Buffy the Vampire Slayer
It's kind of a travesty that for as long as I've had this blog, this is when I'm starting my official blog re-watch of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It is my favorite show of all-time. It engendered in me a life long love of Sarah Michelle Gellar. I re-watch it usually once very year, but this will be the first time since 2018, so I'm kind of excited to do this.
The pilot episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" premiered on March 10, 1997. It was a mid-season replacement on the WB. It is based on the movie of the same name starring Kristy Swanson that came out in 1992. You don't need to have seen the movie to enjoy this show and I would really suggest you don't watch it. It's unnecessary. The first season of "Buffy" is an interesting. It's the weakest of the show's seven seasons, for sure. If you wanted to get through it quickly to get to the vastly superior season 2, there are like four episodes from this season you could watch and be fine, but I feel like there is a lot of charm here and the bones of the season are good. When the first season started airing, all the episodes were completely in the can, so there was no way for them to make any adjustments for what was working and what was working until season 2, which is why the second season is so great. I hope some of you take this journey with me, because I'm extremely started to go on it with you.
"Welcome to the Hellmouth"
Rupert Giles: "The point is, a Slayer should be able to see them anyway, without looking, without thinking. Well, can you tell me if there's a vampire in this building?"
Buffy Summers: "Maybe."
Rupert Giles: "You should know. Even through this mass and this... din, you should be able to sense them. Well, try. Reach out with your mind. You have to hone your senses, focus until the energy washes over you, til you feel -- feel every particle of-of..."
Buffy Summers: "There's one."
Rupert Giles: "W-where?"
Buffy Summers: "Right there. Talking to that girl."
Rupert Giles: "You don't know..."
Buffy Summers: "Oh, please! Look at his jacket. He's got the sleeves rolled up. And the shirt? Deal with that outfit for a moment."
Rupert Giles: "It's dated?"
Buffy Summers: "It's carbon dated. Trust me, only someone living underground for ten years would think that was still the look."
Buffy Summers and her mother, Joyce, move to Sunnydale from Los Angeles for a new start. Buffy is particularly ready for one after what happened at her last high school. It isn't long before things start to go awry. A dead body is found in a locker drained of blood. It turns out Buffy is the slayer, the one girl in all the world with the strength and skill to fight the vampires. She tries to pretend this isn't her problem, consistently running away from her Watcher, Rupert Giles, but when vampires menace her first new friends in Sunnydale, she can't help but pick up her destiny in her new town.
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| She ready. |
I talk a lot about pilots and how important they are and I'm going to do that one more time here. "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" do exactly what a good pilot needs to do. It introduces all the characters. The main antagonist for this first season. It's so clever and funny. All the actors just kill it immediately and there is such insane chemistry amongst the core four of them from the start. It's lightning in a bottle. It is something that rarely happens and it is extremely difficult to reproduce and it's just one of the many, many things that makes "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" so special.
The cold open of this episode is so good. It gives you exactly what you need. There is the cool, tough guy breaking in to the school after hours with the timid good girl. You think you know how this is going. You have seen this before. But then the scene circumvents your expectations by making the "timid good girl" the threat when Darla attacks this random dude. It's perfect and it kind of tells you everything that you need to know about this show in the first like five minutes.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is perfect as Buffy. The idea of a valley girl being this demon slayer is inherently funny, but in Gellar's masterful hands Buffy is never a joke. And she's not what you expect. You look at Buffy and you expect her to act more like Charisma Carpenter's Cordelia, but Buffy is the exact opposite. One of my favorite moments is when Buffy and Cordelia encounter Willow in the hall and Cordelia is absolutely awful to her. As Buffy watches the look on her face kind of shifts and its clear that she has decided to dump Cordelia and move over to the Willow side.
The casting here is just uniformly perfect. Allyson Hannigan is great as nerdy wallflower Willow Rosenberg. I always forget how atrociously they dress Willow in this first season in particular. Like, her plaid jumper dress and white leggings combo with the men's white button up underneath just feels like a massive joke. But, Willow is so likable immediately. She and SMG have insane amounts of chemistry. One of my favorite scenes in the series is when Buffy and Willow are talking at the Bronze and Buffy tells Willow to seize the moment. It just feels so wonderful and natural.
I have to spend a little time praising Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles. He is so British and again, he just plays so well off of Sarah Michelle Gellar from the start. Giles is a stereotypical British person and his snobbishness and stuffiness is so great. I feel like I'm going to just be repeating the same things over and over again. And then you know, Xander is there too.
This first episode introduces us to classic "Buffy" locations. There is the library which is basically the secret headquarters of Buffy and the gang. There is the Bronze where the gang will spend a lot of time hanging out. I have to give a special shout out to the balcony in the Bronze which will feature a lot in the show and in later seasons to some much more salacious moments than the conversation between Buffy and Giles.
We get an appearance from a shadowy, handsome, mysterious man who knows who Buffy is but is not forthcoming with any information about himself. He grants Buffy a cross necklace and warns her about a harvest coming. We love cryptic messages from good looking men in dark alleys particularly when they come bearing gifts.
The action picks up at the end of the episode when Buffy realizes that the dude that Willow is seizing the day with is a vampire. And Willow and Xander's friend is approached by Darla, the girl from the opening scene. Buffy follows them to a mausoleum where things go down. If I had one super minor complaint about this episode, it's that I wish there was a little more action. It's nice to see Buffy finally get some licks in even if she is overpowered by Luke in the final moments. There is some great action in Buffy and I think that is maybe the one thing part one of the pilot doesn't really showcase.
Grade: A
"The Harvest"
Rupert Giles: "We're at the center of a mystical convergence here. We may, in fact, stand between the Earth and its total destruction."
Buffy Summers: "Well, I got to look on the bright side. Maybe I can still get kicked out of school."
Xander Harris: "Oh, yeah. That's a plan, 'cause lots of schools aren't on Hellmouths."
Willow Rosenberg: "Maybe you could blow something up. They're really strict about that."
Buffy Summers: "I was thinking of a more subtle approach, you know, like excessive not studying."
Rupert Giles: "The earth is doomed."
After narrowly escaping her encounter with Luke, Buffy saves Willow and Xander, but Jesse is taken to the underground lair of the Master. Giles educates Xander and Willow about the Slayer and demons and vampires. Giles and Willow learn about the Master. An ancient vampire who brought his minions to Sunnydale in the 1930's to open the Hellmouth, but instead they are trapped in a church underground after an earthquake hits. The Master intends on using Luke as his vessel who will drain victims until the Master has the ability to break free of his prison and finish what he started. It's up to Buffy to stop him but can she do that when she's grounded?
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| Families fight. |
A pilot usually has to give viewers a lot of information and that usually involves a pretty heavy exposition dump that can slow things down. The first part of the Buffy premiere avoids that mainly because it shuffles a lot of that exposition to this episode. So, there are a couple of long stretches where we are being told a lot of things. These things are definitely important but it does kind of slow the momentum of the episode down a little bit. What keeps these expository moments from being too much of a drag, is the writing and the snappy banter between the characters. It keeps things moving and makes you forget that you are basically watching people talk for like five minutes.
I didn't mention the other main member of the Scooby gang in the last episode because frankly, I don't love him. Xander Harris is maybe one of my least favorite "Buffy" characters and it really is dislike from the jump. Xander's main personality trait in these first two episodes is being annoying and being gross towards Buffy because he thinks she's hot. Nicholas Brendon does his best, but Xander is just extremely unlikable. He refuses to listen to Buffy, who is the expert here. I get that he wants to help Jesse but his refusal to do what Buffy says and his like mansplaining energy is not the look. You can tell when Buffy realizes that Xander is following her in the sewers and she wants to deck him and frankly, she should have.
Each season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has a Big Bad and this first season we get the Master. Mark Metcalfe is great as the Master. For a dude that is trapped underground, he is pretty menacing. He has this quiet malice that makes him extremely terrifying and if you weren't sure about it just look at the scene where he jabs his finger in his minions eyes. The makeup and prosthetics are really well done and I mean, this was 1996. You have to give it up to the team who worked on this.
I love when Buffy really leans into the teenage stuff and having Joyce ground Buffy when she's preparing to head to the Bronze to stop the harvest is great. I love Joyce and she's very much one of those New Age-y moms that were prevalent in the mid to late '90's but she's never like grating. You can tell she's read all the books about parenting a troubled teenager and she's following them to the letter. It's not as if the grounding stops Buffy from sneaking out.
The first part may have lacked in action but this episode really makes up for it. Buffy and the gang spring into action and let Luke and the Master's other vampires have it. There are a few memorable moments here. Xander accidentally staking Jesse. Buffy using the cymbal to decapitate a vampire. The sunrise gambit. It's a great third act to a strong part 2.
This two part pilot is super strong and even though I have seen it a million and one times, I am still just as entertained as I was watching it the very first time.
Grade: B+
Next up, Buffy joins the cheerleading squad and Xander's hot for teacher.
I know I have so many friends who are Buffy fans. I'd love to hear some of your favorite moments from the pilot. Anything I missed? Let me know in the comments.
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