Thanks for the info! I remembered the episode where Wesley “kidnapped” Connor in order to save him from Angel (that prophecy). I agree his change from nerd to tough guy was handled gradually and much more smoothly than most changes of that type. I actually liked him better when he became a little darker and more ruthless. He was more interesting. Maybe I had already answered my own half-assed question, in that if he wasn’t tough at all, he would have been killed years earlier. Most people, including me, would have never made it out of Sunnyvale in one piece.
Nah…leaving Sunnyvale is easy. It’s getting out of Sunnydale that’s hard! 
That was a typo. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket.
Damn. I was hoping you’d say Voyager, Cleopatra 2525, and Lexx, and then I could mock you for your obvious lack of taste. But you had to go and name Buffy and B5, both of which are great shows (SG-1 is middling at best, but I can at least see why other people would like it more than I did) and now I have to treat your views with respect. I hate that.
Sara Michelle Gellar can’t act!?!?!?!? :eek:
Dude, you have to be frikking kidding.
Just watch “The Body” and say that again.
BTW: I love Angel and Buffy, but didn’t think very much of Firefly.
[Sheriff from Night of the Living Dead]
OK boys, that’s another one for the fire!
[/SfNotLD]
From what I’ve heard, a lot of people who only saw Firefly on TV didn’t like it, but of those who took the chance to watch it on DVD (and in order, no less), many of them came around to really love the show. Obviously, not everyone is going to like everything, and for that, I stand firmly beside Otto, ready to punish those terribly bad people.
The Body was brilliant, and Sarah did a wonderful job, but I think her best acting (as opposed to emoting and crying on cue) was in the two-parter where she switched bodies with Faith. Both Sarah and Eliza Dushku did an astounding job of not only acting like the other character, but like the other actress playing the character playing the other character…if you know what I mean. Sarah’s mixture of glee and distain in the mirror scene (“Because…it’s wrong!”) was SO Eliza as Faith as Buffy. Yet somehow, it wasn’t parody. Brilliant.
I am not saying I hated Firefly, but I didn’t think it was as good as Buffy or Angel.
I have bought it though on DVD and seen it twice, and think that if it had run longer I would probably have gotten to love it.
Certain things were really cool, but it just needed to grow a little more.
I had the same thing with Buffy Season 1 : I wasn’t really impressed until the story-arcs got bigger and stronger.
I saw “Serenity” first. It was still shit.
This from someone who thinks Stargate SG1 is one of the three best SF shows of all time.
Your taste, sirrah, is all in your mouth.
Totally agreed. (Haven’t seen the Body yet, I’m halfway through S5). But Faith-as-Buffy sold me on Sarah as an actress. Her body language, her intonation, it really made that episode shine. Eliza was good too, but didn’t have as much to do. The other great scene was Faith-as-Buffy taunting Spike.
SMG is a competent actress with a limited range.
Just don’t ask her to cry. She can’t. Well, she can but it’s so unbelievably fake and awful. She has no subtlety to it, just scrunches up her face and pinches up her voice and wah wah wah. Horrid.
Brilliant. Man, I can’t wait until I have a chance to work that zinger into an argument.
I had to reply because I just got hooked on Buffy this year.
I agree with others that you really need to start at the beginning to enjoy 95% of the shows. Story arcs go over several shows or even whole seasons.
For stand-alone episodes, I like “The Puppet Master” from the first season. As mentioned above, “Hush” is one of the most fantastic horror shows I’ve seen, and one I suspect will only get better with re-viewing.
Buffy is not a horror series per se. It’s a series about a teenage girl who has been saddled with this overwhelming responsibility. It’s also damn funny - to me, it compares favorably with “American Werewolf in London”. (One of my favorite bits - Buffy confronts a werewolf hunter and call him “mein furrier”) The show does riff on the standard horror plots, sometimes predictably and other times standing them on their head.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I have a major crush on Giles.