BUFFY THE VAMPIRE POLLSTER

not including the comics bc i haven't read them

anyway the answer is 2

Ultimately Season 8 (the comic) was a load of shit and I assume S9 will be too.

Either 2 or 3, voted 3 because of Faith

3, come on. It doesn't have a dud all season and has about as many classic episodes as most 'great' tv shows ever do.

2 and 5 have the highest highs tho, in Surprise, Passions, Becoming, The Body and The Surprise.

Surprise? Gah I meant Innocence obv. I watched the end again, in the car w/ Giles and on the couch w/ Joyce and omg dunno if any telly has ever been that good. Ever.

a hoy hoy, how long did it take your series re-watch you mentioned some months back?

SEASON TRES

season 1 wasn't half bad tho - i surely hope it gets more votes than 6 &7. it was responsible large part for hooking me onto the show in the first place, bizarre enough (given context of subj. matter of the rest of the series)

I didn't start watching the show until season 5, and I still have a great deal of affection for that season. I think it is underrated.

Went for 2, but 2,3, and 5 are all completely classic.

season 3 really struck a chord w/ me, tho. a lot of it was just due to the coincidence that it was set during the last yr of high-school.. a pretty pivotal time for most everybody... but b/c it really had the last great cast as well.

anya was great but her novelty wore off her first season

obligatory rankings:

3,5,2,1,7,6

5 but not "because" of dawn

it's best season but i didn't notice until rewatch. 1 holds up the worst even though it's soooo snappy when you first see it

4's the hardest season to sit through and the payoff is the lamest (7 takes the most offensive quality dive but there's still plenty to see - <3 andrew)

s1 - ehhhh. it has its moments though, such as the first two episodes, Witch, Angel and Prophecy Girl. 6. Best Ep- Witch.
s2 - wooey. Starts slow, like you could take School Hard and skip the first 5 episodes and then BAM! Lie To Me, WML, Surprise, Innocence, I Only Have Eyes For You, Passions, Becoming - and we have the best romantic arc in TV history. 9.8. Best Ep- Shhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit, how to pick... Passions?
s3 - wooah. I guess I'd give Dead Man's Party a 7. Maybe Gingerbread too. Almost every episode is perfect or close to perfect television. Faith and the Mayor are sublime. 10. Best Ep- Graduation Day Pt. 1
s4 - sighh. Kinda rushed. Kinda confused. So obv they didn't know how to do two shows at once. Still one of the best shows in history w/ Fear Itself, Wild At Heart, Pangs, HUSH, the Faith arc, Superstar as the most meta thing not done by Community, the last two plus Restless. 8. Best Ep- This Year's Girl?
s5 - ;_;!!. Holy shit I <3 this show. I mean look at it. Family, Fool For Love, Shadow, The Body, I Was Made To Love You, Intervention, the Tara arc at the end and The Gift. Never will I wash dishes listening to the rumba the same again. 9.9
s6 - baddd. They sing, they raise the dead, they get depressed and drugged up, Giles leaves and it should have ended as a figment of crazy buffy's imagination. 7.
s7 - talky, speech after speech after speech after speech also the first good black guy in the show (in which we take kendra's accent into account). Oh but Selfless, Storyteller and Conversations With Dead People are amongst the greatest tv i've ever seen. 5.

rankings on the whole with replayability factored in: 5 >> 3 > 2 >>> 6 >> 4 > 7 > 1

noooooo i haven't finished this yet & want to cast an informed vote

andrew revived a lot of the nerdery i missed from xander. he dropped a lot of that after getting high construction job

2, 3, or 5 tho

Season 1 - lol
Season 2 - ANGEL
Season 3 - FAITH
Season 4 - um riley
Season 5 - DAWN

^lol these are p otm season synopses

xpost

I can do it in like a week but I no longer have s6 on dvd so its been years since i watched it all b2b.

Anya's best moments are in The Body and Selfless so meh to "wearing off" after her first season. She hadn't even warmed up!

Also Season 5 shouldn't be DAWN it should be SPIKE imo. What a fucking character arc.

Season 3 is nearly all duds and doesn't have a single great episode.

how far are you kev btw?

you...take that back xp

how far are you kev btw?

― Ravaging Rick Rude (a hoy hoy), Monday, September 26, 2011 3:43 PM (24 seconds ago)

u_u school started again - halfway through 6

Season 3 is nearly all duds and doesn't have a single great episode.

― Melissa W, Monday, 26 September 2011 20:43 (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

srs trolling going on here.

cool kev you can stop there. maybe watch normal again, selfless and cwdp.

2-4 was the peak for me, voted 3 because it had the best villains (faith and the david lynch-esque mayor)

anya is the best character in the history of television just fyi

could've used more rabbit scenes

oh god yeah

also kitten poker

honestly not a huge faith fan

even though it's always hilarious how she always thinks she's good at manipulating people or turning angel evil again and it never works

her daddything w the mayor's fun though and she's great in buffy's body

2 and 5 have the highest highs tho, in Surprise, Passions, Becoming, The Body and The Surprise.

― Ravaging Rick Rude (a hoy hoy), Monday, September 26, 2011 3:17 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

ya this is correct. the body is probably the best single episode of a show i've ever seen, at least for network. and the angelus arc is incredible.

gotta rep for S6 though, i'm a part of its small cult (and i'm not even a OMWF stan)

3 or 5 now i will read the thread

2
3
6
5
4/7
1

7 also has a bunch of really great episodes. opposite case with 6 -- OMWF is good and so is tabula rasa and nothing else, but the season arcs are great (ok i just really enjoy the dark willow story, which is probably challops but whatev). 7 has an awful full season arc but it also has selfless, conversations with dead people, storyteller, maybe a couple others i'm forgetting

6 has both better arcs and episodes than 7 u crazy. 7 is hard to defend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O06DGow63c

yeah i don't know. that episode feels like it's trying too hard with too slight a payoff to me. that whole season is so going through the motions.

oh and + wheelchair fight

um i think people are generally against moving the poll craze into ILE but would anyone be interested in a proper episodes poll (volunteering myself to organize if so)

that song >>>> all of omwf

gtfo

do you mean like with proper email voting or just a poll thread for each season?

only great song on omwf is the tara one, the rest gets by w/ joeks and context.

i mean proper email voting

i will help iyw. its not like my buff knowledge is limited (really should have spent this time on something more productive)

It would be a race for 2nd place with "The Body" taking the big prize, but it could be fun.

i dunno, i genuinely couldnt pick an obv winner from innocence, becoming, hush, body, gift and omwf.

Otm!!

can one skip season 1?

as discussed itt in June 2026, you know the characters now so yr fine skipping to the last two eps

ty

If you want to do the budget version of the first season, I'd say the first three episodes, Angel and the last two episodes will set you up for what comes after. But I do think ultimately they are all worth it.

skip the robot one tho

Four commercial breaks on a two hour movie is fine, four in 42 minutes is frustrating!

That's basically what we had to deal with (and then some!) watching anything back then.

for some reason i thought Willow said "bored now" for the first time in one of season 1 episodes, so was going to advocate for watching it based on this reason alone (apparently it actually happens in season 3)

To be fair I actually think Sarah Michelle Gellar can act or is learning to act, it's the rest I had a problem with.

I love that S1 ending episode was a homage to "Little Shop of Horrors" 1960, didn't see the remake.

SMG did 2 years on All My Children before she did Buffy - “can act” is facts!
She never met an emotional close-up that she couldn’t nail <3

She's so charming and then also convincingly hurt and angry and sad. One of the great TV matches of actor and role.

a tangent:

over a year or so of watching pluto dot tv, the ads for the 'royal kingdom' game(s) have gone from featuring complete randos to influencers i've never heard of to ppl like SMG and mccaulay culkin

it's vaguely embarrassing, but fine -- they're decades out of date and it's easy money

but mainly how does 'royal kingdom' -- which is both free to play and seemingly annoying as fuc -- make its money?

In-app purchases, I assume. People spend a lot of money on that stuff.

wild

I don't know, A list actors are all over commercials like never before.

it's the rest I had a problem with

Curious who you have the problem with, I think most of the (main) cast are good to great! Boreanaz isn't a great actor, and he doesn't really have chemistry with... anyone except Lorne in Angel come to think of it... but he's somehow a really good fit for the role. It's good that he isn't an over-serious Robert Pattinson type.

I hope no one rags on Alyson Hannigan's performance or I might end up succumbing to k-pop stan/swiftie levels of vitriol.

Boreanaz always my least favorite of the OG crew, imo he doesn't have the sufficient level of brooding charisma to carry the role. But SMG makes up for it, she supplies like 80% of the chemistry — I believe she's smitten with him even if idgi.

DB does much better once Angel (the show) gets going and he's no longer playing the heartthrob imo. I think he has decent chemistry with everyone in that cast

but yes he is spectacularly awful on Buffy S1

it's been a long time, but Charisma Carpenter is probably the best in S1 after SMG (maybe I'm thinking of S2 though). ASH should be good but his character is pretty one-note at first

I do not believe in ai but I’d honestly be interested in seeing how much more watchable the show is with no Xander

I remember being surprised that James Masters was so much older (relatively) than the rest of the cast, because at the time being in your late thirties seemed Very Old

xp haha yeah it sucks what a sour note he is in the otherwise peak seasons. I don't think I can ever rewatch this show, mostly for Whedon reasons plus over familiarity, but also Xander (as the Whedon stand-in) is such a bummer

Yeah, he forgot how old he was in relation to the rest of them too

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/ok-we-have-to-talk-about-that-song-james-marsters-wrote-for-michelle-trachtenberg

Boreanaz had never really acted before being in Buffy! he maybe had done a couple of sitcom guest spots but he was VERY green. It shows in S1 but also they didn’t give him a ton besides “be handsome & brood a lot”. I think as they expanded Angel’s role in s2-3 he was able to be more comedic & sarcastic & mean & he got a lot better . Having SMG as scene partner obviously shows his weaknesses but from what I read she helped him learn the ropes in the early days .

Nicholas Brendon is definitely another weak link. I think the reason he doesn't bother me much is that Xander is almost always supposed to be kind of lame and pathetic, so his stiff line readings kind of work as a guy who lacks self-confidence and can't put anything across very persuasively.

otoh I just rewatched the first episode where Seth Green shows up, and even with just like 5 lines you can tell he's going to be a featured player.

yeah tipsy otm re Xander. But I’ve seen the show so many times since it first aired I am just naturally kinda fond of all the characters. He’s playing an idiotic awkward selfish teenage boy, it’s not exactly the most forgiving role. Plus he’s the mouthpiece for most of Whedon’s lizard brain stuff

Seth/Oz was gold from the get go, love him SO much

I'm interested to rewatch Xander for the first time, I was definitely one of the many "Xander's my guy, the Zeppo is the best one" people when I first watched it

Xander doesn't have much of an arc, does he, he just keeps on fulfilling the role of a "regular guy" counterbalance to the rest of the gang

many xps
i'm more likely to find it unwatchable without xander tbh. and as for acting, brendon nails the character straight off the bat, he's way better than everyone else in the cast in series 1 imo

on my rewatch a few years back I found Xander (though not Nicholas Brendon) the worst part of season 1, incel Chandler is an exceedingly unappealing character. I think he got a bit better without changing too much, maybe just sanding off some of the worst parts of the incel side.

Plus he’s the mouthpiece for most of Whedon’s lizard brain stuff

The obvious plus to a Buffy without Xander would be no Anya.

hey now

how dare

xpost how would you even read that as a compliment

"i was being patient but it took too long" is the second most used line in this household

I don’t know if it was the intention, maybe it just reflects the different writers and how they responded to the character, but Xander seems like a really good depiction of a normal teenage boy - he’s annoying, he has genuinely positive qualities and can be a loyal and supportive friend, he can also be a reactionary and judgmental asshole, and you don’t really know for sure which side of him will be dominant once he’s an adult.

Yeah and there was also a plotline where they praised him for not raping Buffy. He’s a shit character.

xpost how would you even read that as a compliment

Why else would you mention this in defence of a character’s existence? If anything we should know less about Joss Whedon’s id.

nicholas brendon did his best with playing the thankless role of a total weasel

xxp idk you can also read that storyline as a dumb horny teenage boy inadvertently getting his ultimate fantasy and having enough basic decency to turn it down.
I didn’t think the episode was intended to make him heroic, he fucks up massively and has to demonstrate some of his better qualities to avoid complete disaster.

ivy otm

early seasons Xander is so toxic. tbf I used to like him too, and he's not *just* toxic, but as an adult it's extremely hard to watch him throw entitled tantrums about Buffy's choices, and then see him decide Willow is attractive as soon as she's in a relationship with someone else and isn't pining away for him, etc. The Zeppo is still a good ep and I think he's better in S3 and definitely by S4 where he's cut out of the social dynamic, but oof he's repellant a lot in S2

I think there are aspects of the show that can be more enjoyable to talk about than to watch - like, i think Xander is interesting as a character but he can be unbearable in a number of episodes. The season 6 villains are 10-15 years ahead of the curve in depicting the rancid misogyny in nerd culture and its darker consequences but i sure don’t love watching those guys for most of a season.

also if any aspect suffers from the Whedon fallout, his very pointedly introducing these nerds who are evil, NOT LIKE ME is it

otoh he's more honest about himself in Dollhouse, which I assume is 100% unwatchable now

xxpost gyac. JFC I said it as CONTEXT. All I said is that it’s a thankless role if anything made worse by the lizard brain stuff. It has aged poorly!
I’m not defending or complimenting anyone!
Please back off.

I love the supreme casualness of Oz calling his aunt and finding out how he caught lycanthropy from his nephew, it's so low-key you can miss it entirely

Yes! Such a great little detail, his chillness is unmatched

The season 6 villains are 10-15 years ahead of the curve in depicting the rancid misogyny in nerd culture and its darker consequences but i sure don’t love watching those guys for most of a season.