Your Favourite Season Finale...

anyatara

anyatara

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Having so much free time on my hands, I set yesterday and thought through all of the Buffy season finales, they all have such big finishes, and I thought I'd make a thread about this? What's your favourite season finale and why?
Or, you can do what I'm gonna do and write a bit about why you do and don't like each season finale.

Season One 'Prophecy Girl' Well, I haven't seen this episode in a while, so I don't remember it all that well, but I remember I really enjoyed it, for the twelfth episode of a TV show, it had a really big impact.

Season Two 'Becoming Part 1 & 2[/i] I cry my eyes out everytime I see this...but it's probably the best episode of Buffy...period...Well, one of them, anyway. I'm not a huge fan of the Bangel relationship, but this episode makes me like it more than I did. I like seeing all the different ways characters act around each other too, it's cool seeing Spike and Buffy working together, even when he has no soul or chip 🙂

Season Three 'Graduation Day part 1 and 2' The first time I saw this, it seemed like just a huge pointless battle, but looking at it in a metaphorical way, it's exactly the way the end of school seems, conquering a battle. Plus, all round great episode.

Season Four 'Restless' Well, what's not to love about an episode that has a cheese man in it? 😉 And the way this episode works...well, it's not like any of the other season finales, but that's why I love it. A lot of it makes so little sense that it makes a lot of sense, plus the return of characters that have left, like Snyder and Oz. And I like the way they put in little clues to future episodes without spoiling to much. You gotta love it.

Season Five 'The Gift' Wow, pretty much the word that springs to mind for this episode. And Buffy's speech at the end, was probably one of my favourite all time speeches. I can't really think of a lot to say about this episode, but I love it!

Season Six 'Grave' Well, I miss Tara so so much 🙁 But I love the season ending. Buffy's relisation for what she wants with Dawn is sweet, and yellow crayon speech...wow. I cry every single time I see this, and I've seen it probably about...50 or more times. Dark Willow rocks, true, but I love seeing the love between Xander and Willow 🙂

And Finally...

Season Seven 'Chosen' Well, it had to go out with a bang, am I right? 🙂 And the perfect way to come full circle, what a wonderful core four moment within one of the last scenes 😀 This episode is mind blowing...I can watch it again and again and again and notice something new every single time. Chosen is one of the most masterful Buffy episodes there is, I LOVE it 🙂

So, opinions, please, people 😀
 
Chosen. I like happy endings, minus the terrible anya part. I don't really have much to say on why, isn't that lame? But anyways, it's still my favorite finale and one of my favorite episodes period.
 
ok so Season 1: fun, cool, but not the best one. but then again, they were just starting out.

Season 2: Love this finale EXCEPT i really think that the music they used at the very end when she's leaving on the bus left something to be desired after that epic scene where she sends angel to hell. it came off so... teenage drama when i felt it should've been far more serious.

season 3: yes yes and more yes! What a way to end high school with a bang! and i LOVE the editing done between buffy going over HER plan and the mayor going over HIS plan. probably my favorite.

Season 4: You know... Restless is amazing but i guess im still... eh about the anticlimatic finale. I know thats what Joss was sort of going for, just more explanation and foreshadowing for the future. I LOVE this episode, don't get me wrong, but as a finale it was a bit weird for me.

Season 5: My second favorite. I cried SO hard and i still do, even though i know she comes back. Especially when Spike just loses it at the end. ugh. I thought overall it was brilliantly done.

Season 6:I liked it, but i didn't LOVE it. I mean, it was great to see the power of Xander, he was so shafted so much, always the guy without the powers who just gets in the way and gets hurt. But here, just being him...saved the freakin world! And yeah, i cry a bit when Willow falls to the floor and he's hugging her and saying he loves her. I don't know if i have anything neccessarily bad to say on it, but something about it just didn't make me LOVE it.

Season 7: you know, the first time, i was kind of like..huh? I mean i thought it was great, but i hated the final scene, the "what are we going to do now?".... and i hated that Dawn got the last line of the serious. i mean, come on! But upon seeing it a second time, i think i definitely have more of an appreciation for it.
 
Tough call between Graduation Day, Chosen and Grave, but I have to pick Grave!

I think it was just a huge leap for the show to make the ultimate "good guy" the big bag, and the way the story played out (with Tara's death being the cause of the whole ordeal), you're never quitre sure how you feel about what Willow's doing. It took the show somewhere it hadn't been before, and I though having Xander come in at the last moment was priceless. An excellent written, well done show! 🙂
 
I'd say The Gift is my favorite. I cried when Buffy jumped to close the portal. Until that moment, I didn't think Joss would kill off his main character. Took me most of the episode of Angel that followed to quit crying, only to start up again when Willow shows up at the end to tell Angel Buffy died.
 
Season 2- Becoming parts 1 & 2. I love Season 2, I love everything about it... and I especially love the ending. The first time Spike ever throws in with the 'white hats' is great, and the whole Buffy and Angel swordfight scene, and then it breaks my heart when she has to kill him at the end (I'm not a massive fan of Bangel, but it still gets me every time), and then the Sarah Mclachlan song at the end makes it all the more hard-hitting.

But its a close call between Chosen and the Gift as well... Becoming just beat them out... plus, I love Spike's 'I like this world' speech!
 
for me it'll always be the Season 1 finale. it was perfect BtVS - just enough of every element that I love about the show (but s2 and s7 do come close) plus the ridiculousness of the image of the Master's plastic-y skeleton never fails to amuse me 🙂
 
My favourite season finale is "The gift". Willow "finding " Tara, Xander proposing to Anya( and her funny reaction), great battle... Also, it was one of the most touching buffy episodes-Buffy sacrificing her life for her sister and the world...
 
Once again, I'd go by choosing "Restless" - here I can go on for ages - it's just was shot in my favorite kind of filming, mis-en-scene, montage, with its fabulous music, dream sequence, and it's difference from other finales - gotta love it!
 
I love Season 2's Becoming mainly because of Spike,Dru and Angelus(best villains ever!) attempts to pull the sword out of Acathla and Spike saying "Someone wasn't worthy" as Angel fails to pull it out.I also think it's cute and funny when Joyce tries to make conversation with Spike and it's kind of an awkward moment between them.Spike and Joyce have good chemisty for a mother-son kinda thing.I hate it when Buffy has to kill Angel at the end especially when he just turned back to his normal self.And it's really sad with the song thats playing at the end what with Buffy leaving Sunnydale and Joyce noticing her room empty.

I also love The Gift where Buffy has to sacrifice herself to save the world.I liked her speech to Dawn before she jumped and then seeing everyone's faces in shock when they see her lying dead on the floor.So sad.
 
Restless was probably my favorite, since it's one of my top 3 or 4 episodes ever, but to be honest, it wasn't really finale-ish. The real finale of season 4 was probably Primeval.

Aside from Restless, it's a toss-up between The Gift and Grave. Even though Chosen was great, too, I preferred the other two I just mentioned.

The Gift had some great moments...Willow restoring Tara's sanity, the big fight with Glory, and, of course, Buffy jumping into the portal. It was just heartbreaking to see Spike, the toughest, baddest bad boy on the show to just break down as soon as he saw that Buffy was dead. I admit, I'm a bit biased towards Grave just because I LOVE Dark Willow, but nevertheless, it was an amazing episode. Willow versus Giles, Spike getting a soul...and Xander saving the world was one of the best Buffy moments of all time. I mean, who didn't get teary-eyed after the yellow crayon speech? Plus, it made you miss Tara even more, which I didn't even know was possible. So yeah, it's a tie between those two.
 
ooh, this is such a coincidence - i just watched all the season finales in one hit on the weekend (except i watched Primeval instead of Restless). For me, The Gift and Chosen were my favourites, though all of them are really great and have something unique and special about them.
 
Here is my breakdown:

Season 1: Prophecy Girl is okay. It has many amusing lines such as "You have fruit punch mouth." Which remains a classic to this day, mainly because that is what I thought about The Master all season and hearing Buffy say it was cathartic. However, Season 1 is by far the worst season of the show, so the finale didn't really resonate with me. Additionally, I hated the master, so the finale that features him is obviously not going to be my favorite.

Season 2: Becoming is probably the most moving of all of the finales. It is just perfect. During the final montage with Full of Grace, I still cry.

Season 3: Graduation day is pretty amazing. The finale has a lot of witty lines and the plot of Graduation Day is probably the best of all the finales, but it does lack the emotion of Becoming, though it has more impact.

Season 4: REstless is one of the best episodes of Buffy period. It flowsso well. It is so poetic and solidifed Joss Whedon genius. A watcher scoffs at gravity.


Season 5: The Gift. Okay, I love the Gift. It is almost as moving as Becoming. I'm not a big Dawn fan, but I like season five. The way Buffy protects Dawn is incredibly moving, and I relate to it on a deep emotional level. She sacrifices herself to save her sister, it's so epic and so primally human and basic at the same time. Plus. Chris Beck earns his keep.

Season 6: Well. I do like Season 6, or i like that it showed the darkness of humanity. The problem Season 6 has is that Joss only wrote 1 episode and it feels like the quality is a bit diluted, but I digress. This is the only season finale he didn't write and, honestly, it shows. All of that being said, Grave is possibly the second worst finale.

Season 7: Chosen. The last episode. I was always going to resent this episode because it represented the end of Buffy. That aside, I feel like Chosen was kind of week. It was witty and had some great moments. like Angel returning and Buffy's discussion with Angel about Spike and Spike about Angel. The D and D thing was also brilliant. However, I feel it was all to positive. That could just be because I crave negativity, but what can you do? Honestly, it felt a bit contrived. Also It should have been a two parter, I mean the final finale and only 43 minutes.....lame.

Rankings( from best to worst):

Becoming
Restless
The Gift
Graduation Day
Chosen
Grave
Prophecy Girl

Though the top four constantly duke it out for the top spot and the bottom three are also hard to order.
 
The Gift. How can you not love The Gift? Anyway, it's pretty obvious why I love The Gift. It isn't? Well, right before Buffy jumped you can see a McDonalds sign in the background. This is why I love The Gift.

I actually just really like the themes of sacrifice and how Buffy had to go through a lot emotionally to reach the level she had to be on in order to actually execute sacrifice.
 
I liked the Season 5 finale, "The Gift," simply because it was the perfect wrap up. Everything was settled, the villain was vanquished, the damsel in distress was rescued, the Knight in Black had made his "promise to a lady" (HIS lady, the way he saw it), and willingly taken his stand for honor and the forces of good. If the hero had to die, she in doing so accomplished her mission and spent her last moments summing up her thoughts for those she had rescued.

The ending wasn't happy (hell, it was absolutely TRAGIC), but it ended on a "We got the job done, even if the cost was dear." note. It ranked right up there with "The Alamo" (John Wayne's version, not Billy Bob's).

Certainly, I would have missed the next two seasons, but as a finale, Season 5 did a better job than either of the other 6 seasons combined.
 
Ranked from Most to Least favorite:

S2. Becoming (both parts). The Buffy/Angel relationship really bugged me the first time I watched it. All the melodrama and moping. Meh. But "Becoming" still really got to me. When Buffy realized she'd have to kill him . . . the look on her face . . . it totally sold the love story for me (the same love story that had annoyed me for 2 seasons). And Joss couldn't even let her off easy and have her kill Angelus. No, no. She had to kill her lover. DAMN! Plus seeing Spike go "white hat" for the first time, as someone else mentioned--also very cool.

S5. The Gift. Giles: "We few. We happy few." Spike: "We band of buggered." The battle-weary determination to keep fighting is so perfectly illustrated with that exchange. And Buffy's whole speech at the end? Television as a rule does not make me cry. Because it's, um, not real. But the emotions at the end of The Gift, Buffy's, Dawn's, Willow's, and especially Spike's total breakdown . . . I flat-out bawled the first time I saw this season finale. And still get choked up when I re-watch it. It was the strongest and bravest Buffy had ever been.

S7. Chosen. I should have been a 2 hour finale, but considering the limitations of time, I thought it was a perfect ending. Painful. But perfect. Buffy's smile at the end, her burden now shared as well as her strength? Great. "Get out of my face," classic Buffy fightin' words. Funny and threatening. And her last conversation with Spike--the fire that burns neither of them engulfing their hands. Perfect image. And if Spike hadn't been resurrected over on Angel, "I wanna see how it ends" has got to be the greatest last line for a character EVER. Simple, but speaking volumes about the character. I think I teared up just as their conversation started and stayed teared up through the rest of the episode.

S3. Graduation Day. Buffy gets her first toehold in Adult-Land. She's in charge. She plans. She rallies. She tells the Watchers Council where to stuff it. Her first love leaves town. And she Graduates. Victories all around. Other season finales have reached higher emotional levels, but they also tended to be darker, or sadder. Even with losing Angel, this one ended on such a note of optimism, that it's hard not to like. Plus, "fire bad, tree pretty." Yep. Those 12 years of education where totally worth it.

S4. Restless. Actually, this is less my #5 pick and more a tie with #4. I loved abstraction of it. The risk that it was from a writing and production perspective, to end the season with a series of dreams. But it worked. I laughed my ass off at some parts, marveled at the language at other parts, and was occasionally flat out confused. I loved Willow's dream. The fact that her nightmare is the idea that she might still be that mousy nerd from High School. Very telling. And Buffy's "conversation" with the First Slayer was so . . . lyrical. Different and great. Risky TV.

S1. Prophecy Girl. Packs less punch than a lot of subsequent finales but, hey, they'd only had 12 episodes, so that's forgivable. I've never been keen on the use of the actual theme song as Buffy walks back to the school. And S1 in general was still finding it's cinematic feet so to speak. And sure, you just kinda assume that the Master's skeleton doesn't turn to dust just because he's so ooooold--but the fact that they didn't even toss in so much as a single line from Giles to the effect of "Ah yes, I've read about this. The truly ancient vampires will not entirely turn to dust." was a tad jarring. It's like . . . um, guys? You do see the skeleton, right? Does nobody have a theory? Questions? No? Okay. Overall I liked it. Just not as much as what came after.

S6. Grave. This one is last because I enjoyed it the least. I appreciated it from a story and character perspective as much as other episodes. Yes, Xander saving the world with nothing but Love was great. Even the brief illusion that Giles might die was heart-wrenching. And SMG really delivered the acting goods in her speech to Dawn. Her crawling out of the grave was . . . well, a bit on the nose, but it did work. The thing was though, all of S6 had been sooooo dark and sooooo painful for all of the characters that it was frankly a relief to have it done with! And I like a lot of individual eps. from the season, but for an overall tableau? Edgar Allen Poe would have been impressed with the bleakness of it all! Although I admit I did get chills when Spike got his soul back. I had assumed that he meant to de-activate the chip so he could *hurt* Buffy and the Scoobies. To find out at the last minute that we'd be seeing a whole new animal in the form of his character next season was an unexpected treat for me. And also quite a testament to how much he loved Buffy--that even without a soul he could feel the absence of his own humanity, and want it back? Huge. Still as far as overall enjoyment, "Grave" comes in last for me.
 
I loved them all but here are my top 3
Grave- because dark Willow is my all time fave villain and season 6 was just SO the best!

Chosen- for obvious reasons, i mean c'mon its the end of BtVS. how can you NOT love it? I really liked Angel's dialogue with buffy at the beginning, and I loved seeing how each of the characters have changed since the beginning.

Bargaining Pt 2 Angelus was my 2nd favorite villain and wow, when I watched this I thought the end had come. buffy killed angel, she was kicked out of school, she wasn't allowed in her own house....brilliant finale!

These are in no order
 
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