more joy: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

[heresluck]

For More Joy day, here's a celebration of the show that's given me more joy than any other. Come share your stories of Buffy joy with me!

In the last couple of weeks I've started rewatching Buffy from the beginning. I'm doing this partly because I need to prep for some long-delayed vid projects; I'm also doing it simply because it's been several

Comments

[dswdiane]

This is an absolutely wonderful analysis of the first season of "Buffy" and, yes, for all of "Buffy" and why we all love it so very much. Thank you.

[heresluck]

Thank you for reading! God, I love this show.

[dualbunny]

Oh hell, now my eyes are all shiny too.

::loves Buffy::

::loves on you and fandom too::

[heresluck]

Our girl! Our show! Our people!

::loves right along with you::

[cija]

real and lasting consquences that reverberate down through the seasons, which is another of the many things I love about the show.

Oh yes. I was talking to someone recently about how I love Buffy more than life and all that, and he said it was amazing how much it had spoiled him for other TV--other shows, you see a throwaway conversation, or you find out someone's favorite novel, or what they're afraid of, and you wonder, oh, what will this mean, what will they do with it later? Only almost always, it doesn't mean anything and you never hear of it again. In Buffy, things always meant something. It set me up to expect art and love from television. I've loved other shows that cared about continuity, and ones that used repetition as a stand-in for theme (at least they were trying), but there's never been anything like BtVS. Buffy (the girl and the show) was something special.

[heresluck]

I'm right there with you on the continuity; I've loved other shows, but so often they fall short in this regard and I just have to handwave it and move on. And looking back on S1, remembering just how early and so well so many things were set up... yeah. Oh, this show.

[jarrow]

I think Buffy still takes the prize, simply because there's so much more of it - we get to see the characters grow, we get to see stories spin out over seasons and years.

That is exactly the reason Firefly will always be number two for me. While I can't imagine anything EVER taking Buffy's number one spot, Firefly's the only thing that I could conceive coming close, and it still had so far to go for that very reason.

Season one is definitely my least favorite too, but you're spot on here on why it's still so good, not just because it's a part of the even greater whole. Hell, even a "bad" season of Buffy is still better than a good season of a lot of other shows.

I'm overdue for a Buffy rewatch, and you (and fan_eunice earlier) have really driven that home for me. I miss my our show. I miss the way it makes me feel. I miss how much it makes me feel. I miss everything about it. It takes hell and high water to get tears to my eyes now, but that show's got so much of both that just thinking about it right now is getting me misty

[heresluck]

This is part of why the loss of Firefly still hurts so much; Joss and Tim had clearly learned so much from BtVS and Angel -- Firefly is so much better right out of the box than either of the earlier shows, and it's so clear that the 'verse would have gone on getting messier and more complicated as it went along, just like they did, and when I think of the heights that could have been reached I just want to weep.

And yeah, that's the thing about rewatching S1; there's so much that's clunky or simplistic compared to later seasons, and yet that's really just a testament to how amazing it gets later on.

[habiliments]

You almost made me cry - again, like some of these scenes always do - just in your remembering of it. Time for a rewatch for me, too.

As much as I love Buffy, I'm not sure SMG herself ever broke my heart as hard again as she did in "Prophecy Girl." I'm not sure it was possible, after that. (The wish-fulfillment-followed-by-forgetting episode of Angel aside, anyway.)

[heresluck]

As much as I love Buffy, I'm not sure SMG herself ever broke my heart as hard again as she did in "Prophecy Girl."

And, you know, I think my reaction is kind of the opposite. I enjoyed and appreciated Buffy as a character before "Prophecy Girl," but that's the ep that pried me open in terms of caring about her; she breaks my heart again and again throughout the rest of the series, and this moment underlies each of those later moments. That's the scene that ensured I'd follow her anywhere.

[habiliments]

It's funny, I've had your reply sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks now and tonight I watched "Family" and "Fool for Love" (it started out as "Hey, let's watch Amy Adams!" but I can't just watch one) and to my not-that-great surprise, I found myself watery-eyed in both episodes. In the split second between Buffy saying "It almost got us killed" about Tara's spell and then deciding that that's not the point, and in that funny yet heartbreaking scene at the end of "Fool" when Spike has his split-second decision to care, not to kill ... it's Buffy both times. And I think you're right.

[heresluck]

"Fool For Love" is one of my all-time favorite eps; it works on so many levels. "Family" is probably not as good an episode, objectively speaking -- not as tightly constructed, whatever -- but my god, the emotional impact of those final scenes! I turn into a sodden sponge every single time I watch that ep, because it's just so tightly tied to the thematic heart of the show. Gah -- I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

Oh, my beloved show.