My wife and I have started to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVDs (courtesy of NetFlix).
We never did watch the show when it originally aired, but enough of our friends told us how good it was that we gave it a try. I suppose part of my reluctance to watch it originally was that I knew it had a continous story line (divided into individual stand-alone episodes) and being the anal-retentive sort of guy that I am did not want to start watching it from a middle point. This problem has been fully rectified by the miracle of DVDs.
We are now halfway through Season 3. So far, so good. But now we are wondering about Angel. We know that Angel was spun off to his own show starting the same year as Buffy Season 4. We are involved enough with the characters to follow him to his own show, especially after asking my friend’s opinion (the biggest Buffy fan I knew of) to find out if it was worth watching. He assured us it was.
Now the question is how best to get the best watching experience from both shows. My friend tells me there are several crossover episodes, where action or plot started in a Buffy episode will finish in an Angel episode. That means clearly that watching the entire run of Buffy shows before starting the beginning of Angel shows is not the best idea.
Do we need to watch an episode of Buffy Season 4 followed by an episode of Angel Season 1, and constantly go back and forth? Since we are limited to the NteFlix delivery schedule, etc., can we do it disk by disk? My friend suggested possibly watching Buffy until we saw a cross-over episode then watching Angel until it catches up. Is this a good idea? (When I stupidly asked how I would know it’s a cross-over episode, he stifled his laughter enough to tell me it’s an episode WITH ANGEL IN IT!)
If we watch using the episode by episode switchover method, does the timing of the airing of the original shows coincide in this manner, that is did they both start playing the same week and always have an episode when the other did? I understand they both originally aired the same night: Buffy at 8 followed immediately by Angel at 9.
I know this will no longer be an issue after Buffy season 5, as season 6 and 7 were on a different network than Angel and thus no crossover.
Any suggestions, or is there a Buffy site that addresses this issue in a clear way?
I’m pretty sure the shows ran at the same time, so if say episode 8 of BTVS is a crossover, episode 8 of Angel also will be.
If you not that bothered, my view is that the series are fairly standalone, and not seeing the crossover episodes in the correct chronological place will not leave you confused.
The Harsh Light of Day / In The Dark
Pangs / I Will Remember You
Who Are You? / Five By Five
The Buffy ep is first for these three. The following ep of Angel, Sanctuary, leads into the Buffy ep The Yoko Factor and they should be watched in that order.
Easiest way to do it (and the way that BtVS S4 and AtS S1 aired) would be to watch an episode of Buffy followed by an episode of Angel. All the crossovers will then line up and you’ll see the shows as Joss intended.
The shows don’t cross over again until the final ep of AtS S2 (which follows the events of BtVS S5), then not again until AtS S4. The only issue of episode order is that you’ll want to watch the AtS S4 season finale before watching the last two episodes of BtVS S7.
Get a DVD player and hook it to a television using component video cables for the best picture quality, then using a fiber optic cable connect the DVD player to a home theater system for the best audio. Make sure to plug all devices in and turn them on.
With the exception of the Faith and Faith cross-over episodes in Season 4 / Season 1. I forgot exactly how I worked it out so we saw them in order, but I just used the air dates as my guide. If you check the episode guides that come with each of the sets, the airdate is listed along with the episode description.
Just as Otto said above, start alternating episodes in BtVS S4 and AtS S1, with the Buffy ep first.
Althea and i have watched everything extant in this manner, and it’s great. However, it’s a real pain in the ass to swap out the discs after each ep.
If you happen to happen two DVD players, I would recommend a simple and cheap A/B switch , so that both DVD’s can be queued up and ready to play the next ep. If you’re really lazy, get the remote control version.
I didn’t have much trouble following it by just watching all of Buffy then all of Angel. (Angel went into syndication a year or so after Buffy.) I suppose you miss a few connections but they’re not big plotpoints, just throwaways.
Unfortunately, when you get disks through NetFlix you receive none of the packaged materials, just the actual disks (you do get to see the Bonus features on the disks, though).
I am sure there are a few million Buffy websites put up by rabid fans. Is there one you know of off the top of your head with a simple page of airdates we can just print? I realize with a bit of searching I can probably find one myself, but I am imagining there are a Hellmouth’s full number of Buffy fan sites, so if anyone knows a page with just the airdates of both shows we can print for this purpose it would save me a bunch of clicking (and subsequent hours of looking at what I’m sure are the neat things on most of the sites I would come across while looking).
Was that Hellmouth thing stretching too far to try and make a Buffy related pun?
Buffyworld.com has both Angel and Buffy episode guides, but I find that one kind of a pain. Slayage.tv has a listing of Buffy episodes, but I don’t see Angel on there. Slayage.com does have both shows, but be warned - there are descriptions of each episode in the guide.
That’s because the episodes didn’t air the same week (or on the same night, I guess.) Faith disappeared for awhile. It wasn’t like when Spike went directly from Sunnydale to LA.
Faith was in in Sunnydale for Feb sweeps, LA for May sweeps. So you don’t have to watch those episodes back to back, because they weren’t back to back.
Also, don’t forget that Bachelor Party sets up Angel’s arrival in Pangs which sets up I Will Remember You. And if you just watch BtVS, you won’t know that Pangs sets up I Will Remember You, or that there was a crossover event at all.
