Season Beginings..

[basakbangel]

Selen dıd thıs with the fınale. So why not thıs one?

Fırstly sorry for typıng "ı" because the real one doesn't type there's somethıng wrong wıth ıt.

Here are the begınıngs:

Season 1- Welcome to the Hellmouth
Season 2- When She was bad
Season 3- Anne
Season 4- Freshman
Season 5- Buffy Vs. Dracula
Season 6- Bargaınıng
Season 7- Lessons

They are all perfect and some of them are special for all of us and some of them has a personal thıng maybe.

I'm asknıg you to do 2 thıngs: Whıch one was your favourıte?
Whıch one was best for explaınıng
the maın ıdea of the that season?
(It doesn't have to be your faveourıte)

[NileQT87]

best:
btvs: when she was bad
ats: deep down
both: deep down

best explaining:
btvs: welcome to the hellmouth
ats: city of... -or- deep down
both: city of... -or- deep down

[Kold]

My favourite -- Anne.
This episode really is a stunner. The coda to the season 2 finale, the real resolution, you know -- Buffy has so much guilt on her for unknowingly unleashing Angelus on the world and herself, and even more guilt and grief for having to kill him when he was hers again. She had to destroy what was hers, sacrificing her world for somebody else's. So Buffy goes out into the big bad world, where the external world reflects the internal world, and to escape the Hell of her mind she has to face a real Hell, so comparable to the thing that took Angel.

And as a fairly useless attempt to avoid the stigma of guilt -- not to mention the responsibility that chases her through her mother and Giles -- she tries to abandon her Slayer identity. But Buffy can't separate her Slayer identity and her human identity any longer -- she killed that thing that really, truly tied her to the Buffy persona, and she can no longer bear to face the other ties. So all she can do is jettison her entire identity -- but you never escape in dreams, y'know?

And the beautiful realisation of this episode, where Buffy is able to turn it around, is to see what she is really doing when she kills a demon or saves the world. To save the world before, she had to kill someone that she so deeply recognised. Here, as she kills the demons and makes the world a better place, she is driven by these totally real people, these people in absolute need, who are so similar to what she's become. It allows her to, in some small way, face what she has done and reconnect to her identity as a human, and come to grips with her destiny as a Slayer. She does what Angel later does -- in this episode, at least, it's not just about killing demons or saving "the world"... it's about placing yourself in front of people and becoming their saviour.

Her impression of Gandhi? A liberator.


Best for explaining the main ideas of a season - The Freshman.
Well you've got the obvious shift of setting -- we have to be introduced to this primary setting for season 4, we need the change in lifestyle that Buffy will be experiencing in university drawn out for us, but this episode does so much more.

This episode throws Buffy in at "the deep end"; puts her in out of her depth. She struggles with how her life has to change at university, and as a result appears powerless and weak in the face of dominating vampiress Sunday. But of course, that's just an illusion -- Buffy felt alone, totally isolated, in this first episode, and that makes her weak. When her friends come to her aid, she regains her confidence. They strengthen her, they complete her, and this point is hammered home throughout the season.

Through the Initiative plot line, the grandness of scale, training and technology seems to overshadow what Buffy can do: she herself is fooled, trying to become a part of the Initiative and trying to work on their times, allowing it to come between herself and her friends throughout the series. Adam comes directly from the Initiative, and Buffy is weak against him -- she is out of her depth with something like Adam, she has no comprehension of this mix of man, demon and machine. But Buffy is strong: she belongs in charge of the Initiative, not the other way around, and eventually it is her friends who once again fill her with the strength to prove herself beyond Adam's comprehension, and overcome any challenge.

Buffy struggles, throughout the season, once again with the identity of being a Slayer -- she is not just isolated, she isolates herself as she did in Anne. But, after so much doubt -- "now I know why there's no prophecy about a Chosen One... and her friends" -- Buffy again and again reaches that cardinal point: her friends give her power. This is the defining point of Restless, too, and it connects back to the self-discovery she made in Anne: "I'm gonna be a fireman"... she is here to save people, she's around to save the world and she is going to do so with support, but she is not going to be told what to do. I think The Freshman alludes to all this quite nicely.

[skinless]

My Favorite was Anne
Which one was Best at explaning: Welcome to the Hellmouth It did a great job of reintroducing us to Buffy and what she does.

[KingofCretins]

To me, the best season premieres are...

1. Anne
2. Lessons
3. The Freshman

I think they do the best jobs in setting the tone for their respective seasons. It's nice to see all the "Anne" love on this thread, it's a very underrated episode.

As far as best expository value, I'm going to go a different way here and say... Buffy vs. Dracula.

As the first episode with Dawn, I feel like "Buffy vs. Dracula" is sort of a farewell to the old group dynamics, and as such they wrote it to embody a lot of the best of how those dynamics worked. The beach cookout scene, the Scooby meeting at Giles', Buffy having robust love/hate about a soul(ful) vampire -- I think it did a great job in getting across who the characters are and how the relate for someone if it was the first episode they watched.

[selenspuffy]

-Which one was your favourite?
Anne. I don't think that Season beginnings are that awesome, imo they don't usually have the atmosphere of that season.But all in all, my favourite one is Anne.

-Which one was best for explaining
the main idea of the that season?
(It doesn't have to be your favourite)
Umm..Welcome To The Hellmouth may be the answer, it's like the beginning of the beginning Also if makes you feel that it's season1 for sure. The other season's ideas change completely through the seasons

[Weredog]

"The Freshman"
It represented the season in a whole; the gang banded yet disjointed, Giles feeling unnecessary, the Initiative, and most importantly, life after high school is bigger and badder.

[Chosen1]

My favorite would have to be either Buffy Vs. Dracula or Lessons. I liked BvD because it was when Buffy started to really want to learn exactly what she is. I liked Lessons because the brought the high school back and it was cool to me how Buffy started showing Dawn how to fight and stuff. The one that I think explains the season the best would have to be Lessons. It clearly states that it's going back to the beggining of it all. Plus, the extra bonus of seeing all the bad guys again in the end.

[Veverka]

Good thread. Looking at each of them, I'm really surprised by how many are quite different to the season they open, as a whole. Not that they don't fit, coz they do, but just, they're quite different- Anne takes place in LA, Buffy v. Dracula doesn't feature Dawn, but features beach play.

At the time when I first watched them, I would say I liked Bargaining the most. Looking back, I would say "When she was bad". The first ep I ever saw, it holds a special place in my heart, but more than that, I think there's a lot of foreshadowing going on there too, a lot of the season summed up in the ep.

[Wolfie Gilmore]

My favourite season opener is Buffy Vs Dracula. For me, that episode sums up everything that's great about the show (without being my favourite episode, because I think an episode being "typical" Buffy doesn't necessarily make it "best" Buffy, because it's when the show breaks its own rules that I like it the best. EG OMWF, Tabula Rasa, Normal Again, Who Are You?).

Buffy Versus Dracula has it all ? hilarious wordplay and verbal brilliance (The dark prince?bator, Xander's buttmonkey speech); an exploration of Buffy's role in the world, as slayer and as a human being; great pop culture gags (Dracula as "pimply fanboy" Lestat wannabe); and our feet being rugpulled with Dawn's appearance.

Come to think of it, this ep is "typical" in its monkeying about with what's "normal" in the Buffyverse ? BtVS is a shifting thing, and this episode rejigs the universe in a way that makes it even more BtVS-ish, because change and narrative game-playing are a large part of what makes BtVS BtVS for me.

Plus, it has Giles and the three sisters "making time". The moment when he wants to go back to get his shoe is priceless.

[spuffbeste]

My favourite season opening is Buffy vs. Dracula. Firstly, I like the theme of season 5 and imo, this episode really explains the theme in an obvious and a blur way! It is one of my favourite episode as well.... Also, Lessons was great, too. But I don't think it really explains the season 7 as the first episode of that season.

[basakbangel]

Thank you guys so much.

My favourite season begining is, Anne. It's very different and the idea of it scared me because she had gone to LA. She was very depressed and it was more exciting and interesting to watch.

The episode that explains is Buffy Vs. Dracula. This episode told us the difference. I really felt that the scoobies grew up. I dont know what made me think like that. But the atmosphere was a big difference. It was this dark thingy that I felt while wacthing. Also, we could see that It became more serious and they were more mature so we could understand that something "serious" would happen.