Buffy – s2:e6 – Halloween

Halloween, how do I love thee?

• After two consecutive detours (Reptile Boy and Inca Mummy Girl), we finally have our Spike back!
• We have a new villain, Ethan Rayne. He’s like mischief turned deadly. Fun but fatal. And he’ll be back – another bit of bonus knowledge from my second viewing.
• Cursed costumes! Buffy gets to play the fainting flower, Willow winds up both ghost and dress-up slut, Xander regains some stolen masculinity as a soldier, and Cordy (uncursed) wears the ubiquitous skintight cat costume of the nineties.

Buffy – s2:e5 – Reptile Boy

Look at this cock monster! You can actually see what could easily be construed as foreskin around the hips. And that mouth cries (or hisses) piss slit loud and clear.

Buffy falls prey to a cult of cock-worshipping frat boys.

At least that’s what I read into this cautionary episode about the dangers of associating with clean-cut, polite

Buffy – s2:e4 – Inca Mummy Girl

[#208 on my Buffy/Angel ranking
of all 254 episodes from both series]

Ampata becoming Ampata. The Inca Mummy Girl takes her second boy and her first contemporary identity.

The Inca Mummy Girl is an anti-Buffy. She’s The Chosen One, too, just not chosen to be The Slayer; instead, she was offered for a specialty sacrifice like 500 years ago, which would have made her one of the last before the conquistadores arrived. I think I could excuse more of this weaker episode had they invested more in the mummy

Buffy – s2:e3 – School Hard

Spike crows about how he likes tools!

Now it’s on! Season two kicked off with When She Was Bad,  featuring some summertime character development for Buffy while harking back to the finale of s1. Next came Some Assembly Required, which hews closer to the monster-of-the-week formula, marking a holding place in the series. The third episode, School Hard, makes a hard left in a new direction and casts a dismissive eye at s1’s leftover villain, The Anointed One, who finally meets his just end

Buffy – s2:e2 – Some Assembly Required

[#204 on my Buffy/Angel ranking
of all 254 episodes from both series]

In which the gang races to stop a pair of novice mad scientists from using Cordelia’s head as the lid for a Bride of Frankenstein project.

Buffy faces down another pair of geek threats along the lines of Fritz and Dave from s1’s I, Robot… You, Jane. This time, instead of tech nerds, we’re up against geeks from the yearbook and the science fair: the evil, nebbishy Eric (Fritz’s counterpart) and the remorseful, faintly bashful Chris (analogous to Dave).

Nice Chris and nefarious Eric hatch a plot to create their own Bride of Frankenstein.

This is also our second episode in the series to address the phenomenon of cutting up teenagers for body parts, following s1’s The Puppet Show. Rather than a demon using them to achieve human form, however, this plan

Buffy – s2:e1 – When She Was Bad

The last thing I needed was to find out I must have the Absalom trading card.

The first show of s2 accomplishes two goals. First, the episode uses the summer gap to temporarily divorce Buffy from Sunnydale and from us, making the change in her – from victorious, celebratory Slayer to callous, cruel Slayer – believable and understandable. Second, despite the three months off, the story manages to pick up right where we ended: in the library with Giles, Miss Carpenter, Cordelia, and Willow standing over the freshly staked skeleton of The Master.

Buffy – Raúl’s Season One Rankings and Closing Thoughts

Holy crap. I feel like the cheerleading coach in Witch trying to sort out the best from the alternates. There really were no bad entries here, so everyone makes the team, though some episodes didn’t work as well as stand-alones, and I’ve found on review that I really prefer those that played into the seasonal story arc with The Master. At heart I am a soap fan and I need to ride that continuity for a sense of tension threading the whole together. Yet in terms of setting the characters and tone for the overall series,

Buffy – s1:e12 – Prophecy Girl

Our first season finale! Highlights for Raúl:

• Buffy finally squares off against The Master alone with disastrous, prophecy-fulfilling results.
• Buffy dies (for the first time, and far more temporarily than in the s5 finale) and is revived through the devotion of her two hopelessly unmatched rival suitors, bad boy Angel and boy-next-door Xander.
• Buffy faces off with The Master again, still alone, but this time to spectacular, skylight-smashing results.
• In the meantime, the Hellmouth opens and a tentacled monster bursts through the library floor as Giles, Willow, Cordy, and Miss Carpenter try to hold off a horde of vampires!

This discovery shakes Cordy and Willow, but then it’s forgotten about. I don’t think they mentioned the mass murder in s2.

The finale also heaps on the horror by having an entire A.V. room full of students murdered. I found the scene a bit unnecessary, but it afforded Willow and Cordelia a chance to express shock and sadness

Buffy – s1:e4 – Teacher’s Pet

OK, so my dread of sitting though this one again was what stopped last year’s attempt at a series re-watch dead in its tracks. But I plunged ahead this month and to my surprise found it rather entertaining. Yes, I think after last week’s Witch, it’s a comedown, and yes, they need to get a tighter focus on this season’s threat, The Master, but it’s still a fun episode that gives Xander his first spotlight and it’s our second (in a row!) featuring a female villain with a hidden identity – a fucking praying mantis even vampires steer clear of!

We have a pretty good idea as soon as Miss French shows up to prompt hard-ons in biology class that she’s not

Buffy – s1:e3 – Witch

Only three episodes in and they’re already using Barbies as voodoo dolls.

On top of that, Whedon establishes the series as episodic as well as seasonal in storytelling. Witch is the first monster-of-the-week episode, and befitting a show largely about teenage girls, they make the monster a mother. In addition to serving as a contrast to Buffy’s busy, often