Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. Case in point: I knew even before I started watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” a few months ago that I’d get hooked. Friends I trust were recommending the series to me, I already liked other “genre” shows, and my favorite toy company announced they were making toys based on the television show. And even though I knew I’d get sucked in to yet another geeky franchise, I went ahead and jumped in. My wife rolled her eyes, I gritted my teeth, and buckled down. I watched the first season of DVDs in about two weeks…but that was only twelve episodes. I knew going into the second season it would be twice as long. And that, coupled with a new baby and a new job and working 90 hours per week, means that it’s taken almost a month to work through the second season of Buffy. The sacrifices I make for my obsessions.

I had several people tell me that Season Two is their favorite, because of how much the series expanded from its relatively humble beginnings. I was a fan of the first season, but was intrigued at some of the hints that I knew were leading to bigger things. I already liked the core characters, like Buffy (the Slayer), her best friends Willow and Xander, the amazingly hot snobby girl Cordelia, and Buffy’s Watcher (mentor), Rupert Giles, the most tweedy librarian you’ve ever met. Some other characters I knew would be more important later, like Angel (who I knew got spun off into his own series), but for now he was just sort of a mysterious buff guy. Not Buffy, buff.

I usually try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, but there are some things that happen in this season that made the DVDs much more interesting to me….so there are going to be a few spoilers. Sorry about that. For a semi-decent primer on the first season, including a setup of the characters and setting, check out my review of Buffy’s first season here: http://www.epinions.com/content_148969197188

The second season takes all the characters we’ve met in the first season and builds on each character and tests each relationship—and creates some new ones too. Some favorite new additions include Jenny Calendar, who we met last year as the New Hot Computer Teacher, and she starts a fumbling stuttering romance with Giles; another great addition is Seth Green’s character Oz, who starts a relationship with Willow, interrupted by his turning into a werewolf partway through the season.

The hookups between the main characters continue apace, and most of the relationships end up in triangles of sorts, where the person on the short side of the triangle is pining for another person in the group. For example:

Angel – Buffy – Xander …Xander has been longing for Buffy for some time now, but he’s not gonna get her. Not yet.

Cordelia – Xander – Willow …Willow’s on the outside of this one, and one of the funniest and most unexpected relationship comes when Cordelia and Xander hookup—I gasped aloud when they kiss, and it’s been one of the most satisfyingly funny series of dates and breakups and makeups. Funny stuff…but painful for Willow, who’s been in love with Xander forever, which leads us to:

Willow – Oz – Xander …Here Xander is the pursued, since Willow has loved him since they were just pups, but when Oz comes along, well, she decides to go after the guy who will love her back. Smart move.

There are other non-romantic triangles as well, that create a tension between the characters:

Buffy’s Mom – Buffy – Giles …Buffy’s often placed in a situation where she has to lie to her Mom or break commitments at home in order to keep up her duties as Slayer…and that’s an uncomfortable place for a teenage girl to be. I’m sure there’s some larger metaphor going on there, but I’m glad at the end of this season there’s finally some resolution there.

Spike – Druscilla – Angel …Spike and Dru are the new vampires in Sunnydale, and they’re a great couple. Spike is wickedly funny, deliciously evil; Dru is delirious with some sort of illness the first half of the season, and conniving but still a little loopy for the second half. When Angel joins them, his personal history with Dru jeopardizes Spike and Dru’s relationship, and that creates all sorts of fireworks.

In every sense, the second season improves on the first. The stunts and special effects, which I thought were often filmed in the dark purposely first season in order to hide shoddy work, come out into the light a bit more. Sunnydale is still dark, but the fights are better, and the stunts are cooler this time around. The special effects are a bit better, with the glaring exception of a werewolf suit that looks like I made it with my Seventh Graders last week. Hopefully that gets better over time.

The episodes find a tidy balance between the soap opera-ish drama of Buffy’s love life and the action/adventure a lot of us crave. There’s also a good balance between the “mythology” episodes that build the overall story of Buffy’s adventures at the Hellmouth with “freak of the week” episodes that feature one-time monsters…many of whom are students at Sunnydale High. Something I thought was kinda cool with the second season is that they took all of the classic monsters and gave them an update; so we got to see not only vampires, but also versions of Frankenstein, the Mummy, Wolfman, a Creature from the Black Lagoon, and even a Stepford Wife of sorts. There’s a lot of comedy in these episodes, and although there’s a lot of tragedy as well, usually when I’m watching Buffy I’ve got a dumb smile on my face.

A few plot points that I loved (this is a spoilerific section, so if you don’t want to know, don’t read any further) :

First, that there are plenty of references back to old episodes. Without becoming too much of a soap opera, “Buffy” is able to go back and refer to other events or characters that have impacted their lives. It can be a simple aside or a deeper analysis of what happened last year. Too often in genre shows, at the end of an episode the story is sealed up and placed on the shelf, and never referenced again. Star Trek does that. X-Files did that more often than not (although of course it built up a larger mythology as the show progressed). Smallville does that. It makes the characters more real and the show more enjoyable for those who have watched it from the beginning. I like it.

We get thrown a major curveball in the middle of the season, when a SECOND Slayer appears—Kendra. Part of the whole Slayer lore is that “there is only one,” but Kendra comes along and thinks Buffy’s a fool for taking her role as Slayer so lightly. Kendra’s trained since birth to be a Slayer, and when Buffy (temporarily) died at the end of Season One, Kendra’s calling got “activated.” So she shows up in Sunnydale from some foreign land, and proceeds to kick butt. Eventually the two Slayers fight side by side beautifully, and Kendra returns at the end of the season to help Buffy again. I thought it was a clever twist, and was completely unexpected.

Angel, tortured heroic vampire-turned-Buffylover, turns evil in the middle of the season. I figured it was coming from the moment we met him, but thought it would just be for an episode or two. Having one of the major heroes of the series turn not just evil, but horribly evil…that was a surprise. Angel’s a killer, and I think we saw him actually kill more people than we’d seen killed onscreen in the entire series. By having someone Buffy loved so dearly turn into the greatest threat in town created massive amounts of turmoil, and while it was tragic, it was a lot of fun too. The heroes wring their hands and ask themselves if Buffy can find it in her to kill Angel, and we know she can’t…until Angel goes too far and kills a core member of Buffy’s group. This friend is killed in a brutal manner and then left to mock Buffy and her allies, and once again I was shocked. I had no idea that this character, one of the central heroes, would die. When this hero was killed, it opened up the series for anyone (well, barring Buffy, I assume) to be killed. The grief that comes over the rest of the characters is realistic and painful to watch…again, another step above usual genre fare, where once a character is written out, they’re out, and rarely mentioned again.

I’ve already mentioned the additions of Spike and Druscilla to the cast; by having a “go-to” team of vampires, we see more clearly their own motivations, and that despite their monstrous behavior, they’re still affectionate towards each other…and probably have a rocking (and perverse) sex life. So bully for them—it’s good to be undead.

The season ends with hints of what’s to come…Sunnydale High’s principal, Mr. Snyder is seen talking on the phone to the Mayor a few times, and evidently both are aware of the Hellmouth under Sunnydale. I think Snyder knows Buffy’s the Slayer, and there seems to be some sort of shadow government kinda thing going on. I could be completely wrong, but Snyder knows more than he’s let on up until now. And cell phones were enormous in 1997.

This was a great set of episodes, and even without knowing the history of the characters, the series would be easy to get into. If you’re tired of reality tv and procedural dramas (CSI: Boise, anyone?), it might be time to try something a little bit different. Buffy’s different from other shows I’ve gotten into, although it successfully combines elements of comedy, drama, and the supernatural. It’s well written, acted, and produced, and if the arc progressing from Season One to Season Two is any indication, I’m looking forward to watching Season Three. Probably without my wife and kids, but hey. An obsession is a horrible thing to waste.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD