I’m another who prefers “Angel” to “Buffy,” but unlike most of the posters in this thread I was pretty much hooked from season 1. I was in my 30s. My husband was in his 40s. We both loved it (and both preferred “Angel”).
Yeah, I like that show too.
Both Buffy and Moonlight are examples of something they do with TV vampires which bugs me a little bit. When the vampire decides to do something vampire-ish, their face transforms. On Buffy, they just got really ugly. On Moonlight, their skin turns pale and their eyes sorta glow. Why?
“Ooh, look! I’m a vampire!” Yeah, I know. The fangs and the growling and the killing and the obviously super-human athleticism kinda clued me into that.
In Buffy, at least, it was a conscious decision to make the vampires less human-looking, so there’d be less objection from media watchdog groups to slaughtering them wholesale. The bit with them turning to dust was similarly inspired, so their heroine wouldn’t be leaving piles of bloody corpses all over town. (Also, as a plot contrivance, so their heroine would never have to explain to the authorities why she was leaving piles of bloody corpses all over town.)
Which helps out in Season 2 when Angelus kills Jenny Calendar. Whedon didn’t want fans to remember Angel as her killer, so he had Angel get all vampy right before the kill. He wanted to separate the two, Angel and Angelus.
It’s not, but it bothers me elsewhere. And I’ve never seen an opera.
FWIW, I’m with the OP. After years of people raving about how fabulous BTVS is, I decided to see what all the fuss was about and ordered the first few episodes from Netflix. After about half a dozen episodes, I gave up. I found it cheesy and repetitive, with plot holes you could fly a 747 through. I’m well acquainted with the concept of suspension of disbelief, and can get on board with the most outlandish premise as long as it’s internally consistent and logical. BTVS wasn’t.
On the flip side, I’ve just started watching the first season of Smallville, and have not been disappointed at all. To me it just goes to show that a series shouldn’t require inordinate amounts of time to establish quality.
Someone once defined opera as “a play where, when the someone is stabbed, instead of dying, they sing.”
weird. I stopped watching about 1/2 way through Smallville because they were just BtVS re-treads. I swear, some plots were lifted wholesale from the first season of BtVS, and it alternately disgusted and annoyed me.
I really enjoyed the first season of BtVS when I first saw it, but even so, it’s really not representative of the direction the series took from S2 onward. I think they’re a fun 12 episodes, but the show didn’t really get its legs until the first full season.
Okay, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date and The Pack have been watched. I really liked the latter, mainly because the characters, ironically, are starting to act like people.
Ah, I think I’ve heard that before.
To this day the mix up between the Spotted Hyena video and the ( completely unrelated! ) Cape Hunting Dog video eats away at my very soul.
Sometimes, lo these many years later, I’ll still awake in the middle of the night, screaming from the very horror of it. A scar I’ll bear until the end of my days.
Thanks for nothing, Joss. 
Xander Harris never seemed to find his own little niche. By a few seasons in he seemed pretty useless to have around for the most part. In one episode of season 3 he was being intimidated by a school bully. You’d think by this point in his life Xander wouldn’t be intimidated by a school bully but there you go. I liked the character but I don’t think they ever really did anything with him. Oh, and season 6 especially pissed me off.
Marc
I want to ask the same question as the OP but about Angel instead of Buffy.
I recently caught the first few episodes of Angel on cable and was underwhelmed. Angel seemed wooden. His little sidekick was annoying. Cordelia was largely a one-note airhead.
Does the series change dramatically in tone or depth after the initial episodes? Or should I just accept that if they didn’t work for me, the whole series won’t?
It’s hard to imagine that I could enjoy Buffy so much and not get into Angel, but there it is.
Yes, enormously so, to a far greater extent than Buffy did after its own somewhat underwhelming first season. Really, first season Angel was pretty dire, for the most part. It started to pick up after they added Wesley to the cast, about halfway through the first season. It starts really hitting its stride in the second season, and just keeps getting better until it’s fourth year, which for my money is the single best season of any television show I’ve ever seen.
Angel hits its stride when they do a little shuffling. As Miller noted above, the addition of Wes really added to the dynamic. The end of Season 1 gets things really going, and it just builds from there. Differing from Miller, I think Season 5 is the strongest, even if it has a rushed ending. But the whole show is about something different than Buffy. Redemption is a powerful theme. There are some very adult things going on in this series. That, and the characters are darker. Not that it’s not without its humor:
Angel: So I guess we should, I don’t know, talk?
Eve: About what?
Angel: About what happened back there with us.
Eve: Angel, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve had sex under a mystical influence. I went to U.C. Santa Cruz.
But you do have to come at Angel a bit differently than you did Buffy. But they are both great in their own ways. I’m so Joss Whedon’s bitch.
Angel does seem a bit wooden, but David Boreanez gets much better as the series progresses. I just wave David’s sometimes underwhelming performance away by reminding myself that Angel is extremely uncomfortable around people. He spent some 150 years as the Scourge of Europe, and then he spent another 100 year shunning vampires and humans, living in sewers, and eating rats. Now he’s got to learn how to live among humans and help them without completely giving in to his heavy guilt OR breaking down and killing the lot of them.
And as I love S1 of Buffy, I also adore S1 of AtS. I love Wesley. I love the dynamic between the three of them. I love watching Angel slowly but surely learn what it means to really care for people (besides his All Consuming and Epic Love For Buffy puke).
I love all the seasons of Angel more or less equally, but I think the last half of S3 is unbelievably, devastatingly powerful.
And I, too, am Joss Whedon’s bitch. Which is why I’m following the comics now and eagerly waiting for his new show so he can destroy me again.
But I’ll bet even you teared up a bit during “I Will Remember You.”
Buffy was a silly girl. It’s not like she would have to go all government-worker - “Sorry, can’t slay the vampire sucking on your neck - I’m on a break.” It could have just been an…understanding.
Licentious, different strokes for different folks and all that, but I’ve never found Smallville to be anywhere near as clever and entertaining as Buffy or Angel. I can forgive a lot when the dialogue is snappy and witty, and I actually care about the characters.
if the episode to which you are referring is The Zeppo, I think that defined Xander very well. Besides, the Scoobies had to have one non mystical in their ranks, otherwise who would be the normalcy compass?
**Angel **(the episode) has been watched.