It absolutely does not peak in season 2. The show is bad in season one, a little less bad in season 2, and continues to improve throughout the series, until it ends in the extremely good season 7. It never peaks. It just keeps getting better.
As you can see, there are a lot of different opinions about this. My advice would be to watch Season 2 and if you don’t like it by then, you probably never will.
And FWIW, my ranking
5, 2, 3, 6, 7, 1, 4
There’s a hitfix.com podcast where two of their tv reviewers are revisiting Buffy season 1 this summer, and talking about how you can see the show trying to figure itself out (and see some of the pieces they put into place over the 12 episodes), while at the same time acknowledging that some of the episodes are truly awful tv.
Yes. There are good moments throughout season 1, but you won’t miss anything but the Buffy/Angel relationship in its beginnings.
I only watched the show on DVD, still thought Season 7 was the nadir of the show, by far.
Well, there’s nadir, and then there’s Marianas Trench…
The whole thing was pretty cheesy at first, especially the fighting.
If it helps, I watched Buffy on TV when it was new and kind of liked it at the time but was just a kid, so as I got older I assumed it must be a bit rubbish (the whole teens in high school thing put me off a lot). It was only a couple of years ago that I thought “I like Firefly, I like Dollhouse, can Buffy really be as bad as I assume it is?”
So I watched it from the first episode, and obviously something in the first season kept me interested if I went from rolling my eyes at the thought of it to watching every episode way too fast.
This.
I liked the whole show, even season one, but when watching it on TV, thought season three was the best. However, watching it again via DVD/netflix, I thought it was all much better. It flowed much better when you don’t have even commercial breaks in an episode to ruin the flow.
I think the season three villain is my favorite for how he was done but liked the progression of all of it.
I’m finding that Joss’ work is much better without those interruptions in it. I don’t know why it helped but it did.
vislor
Stauderhouse, I think the take-away from this thread is basically: watch Season 2, and pay attention to the “big picture” arc of the season rather than focusing too much on the monster of the week episodes. If you still haven’t gotten into it by the end of that season, Buffy is not your cup of tea. Although opinions obviously vary regarding which season(s) were the best of the show’s run, I think it’s a pretty universal sentiment that the Season 2 story arc is the perfect encapsulation of what makes Buffy “Buffy.”
My personal ranking of the seasons, incidentally, goes: 3, 2, 5, 4, 6, 7, 1.
Season 3 is, IMO, one of the few “perfect seasons” of TV - not a single bad episode, and a fantastic season-long story arc featuring one of the greatest villains ever conceived for television. Season 2’s season-long arc might actually be even better (since it is VERY focused on the core characters of the show), but it suffers a bit in comparison to Season 3 due to some weak monster of the week episodes (hi, “Reptile Boy”!). Season 5 goes to the very heart of the show, a slow-burning heartbreaker of a season that may be the show’s most emotionally powerful run of all, but which requires a deep understanding of the characters to “get.” And seasons 4, 6, and 7 all have some stellar episodes, but also, sadly, a lot more filler pieces and some (IMO) jarringly illogical/ poorly executed character developments.
As for Season 1, it was Joss Whedon and his writers attempting to find their footing while doing something that had never been done before on television. And all before a single episode aired. And with the approximate budget of an episode of “Roseanne.” The show really doesn’t find its identity in that first season at all.
The show improves a LOT. I must admit (albeit grudgingly) that I wasn’t a huge fan of the first season either. Like the first seasons of many shows, it hasn’t really had a chance to find its feet and develop the characters yet - but trust me, there is significant (and sometimes shocking) character development for most of the cast. I think the actors become more skilled as the series progresses too. The plot certainly twists more. There were episodes that left me surprised, and sometimes I would look back and laugh at how simple and plain the first season seemed compared to the later ones.
New characters are introduced who you may like if you still aren’t a big Buffy Summers fan (I don’t much like Buffy either, really, but I adore Oz, Faith, Anya, and several of the others that you don’t get to know until later seasons).
So in short, yes, keep watching it.
For me, I din’t like season 1 at all. It got good when Spike became a cast member. Got better when Michelle Trachtenberg joined. The last season was the best.
Skip ahead and watch Normal Again, in season 6 if you’re watching on Netflix or whatever.
It will give you a fair sense of the tone the show eventually found. And you can watch it with, as I recall, not too much spoiling (except for “wait, who the hell is that other kid with them?”).
Either it’s your style or it’s not.
I watched season 1 LAST.
My daughter had given me Seasons 2-7 (where she got them from is probably best left unsaid), and I watched them all in order before I was able to lay hands on Season 1.
Season 1 has a couple of good moments, but the show really doesn’t hit its stride until “School Hard”, the third (I think) episode of Season 2.
As others have said, you should like season 2 better than season 1. But if you’re not that impressed by the season 1 characters and dialog you might want to stop altogether. 3 gets even better.
I started in season 3 originally when I got hooked. I am now (re)watching season 1 and 2. Some episodes I remember from reruns, some not. I enjoyed season 1 mostly because I could see the first meetings of major characters and could see how much less sophisticated the plots and special effects were. Season 1 also had a lot more “monster of the week” going on.
Dude, yes.
Season 2 is great, especially towards the end. Watch it.
Could not agree more. I still think it’s one of the weaker seasons, but it’s so much better when you don’t have huge gaps between episodes (many of them much longer than just a week). It’s like going from a ferris wheel to a rollercoaster. Yeah, parts will make you scream, and occasionally you may want to puke, but in the end, it’s a much more exciting ride.
Okay, after hearing about this show for the better part of the past 15 years, this thread promoted me to start watching it on Netflix. I’m 8 episodes into the first season and don’t see it as anything particularly special. That being said, it’s still very fun. I’m going to keep watching, while certainly looking forward to season 2.