Xander: "You don't know how to kill this thing." Buffy: "I thought I might try violence.": Rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2 Episodes 12-22

Man, it's hard to cut Season 2 down. Now, here's a time for a confession: I love anything having to do with Giles, maybe because child-father figure stories usually get me. For comparison, anytime Clark Kent and Jonathan Kent get into a conversation about where Superman got his values, that's the sort of stuff that gets me all the time.

So, season 2 has some crucial plot and character arcs; and there are some excellent one-offs that I might want to include. Right now, my list of necessary episodes includes

1. Surprise and Innocence (13 and 14)--all about Buffy and Angel
2. Phases (15)--Oz goodness
3. Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered (16)--a fun episode
4. Passion (17)--Giles goodness
5. Becoming, Part One and Two (21 and 22)

That brings the total episodes up to ...

(2: Season 1, Episodes 6 (The Pack) and 9 (Puppet Show)
12: Season 2, Episodes 3 (School Hard), 6 (Halloween), 9 and 10 (What's My Line, Part 1 and 2), 11 (Ted), 13 (Surprise), 14 (Innocence), 15 (Phases), 16 (Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered), 17 (Passion), 21 and 22 (Becoming, Part 1 and 2))

... 14 episodes total. I do like the one-offs "Bad Eggs" and "Go Fish" and even "I Only Have Eyes For You" (with a young John Hawkes!), but at 14 episodes, my playlist is beginning to show a little bloat. I think I'll keep "Ted" in the list rather than swap out one of the other one-offs because, if I'm prepping this list for my girlfriend, I think she'd like John Ritter.

Now here's my second confession of the day: I'm bored by the fight scenes in Buffy--they may be well choreographed but they don't always have much besides spectacle going for them. Rarely do they examine character or make jokes; mostly it's just "there's a blonde girl who vaguely looks like Buffy from far away doing some roundhouse kicks."

A final note: because the episodes are thematically organized, it may be easy to turn them into afterschool specials. For instance, "Go Fish" clearly contains a lesson about the dangers of steroids. Some of these little lessons may be past their sell-by-date for certain audiences. (If I was going to take steroids, it would've been during my illustrious fencing career in college. Though the idea of a steroidally-jacked fencer is sketch-comedy worthy.) It's still a good episode, but might cause a little eye-rolling as they hammer the lesson home.

"Did anyone explain to you what 'secret identity' means?": Rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2 Episodes 1-11

Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is more solid than Season One; and starts to lay down the serious relationship material that will be instrumental in twisting the knife in Season Three. So it seems harder to pass up some of these episodes, and I worry this playlist may end up pretty long.

One thing that you should start to notice when you're 24 episodes into 144 is how well-crafted the episodes are, how thematically focused they are. For instance, the Halloween episode is all about trying out different parts of your (forming) personality, and we see this idea across the major characters, both magically-induced and stress-induced: Buffy becomes regular (and helpless); Xander becomes tough; Willow--seeking invisibility--becomes hypervisible; Cordelia continues her growth into a helpful partner; while we also see a first glimpse of Giles's darker past--the part of his personality that he left behind.

Right now, my playlist for the second season is

1. School Hard (3), which introduces Spike
2. Halloween (6)
3. What's My Line, Part 1 and 2 (9 and 10)
4. Ted (11)

"Ted" might be controversial, but I think it's important to show a "monster of the week" episode and I think John Ritter really sells the 1950s psychokiller.

"Enough with the hyperbole!": Rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1

It's long been a dream of mine to come up with the perfect episode playlist for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the kind of limited list that you could give to someone if they asked you "Why do you love Buffy and what might convince me to love it, too?" To be honest, I think it would be impossible to make a list that would work completely for anyone--this list would have to be aimed carefully at the heart of the viewer. In other words, this is the type of quest best performed for a loved one who never got into Buffy but whose taste is generally a known quality, like my girlfriend.

So, I've been home sick this week with a minor fever that might warp my speaking ability but has left intact my Netflix-navigation acumen. So I rewatched the first, short season of Buffy, and here's my take:

The thirteen episodes of Buffy's first season set up the general dynamic for the long, three-season arc of Sunnydale High, including all the main characters--Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia, Jenny Calendar, Angel, Principal Snyder; and yet none of the episodes reaches the level of must-see. Almost anything you need to know about those characters, a dedicated viewer could sum up in a sentence or two, or maybe just a phrase: slayer with a ditzy side, male friend with unrequited crush, etc.

The only episodes that rise to the top for me are those non-vampire, weird episodes that make the metaphor of monstrous teenagerhood into something real, like "The Pack," which is all about cliquehood (and involves the authentically weird moment where the students eat the principal); or "The Puppet Show," which involves issues of being out of place and out of control.

"The Puppet Show" has one advantage in Principal Snyder's introductory line about how children are criminals and any attempt to deal with them as humans is just "the kind of wooly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten." This is an issue that comes up a lot in the series: the powerlessness and assumed criminality of the young.

Also, another issue that comes up frequently: Xander's clothes are so dated.