one from the first season... I mean, Amy was introduced, and she really was cute and innocent back in season one. The cheerleading outfit looked good on her, not to mention the axe... She could've made decent friends with Buffy, if only she didn't somehow turn evil in later seasons...

But what made Witch really strong was the love triangle of the first season... Xander mooning over Buffy, while Willow mooned over Xander was what made this episode special. A lot of clever dialogue was written throughout Witch. And even if her outfit was ugly, Buffy sure did seem spunky and cute as a cheerleader again. The happy-happy joy joy hex on her also helped a bit...

Witch also had one of the better battles of the first season... I actually thought it was a smart idea at the time, to have a body switch sort of idea so early in a series. And the mama witch in the final battle actually did kick Buffy's ass in decent ways that didn't look completely under budget... Overall, the plot didn't grate my brain this episode. And the script was definitely strong enough to make the Witch probably the strongest episode of the season.

The only thing that really bugged me was the driving test gone wrong... I sincerely didn't need a personal reminder of that... but that's besides the point...

Oh, God no... This episode was just so stupid that it doesn't even deserve a review...

At least it started the whole Xander-is-only-attractive-to-evil-women thing. And it still makes me laugh, seeing Buffy fight a demon with bug spray of all things... But the Praying Mantis lady? The eggs after biting the teacher's head off? The 180 Exorcist head spin? How lame can an episode be?... on purpose, I mean...

The episode didn't even have the strong writing that Buffy defines itself as a show with. All that really happened, was Willow pined over Xander. And Xander just went ga-ga over a teacher who really didn't look attractive to me... All I really remember from this episode, was the horrible horrible battle against the Praying Mantis lady at the end. And you know an episode is really bad, when you have on camera a shadow of a sword cutting up absolutely nothing on the ground... silhouette montages definitely haven't worked since the B-rated movies of the 50s...

I didn't really like this episode either, because the foo-Anointed One was a lame ass villain... It didn't take long until he got his ass fried in an incinerator. And up to that point, the episode had tried to make him out to seem uber-religious and deadly... which he really didn't turn out to be in the end... instead, the Anointed One turned out to be a little kid with an annoying voice... who really made vampires look more pathetic than creepy in the end, but that's a story for another day... at least Spike got to kill the little bitch...

The only thing I really liked in this episode, was poor Xander weeping over Buffy and her date. The scene where Xander tells Owen that Buffy doesn't like to be touched, was probably the most hilarious moment of the entire season... And this episode also started the startling contrast between super-serious and ultra-meaningless scenes. The switch from the "end of the world talk", to just Buffy and Giles bored in a cemetery, was exactly the kind of brilliant writing that I would fall in love with later in the series...

But for now, this episode still sucked... Owen was a waste of time, not being anything more than a simpleton of a date. And Angel was unnecessarily ambiguous again, although at least his jealousy angle helped... And for the most part? All I really remember, is Giles getting himself into trouble by visiting the morgue himself. And all those scenes really did suck... I mean, I've never been a fan of the horror part of the "horror comedy" genre. I'd much rather laugh at Giles' god-awful car that he brought to the Americas...

Never Kill a Boy on the First Date had an interesting title, and perhaps an interesting premise... And I loved the Buffy line, to page her when the apocalypse comes... Episodes that deal with Buffy's Slayer job ruining her social life would become hilarious in later seasons. But not quite yet... not with the Anointed One sort of crap this episode...

... honestly, this prophecy crap? Doesn't Giles ever notice that there are prophecies dealing with stuff... after the coming Apocalypse?... chances are, the apocalypse is gonna be stopped then, if there's gonna be another... don't these people ever read?...

For God's sake, Xander got taken over by evil hyena spirits or some crap like that... Probably the only scenes I enjoyed this episode, was when he got to kick Buffy's ass. And maybe when he pretended like he didn't remember anything at the end... And oh, maybe the pig was cute too. I've never had a thing for pigs, but Buffy did this episode. And I do have a thing for Buffy, so...

The only thing I really enjoyed about the first season, was poor geeky Xander desperately pining away for Buffy. But we didn't really get that in The Pack... we got Willow wanting Xander instead, and feeling all rejected. And I'm sorry, but I just couldn't care less for her... Mopey girls just aren't as funny as pathetic guys to me. And The Pack didn't have pathetic guys... Instead, Xander got to be cool, almost eating the first principle of the school and everything. And c'mon already... Hyenas? Can't the writers think of something better than a group of students, on the prowl for hot dogs?...

The first season of Buffy was quite an experimentation It tried to go for such wacky and god-awful ideas, to make a real identity for the show... Thank God the series got over its identity-crisis lameness by the later half of the second season of the show. I guess I should be thanking episodes like The Pack then, for getting these awful ideas of out of Joss Whedon's head... but I just can't thank an episode that I hate so damn much. I just can't...

Angel suffered from being an episode that took itself too seriously... There was really no humour. Buffy just kept obsessing over vampire Angel, without ever making those cute little quips of hers that really define her as a great character... And Angel himself? Finally, he got to show some of his tortured soul of a self routine. He was no longer unnecessarily evil, which was a start, but... I've never liked his tortured soul character anyhew. And his romance with Buffy was way too forced... I much prefer the hard work that poor, pathetic Spike had to do to win over a girl's heart...

There's only one reason that Angel actually stands as one of the better Buffy episodes of the first season... Darla was finally given a chance to be evil this episode. And even if she was cliche evil as much as The Master was, Julie Benz really did play the seductive school girl character to the letter... We learned a lot about her history with Angelus this episode. And even if Darla herself had perhaps the worst aim in the entire world with guns, at least vampires finally got to seem threatening for once instead of just dumbass brawlers... Even the Master finally got into the act of things. With Darla around, staking The Three, The Master even started to make some jokes. Vampires were finally being treated not just as one dimensional metaphors, but as interesting characters themselves...

... although Joss Whedon would always think that backfired against him with Spike... I personally will always thank him, for finally getting away from the cliche nature of evil at least...

So instead, we just got the cliche nature of poor souled Angel... Nothing really good came from his little love fest with Buffy this episode, except maybe for the girl viewers of the show... Xander at least tried to save some scenes with jealousy comedy. But overall? This episode just took itself too seriously... It was a nice Angel history lesson. But also a bad prelude to the way over-serious first season of Angel on his own show...

The first season of Buffy was all about bad romances... and Willow finally got her chance, with a robot no less...

Okay, I hate this episode. Not just because I hated the idea of a demon being omnipotent on the internet (yet doing almost nothing with his power), but because of all the goddam debates between Giles and Ms. Calender over the computer revolution... I mean, if she was a "technopagan", why was she so one-sided in all her computer glorifying? And why did Giles play the cliche musty-books sort of character? Their arguing just rolled my eyes, because it was such a watered-down example of all the moronic debates that did go on during that new era of the public internet... Plus, I hate this episode for the awful digitization effects of the Corrupter Demon on screen. But that's besides the point...

The only good thing to come out of this episode, was Buffy making fun of Willow for her little internet crush. But that didn't last long, with scenes of cyber suicides that took themselves way too seriously... Having a ton of geeks following an evil robotic demon just doesn't work in my book. And Willow being wooed by evil e-mails certainly didn't help either...

... these are ideas just so bad... that you hope that they'd be funny... but they just aren't...

I've always hated how computers are used on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and this episode was definitely no exception... At least I Robot, You Jane was meant to be cheesy as hell. But considering the entire season was exactly the same way?... I'm sorry, but sometimes bad plotlines are just bad plotlines (which is the case for pretty much every first season episode, actually...)...

Joss Whedon sure has some dumb ideas... He waited his whole life it seems, just to make an episode about an evil Dummy. Except that the evil dummy really isn't evil... Joss sure loves his misdirection. And it worked, in episodes like Witch and... umm... nothing else actually...

Because I hated this episode. The Puppet Show not only brought back horrid memories of my own Christmas Concerts and crap like that... but the episode had a terrible script. The whole thing was about Buffy being afraid of a little Dummy from her nightmares. And then the episode turned even more cheesy, with a badly handled Dummy character hitting on Buffy (in more ways than one) in the stands... The episode just wasn't funny to me in the end. The only thing that was, was the sight of Buffy, Xander and Willow pulling an Oedipus on stage at the end. And that technically wasn't even part of the episode... credits don't really count...

Joss loved the idea of a Dummy waltzing around with a knife... that's all this episode really was about. It was once again more about the horror than the comedy in the "horror comedy" genre. Until the big twist at least, with the lameass magician student, which I certainly could've done without... The Puppet Show was a great example of Joss' vision of a high school on a hellmouth. Seeing Giles make a power circle to find the demon amongst the group is always a crowd pleaser... But without all the witty dialogue that usually comes along with the Slayer package, all you have left is a bad episode that takes itself too damn seriously... for most of the episode, at least...

... well, at least Principle Snyder was introduced... that's gotta be worth something, along with Buffy's classic Oedipusathon at least...

Honestly, how am I supposed to care about an episode, about the deepest and darkest fears within Buffy?... of loosing to the Master... of turning into a vampire... when there's giant flying bugs, evil clowns, and a monster of a baseball coach in the mix too?...

... plus, Buffy really did look awful as a vampire... Couldn't she have unscrunched her face at some point or another?...

The idea of the nightmare world becoming reality was a pretty decent idea. But the episode just ended up so damn dumb that I couldn't take it after a while... Now, I can tolerate dumb episodes. Hell, I can even like them, as long as Joss writes in enough cute Buffy puns or Xander pining moments to make the torrent action all fly by more smoothly... But there was none of that this episode. All I really remember, is Buffy following around a little kid, scared out of her mind of living out her worst fears of dreams... and then Xander was half naked... then Willow was singing, ala Restless... and oh, we got Cordy joining the Chess team as well... and believe it or not, I don't find that comedy...

... I was actually kicked out of the chess team... I sucked... that's a fear all too close to reality, I'm afraid...

There was only one good scene this entire episode... Marcie's yearbook did bring back good memories of my own high school days. Except for one damn thing... NOBODY signed my fucking year book. At least Marcie got a thousand "have a great summer", kisses of death. But what about me?... Dammit, why didn't I turn invisible and turn into an elite asshole of an assassin?...

With that said, this episode was yet another first season example of an episode that took itself too damn seriously... It completely ruined Cordy's character. Because at least in later seasons, when Cordy is actually acting compassionate, she mixes it in with a bunch of cruelty and bigotry as well. But she barely had any of that this episode... Instead, she was a one-dimensional damsel in distress. And not only was she boring, but she was cliche for her type of character as well with all the lonely speeches...

And then we got all those awful Marcie flashback scenes, of her being ignored and all, when all these scenes ever did was make the episode seem more overdramatic than it already was... All the characters this episode ever did was pity ol' Marcie. They talked about what it felt like to disappear, or what she must've gone through to become a psycho. But where was the witty comedy? Where was the clever dialogue? Once again, the horror part of the horror comedy genre took over. And that's the reason why I really can't stand the first season of Buffy...

... well, at least Marcie was kind of cute... yes, I have a thing for invisible girls. So sue me...

Let me just get one thing off my chest... My God, that dress that Buffy was wearing was absolutely hideous...

... and oh, she sort of died this episode... I guess that would've made headlines back in the day...

Not for me though... Buffy the Vampire Slayer is rather hit or miss with its season finales. And Prophecy Girl was definitely a miss... Because except for some puns near the end, once again Joss left out the trademark cute comedy that would define the series in later seasons. Instead, he tacked on grand speeches about Buffy being too young to die, and how she wanted to quit the gig and all. And I'm sure that to the girls of the pre-reality show ages, that this sort of melodramatic crap could've been interesting... there was the imagery of her ripping off the cross, afterall...

But I'm not interested in any of that crap. I didn't care that Xander brought Buffy back to life, even after she rejected him... and I certainly didn't care for Angel, the most useless character in the entire season (well, next to Cordy anyhew...)... All I cared about, was how stupid the Hellmouth demon looked when it was spewing out of the library. And all I cared about, was how cliche the Master acted this episode, except for his Richter scale sort of comment... And the big fight at the end, which left the Master as a pile of dust? While I'm thankful that Matrix kicks hadn't been invented yet, I really could've used some sort of real action... The whole vampire thrall thing just doesn't work when a girl is wearing as hideous of a dress as that one...

Honestly, what was wrong with the Buffy fashion designers in the first season?...

Prophecy Girl was a big episode for a lot of fans, but to me, all I can see is wasted potential... Once again, Cordy acted like her saint self again. Willow and Xander didn't have enough clever dialogue in their love triangle, except for perhaps the whole date rehearsal thing... Giles was strong as the protective father figure again, but he just wasn't as endearing as he was in the first episodes of the season. And Buffy herself just took the whole situation too damn seriously... So what if she was going to die? Who doesn't in this day and age anyways?...

If you haven't gotten the clue yet, I really only like Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the show is cute and funny and witty in all the right ways... But the only episodes that really demonstrated this in the first season, were Witch and maybe some parts of Welcome to the Hellmouth... Every other episode, Prophecy Girl included, simply took themselves too damn seriously, trying to establish the show more as a cheesy horror than a teen angst comedy... and as a guy, as much as it pains me to say this... I really do need teen angst girls... as long as they're as adorable as Sarah Michelle Gellar was...

... but my God, what was with her fashion sense this season?... that dress was hideous, and so was the first season... but I digress...