Just watched episode 8 of season 2, titled “The Dark Age”. This is the first episode that really showed me what the show can be. It had an interesting story that told us more about Giles past, as well as just the right mixture of witty remarks, action and character development for all the major players. I was very pleased indeed.
Next is the 2 part episode “What’s My Line.”
I didn’t watch much Buffy, so I’m not sure- was there an episode where there was a modern underground facility under the town, accessible by elevator, that housed monsters in glass cages?
Yes. But that’s the plot of Season 4 and the OP hasn’t got there yet
The idea of Buffy as a Power Rangers knock-off is very nearly accurate, but not because of Joss Whedon.
From Joss Whedon: The Biography
More generally, Whedon has never been shy about sharing where he gets his influences, and Japan and Japanese culture are seldom big subjects. This click-baitish article by him listing his influences never gets any further east than Ingmar Bergman. His wikipedia entry has a section on themes and influences that never mentions any Japanese sources. Indeed, after fifteen or so minutes of googling, I can’t find anything where Whedon - who arguably will not shut up about the stuff that influences him, even mentions the words “anime,” “manga,” or “Japan.” I’m also having trouble coming up with any references to Japanese pop culture that he’s written into any of his shows, and drawing a blank. And this is a guy who worked Trogdor the Burninator into a network television show.
I’m not sure at this point that Whedon is particularly aware of Japanese comics and movies at this point, much less influenced by them to any significant degree.
Anime fans seem obsessed with tagging Whedon with the “ripoff” label because a few shots in Firefly were somewhat similar to Outlaw Star, a space series that used a lot of western genre conventions.
I made no such argument. I said that there were better things out there in the genre, pointed out that even the better ones aren’t all that impressive, and suggested a few examples that I would recommend instead (specifically, Kamen Rider Ryuki and Reaper). That is the sum total of everything I have said and argued.
Really? Reaper? I’m not the biggest fan of Buffy etc., but Reaper got really bad near the end (of a very short run). I can’t imagine recommending that as better fare.
OK I get that Buffy may remind you of the tokusatsu shows, but I still don’t get what you mean regarding Whedons fame being because he helped bring anime and Japanese entertainment to the mass subtitle hating populace. How did he do that? Or this just all a matter of your opinion?
I watched the first season, I think. I seem to remember the idea being basically the “Someone Else’s Problem” field but connected with the supernatural. In other words, mundanes couldn’t see the supernatural (except in special cases). Does this change?
They always could, it’s just that for 99% of the times people who are not Buffy or her mates, an encounter with the surnatural involves ending as bloody chunks all over the ceiling :p.
Early on the show mostly ignores the vast implications that the supernatural would have on our world if it were aware of it (the Bad Guys hide from the world, basically), then there’s a token effort to indicate that the Powers That Be try to cover it all up when overt incidents happen (in increasingly desperate ways in Sunnydale, where the supernatural congregates for Reasons), then around season 5 it becomes more of a case of fuck it, just roll with it with more and more Muggles being involved with it and at that point it’s just no big deal, *blasé *urban fantasy kinda thing. “I was just attacked by a vengeful ghost. Weird, right ? Anyway, I’m late for class”.
Buffy never was X-Files or *Supernatural *or whatever and is not interested in exploring the supernatural at all ; or even explain much of it. Rather the supernatural is there to allow an exploration of regular people/life. With kitschy rubber suits :).
No, there’s no explicit supernatural effect that prevents normal humans from seeing monsters or demons. If a human sees a vampire in full monster mode, he perceives them as such and will remember that they looked inhuman. They never really give an explanation for why demons and vampires aren’t common knowledge - and in the later seasons, particularly on Angel, they eventually start treating them like things that are commonly known, at least to most people.
I quite liked Season 6. Season 7 dragged bit in the middle, for sure. Season 1 is clearly the worst.
If I had to rank my favorites, having been years since I’ve seen an episode, judging by which seasons I’d most want to re-watch right now:
5, 6, 4, 3, 7, 2, 1
Season 3 and 5 are probably the best seasons objectively, with 2 right behind. But I really like two characters that don’t feature in the earlier seasons…Tara and Anya…so that skews it for me.
Parts of Season 6 have issues, for sure, but if I had to kill 10 hours in an airport and was offered one season of Buffy to watch, I’d be choosing between 5 and 6. I might actually choose 6 over 5, though probably not.
Also, I liked Season 4 a lot. It has two of my favorite (small) memories of the series:[spoiler]Spike (tied to a chair): A bear! You made a bear!
Buffy: I didn’t mean it…
Spike: UNDO IT! UNDO IT!
That whole Thanksgiving episode was A+ through and through, right down to the very last line.
The other moment I really liked from season 4 was when Adam was convincing Spike to join him. I can’t find video online to link, but at the end of Adam’s pitch Spike kind of slumps down on a couch and mutters “I get why they follow you.” I just loved that moment.[/spoiler]Plus, of course, season 4 has Hush.
To further torture the OP with “boxes which must not be clicked”:
Another thing that was mostly a throw-away, and probably not planned but who knows, I always liked[spoiler]Julia Lee’s arc.
We first meet her in season 2 of Buffy, where she’s a dopey teen who wants to be turned into a vampire. That plan goes horribly wrong, of course.
We see her again in Season 3, as a homeless teen living on the streets in LA going by the name “Lily.” Buffy is in LA running away from her boyfriend woes, going by her middle name “Anne.” After saving Chanterelle/Lily from vampires again, Buffy heads back to Sunnydale, but not before giving Lily her apartment and Anne’s identity.
Angel season 2 we meet Chanterelle/Lily/Anne again, running a shelter for teens and still using the Anne identity. Local street-girl makes good! She even survives to the Angel series finale, when Gunn tries to get her to leave LA because shit was about to get real.[/spoiler]
Regardless of who did what first, even putting them in the same genre is quite a stretch. It seems like you don’t think much of Buffy and want to write it off as cheap pulp entertainment. And that’s fine, not everyone has to like the stuff I like, there’s certainly plenty of “good” stuff I don’t care for. What I’m saying I’m not trying to attack you for disliking something, but the comparison you’ve drawn is so wildly outside my own understanding that I would genuinely like to hear a more comprehensive explanation at how you’ve arrived at that view.
That’s not what you said when you first watched this show, Fenris 
I don’t dislike Buffy. I just don’t think that it’s a particularly notable entry in its category.
As to why I say that, well simply it’s because I’ve seen better or can easily imagine better.
I think that Neil Gaiman is quoted on his Wikipedia page as saying that the reason he got into writing comics is because he doesn’t need to worry about being compared against the classics of literature. To be a notable author, he simply needed to produce something better than the general schlock that was coming out in comics.
To take one comic writer for example, Greg Rucka wrote the series Queen & Country as a homage to the British TV series The Sandbaggers. I thought the comic was decent. Then I watched The Sandbaggers, and it is excellent. A definite classic. Queen & Country was decent but not super memorable, but I figured that I would try Rucka’s novels, on the chance that he had been restricted by the small size of a comic book story. But despite having a lot more room to really work his magic, I think his comics had probably been better. And if you were to compare the Q&C novels to others in the same category, like Tom Clancy or whatever, I don’t think they would be all that notable. And, of course, compared to The Sandbaggers, they’re really not in the same league. Rucka simply has the advantage of being someone who can write at passable novelist level, and consequently can write comics that are at a legendary level, in today’s market.
But, personally, I see no reason to go easy on someone because of the medium/genre they are in. I don’t see any reason to not compare comic book superheroes to Arthurian legend, The Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, or whatever else. That stuff all exists out there, for any comic book, TV, or whatever writer to read and learn from. And there’s no reason to expect that someone who reads a comic isn’t familiar with other forms of entertainment.
And so I say that, regardless of whether Buffy was or wasn’t groundbreaking to your average 90s American who had nothing to compare to except The Days of Our Lives and The Dukes of Hazzard, I feel no reason to compare it to those shows. The Buffy Scooby Gang may be lightyears better than the Scooby Doo cartoon, but I grew out of Scooby Doo when I was 6 or 7 years old probably. Being better than that isn’t a score for notability. Ditto for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
For me, Buffy is competing against things like Good Omens, the M.Y.T.H. Series, Those Who Hunt Elves (the manga, not the anime), Reaper, RED (by Kenichi Muraeda), The Princess Bride, Kamen Rider Ryuki, Kamen Rider Fives, Reaper, Constantine (the just-cancelled TV series), Hellboy (the movie), Vampire Princess Miyu (the TV series), Devil Man (the old manga, not the anime), Scaramouche, Arthurian Legend, etc. And while not all of those are classics, probably only Kamen Rider Fives is equal to Buffy. Everything else is better. And I could compare to many more things, though the comparison would be more distant. The point would remain that, of everything I’ve seen or watched, Buffy ranks above the cutoff line of “entertaining”. But the majority of other things above that cutoff line are higher above that line than Buffy.
Consequently, I am not surprised that the OP was not blown away, since TV is better now. And I would recommend different things for them to try out, if they were interested in something along those lines.
And of course many of us disagree with your rankings and preferences.
One thing is for sure, though: He really really likes Reaper.
I was a big Reaper fan, but consider Buffy a much better show.
I never saw any similarity between Power Rangers (a little kids show) and Buffy (teen/ young adult oriented), but BTVS’s stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt and Buffy’s stunt double Sophia Crawford both worked on Power Rangers, so the fighting styles might look similar.
QFT. Those rankings are amazingly, mind-bogglingly wrong on any scale.