Unofficial Buffy-Boards Buffy the Vampire Slayer Rewatch

Okay, this is spinning off from another thread started here. We are going to be rewatching the series as a group, starting January 8, 2013. We'll watch two episodes a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays.

So, a few ground rules/guidelines:

Since this is a rewatch and most of us are rather fanatic about Buffy, there will be a lot of spoilers. So if you don't like spoilers... what are you doing here? Get out while you still can.

We'll start discussing the episodes here the day that they're scheduled -- so the discussion of Welcome to the Hellmouth will start on January 8. It won't necessarily end when the next episode starts, but you should probably get in what you want to say before we watch the next one.

As for episodes we haven't made it to yet, don't start a discussion on them until we've gotten there. You can mention things in passing (knowing myself, I'll probably made off-handed references to Faith constantly), but no more than that. Save the actual discussion until the relevant episode comes up.
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So, that's the gist of it. Every Tuesday and Saturday, we watch a new episode, have a discussion about it here.

As a bonus, before the rewatch starts, to give us something to talk about, here's the unaired pilot. We can talk about that until the rewatch officially begins on the 8th. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR3J-v7QXXw"]The Unaired Pilot[/ame]

Yay 😀

Ugh, I still can't get over how bad that actress playing Willow is. Her performance is so...wooden. Alyson really brought something to the character when she came to it.

Evil Angelus 95 said:

Ugh, I still can't get over how bad that actress playing Willow is. Her performance is so...wooden. Alyson really brought something to the character when she came to it.

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What really killed it was the lack of chemistry she had with anyone else. If you notice, Nick and Sarah, as well as Nick and Charisma, seemed to have some chemistry right off the bat, while Riff Regan had no chemistry with anyone. It's fine if your performance is a little wooden if you have good chemistry with the cast (look at David in season 1 -- it took him a while to get good, but he had chemistry with Sarah pretty early on), but she just never had the chemistry.

As for my thoughts, I took two pages of notes while watching this, so let's see if I can isolate the more interesting thoughts...

In this, along with the first season, there's something that bugs me about Julie Benz. I think it's her hair -- it's much longer when she comes back in S1 of Angel, and I think she looks a lot better there.

Is Sarah's hair dyed blonde? I can't really tell due to video quality. It looks more like her natural color, but again, it could just be the bad video quality.

Principal Flutie is... weird. I like the character they went with in the actual series more, though I wish they'd kept Stephen Tobolowsky -- he is just awesome in everything he does, and he's kind of fun here when the writing isn't... bizarre.

And Cordelia walks into frame, pretty much fully-formed. I love when they manage to get a character pretty much perfect as soon as they walk on screen. That doesn't mean she doesn't develop, however.

On the subject of the Cordettes, Harmony’s presence means that Mercedes McNab is the only person to appear in the pilot and the final episode of Angel.

On that note, there was a scene somewhere with Angel that was cut -- you mean they filmed something bad enough that it had to get cut from this?

There were a lot of scenes that they had right in the outline -- notice how much of Xander and Buffy’s early interactions are pretty much identical except with modified dialogue. And Buffy and Giles as well -- the main change was that the sets actually looked like they had some money invested instead of what just happened to be on the lot.

What is the purpose of the scene in the classroom? What is supposed to be going through Buffy’s mind, or what are we supposed to think is going through her mind? I can’t figure out what exactly they were going for.

The clique scene should have been in the first episode -- this was actually a pretty good scene, and the chemistry between Sarah and Nick was obvious pretty early -- would be a good thing to lead with. And his sense of humor is established early -- again, a character that walked onto the screen fully formed.

I like the early acknowledgement of the Sunnydale weirdness, and the humor about it being all-too common for dead bodies to show up. But why does he let her in to look at the body? And where’s the yellow tape?

The library scene is one of the key scenes in this episode. Vampires are back in her life. It just doesn’t jump out all that much, seems a little too subdued. Until she brings up her old watcher, which actually gives this some emotion. This is making me wish that Joss had directed the Buffy movie, with creative control and Sarah in the lead role. Too bad that’ll never exist.

Giles begins his monologue that he seems to really love doing. Kind of necessary, but I like the way she ends it and makes it not quite the cliche. Also, I quite like the scene where she jumps down the stairs.

Jonathan in line to get into the Bronze? This scene would just be far too awkward on its own, but it’s kind of hilarious in retrospect.

Is Dingoes Ate My Baby playing? Would explain the loud amp and no chords thing...

This is a really awkward way of getting Buffy to chasing after Willow. I can’t quite remember how they did it in the actual first episode, but I don’t remember it being this clunky.

Buffy looks kind of ridiculous while she’s lecturing the vampire on fashion. Also, the fact that this is in the theater just makes it look even cheaper than it already looks, which is an accomplishment given this pilot.

Okay, the dusting is... weird. What was that, anyway? What’s good is that, when they used it later, they sped it up quite a bit -- that took too long for it to work in the faster paced fight scenes that come up later on.

Did Willow kill Darla? It’s kind of funny how much they seemed to want to kill her early on -- good thing they eventually brought her back.

Trope here that I really like sometimes -- the fight that takes place just off-screen, and you hear all the commotion, wondering what the hell is going on -- I actually really like that, and it comes up a few more times in the series.

Suddenly, a very 90s ending... and really, the way she stakes the poster from such a distance is so dumb. And the way Sarah delivers her last couple lines there... kind of odd.



So, yeah... that was the pilot. Looking at this, I have to ask, why was this picked up for a series? I'm glad that it was, don't get me wrong, it just doesn't add up to me that they did. I kind of see the potential, but this just wasn't good. I guess I could kind of see the potential, but it just wasn't good, and seemed a little too bogged down by being a little too flat to really get it through. Then again, this was a mid-season replacement, so I don't think that they exactly expected it to work well and actually get renewed.

Agreed. That's what I was trying to get at, but I'm really tired at the moment, so I must have forgotten to type that in 😛 I'm glad Alyson came onto the show, because she was the final piece I think that needed to be clicked between the main four.

I don't think Sarah's hair was dyed at this point, she still has brown hair during the early episodes of S1. I could be wrong. I really hope that someday they release the pilot on one of the DVD sets with better quality. I'm sure Joss has his copy lying around somewhere.

At this point, I think Joss was still trying to get all of his ideas gathered into a comprehensive vision that made sense. You can see that there are a few things in here that he dropped, and I really think they were decisions that were good ones. The things that we don't see in "Welcome To The Hellmouth" or "The Harvest" are things that would have made the entire show seem more cheesy.

As far as I've read, Buffy was picked up as mid-series replacement for something else on the WB. I don't think the channel knew what a success the show was going to be.

I'm five minutes in and I already hate the actress playing Willow. She's been in one scene and I swear she sound so bored. I could play a better Willow! Anyway, mini-rant over.

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Okay that whole thing was just painful to watch. The actress playing Willow was awful. I know it's the late 90's, but why is the video quality so bad. I thought it was in black and white for the a few minutes.

My thoughts on the Pilot

Best deceion by a studio ever in asking to replace the actress for Willow
First dusting was terrable but I knew it was a tempory stand in.
The fight at the theater was way overly dawn out.
Glad that got rid of the spiral staircase poor ASH looks like he had a terrable time saying his dialog comeing down that thing.
More Buffy the Gymnist is always a good thing.
Xander and Cordi work from the start.
The tour of Sunnyhigh is something that should have survived into the first Ep.

Riff was really bad and as [MENTION=12230]Mischlings[/MENTION] said above, she didn't have any chemistry with anyone and I can't really appreciate her acting, it's really too stiff.

It's interesting how much time Buffy and Xander are on screen together, just talking...I guess Joss decided to drop it but it was really nice to see.

Another thing to notice is the already existing chemistry between Rupert and Sarah..I love it.

Evil Angelus 95 said:

As far as I've read, Buffy was picked up as mid-series replacement for something else on the WB. I don't think the channel knew what a success the show was going to be.

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Yeah, it was picked up to replace Savannah -- like I said, I think the fact that it was "only" a mid-season replacement explains why it actually got picked up at all.

whitewolf said:

I know it's the late 90's, but why is the video quality so bad. I thought it was in black and white for the a few minutes.

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My guess is that it's because it's a digital transfer of a VHS. I'm also guessing that it was probably shot on 8mm film, but that's pure speculation on my part. I get the feeling that it was better quality, but was transferred badly a few times, degrading the quality.

tec said:

My thoughts on the Pilot

Best deceion by a studio ever in asking to replace the actress for Willow
First dusting was terrable but I knew it was a tempory stand in.
The fight at the theater was way overly dawn out.
Glad that got rid of the spiral staircase poor ASH looks like he had a terrable time saying his dialog comeing down that thing.
More Buffy the Gymnist is always a good thing.
Xander and Cordi work from the start.
The tour of Sunnyhigh is something that should have survived into the first Ep.

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I agree with pretty much all of this. I didn't notice trouble with the dialogue on the staircase, but that's just one of so many things in the pilot that I'm sure to have missed a few.

TaylorSwift said:

Riff was really bad and as [MENTION=12230]Mischlings[/MENTION] said above, she didn't have any chemistry with anyone and I can't really appreciate her acting, it's really too stiff.

It's interesting how much time Buffy and Xander are on screen together, just talking...I guess Joss decided to drop it but it was really nice to see.

Another thing to notice is the already existing chemistry between Rupert and Sarah..I love it.

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Yeah, the amount of time Xander and Buffy spend together is probably what works best about the pilot -- there's definitely a lot of chemistry between the two of them there.

Also, I find it funny how you mixed the character and actor names in the next point -- not sure why I find it so funny, but I do.

Mischlings said:

My guess is that it's because it's a digital transfer of a VHS. I'm also guessing that it was probably shot on 8mm film, but that's pure speculation on my part. I get the feeling that it was better quality, but was transferred badly a few times, degrading the quality.

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Again, I'm sure Joss or someone else has a better quality copy of it, they're just not sharing at this point

Evil Angelus 95 said:

Again, I'm sure Joss or someone else has a better quality copy of it, they're just not sharing at this point

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Joss had said that he's not going to release it. He hates it, and so we're not getting a better version as long as he has control.

Yet in a commentary Joss said to find it and watch it that it was out there he doesent excactly hide its exsistance.

Joss also told us to seek out an ep (possabley Gradutation Day pt 2)on the net when I think Canada jumped an airdate that pissed the studios off some

This is the first time I've seen the pilot....Interesting what a jump from this to the actual first episode! 🙂

Mischlings said:

Joss had said that he's not going to release it. He hates it, and so we're not getting a better version as long as he has control.

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Really? Oh wow, I didn't know that! I can understand where he's coming from though. I made some stuff in my Video Productions class last year, and the earliest stuff I'd rather forget 😛

So, for this rewatch, would we watch "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" back to back, as they originally aired on TV? Or do we watch them seperate?

Evil Angelus 95 said:

So, for this rewatch, would we watch "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" back to back, as they originally aired on TV? Or do we watch them seperate?

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My thought was separate, since they're listed pretty much everywhere as separate episodes, though we could combine episodes that aired back-to-back, like this, What's my Line, and the like -- I've only watched Welcome to the Hellmouth at the moment. I'm not entirely sure how to handle those -- what I originally said was two episodes a week, and my original plan was to separate these two, but if you want to, I'm open to changing that and watching episodes that aired back-to-back as one (which just means that my thoughts on the episode will have to be delayed, since I need to find the time to watch The Harvest).

...

I'm going to leave all that as stream of consciousness thinking, but I think that we'll do everything that aired back-to-back together on one day counting as one "episode" -- I'll have to do a little more research to figure out what counts exactly as that, but I think it makes more sense. 1) It resembles the way that the episodes were originally presented, and 2) It'll make this go a little more quickly, since there are a lot of episodes, and pairing up ones that aired like this will cut down on that time a bit.

Sound good to everyone else?

EDIT: Something else to put out there: Going to add Angel to the rewatch once we get there? Sure, it'll be quite a while before we do get there, but it's something we can start thinking about now.

Mischlings said:

My thought was separate, since they're listed pretty much everywhere as separate episodes, though we could combine episodes that aired back-to-back, like this, What's my Line, and the like -- I've only watched Welcome to the Hellmouth at the moment. I'm not entirely sure how to handle those -- what I originally said was two episodes a week, and my original plan was to separate these two, but if you want to, I'm open to changing that and watching episodes that aired back-to-back as one (which just means that my thoughts on the episode will have to be delayed, since I need to find the time to watch The Harvest).

...

I'm going to leave all that as stream of consciousness thinking, but I think that we'll do everything that aired back-to-back together on one day counting as one "episode" -- I'll have to do a little more research to figure out what counts exactly as that, but I think it makes more sense. 1) It resembles the way that the episodes were originally presented, and 2) It'll make this go a little more quickly, since there are a lot of episodes, and pairing up ones that aired like this will cut down on that time a bit.

Sound good to everyone else?

EDIT: Something else to put out there: Going to add Angel to the rewatch once we get there? Sure, it'll be quite a while before we do get there, but it's something we can start thinking about now.

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It was just an idea, I have no problem with watching them seperate, but I just thought it'd be an added thing of fun. You don't have to if you don't want to.

I don't know about adding Angel to the mix when we hit Season 4, unless they're the crossover episodes. Which would make sense considering that they're connected

Sounds good to me 🙂

I was wondering if there is an actual time that this starts, because i'm very interested in doing this. 🙂

TiMER said:

I was wondering if there is an actual time that this starts, because i'm very interested in doing this. 🙂

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It starts tomorrow. We'll be watching episodes on Tuesdays and Saturdays. 🙂

Evil Angelus 95 said:

It starts tomorrow. We'll be watching episodes on Tuesdays and Saturdays. 🙂

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Sounds good 🙂 I live in Australia so it gets a bit confusing since its already the 8th here. I'll just start when I see people start posting about the first episode.

TiMER said:

Sounds good 🙂 I live in Australia so it gets a bit confusing since its already the 8th here. I'll just start when I see people start posting about the first episode.

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Sounds good 🙂 Its funny, I finished watching the entire series for the first time yesterday, and I'm starting again tomorrow 😛