Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest
And so it begins!
I have to say, I remember loving this show from the beginning - but in retrospect, I think its early success should be credited more to Sarah Michelle Gellar than to Joss Whedon. He hadn't quite found his groove - there are a lot of hokey horror movie tropes, the pacing's a little wonky, and the writing's not quite as crisp as I would expect. But SMG is quite endearing, simultaneously strong and vulnerable, both yearning to be popular and feeling the pain of the geeks. She really carried these episodes for me.
That said, there were definitely glimpses of what would make "Buffy" great. For me, the most powerful is probably the use of Eric Balfour as Jesse. It's heartbreaking watching his friends try to save him to no avail. It was really an indicator that the show was going to be willing to go there... deal with actual loss, pain, and darkness. (I read at one point that Whedon really wanted to include Eric Balfour in the opening credits to really drive that point home - lead people to assume that there's no way this character would actually be killed - a trick he would use in later years.)
Random thoughts: Kristine Sutherland had a really bad haircut; Willow's "it's okay, I can solve the problem through hacking!" solution was amusingly dated; David Boreanaz was super-cheesy and kinda useless; and Anthony Stewart Head was TOTALLY unsexy, disappointingly.
And in other news, Adam807 has officially declared his intention to join me in this endeavor, though he hasn't posted any official episode observations yet.
I have to say, I remember loving this show from the beginning - but in retrospect, I think its early success should be credited more to Sarah Michelle Gellar than to Joss Whedon. He hadn't quite found his groove - there are a lot of hokey horror movie tropes, the pacing's a little wonky, and the writing's not quite as crisp as I would expect. But SMG is quite endearing, simultaneously strong and vulnerable, both yearning to be popular and feeling the pain of the geeks. She really carried these episodes for me.
That said, there were definitely glimpses of what would make "Buffy" great. For me, the most powerful is probably the use of Eric Balfour as Jesse. It's heartbreaking watching his friends try to save him to no avail. It was really an indicator that the show was going to be willing to go there... deal with actual loss, pain, and darkness. (I read at one point that Whedon really wanted to include Eric Balfour in the opening credits to really drive that point home - lead people to assume that there's no way this character would actually be killed - a trick he would use in later years.)
Random thoughts: Kristine Sutherland had a really bad haircut; Willow's "it's okay, I can solve the problem through hacking!" solution was amusingly dated; David Boreanaz was super-cheesy and kinda useless; and Anthony Stewart Head was TOTALLY unsexy, disappointingly.
And in other news, Adam807 has officially declared his intention to join me in this endeavor, though he hasn't posted any official episode observations yet.
posted by mcm at
11:29 PM
1 Comments:
I said I was going to let you catch up a little! I'm already halfway through season 2 in my watching (though not quite in my writing).
I agree wholeheartedly. It's weird to think of SMG as the star of the show, despite being the title character, given how strong an ensemble it would become and how she would arguably become the worst actor of the principals (that's more a compliment of them than a slam on her). But she's really great here.
So much of it is SO dated. Just wait til the demon in the internet episode! And I'm frequently struck by the lack of cell phones.
Here's my post on season one.
By
Adam807, at 7/10/2011 8:18 AM
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