So, my girlfriend is a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched the first couple of seasons and liked them a lot, but then I moved abroad for a while, and never really got into it again.
I’m thinking about getting her one or two seasons of the show on DVD, but I need some help: which seasons are better than the others?
Assuming she’s seen the all already, so she won’t mind getting them out of order, I’d personally vote for 4 and 5. I think in general it’s a bell curve. 4 and 5 are best, followed by 2 3 and 6, followed by 1 and 7.
I’d say, in terms of total seasons, season 3 was the best, followed by 2. You had probably the best villian in the Mayor, you had the entire Buffy/Faith dynamic, Spike (in season 2, at least…he wasn’t really in season 3) was evil and not a wimp, and I think the series did best when it was about high school.
My favorite is definitely season 6, both for its excellent stand-alone episodes (the musical, tabula rosa, the psych ward episode, etc.) and the character development that took place along its arc. It’s also the season that benefits most from being seen in a short period of time, as the episodes linked to one another quite closely and was thus pretty hard to follow on TV separated by 1+ weeks. It was easily the darkest season, but also the most captivating. And the humor that did surface really delivered (“oh dawn’s in trouble again… must be tuesday…”).
The safest choice for season would be 3, simply because I can think of no one who doesn’t like it (6 is pretty polarizing in its effect on fans).
What ever season had alternate universe Willow in that leather corset outfit.
OH and the Bunnies song in the musical is probably my second favorite thing.
I stand by my pick. Glory is second only to the Mayor for big bad. Dracula. “The Body.” Willow becomes a total badass. “Fool for Love.” The return of Drusilla. The Buffybot. “The Gift.” Overall definitely a solid second place, and crowding hard on first.
In a way, S.5, which is moving up to be my favorite and replacing S.3, is a condensed version of all the Buffyverse. It’s starts with her meeting the most famous vamp of all time and ends with “The Gift”.
I’ve got to go for season 2 as the best standing season of Buffy. It was what convinced me that Buffy was worth watching and the overall arc of the season was easily the most coherant. And that’s not to say that I dismiss season 3; there’s some very good reasons its the consensus choice around here as it is the definitive set of Buffy episodes, but for a total story give me season 2.