Return to Sunnydale: The Great "Buffy" Rewind, Season One

This summer, I embarked on a rather ambitious project, if I say so myself: thanks to the glories of Netflix instant and the infinite patience/passing interest of my special lady friend, I am going to watch every single episode of "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer," and then blog about my thoughts on the show here, one season at a time. This is the first installment in that series.

In my late-middle school/early high school years, I knew a lot of people - a lot of girls, anyway - who loved "Buffy." And while I would catch the occasional episode here and there and generally knew what was going on the in the show even when I wasn't watching it, it never became must-see-TV for me, for reasons I still can't quite define.

However, something has happened over the last couple of years: I have slowly but surely begun turning into a Joss Whedon fanboy, and I'm going about it all wrong. It all started during the writers' strike of a few years back, during which Whedon created "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog," a web series Tara introduced me to which I immediately fell in love with. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now.

After "Dr. Horrible," one of Tara's good friends bought her a "Firefly" box set and, just as with "Dr. Horrible," I instantly fell in love with the space western series, and I really enjoy its big screen continuation, "Serenity." Hell, I even bought the comics because I couldn't get enough of those characters and that story.

But still, being the obsessive geek that I am, I felt bad for falling in love with the Whedonverse without experiencing "Buffy," a series he put seven seasons of work into. I had seen the feature film version (which I hear Joss is none too fond of) and I had the earlier-in-life flirtations with the series I described above, but I felt like now was the right time to take the plunge.

And I have to say, after having knocked back the first season of "Buffy," I'm really enjoying myself. Sure, it's not great. Hell, there are some episodes that I'd consider flat-out terrible, but it's a fun ride, and I'm curious to see where the show went after season one.

(Note: I'm not going to do an episode-by-episode breakdown, because neither you nor I have the time for that; instead, I'm going to give you my general impressions of the season.)

The tricky thing about "Buffy" appears to be the overall tone of the show: there's some campy shit that goes on in these episodes (I'm looking at you, ancient Italian demon that haunts a high school's intranet for the purposes of flirting with a shy, bookish girl before possessing a giant makeshift robot with glowing eyes and horns) but each episode is grounded in issues that were on the minds and hearts of myself and my "Buffy"-watching friends when we were in school: popularity, rejection, infatuation, friendship, love, longing and confusion all being as prominent in the show as any monsters.

As a result, the performers who are the most successful in the show's first season are the ones who pull off the balancing act between camp and all-too-real emotional turmoil: Alyson Hannigan (Willow), be-still my beating heart, is perfect at this. You know that Italian internet demon robot thing I was telling you about? Well, it was after her, and she sold the hell out of the shy girl looking for her shot at companionship at the other end of those awfully strange online conversations. Bless her heart, even when the show falters, which it does quite often in season one, Hannigan's performance never does.

Every time Hannigan was on screen, the show seemed to step up its game, and the same could be said for Anthony Stewart Head (Giles) and David Boreanaz (Angel). Two solid actors, they bring so much more to their underwritten characters than what must have been on the page, and the couple of scenes they have together were my favorite of the season.

Other performers, however, haven't fared so well: Nicholas Brendon (Xander) has yet to master the art of delivering overly-witty Whedonisms and Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, sure does kick a lot of ass, but when it comes time to hit the deep emotional notes, she and the show sometimes waver, not sure how straight or campy to play key moments.

While there were plenty of season one episodes ("Teacher's Pet," "The Pack," "Out of Mind, Out of Sight") that I wouldn't be surprised to discover are legendary in fan circles for their awfulness, the show in general took an interesting arc as the season progressed: the ideas didn't get any smarter, but the execution got better, as if the crew in front of the camera and behind the scenes were getting closer to honing "Buffy"'s tricky tone.

Two fine examples of this actually aired back-to-back: "The Puppet Show" and "Nightmares." The former is based on the goofiest of horror concepts - the killer ventriloquist dummy - and plays it for equal parts laughs and scares. And you know what? It works, thanks in large part to how the episode's plot plays with the conventional trappings of that particular cliche.

And "Nightmares," while not making the most sense in the world plot-wise, strikes a similar chord: the plot revolves around the main characters' worst nightmares coming to life. Some of them are funny (Willow's), some are kind of scary (Xander's) and some are nearly tragic (Buffy's/Giles'). All in all, good stuff to be found here.

So now I'm 12 episodes into "Buffy" and with Halloween right around the corner, I'm ready for more. Stay tuned, faithful readers.