av Mr Chase » ons mar 03, 2004 0:17
Mr Chases recension av Buffy numero uno EDITED:
1. Welcome to the Hellmouth
An awesome start for an awesome series, it introduces us -- the unexpecting viewing public -- to Buffy and her gang of vampire (among other occult beings) fighting buddies. And unlike many TV pilots this one comes off as a thoroughly great must-see from the get go.
Let's see, from the very first scenes we get a taste of Joss Whedon playing with our expectations when the girl who breaks into school with a guy at night turns out not to be the victim-to-be but a vampire turning on her fellow burglar. This twisting of our minds is going to be a trademark Joss treatment throughout "Buffy". Great!
We see Buffy Summers, a petite and pretty blond girl, in her first day at school. We all know she's the slayer (since the movie) but she really doesn't what to be the chosen one and freaks when she meets Rupert Giles, the librarian/watcher, who immediately introduces her to the book "Vampyr". Not much later her angst at being the slayer shows. She so much just wants to be a normal teen.
A normal teen like Cordelia Chase perhaps? We get to see the bitchy "Queen C" right away, with hardly any redeeming qualities at all (boy, is that going to change). At first Buffy seems glad at the prospect to become a "Cordette", the popular click in school, but she feels very uncomfortable when Cordelia really mistreats the poor shy and geeky Willow Rosenberg. Buffy instead seeks Willow out. Obviously, she doesn't want to be "normal" (whatever that means) at any cost, and they strike up a good friendship. You can't "legally", as Willow put it, be a friend of both Willow and Cordelia at Sunnydale High. Buffy also meets the goofy Xander Harris who is immediately taken in with her (and which male in is right mind wouldn't be) and her stake/small fence equipment.
Buffy's troubled vampire slaying past isn't going away. She has a reputation of being a troublemaker even before her first class. In a funny scene we see the rather likable principal Mr Flutie tearing up her record saying that everyone in his school starts with clean slate, only to visually patch the record back together again when he reads that Buffy burned down her old high school gym (hey, I wanted to do that many times myself and my school didn't even have vampires in it!).
Cryptic Angel also shows up as a mystery man giving Buffy some advise (sort of) and a cross necklace. I have never been much of a fan of the Angel character and I sure didn't like him in the first episodes. He only grew a little on me even if his story arc was interesting. Oh well, you can't please everyone.
Buffy's new friends finds out about her really fast and they take it surprisingly well even if Xander overhearing a Giles/Buffy conversation in the library is a bit too much of a cliché. But Willow as the almost-vampire victim was good.
OK, I've almost forgotten about the villain(s). The Master has always been sort of a disappointment. But then again, how dangerous can a vampire be if he's stuck between dimensions? The problem is that he really didn't improve over the first season until the very last episode, but by then it was too late. And Darla the girl vamp is way too inept for being such an old . Only Brian Thompson shone but he always does when he plays bad guys (has he ever played a good guy?).
Well, it was a good welcome to the Hellmouth but one serious question remains, and as far as I know it still remains: If Sunnydale is indeed on the mouth of hell how is it that all vampires, demons etc break out when Buffy arrives and not before? And if they have been roaming the streets of Sunnydale before why hasn't there been much news about it?
Senast redigerad av
Mr Chase ons mar 03, 2004 2:58, redigerad totalt 1 gång.
Rupert Giles: "I'll be back in the Middle Ages."
Miss Calendar: "Did you ever leave?"