For the month of October, I took a hiatus from rewatching Grey's Anatomy (which I had intended to do a post on and might still do later) as I wanted to watch something more in-theme with Halloween. I narrowed my choices pretty quickly down to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. I almost went with Charmed, mostly due to the fact that the reboot premieres this month, and I had been planning to do a marathon of the original on the premiere date. (I will still do this.)
I ended up choosing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because I've been intending to do a rewatch of this for years and haven't done it. The last time I watched Buffy was when I finally pushed through season 7, and I did that without rewatching most of the series prior to. That was probably at least 6 or 7 years ago, so it was definitely time to make good on my intentions to do a Buffy rewatch.
I'm nearing the end of season 1 now. Season one tends to get a bad rep; I've heard a lot of people saying what an awful season it is, with almost no good episodes to speak to it. I've even found myself only defending it as far as the season finale; at least it had one good episode right? Prophecy Girl is a fantastic episode, and a great finale. But I wish I was better at disagreeing with people. (Even people I'm really comfortable with, I've found myself sometimes agreeing with them even if that's not what I really think. Gotta work on that.)
To start with, Welcome to the Hellmouth and Harvest make a great two-part pilot. All of the character introductions are great. The way that Buffy befriends Willow, after watching Cordelia bully her and then seeking her out for friendship, endears you to Buffy pretty quickly. The introduction with Giles, and his initial interaction with Buffy which does not go well, is interesting to watch. The set up for the Master, who is the first Season Big Bad for Buffy, on a show where season-long villains were still not common for television at the time that it aired, is solid.
Witch is another episode that I enjoyed. The story itself is strong, about a girl whose witch mother takes over her body so that the mother can return to her glory days as a high school cheerleader. Sympathy for the real Amy is high, and the end is downright chilling when you realize that Amy's mother has been cast into the cheerleader trophy in the display case. I would have liked to see a stronger reaction from Amy regarding watching her mother get spellbound into who-knows-where, but given the years of emotional abuse, and then the horrific things she does to Amy with magic, it's understandable that she doesn't really have too strong of a reaction. (On top of that, Amy is not a main character and the emotional stuff tends to get reserved for the main cast.)
Teacher's Pet and The Pack are episodes that I personally like, admittedly because Xander is my favorite character. It's been interesting rewatching in 2018, when so much of our culture has changed in the past 21 years since season one first aired. What the mantis almost does to Xander and to their school peer should be called rape. (Even back then I would have thought so, but rape being perpetrated against men wasn't commonly acknowledged back then.) If Buffy or Willow had been the intended victims, it would have been called attempted rape or sexual assault without hesitation, but when it's Xander everyone just refers to it as "mating." Even when they're concerned that he would get killed, neither Buffy, Giles, nor Willow, ever refers to the mating as any sort of sexual assault. This bothered me.
Another thing that's bothered me, which didn't bother me before, is Xander's behavior towards Buffy. I've heard of several people rewatching older movies and shows, from the 90s all the way back, with different eyes than they'd had before, and things they'd laughed at or accepted as normal back then are making them shudder today, mostly in relation to the
#MeToo movement, rape culture, and the societal norms regarding how men see and treat women. Xander has a crush on Buffy. He's an awkward teenager with no relationship experience, so he doesn't always know how to communicate with her. That's all well and good, understandable, and even relatable. But he kinda sexually harasses her, especially in the early days of their friendship. He's not at all subtle about liking her, and while a bit of that can be excused with his lack of experience and awkwardness, not all of it can be. He (so far) hasn't directly told her he likes her, even though she knows, but he becomes monstrously jealous whenever she dates someone else. He reacts horribly to Angel being good looking. He makes terrible comments, oftentimes to her face. It makes me cringe, especially that it didn't bother me too much before. We have been so socialized to care more about men being able to express themselves (boys will be boys, afterall!) than women's feelings, even in regard to the way women are treated by men. This is definitely affecting my perspective of Xander, which is hard. I'm looking forward to getting past this Xander and onto a hopefully better Xander in future seasons.
One of the special features on the season 1 DVD are interviews with Joss Whedon, a couple of which I've watched recently. In one interview, when talking about all of the characters and how Joss developed them, he mentions that Xander is his high school experience. I understand that we all (men and women) were socialized with gender roles, gender behaviors, and that the majority of people never question these things. But given Joss' recent history, not specicially the cheating because men and women are both guilty of cheating, and I don't believe that cheating inherently makes you sexist, but the accusations that Joss groomed a lot of the women that he cheated on his wife with, and used his authority over them to get into relationships with them, that comment made me cringe. (Nor am I ready to convict Joss, I haven't done a lot of research into the claims. The only claims I've heard have been from his now ex-wife, and while they may be accurate, there is also a chance that she's bitter about the way her marriage went, which she is entitled to be so but doesn't mean she's telling the truth, or that her perspective isn't slanted.)
Back to Buffy.
Other solid episodes include Nightmares, a fun one I've always enjoyed and still enjoyed on the rewatch. I also liked "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date." I've always liked that one. It may not be one of the best Buffy episodes, but it can't be counted among the worst either. I always forget that her date doesn't actually die. When he first lived, I was convinced it was a fake out and that the vampire was still going to pop out and get a last minute kill in. It happens a lot on TV, especially these days. LOL. Also, it's a very early lesson to Buffy in what the stakes are. There are risks to dating someone who doesn't know what's going on. (Although they really could have/should have handled things with Owen so much better than they did. If they'd just said to Buffy, there's an emergency and we need you, Owen never would have followed them.) And Buffy let herself get so caught up in wanting to go on this date that she ignores her duties, trying to tell herself that she can just deal with it later, which results in Giles going in alone and ending up in danger.
I noticed early on that there is some gender-role swapping that is probably intended. Given that Joss Whedon's idea for Buffy was a blonde girl in a horror story who's capable and ready to fight, and kicks the asses of the things that stalk her in the night, this isn't too surprising. The very first vampire we see is Darla, a female vampire. The first several victims are boys, not girls, which is also refreshing because women are so often the subjects of violence in both real life and entertainment. The boy Darla kills at the start of the pilot, and then Jesse are the first deaths we see. Even Xander comes closer to biting the dust than Willow does.
I still have the last 2 episodes of season one to go, but I already figured one month wouldn't be feasible for 7 seasons of show. To that end, I was considering adding Angel into the mix once I get into season four. I've always wanted to do a watch where I watch everything in the order it aired, meaning swapping back and forth between Buffy and Angel in the seasons that both were on. Seems like the right time to do it!!
drained