Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 1 (New Packaging) [DVD]

This is were it all started (not counting the Movie of course). Buffy Summers moves to Sunnydale after being expelled from her previous school in LA after setting the Gym on fire (to kill a horde of Vampires threatening the school).

12 episodes of (in general) one-shot stories. Even though they are one-shots the continuity they set up is pretty well adhered to throughout all 7 Seasons of this marvelously crafted show.

This first season introduces us to the mainstays of the series. Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Willow Rosenberg (Allyson Hannigan), Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) and Rupert Giles, Buffys Wathcer (Tony Head). These 4 make up the Slayer and the Scooby Gang who foil various nefarious plans for evils domination of the world.

Also introduced in this first season are Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) and Angel (David Boreanaz) who were, along with others, mainstays of Buffy for the first 3 seasons before Angel got his own eponymously titled show which also saw Cordelia as an important supporting character.

This season sets up the world which Buffy will exist in for 7 years. Sunnydale was built on a Hellmouth (an area of mystical convergence) and so sees more than it's fair share of 'funny goings on' and monsters/demons, particularly Vampires.

During this Season the main 'Baddie' is the Master, an ancient Vampire, who is trapped in a church which was sucked underground in an earthquake. The Master was a superb villain who sets alot of things in motion for future seasons, such as the calling of another slayer after he kills Buffy (temporarily) in the finale of this first season.

If you are a fan of Buffy you must own this first Season as it sets everything up for the future. If you are not a Buffy fan then you should start here and this will set the groundwork for the rest of your life as a Buffy fan.

I am a relatively new Buffy fan starting at the beginning, with no real sense of the direction future seasons may have taken. The first twelve episodes of Season One certainly provide a wonderful introduction to the subject at hand, succeeding fabulously even when storylines wander into really weird places. Few television shows could grow and prosper with such plot points as a substitute teacher who is actually a giant praying mantis, a girl who takes the concept of being invisible to everyone around her much too far, and an ancient demon who comes backs to life via the Internet. In Sunnydale, a town residing directly over the Hellmouth, anything can happen and be accepted for what it is by both the characters as well as the audience.

There are many strengths to this show: Joss Whedon’s vision, commitment, and talent; sharp writing by all concerned with different writers all moving seamlessly in a fictional world larger than themselves; excellent special effects; a genuinely unsettling atmosphere wrapped around a seemingly bright and sunny one; etc. The greatest strength of the show has to be the actors, though. Sarah Michelle Gellar is gorgeous as well as exceedingly believable in her role as the Slayer; Alyson Hannigan is captivating as the quiet, demure Willow Rosenberg; Nicholas Brendon brings an incredible amount of humor and teen-based reality to everything that happens as the Chandler Bing-ish Xander Harris; Charisma Carpenter is the quintessentially vain prom queen whose character Cordelia Chase really only begins to belie her stereotypical image toward the end of the season. Topping them all, though, is Anthony Head in the role of Rupert Giles, the Watcher whose job it is to train and prepare Buffy in her role as the ordained Slayer. His aura of professionalism, commitment, intelligence, and kindly authority injects a necessary dose of believability into an unbelievable world. I’m rather ambivalent toward Angel (David Boreanaz), as I tend to share Xander’s feelings of dislike for this mysterious man in Buffy’s life.

One feels as if one knows these characters from the very beginning, identifying a great deal with some if not all of them. Buffy just wants to be a normal sixteen-year-old girl, sometimes resisting her destiny as the one and only Slayer standing between the world and the apocalypse. Xander is simply brilliant and hilarious to me as the normal guy trying to deal with impossible things as well as his undisguised and unrequited love for Buffy. Willow is the smart and geekily unpopular kid who possesses a greater strength that she realizes, pining silently over Xander in the final ring of a weird little love triangle. Eggheads like me, of course, celebrate the efforts of the scholarly Giles and identify with many of his old-school feelings and arguments. It is not often that we are blessed with a librarian hero.

Season One has two dimensions to it. First, it lays out the vague history of Sunnydale’s newest student Buffy Summers, introduces the responsibilities and functions of the foreordained Slayer, and exposes us to a wide cross-section of the dangerous monsters that one would expect to converge on a place referred to as the Hellmouth. Second, it assembles Buffy and her gang of friends into the first dream team of vampire slaying and other miscellaneous demonic extermination. Buffy does most of the work, of course, but everyone plays a part in thwarting the incredibly threatening things that seem to rise up continuously in a town somehow still referred to as dull and boring. At this time in Buffy’s slaying career, her enemy is the ancient vampire named the Master; his attempts to free himself from his underground tomb and return to the surface serve as the backdrop of most of the major action of the season, leading up to a direct confrontation between him and Buffy in the final episode.

Perhaps no other show on television has given us so many great zingers and one-line catch phrases, digging deeply into the world of popular culture. It also provides an impressively realistic look at youth and some of the issues young people confront in the normal, non-vampire world. Buffy is about much more than slaying vampires, vanquishing demons, and the like. Buffy, Xander, and Willow in particular deal with problems each of us have faced before alongside the type of evil threats that can be found only in Sunnydale, and it is this aspect of the show that truly connects with many of its fans.

This boxset made its way into my Christmas stocking and I have absolutely relished it since! I've been a fan since the beginning and this is the best way to watch Buffy - on DVD! While the picture is grainy at times and dark episodes such as Angel don't look as good as they could have, this is probably due to the lower budget and, hence, the lower quality film used. It's not an issue to be dwelled on, as the episodes look better than they do on video or on transmission. The sound is also definitely better than the VHS copies, meaning the DVD wins hands down (not surprisingly). Of course, there are also a (leniant) number of extras too. If you're a fan who purchased the 'Welcome To The Hellmouth/The Harvest' video, then you'll already be familiar with the fun little trailer and the brief interviews with Whedon and everyone's favourite Angel, David B. There's also a fun-to-watch-a-couple-of-times-but-never-again music video in the shape of the cheesy Hepburn track 'I Quit' (which would have been better included on the Season Three or Four DVDs, as the clips and sets are from this era), as well as a nice little photo gallery, cast biographies (which are more interesting than you may think but contain info you'll only skim through once or twice), and the scripts for the first two episodes - while these are handy to see what the actors see on the page, while also giving us a glimpse at what was cut and what was changed, they're not very well put together and a big chunk of what happens on screen is missing from mine (maybe all copies, I'm not sure). There's also a slim little guide to the first season which is a rather cool addition, yet a little pointless if you already own the first Watcher's Guide book. However, the 'big' extra is the commentary courtesy of the master, Joss Whedon - informative, witty, and enthusiastic (though there are a couple of lengthy pauses, mind). The extras in their entirety make for a nice improvement on the boxset and the episodes, though, and the episodes themselves are a mixed bag. The first season is fun to look at now and again to see how the characters first startd out, to see all the bits and pieces that are referred to over and over in the following seasons (as we all know Buffy is a continuity-extravaganza) and to see how big the regulars' hair used to be! However, with the exception of the opening two-parter, the episode 'Angel' (which opens the door for the big epic love story between vamp and slayer) and the emotional and rip-roaring finale, this is all filler and not much killer. While many of the fillers are fun, they're just not that important in the big Buffy picture - while they are funny and introduce lots of recurring characters that we'll see again (Jenny Calendar, for instance), they're just not all-out-there experiments. However, this is where it all began and to understand the brilliant seasons that follow, you MUST purchase this NOW! Expect gorgeous girls, tangled relationships, fangs galore, Emmy-worthy performances, a freshness missing from later seasons, and above all the tremendously layered scripts. A must-have must-see item! Have fun slaying...