Any good movie geek knows that the point of OWNING a dvd player is to be able to get all the extras like director's commentary on Tommy Boy, right? I mean, I bought my dvd player for more than $300 back in Y2K (I feel so retro saying that!) with the sole intended use being to view the Magnolia extras on the 2-disc set. I was so infatuated at the time with the film that it seemed like a reasonable and utterly justifiable cost. (It still doesn't seem that weird to me, honestly.) Now that one can pick up a dvd player on the cheap -- I have heard tell from Ms. Kellydeal13 that they are available for $60 these days! -- there is no reason not to snatch them up and then spend a nice fall weekend curled up with your sweetie, listening to how Amy Heckerling decided to cast Mena Suvari in her teen angst flop, Loser.

But now that the powers that be have started issuing beloved teevee series on dvd, the raison d'etre for the dvd format seems to be to relentlessly catalogue all those shows that were beloved and axed (My So-Called Life, Sports Night); available only on the fancypants channels (Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Queer as Folk); or the object of fetishistic fandom (The X-Files, Twin Peaks).

The Buffy dvds fall firmly in the third category. The show is a critical darling, perpetually snubbed at the Emmys and the springboard of the dizzying film career of Seth Green, but more than any of those things, it is the locus of a fanbase as rabid and as slavering as any of the pointy-teethed vampires it portrays.

(I say this with love, you understand, because I am one of them, who has my copy of the musical episode, "Once More With Feeling" in a fireproof box just in case. [I am kidding, sort of.])

Anyway, the first installment of dvds made for the US market contains the entire first season of the show, which is currently in its seventh (and perhaps final) season on UPN. The show begins at the very beginning, when a certain Ms. Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) arrives at Sunnydale High School, meets up with a few pals, Xander and Willow (Nicholas Brendan & Alyson Hannigan respectively), and begins to fulfill her destiny as the Chosen One. See -- and I ask you to suspend your disbelief here, newcomers to the show, because it is fully worth it -- there is one girl in all the world chosen to save the world from being overrun by vampires, and Buffy is it, currently. She is assigned a watcher (played by Taster's Choice hot British guy Anthony Stewart Head), who doubles as the school librarian.

The first season of the show follows Buffy as she struggles under the weight of her responsibility when frankly, she'd rather be a cheerleader. The supernatural conflict on the show is kept percolating episode after episode thanks to the uncanny coincidence that the high school is built over the Hellmouth (what it sounds like), which provides a legion of monsters of all sorts, and also thanks to the season's Big Bad (i.e., Buffy slang for the season's major foe) The Master, a powerful and aged vampire who has been mystically trapped underground but is intent on rising and destroying the town/world.

But beyond the monsters and vampires, there are ample -- and I would argue more meaningful -- sources of dramatic tension from the everyday life of just being a girl who has a lot of responsibility she'd rather not, dealing with things like grades, boyfriends, the popular crowd and a mom who is always bugging her. This is where the strength of the show has always come -- the realism underscoring the monster element, which more often than not makes for a moderately sophisticated metaphor somewhere in there.

Solid performances from all the major characters abound, and the plots overall are solidly wrought, with a few exceptions here and there. Even the less witty episodes manage to at least hold their own over most of the rest of what's on teevee, let's face it.

So clearly, from the content of the episodes, I am extremely satisfied with the dvd collection of Buffy's first season. However, as I began this review, I mentioned that the disc extras are what makes the dvd format so delightful. On that front, the Buffy Season 1 discs are a disappointment. An interview with creator Joss Wheedon is brief and focused only on several episodes anyway, rather than the entire season, and is extremely unsatisfying to the typical (read: rabid) Buffy fan. It seems like he is answering a few questions for Entertainment Tonight, and is definitely not the kind of in-depth commentary for which one would hope. The other "extras" are completely dismissable. (I mean, is language selection really an extra?)

In light of the Buffy Season 2 dvd set, it seems like the crew at Fox and Mutant Enemy have already gotten the message from fans that more extras are not only wanted but needed in order to make these discs the comprehensive Buffy source they claim to be -- in fact, the Season 2 set is very well put together and all I could really have hoped for. I am sure that subsequent releases of the show will follow in a similar vein. (And there was really, really no pun intended there.)

In the end, my analysis is this: the Season 1 dvds should be purchased or rented for content alone. Given the reasonably low price of the disc set, I would say that they are worth the purchase or rental price based on the content. Then go get yourself the Season 2 set to hear the fascinating commentaries and featurettes and get a real extra-dorky, anal retentive, obsessive-compulsive Buffy fix.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older