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Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete First Season

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete First Season

List Price: $39.98
Your Price: $27.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Beginning of one of the Best Shows
Review: Anyone who is a fan of television knows that Buffy is a great show. This is where it all began as a television show. The first season was made of many self-contained episodes with the Master running in the background. Since Buffy was a mid-season replacement, there dvd only has about 12 or so episodes not the usual 24-22. The video is a tad dark and the special features are rather lacking but the show is just too good for any of these things to matter. The first season was one of the best of Buffy and Angel combined with humor. Cordy was fantastic with her insults and Zander was on the top of his game. Meanwhile, the Master played by the villian from ANimal House was fantastic. I just wish he had a longer run on the show. The two part season final was great, it just brought everything together and was a great fight that would be topped each and every season. The last thing I want to say is about the relationship between ANgel and Buffy... This is where it started and it was so great. It was well written and it developed so naturally for a teenage first love. Go and buy this and then enjoy.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Indoctrinated by the Slayer
Review: I'm a Buffy novice. Watching only the movie last year, I had successfully avoided the Buffy phenom year after year. Perhaps it was the undue influence of a certain person that worshipped the shows as the best thing on. But it took my current boyfriend to turn me on to the Slayer and her gang of do-gooders that has made me a complete convert. I stand in the awe of Buffy.

Since I have no other seasons with which to compare this first season, I must say this is a delectable, funny group of episodes. Setting the course of the show, Sarah Michelle Gellar proves her talent early on, giving Buffy the appropriate menace and high school angst. She clearly carries the show on her shoulders, yet carries that mantle with utmost professionalism. Her cohorts are equally compelling. Alyson Hannigan plays Willow, a self-confessed computer geek, with a sense of wonderful innocence. Nicholas Brendon gives Xander, a loveable loser, dignity. Anthony Head's Giles, know-it-all librarian, is stuffy and fun.

The twelve episodes stand up well, with only a couple of brain scratchers in the mix. The first two set up the series and its characters very well. Some of the favorites included the "Angel" episode, that finally helps solve the mystery of the character while seemingly adding more to it, and "Nightmares" where seemingly bad dreams enter reality. One particularly odd episode was "The Pack", where hyenas seem to enter a group of students as they proceed to reign havoc over Sunnydale, but I didn't buy it.

Overall, you can see the promise of this series in these early episodes. I was pleasantly surprised at the developing sense of humor that seemed to grow with each episode. I really enjoyed the comraderie between all the main characters, as they fight both those hideous Hellmouth demons and the trials and tribulations of puberty. Overall, it's been an enjoyable experience.

I'm eargerly awating to watch season two on DVD now, and find out what happens to Buffy and her gang!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Season One
Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season One. Buffy is a very complex television show. It's more then just about vampires and other dark things, that go bump in the night.
I have been re-watching season one lately. As I am waiting for season six on DVD excitedly.
I now appreciate season one more then when it first aired. When it first came on I don't think I understood some of the story lines.
However, after re-watching it it really does stand out.
Some really great episodes are The Witch ( the first episode with Amy. ) Angel, the Puppet Show ( not as lame as it sounds. ) And one of my favorites Out of Mind, Out of Sight.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Good Start for a Magnificent Show!
Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a magnificent show, my favorite TV shows used to be Star Trek and ER but even though they are still terrific shows my absolute favorite TV show is now Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I read a review from someone who had never watched Buffy until recently when they just watched season 1 for the first time and didn't like it and is probably not going to watch the other seasons. Personally I think Season 1 is a good season but not as good as seasons 2 to 6 because of a lower budget, there are only 12 episodes and the characters aren't as developed so if you have just started watching Buffy and have started with season 1 you shouldn't judge the entire series by this season because the show gets better in season 2 and really hits it's stride in season 3 but I think basically every season is good and I recommend every season of this show, even season 7 which was my least favorite. With season 1 you get some cute episodes and you see how Buffy after her move from Los Angeles, California to Sunnydale, California, her first day of being the new girl in Sunnydale High School, how she met her new watcher Rupert Giles and her new friends Willow Rosenburg and Alexander (Xander) Harris and her rival the self absorbed most popular girl in school Cordelia Chase who started off as kind of a bully but later even though still being a self asorbed princess with an acid tounge also kind of became a nicer person. Even though season 1 is not as good as season 2 to 6 I did like it more then season 7 but even the weakest season of Buffy is better then a lot of other stuff on TV! I'm rating this season a 5 because it did have some terrific episodes, Witch, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, Welcome to the Hellmouth which is the very first episode, etc, etc, etc, etc!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: what's all the hype???? disappointing series
Review: I'll admit that I'm more of a sci-fi fan and not really into horror (vampires and such). However, with adequate acting and good writing, I can get sucked into any well-done series. This is not one of them. I never watched the series when it was on TV (making time for Star Trek, Andromeda, and ER instead), but picked up the DVD recently. I'd just watched the first season of Roswell (which I LIKED) and figured this would at least be on the same level as far as acting/writing. I'd also been strongly affected by Joss Wheldon's (Sp?) Firefly (which SHOULD have gone on but didn't). Well, I was disappointed with Buffy and wished I'd have rented the DVD instead of buying it. It just lacks the energy and spark I've come to expect in good series TV. Seems to be driven mostly by action rather than brain-power so don't trouble yourself with the bits and pieces of the storyline that just don't fit. There's a bit of spunky dialogue but it's quite flat in the whole. I just don't 'get it'. Sigh.....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Welcome to the Hellmouth
Review: These DVDs contain the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the cult hit now widely regarded as one of the best TV series in the history of American television.

Buffy is a High School student who has been chosen to become the Slayer, a girl endowed with superhuman fighting ability to protect the world from vampires, demons, and general evil. She's in the right place for a slayer in Sunnydale, a city located on the Hellmouth, a center of attraction for the dark forces Buffy is fighting.

The first season is short, only 13 episodes to the 20+ that were filmed in each of the later seasons. It's also less dark and less ambitious. The standard plot for most of the episodes is taking some horror of the High School experience and giving it a supernatural twist: A gang of bullies who act like beasts and then actually transform into them, an unpopular girl who becomes literally invisible and starts wreaking havoc on all those who ignored her, etc. The primary villain is The Master, an old and powerful vampire who is trapped below the earth but hoping to manipulate the power of the Hellmouth to escape.

The season is pulled above the average by a strong cast and excellent writing. The dialogue is consistently clever and enjoyable. It's witty from the very first episode - in almost the first scene, Buffy, who was kicked out of her previous school, meets with a guidance counselor who tells her that every student at Sunnydale High starts with a clean slate, and demonstratively starts ripping up her earlier record in front of her. As he tears it, he reads a few highlights then suddenly reconsiders, grabs some tape, and starts piecing it back together. It's a great scene, and the moment that first made me a Buffy fan. The invisible girl episode also has a very amusing finale.

The entire cast is impressive, but Sarah Michelle Geller as Buffy and Allison Hannigan as Willow stand out.

Still, if this your first exposure to Buffy, you won't really understand from this season why the show has such a devoted following. The first season is merely a good, entertaining show. Later seasons made the jump to real brilliance by making the characters far more complex and creating story arcs that stretched through entire seasons, allowing substantially more interesting stories than can be told in the largely single episode (the premiere and season finale are two part episodes) format of the first season.

Overall, this is the weakest of the seven seasons of Buffy that were produced for TV. But it's still quite good, and if you're unfamiliar with the series and interested in learning more, the best place to begin is at the beginning.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Buffy Vs Buffy The movie
Review: Buffy the tv show butchers the movie. If your able to forget about everything that happened in the movie this season is great. I dont remember buffy burning down the gym in the movie or her parents seprating and in the movie buffy was a senior in high school. This starts out with her in 10th grade becaouse by the third season she having her senior prom. But if you can look past all that you will like this show.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Addictive
Review: I always kind of made funny of Buffy and her loyal fans just to find myself now hopelessly addicted to this show. I'm borrowing all the seasons from a friend who has them and she can't get them to me fast enough. The worst part is I know how it all ends and it makes me immensely sad. Why can't it just go on forever and also I haven't watched Angel completely yet but from what I've seen it doesn't seem as fun as Buffy was.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Great series, Lousy DVD transfer
Review: I'm a huge Buffy fan and was very excited to get the series on box set DVD. At the very least, I was expecting what everyone expects when they buy something on DVD...a great picture! Much to my surprise, I was terribly disappointed by the visual quality on this set.

The picture is grainy, flat, and has no depth. The colors even seem off compared to the TV broadcast. It looks like about as good as a S-VHS copy when I used to tape the shows. It's a little better than VHS, but falls far short of the broadcast quality.

To make matters even worse, I'm noticing a lot of blurring effects whenever there's any fast motion on the screen. You might see a similar effect on poorly captured video clips on your computer, but I've never seen this before on any DVD I've ever watched and it's terribly annoying.

After checking the newsgroups, the poor quality issue was a very common topic among other fans, too. It was pointed out that Seasons 1 and 2 were shot on 16mm rather than 35mm like the rest of the seasons, but to have a DVD look pitiful next to even the broadcast version is inexcusable. A little time in the lab with some color correction and proper video compression could have made all the difference in the world, but it looks like the execs weren't concerned with picture quality. It looks like they transferred this from an old VHS tape. Fox and Whedon really dropped the ball on this one. A total disappointment.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Buffy Beginings
Review: Buffy Beginnings:

I started watching Buffy in spring of 8th grade. I'd seen the movie when I was 11, and it instantly became one of my favorites. Anyway, I loved it right from the get go. It was cool to see someone kicking butt who was closer to my age than Dana Scully (who I love, I'm a hopeless X-Phile as well). There's my simple testimonial.

Now it's seven years ago that the series first premiered and we get these wonderful DVD sets of the best shows on TV! So here's a retro review of season one. As it stands, this is my second least favorite season. It's hard for a series to run on half a season and try to establish a following. Especially in March, when most shows are in a cycle of reruns. Buffy premiered with 'Welcome to the Hellmouth' and ended its first season three months later with 'Prophecy Girl.'

Between those episodes we were served were generally good, but not spectacular. We got hints of how good 'Buffy' could be with 'Witch,' 'Angel' and 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind.' But we also got 'I Robot, You Jane, and 'Never Kill a Boy on the First Date.'

It leveled out to what amounted to a mediocre first season, but I think we all expected great things to come and season two delivered-in spades.

Episode ranking on a 1-5 scale.

1. Prophecy Girl 5
2. Angel 4.5
3. Out of Sight, Out of Mind 4
4. Welcome to the Hell Mouth 4
5. The Pack 3.5
6. Witch 3.5
7. The Dummy Show 3.5
8. Nightmares 3
9. The Harvest 3
10. Teacher's Pet 2.5
11. Never Kill a Boy on the First Date 2
12. I Robot, You Jane 1


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