As I get back to our regularly scheduled programming, I’ve opted to take a look at some of my favourite moments from a show that was not only popular, but became a guilty pleasure.

The list is very much balanced in the later seasons. The reason being, I liked them better so not much in the early episodes got a look in. For me, the show’s potential was realised later on when the gang had all grown up and the tone became a comfortable mix of serious and silly, breaking free from the teenage elements and just evolving into something better.

I completely ignored the whole Riley/military thing as it was dreadful, but the later episodes were really brilliant, even through a phase of nothing actually happening which included an episode where there was very little resolution and Buffy shrugged off evil doings and weird events.

The most annoying thing abut this show… Joss Whedon. I’ve sad if before, but I can’t stand the man. He seems arrogant and smug and his obsessive superfans seem to feed his ego. But despite that he’s done some good work and is wonderful as poking fun at his ideas which in all honesty is half the reason it works whether it be Buffy, Angel, Dr Horrible or Firefly. Dollhouse… well that wasn’t so good.

So anyway… the list!

Realised potential.
Innocence (season 2)
The whole Buffy thing was a camp little show that was only really held together by it’s comedy, especially in the early days. The big scary moments weren’t really big and scary and there was always the off putting element of it being a teen show.

But it was a show that always had potential to be something more than that. I don’t think it really achieved it until the cast were all grown up and the show got a little more serious, but this episode nailed what it could be and that was before the credits rolled.

We had a nice vampire who’s got himself a soul but he’s lost it having a fumble with Buffy. A whole deal about finding true happiness, which is oddly ejaculating into his slayer soul mate, and now he’s evil. Not only did we have an evil vampire on the loose, but the moment focused on the fact that despite her mystical powers… Buffy’s still a teenage girl with teenage girl emotions.

It was the first time I felt the emotional strings were pulled in the right way and the first time Buffy had to stop being a teenager and grow up faster than she could. The idea began to grow throughout the series that her best years were lost, but this is the moment it all started for me and the true potential of the show was first realised.

This should not have worked…
Once more with feeling (season 6)
It really shouldn’t have worked at all. Not in the slightest. It’s an insane idea that only a show like Buffy could pull off. The man behind it was a demon. A singing, dancing demon. He’d infected Sunnydale and everyone was bursting into song and dance until they died.

At this stage Buffy was just doing episodes with comedy, character development and low key endings where nothing really happened. It was weird, but it was good. For all my dislike of Whedon, he can write dialogue where even the most ridiculous thing has some sense to it and because he doesn’t take the ridiculous circumstances seriously and wll poke fun of them through the characters,it works.

This should have been a disaster, but it worked. And in the final number everything was thrown in from the funnies to the pain and heartbreak.

And this was an episode about a singing dancing demon. Bizarre.

I’m listening…
Conversations with Dead People (season 7)
This episode in particular was rather brilliant. Even Dawn’s scenes, a character I particularly hated until she stopped being a brat in the seventh season, had good moments when she was haunted while home alone seeing what she believed was her mothers house.

On the other side we had Willow chatting with a girl who recently died who was really the first evil screwing with her head, and Spike chatting to a girl as he tried to workout his anguish over being a de-fanged vampire in love with a girl who couldn’t love him back.

But then you had Buffy in the cemetery doing what she usually does, killing vampires. But this one she recognises, an old friend from school who went onto be a therapist and was turned. They both understand the vampire-slayer relationship and that the vamp must be killed and they both seem to accept it as a friendly challenge.

But they also talk. And that’s where the episode became brilliant. There was the usual Whedon comedy, how could you not have comedy in that situation, but there was also a lot of development for Buffy while the vampire pyscho-analysed her. Where Buffy was struggling with her life and being brought back from the dead, being ripped from heaven only to go back to her difficult life, she was able to work out her problems with the vampire as she couldn’t talk to her friends who she resented for their plan to resurrect the Slayer.

But it all comes out in the end that the vampire has been sired by Spike. And thats when Buffy goes in for the kill as she learns the vampire with a chip in his head to control him, the man she’s learned to trut and had some violent kinky sex with, was somehow back in the game and then we cut to Spike feeding on the girl he was chatting it throughout the episode.

It’s no surprise that the episode became an award magnet, not only did it have the wonderful cemetery scene, a great ending and wonderful opening, it kicked the show back to life and opened the way for the big finale.

Stray bullet.
Seeing Red (season 6)
In the 6th season we had a few quiet episodes with nothing really happening and the Trio, a geeky group with plans to be evil geniuses mastering magic and all sorts of evil things. They were a really huge piece of comic relief, but as the season went on their ring leader, JWarren – who looks like a young Rodney McKay – became a obsessed, angry at the world and while his lackies remained the funny ones, we just moved all the way up to evil little bastard.

But he was still a geeky failure of an evil little bastard and when his plans to take down the Slayer failed, he resorted to a good old fashioned gun. But one of th a bullet intended for Buffy didn’t quite hit the target. The gang didn’t notice for a while, but one of his bullets fired through a bedroom window and shot the lovely Tara in the chest and while the gang went on the hunt, Willow was left with her girlfriend dead in her arms.

The couple had been a bit of a focal point in the show. Throughout the season Willow had gone a bit over the top with how quick she was to use magic as a shortcut and the couple split until Willow was able to calm herself down. When they got back together there was much rejoicing, particularly by Dawn. And with Willow’s one true love dying in front of her… well, she goes batshit crazy.

It was a hugely emotional scene, very low key at first the Willow snapped. We’d seen an alternate realty in Hush, an early-ish ep where Cordelia wished Buffy out of the way and without her Willow had turned into a sexy PVC clad evil witch. After Tara is shot, we see the prime reality’s Willow go down that path as she kills a god, becomes consumed with all sorts of magical hooha and basically becomes the most powerful witch on the planet, destroying everything in her path and skinning people alive.

And looking damn hot in the process, which brings me to…

Faith.
Any episode (any season)
Ok, so this is a bit of shameless sleazing on my part. But Faith was awesome. Any scene she was in, any episode she was in… she was spot on brilliant.

The only flaw with Faith is that she’s too good. She’s got more attitude and courage than Buffy, she’s more into just doing the job (and doing everyone around her from Xander to principal Wood) and is just far more interesting and captures the screen. While Buffy later becomes closed off and like an aggressive general leading the potential slayers, Faith always stays the same vampire-killing slutty bitch.

And thats awesome.

The downside is that Eliza Dushku can’t act. Sure, she was great as Faith and if you cast her in a similar role she’ll be wonderful as it is just an extension of herself. But if you cast her as anything else she’s absolutely useless and all you want is Faith.

So for her being awesome, slutty and hot. Every moment she’s in wins overall.

Almost every other contender for the list was comedy moments that made me laugh such as Randy Giles, pumping for information… though there were some other great moments like Buffy and Spike killing a house through the powers of his vampire penis, the addition of Nathan Fillion in season 7, spike going nuts and raping Buffy, his eventual return after then when he was even more mental and a load more.

I quite enjoyed the show, despite the de-fanging of vampires and Angel’s poncey hair gel, but damnit… I still can’t stand Joss Whedon.

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Tags: fantasy, fives, geek, sci fi, telebox