Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 6 (New Packaging) [DVD]

I'm not in it for Buffy, I'm into Spike and as far as I am concerned this is the best season of Buffy, well apart from the Spike & DRu sessions in Season 2&3. I love the character development between Spike & Buffy and as far as I'm concerned even all those raunchy scenes are of themselves really interesting metaphors for how things are going for them "Out of high school" and into the "real" world...its actually one of my favorite seasons of Buffy and I can't imagine why anyone would write it off because its "different from other seasons"....if its not different after a while, there's no progress....why bother at all? Just replay SEason 1 over and over and over again....its original and Who doesn't want to see more of Spike in less clothes? :-)

Buffy is a love or hate thing (it takes a few consecutive episodes to know which camp you fall into), and even within the people who are into Buffy there are those which like the early 'fun' episodes, which are more like one-off adventures and more like kids/teen trash TV (though still highly entertaining). Season 5,6 and 7 of which this, season 6, is the best have huge story arcs and character/plot developments and subtlties which span not only the entire series but the entire history of the show, ie all the episodes link up to make one big story.

If you have a spare week or however long it takes to watch this, do it. The Times once reviewed this season of Buffy as the best television programme ever made - I couldn't agree more.

Pure fantasy entertainment that you will become addited to

Challenging, ambitious, courageous, daring and not particularly good, the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a curious paradox, boasting some of the most quotable dialogue (the supergeek supervillains argument over the best Bond, Spike's every other line) and one of the most fondly remembered episodes but never being able to shake the feeling that they really should have left the gal and the show in their grave. There are some intriguingly dark ideas - torn out of Heaven by her friends, Buffy spends much of the season trying to come to terms with being brought back to a life of fear, loss and uncertainty while the leader of the initially comic geek trio displays an ugly undercurrent of misogyny - but too many episodes are just lazy. Always boasting smart writing, the temptation at times veers to settle for smartass, only just dodging the bullet. Not only is the fun gone, but the often unremittingly joyless tone of the season ensures that none of the intended dramatic highs stand out - when everything is one-note miserable, what's another crisis more or less? There's not even much slaying going on as it piles on more soap opera angst, turning it into a veritable Sunnydale 90210. There's little of the real emotional power that enabled some of the supporting players to show their strengths as actors here: they have character arcs, many of them interesting, but it can't shake the feeling that they've been doing this too long to really be enthused by it. And yet it has one of the smartest episodes - Once More With Feeling, where creator Joss Whedon almost seems to turn the show into a mirror on conflicting emotions to its return with songs like Going Through the Motions. Still, it rallies for the finale, though.

Decent but insubstantial extras on the boxed set, but once again the UK set is cropped widescreen rather than (as per the US edition) the original fullframe.