Does so.
You can judge it in retrospect if you like; I’m judging it season by season - since I was rating the seasons in order of my preference, that seemed like the way to go. If Season Two and Three retroactively improve Season One, it means I like Season Two and Three better for having done so, not Season One for having received the retroactive assistance.
And Otto : Does not. 
Fair enough.
I watched Buffy by more-or-less being forced to by a friend who couldn’t understand why I made fun of Boreanaz’s Irish accent in “Becoming” - she was very sensitive. But I got hooked almost immediately.
But if I had to rate the seasons, it’d probably be 3, 5, 2, 6, 4, 1, 7.
So we are more in agreement than not, it seems. 
Daphne
Like Miller, I have no idea why so many people hate “Ted”. I think it’s a fantastic episode. Likewise, I think Go Fish is practically a masterpiece of the campiness that I like about the early seasons of Buffy (Soviet fish-man experiments? Brilliant!) and Inca Mummy Girl has the great scene of the first time Oz sees Willow. I also love Killed by Death, Phases, and Haloween.
By contrast, most of s6 and s7 just kind of blur together for me. In any season 6 episode, I can be pretty sure Buffy is going to be depressed, there’ll be some nauseating scene with Spike, Willow will be addicted to magic (which, by the way, I think is the worst storyline of the entire series, capped off by the god-awful yellow crayon speech, which was the point where I seriously thought “maybe I shouldn’t be watching this show anymore”).
In fact, the only s6 and s7 episodes I ever really have a desire to see again are OM,WF, Tabula Rasa, Normal Again, and… well, maybe Conversations with Dead People and Chosen, although the last one is really pushing it.
For the record, I love almost all of s1, too. I don’t understand why Never Kill a Boy on the First Date gets the negative press that it does, I think it’s a great, somewhat prototypical episode of Buffy. Granted, the guy who plays Owen looks about 35, but hey.
As for the whole “s6 is too dark” thing, I don’t even think that’s why I dislike it. To paraphrase Oz: I dunno, I usually like darkness, but this is leaving me cold. My problem with the season isn’t that it’s too dark, it’s that I think the writing quality went straight down the tubes, the show started to become more of a soap opera than anything else, I think MagiCrack was a horrible storyline based on the fact that it was stupid, I hate Spike with a passion, and there was far too little Giles.
I was hooked from the episode “Angel” in S1 - - and now own all DVD boxsets available ( Angel too! )…
As I watched them, I liked S4 less, probably because
A) The format changed…
B) I stupidly allowed people who had digital TV (I’m in th UK) to let me watch tapes of episodes ahead of where I was in the story arc…
C) I finally got Sky digital, and so began watching S5, before I’d finished S4
but then, at the time I didn’t think S5 lived up to S3…
once I’d seen S5, and S4 was a bit more familiar to me, I started to like both for different reasons - - mainly stand out Eps like “Hush” and “Restless”, and even “Superstar” which was a nice preparation for the whole Dawn thing in S5…
S6 was pretty dark - - but “Once More With Feeling” is bar far the best episode since “Hush” - - but I still preferred S6 - after I finished watching the season… and was able to go back to episodes…
S7 I had a problem, because I stopped having Sky… so I had to get a friend to tape it - - which gave it a different feel…
It’s also the only season I haven’t gone back to and watched back to back.
IMO Angel eclipsed Buffy in it’s last two seasons ( I know Buffy finished a year earlier - but you get my meaning )
although Angel’s rushed ending was understandable - but disapointing…
If I had to pick a favourite Season… 3. or can I choose second half of 2, second half of 3 and stick them together - -
and for the record - Buffy, and Angel are the only two TV-series, that have ever made me emotional enough to almost get a tear in my eye (too manly to cry I am)
oh, and for the total order
3,2,5,1,4,7,6… probably… although the high points in 6 beat 7, the low points in 6 are more numerous.
Tales from the cryptic
::splutter:: Wha!? That was one of the most emotional and powerful speeches ever given in a drama! That speech made the whole season. It saved the world, dammit. The pathos, love and redemption captured by that scene are what distinguishes Buffy from the rest of the filler on television. Get thee to a Vin Diesel movie if you desire mindless violence; but speak not ill of the Yellow Crayon Speech.
What’s everyone’s issue with Andrew and Kennedy? Andrew’s probably my favorite character on the series (along with Oz, Willow, and Xander) and I like Kennedy too.
I’m guessing the Kennedy hatred stems from her relationship with Willow (since that was pretty much the whole point of her character) but what about Andrew? His character was a bit goofy and over the top but so were a lot of the others.
Most of it probably stems from the fact that Andrew lived and Jonathan died.
Andrew was annoyingly grating, while Jonathan was adorably annoying.
A slight but subtle difference.
There were a lot of problems with Kennedy, starting with the fact that the actress playing her was simply awful. But the way they wrote her relationship with Willow was almost directly in contrast with the way they wrote her relationship with Tara. Willow and Tara felt like a real couple, who happened to be lesbians. Willow and Kennedy felt like a couple of lesbians added to the show to get more horny guys to watch. On top of that, they had almost no chemistry with each other (which I blame on the general suckiness of the actress who played Kennedy). Watching them together, I simply didn’t believe that they were in love with each other. I just didn’t feel it.
Also, they started a relationship way too quickly for me. Tara hadn’t even been dead a year, and Willow was so in love with her that she almost destroyed the entire world out of grief for losing her. Contrast that with Buffy’s futile and heart-wrenching attempts to start dating again after she killed Angel, in the first half of season three. I felt the ease they fell into bed with each other really cheapened Willow’s relationship with Tara.
On top of that, every time one of Willow’s relationships goes sour, she ends up almost killing all of her friends. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d start seriously looking into celibacy if I were her.
Can’t help you with Andrew, though, as I always liked his character.
I’ll have to pay more attention to the episodes with Kennedy in them the next time I catch them in a couple months. I admit to being a bit … mesmerized by the actress playing her and didn’t pay as close attention to her acting as I otherwise could have.
I can see the issues with her and Willow being together so soon after Tara’s death though and that was something I hadn’t given much thought since I was a recent convert when I saw those episodes. I’m just now seeing the introduction of Tara after watching her die two months ago.
Thanks for the discussion, y’all. As a new fan, and one who hasn’t seen those season 6/7 episodes, it’s interesting to read the debate about them. I’m still going to watch them - and since I haven’t found a place here to rent any of the episodes, that will likely mean buying them - and even if I don’t find them as good as some of the others (and I may love them, I may hate them. I don’t know yet), I still expect to enjoy them, just because.
I just wanted to check in and point out a bit of a nitpick; probly just a typo. Andrew is as far from annoying as it is possible to get. I still find myself lying awake nights, dreaming of Andrew. For a while in the seventh season, Andrew was more of a reason for me to watch Buffy than Buffy was. Andrew is one of my alltime favorite TV characters. The episode “made” by Andrew is one of the single greatest hours of television in the history of electrons.
Any questions?
I liked Andrew too. “Storyteller” was either the best or second-best episode of S7 (cwdp might beat it out). I even liked Andrew on Angel.
My problem with Kennedy was entirely that the actress was bad. Very bad. Energy-sucking bad. I think that Joss said somewhere (no cite offhand) that he wanted to end the series with one of the characters in a happy relationship and/or that he didn’t want Willow stuck in “typical TV gay celibacy.” Both reasonable, but it could have been done… less crassly, I guess.
Daphne
Storyteller? One of the best episodes of season seven is Storyteller?
Pass the hookah my friend because it must be some good shit.
I hated Storyteller with a passion and it was (BY FAR) my most hated episode of S7. I find Andrew very annoying and I couldn’t get over his inane speeches throughout the whole episode.
Lessons and Chosen, the beginning and the end, were the tops of S7. With Caleb’s intro a close third.
That is all.
I misread that the first time as “erections” instead of “electrons”. And while I don’t think the episode was top five for the series, I do think it goes in the Win column for S7, and could be top 10 material.
Andrew was a wonderful character! UberGeek with a dark streak…can’t beat that on a resume. 
Andrew is one of the most hideous characters in all of Buffydom. Not only did they not need to add anyone to the already bloated cast in s7 (let alone a legion of slayerettes), it sure as fuck shouldn’t have been “I conspired in acts of unspeakable evil… but, you know, I guess it’s okay now because I make Star Trek jokes or something” Andrew. Among other things, he had lines that would have been much better served coming out of Xander, giving him at least some semblence of purpose in the season.
He also shares a trait with Spike in that he’s a character who, by any logic whatsoever, shouldn’t be around (why isn’t he in jail?), but sticks around because the writers think he’s kewl and give him hi-larious lines.
Sorry. I think the yellow crayon speech is a heaping pile of treacly bullshit sentimentality that capped off a terrible season filled with terrible writing. My favorite part is how Dark Willow asks Xander, mockingly, if he’s going to stop her by telling her he loves her… which he then proceeds to do. Sorry, ME, it’s not any less stupid just because you’re acknowledging that it’s stupid. I didn’t know how far back my eyes could roll until I had to listen to the yellow crayon speech.
Almost as loathsome is the Tampon Commercial moment Buffy is having with Dawn at the same time.
“You can ride… swim… kill demons…”
UberGeek with a *fabulous *streak, you mean.
Looking bad, a big, though not always deciding, factor is the Big Bad’s sense of humor. My order is 2,5 & 1 (tie), 4, 6, 7. My top three all have one thing in common - the Big Bad’s were deliciously evil. Evil Angel was a happy mass murderer. Gloria was ditzily evil. And the Master was perfectly droll. Indeed, if it weren’t for the probably unavoidable growing pains in s1, it would probably be my favorite.
OTOH, Adam was not programmed with a sense of humor. He was a dull dude. We learned in s6 that life has no sense of humor either. The First, well, he/she/it had flashes, but generally wasn’t a people person (and anyway, the ad naseum Buffy speeches just tuckered me out - even if The First had been played by Richard Pryor, s7 would still be low on my list).
Sua