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Basic Facts:

Episodes: 12
Runtime: 44 min.
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Premiered: 1997

Format:

Series

Genres:

Action, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery

Created By:

Joss Whedon

Actors:

Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head, Charisma Carpenter, David Boreanaz, Kristine Sutherland, Mark Metcalf, Nicholas Brendon, Robia La Morte, Sarah Michelle Gellar

Made In:

USA

Premiered at:

The WB

The Vam­pire Slayer is longest run­ning vam­pire and super­nat­ural series ever made, even though I think is far from the best. It’s a first major cre­ation for Joss Whe­don, and while I like some of his later work (Fire­fly), I never really watched Buffy and Angel series. So, I recently got my hands on the Cho­sen Col­lec­tion box set, and decided to give Buffy a chance. And, over­all, my opin­ion about the series is mixed at best.

First sea­son is the short­est of one with only 12 episodes. And it started a whole new fol­low­ing that spanned not only to TV and long suc­cess­ful line of Buffy and Angel series, but expanded to other media. Joss cre­ated very com­plex mythol­ogy and there were not many sim­i­lar fran­chises like Buffy was. In the years after Buffy, many vam­pire series were cre­ated, and only the lat­est one True Blood man­aged to remain on air for more than a sea­son. Seven sea­son of Buffy don’t mean that Buffy is the best, because I liked both Moon­light and Blade more, but Buffy was much dif­fer­ent than any other sim­i­lar series.

Story

Vam­pire Slayer is war­rior born in every gen­er­a­tion, always a girl, with super human strength, rapid heal­ing and only one goal: to kill vam­pires and other demon folk. Series is set in small Cal­i­for­nia town of Sun­ny­dale. And this small town is a cen­ter of demon activ­i­ties, with open­ing of Hell­mouth in the mid­dle of the local high­school. Vam­pire Slayer has a Watcher, some­one who has a task on train­ing the Slayer and watch over her.

First sea­son will intro­duce main char­ac­ters, Slayer’s small group that will later be known as Scooby Gang. They know all about Buffy and are help­ing her fight evil. And not all peo­ple that are help­ing her are human. Dur­ing first sea­son they are fight­ing the Mas­ter who is try­ing to open Hell­mouth and start Apocalypse.

Char­ac­ters

Sarah Michelle Gel­lar is in the role of Buffy, and for the most part I like her per­for­mance. She man­ages to play two sides of Buffy, a vam­pire slayer by night and a “nor­mal” teenage girl by day. Her watcher, Rupert Giles, is work­ing as a school librar­ian, and library will be a major gath­er­ing point and cen­ter of the series in the first cou­ple of sea­sons. Watcher is played by the Anthony Stew­art Head. Buffy’s best friends are Wil­low (played by Alyson Han­ni­gan) and Xan­der (Nicholas Bren­don). In the begin­ning they are mostly annoy­ing, sort of comic relief side­kicks. Over the time, that will change and they will get much more devel­oped and bet­ter roles.

Buffy, Sea­son 1 Cast

Buffy has a helper on the other side in form of vam­pire with a soul Angel. He is fea­tured in half of episodes in the first sea­son, but his role will also grow.

And while I like the com­plex and deep mythol­ogy of the series, there are many things that I feel are bad. For the most part, vam­pires are pre­sented as a joke, easy to kill, stu­pid, and all with knowl­edge of mar­tial arts. Fights all look the same, and you will grow tired of them. And this first sea­son is respon­si­ble for set­ting the bar too low when the vam­pires are con­cerned. Many ele­ments of vam­pire mythol­ogy are under devel­oped and (sorry) plain stu­pid (bit­ing and blood drink­ing are very stu­pid). I feel that idea Joss had was very good but some­how it was watered down to unre­al­is­tic and mostly week vil­lains. And while the story will get bet­ter as time goes on, this basic ele­ments will remain week through out the series. I know that they wanted to make mix of teenage com­edy and hor­ror, but this has gone too far.

Con­clu­sion

Fair start of the series, and maybe the weak­est sea­son of all. Any­way, if you get past the ini­tial obvi­ous mis­takes and plot wholes, series is actu­ally enjoy­able and fun to watch. It will get bet­ter after first season.