This issue seems to be real opener of the season, the one where the plot and themes of the season are really introduced (which is something that happened in BtVS seasons 2,3,4 and 5, where the season premiere was character-driven and either dealing with fallout from the previous season, or it was s standalone hinting at future character issues ( Read more... )

I know that a lot of people hate this episode, but it’s an OK little early seasons horror story with some nice moments between Buffy, her friends and her mom, although nothing particularly important happens and it could be taken out without the story suffering at all. Nothing puts it above average for BtVS but nothing puts it below either.

( Read more... )

One of the high points of the show and its first really heartbreaking episode, this was the moment when I first realized BtVS was one of the greatest dramas on TV. Having Angel go evil was a bold move, but the real game-changer was having him kill a character we know and care about and cause great pain and loss to a core Scooby member.

( Read more... )

So, finally, after a long wait, three preview pages, lots of craziness in the fandom caused by spoilers and a couple of weird early reviews and people's general tendencies to read their own preconceptions and obsessive peeves into the text and several really bizarre quasi-controversies with some things blown way out of proportion, I finally read ( Read more... )

This episode is mostly known for the wacky love-spell-gone-wrong comedy, but I find it a bit overrated as comedy and actually like the parts before the spell much better. The stuff with Xander and Cordy’s relationship is really good for the first 20 or so minutes, and another plus is that the darker B-plot with Angel is woven nicely into the ( Read more... )

I guess it had to happen: with all other kinds of monsters in the verse, sooner or later we had to meet a werewolf. The twist is that it’s Oz, the nicest and by all appearance calmest and least aggressive man in the show. And of course it’s right after Willow started dating him, because there has to be some sort of complication in the most stable ( Read more... )

Now this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer in all its greatness. It is of course, an iconic episode, but I had forgotten just how great it is. Well, there are a couple of plot points that don’t make an awful lot of sense… but I’m willing to overlook it, because it just keeps delivering emotional punches, from start to finish.

I’ll start by ( Read more... )

The start of the tradition of Buffy’s disastrous birthdays, and the first part of the game-changing two-parter, this episode works great as a setup for Innocence, but in itself it’s a mixed bag. There are some great moments in it, but the problem I’m having with it is that the Buffy/Angel romance, which is dominating the episode, is here ( Read more... )

Despite this episode’s bad reputation, I didn’t find it as awful as it’s cracked up to be. I can’t say that there was anything that especially annoys me about it - its only problem is that the main story is a little thin. The Texan vampire brothers Gorch are a comic relief red herring, and the real danger turns out to be in the eggs that the ( Read more... )

The plot of this standalone is very similar to Joseph Ruben’s 1987 thriller The Stepfather with Terry O’Quinn: a teenage girl’s divorced mother finds a new, too-good-to-be-true boyfriend, a guy who seems to be an embodiment of the 1950s sitcom dad, all traditional and fatherly and nice and into “family values”, and only the girl is suspicious ( Read more... )