TVScape.NET

Basic Facts:

Episodes: 22
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, James Marsters, Juliet Landau, Kristine Sutherland, Nicholas Brendon, Robia La Morte, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seth Green

Made In:

USA

Premiered at:

The WB

And while sea­son 1 was not so good, it man­aged to lay a solid foun­da­tion for the rest of the series (if you get past the mar­tial arts stu­pid vam­pires and the great ease of killing them). Also, first sea­son was too seri­ous, and that’s some­thing sea­son 2 and later sea­sons will cor­rect adding more fun into the mix. Main and recur­ring cast is expanded and sev­eral very inter­est­ing char­ac­ters are added (and by that I mean Spike).

Story

While the first sea­son was mostly sin­gle story line lead­ing to killing the Mas­ter, pri­mar­ily Buffy has episodic nature, but still hav­ing a main arc for each sea­son, each one end­ing with some form of Apoc­a­lypse. Main focus of the arc of sea­son 2 is the open­ing of one of the Hell dimen­sions and Angel loos­ing his soul in the mid­dle of the sea­son, and going back to being evil.

But, strongest side of the series are episodes that divert from main story line and deal with unusual and funny events or crea­tures. This started with episode Hal­loween, and cos­tumes that trans­form the peo­ple that wear them. Sim­i­lar type of episodes are Ted, Bad Eggs and my favorite Bewitched, Both­ered and Bewildered.

Dur­ing this sea­son, we learn a bit more about Giles and his (dark) past, but that only scratches the sur­face, and it’s a real shame that only hand­ful of episodes dur­ing the series deal with this char­ac­ter. At one point, there were plans to cre­ate a spin off series about him, but that never made it into production.

Char­ac­ters

Many new char­ac­ters were added in this sea­son. David Bore­anaz is now series reg­u­lar, and his char­ac­ter Angel will be replaced by evil and soul­less Angelus. To replace the Mas­ter, we get two new char­ac­ters: Spike and Drusila. They both have a long his­tory with Angelus and they will together plan the open­ing of Hell. Spike char­ac­ter will get huge fan base dur­ing this sea­son, and it’s decided not to kill him off, but to expand his role in the later sea­sons. James Marsters is excel­lent in this role. Another great deci­sion is to expand the role of Cordelia (Charisma Car­pen­ter) beyond the cliché char­ac­ter she was dur­ing the first sea­son, and Cordy is defin­i­tively one of my favorite char­ac­ters in these early seasons.

Buffy, Sea­son 2 Cast

And while series is still plagued by incon­sis­tent writ­ing, too many clichés that will get annoy­ing very quickly, improve­ment over first sea­son is sig­nif­i­cant. Also, it’s very impor­tant to know that series intended audi­ence is younger than I am, so maybe teenagers will find it much bet­ter than I did.

Con­clu­sion

Much bet­ter sea­son than first one, with at least 5–6 great episodes and very few really bad episodes. Adding Angel/​Angelus twist and char­ac­ter of Spike will prove as excel­lent move and will ensure the suc­cess of the series. So, grab your Cho­sen Col­lec­tion box set and start watch­ing. Rest of sea­sons reviews are coming.