Buffy
the Vampire Slayer
[DVD Buffy]
In all the years we've been
offering up Staff Recommendations here on the BookGuide site, I can't believe
nobody has recommended the DVDs of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer! This being October, it seems only appropriate to
recommend this incredibly iconic seven-season fan-favorite supernatural show.
Joss Whedon took the idea he'd introduced in an unsuccessful 1992 movie
(starring Kristy Swanson as Buffy), and turned it into a weekly television
series in 1997. Sarah Michelle Gellar starred as Buffy Summers, latest in a long
line of mystically empowered "vampire slayers", whose mission is life was to
hunt down not only vampires but all of the other supernatural menaces that
threatened mankind. Problem was -- she just wanted to be a normal high school
student, without all the carnage and mayhem. Paired with her "Watcher", the
somewhat stuffy high school librarian Giles, Buffy quickly makes friends at her
new high school is Sunnydale, CA -- which sits on a gateway into Hell (The
Hellmouth), and the supernatural proves unwilling to let her live a normal
lifestyle. Breaking with centuries of tradition, which state that the Slayer's
life is a solitary one, Buffy and her friends...the Scoobies...proceed to go
through three years of high school and four years of college, battling the
threats to humankind. Filled with snappy dialog, absolutely terrific
performances from the main cast (Giles, Xander, Willow, Angel, Cordelia, Oz,
Faith, Tara, etc.) and each season's "big bad" villain, cool effects and
make-up, and great music, Buffy is a pop culture treasure. Whedon and company
manage to use a wild and crazy concept of a teenaged demon fighter to tell
emotional tales about the "real world" and what it takes to survive adolescence
and young-adulthood. Three key episodes stand out above and beyond all the
others: "Hush" (season four) is almost complete dialog-free as a group of
demons steal everyone's voices and float menacingly down the streets at night
harvesting victims' hearts; "The Body" (season five) features some of the
cast members' best performances, as Buffy finds the body of her mother, who has
died unexpectedly but of natural causes; and "Once More, With Feeling"
(season six), in which a visiting demon forces everyone to experience key
emotional moments in the form of song and dance - all of the cast turn in
bravura musical performances in an emotionally-wrenching storyline. Each of the
seven seasons features an over-all story arc, with a primary villain that Buffy
and company have to fight against in the season finale. Personally, I found
certain seasons stronger than others -- Season Two features Buffy's vampire
boyfriend Angel turning into the darker Angelus. Season Three features the Mayor
of Sunnydale building up to a demonic "ascension" and also sees the destruction
of the high school in the final episode. Season Six features a resurrected Buffy
(killed at the end of season five) coming to terms with having been brought back
to life, and shows gal-pal Willow (a witch) going to the dark side when her love
is killed. the series wraps up many of its overall plots at the end of the
seventh season, but leaves several plot threads dangling, which have been picked
up in official "season 8" and "season 9" comic-book/graphic-novel follow-ups. Happy Halloween!
[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the spinoff series Angel.] -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library [Subscribe to
Scott's monthly booklist newsletter It's All Geek to Me! - on the Books,
Movies & More newsletter sign-up page]
[ Internet Movie Database entry for this series ] | [ Wikipedia entry on this series ] | [ Detailed episode
guide at epguides.com ]
Have you seen this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide
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