“Where the Wild Things Are” (season 4, episode 18)Īlso known as the episode where Buffy and Riley have sex for 45 minutes. Still, let us not gloss over the bad, which, as this show goes, is very bad: We get yet another episode of Buffy moping over terrible Parker, the introduction of the odious she-werewolf Veruca, and a very silly, very preachy story about the awfulness of college students drinking beer (oh, the horror). It speaks volumes about the quality of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that the episode almost universally agreed to be the worst of the series still manages to boast some sharp dialogue, physical and verbal humor, and even a dang Emmy nomination (for Makeup and Hairstyling). These are still some pretty bad episodes! Down goes Parker.
We all know a bad episode of Buffy is better than a lot of other TV. We argued, kvetched, and agonized through several rounds of voting to bring you a complete and definitive ranking. How do you choose between a brilliant formal experiment like “Hush,” with its 20 minutes of dialogue-free action, and an episode like “The Gift,” which does nothing formally unusual but advances the themes and characters Buffy is built on really, really well? Is season six brilliantly dark or willfully bleak? And which of Buffy’s boyfriends is best? We looked at what made the show great and at what it never exactly figured out how to handle, at the themes it elevated to art and the ones it poked at a couple of times and then abandoned. So in honor of Buffy’s 20th anniversary, we’ve ranked its 144 episodes from worst to best. Only Buffy could give those anxieties the apocalyptic stakes every teenager knows they deserve. Other teen soaps of the era could talk about being so ignored you feel invisible, or being worried that after you sleep with your boyfriend he won’t respect you anymore. But over the next seven seasons, it became clear that Buffy, as helmed by showrunner Joss Whedon, also lent itself to uniquely emotional explorations of the demons of adolescence.
It was a weirdly high-concept premise designed first and foremost to restore agency to the archetypal blonde girl who dies in horror movies. That show would go on to become one of the most beloved and revolutionary TV shows of all time, one that would shape the way we talked and thought about the medium for years to come, and help establish the golden age of television.īut back on March 10, 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was just that scrappy little show about a cheerleader in SoCal who was destined to hunt and slay vampires, demons, and other assorted creatures of darkness. Exactly 20 years ago today, a little-watched network called the WB premiered a midseason replacement show based on a 1992 movie that flopped at the box office.
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