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Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete Fifth Season

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Complete Fifth Season

List Price: $59.98
Your Price: $44.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My Second Favorite Season
Review: This release is making me the happiest man Alive!!! I love the Fifth Season and it is coming out a month ahead of the original schedulings because the series is over. I just hope that because the series is over, they will not stop giving us the wonderful extras, such as audio commentary on at least 6 episodes and the behind the scenes featurettes.

This season introduces Dawn, the Slayer's younger sister whom we have never met or heard reference to. All of a sudden she shows up, and everybody has memories of her, even Angel. This season's theme is that a slayer can never be fully prepared for what is happening and that even Buffy, the most extraordinary slayer, cannot fight everything. All of the foreshadowing of past seasons are completed by the end of the season. Season Three: Faith: "Little Miss Muffet counting down to 7-3-0"
where the 7-3-0 is 730 days, or exactly two years from then, and foreshadows that something major that Buffy is counting down to, or all slayers are counting down to, will happen in the season 5 Finale. Season Four: Tara: "Come back before dawn" in Buffy's dream in the finale.

The first arc is mainly about Buffy and Riley, he can try all he wants, but he cannot be the strong man that Buffy needs. He comes to the rescue and saves her once or twice, but he cannot compete with the evils in her life. She draws him to the darker side of the world and he gets jealous when Dracula shows up and she goes into a type of trance when he sucks her blood. Riley wanted to know that feeling so he goes to a demon house and gets his blood sucked by a vapiress. Once again Joss Whedon show the metaphor of vampires sucking blood as... something not meant for little kids. When he can't deal with it anymore and realizes that Buffy doesn't love him, he goes back to work with the Initiative in South America. This ends the first arc.

The second arc starts with a powerful energy chasing after monks to get something back that they "stole". Thus, Glory is introduced. We find out more about Dawn and why we never heard mention of her before, and Willow's and tara's relationship is tried to the maximum. I will not Spoil this any further. If you are any kind of fan of Buffy, buy this DVD set, I will, and you will enjoy it. My favorite season by far has got to be season Seven.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Season but in my opinion ... not the best
Review: See what I don't like about this DVD is that I didn't care for Glory ... Even though it was the Only Single Working Big Bad that was a woman which was cool I didn't care for most of the episodes.

I think I might have to watch the season again
I can't wait until Season 6 and 7 come out on DVD because they've ALWAYS been my favorite

The Gift is a great episode but episodes like No PLace Like Home , Shadow , Triangle , Checkpoint and they just don't cut it

Other ones ( great ) that are < like Buffy V.S. Dracula , Real Me , The Replacement , Out of my Mind , and Fool For Love are great.

The Last couple episodes of season five are great too like Tough Love , IntevenTion , Spiral ... great , really good

Overall I guess it's a really great season but some how does not compare to the other seasons ( 7 , 6 , 3 )

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Five stars for fifth season
Review: Buffy's fifth season has been called one of the best seasons of the show: it includes one of those rare and almost hypnotic episodes I love so much in TV (like in The X-Files episodes Milagro and all things, and in Buffy's fourth season: Restless), it is The Body. It also introduces Buffy's sister, Dawn, who appears in the end of the first episode of the season. I couldn't help but to feel stranged with her: ¿Buffy has a sister? And this is the feeling the season moves around. How everything changes once Buffy discovers that Dawn is not really her sister, but an ancient ball of energy which is searched by a powerfull being called Glory: she needs this ball of energy called The Key to unlock the limits between dimensions, which will allow her to return to her dimension. During the season, everything moves around the realization of what wants Dawn, what does it want it for, and how can they stop that without killing Dawn.
The season begins with a somewhat regular episode... it is a shame because it was written by Marti Noxon. Buffy vs. Dracula says everything in its title, and the only really good thing about this one is that it has Buffy begining to wonder about her powers. It really came from the closure of season four, Restless. Where does the power of the slayer come from? The subsequent episodes elaborate around the other characters (in Real me, we get to know Dawn and we meet Harmony once again; in The Replacement the shows achieves to show Xander's growth without really destroying the character we've seen for four years; in Out of my mind Riley experiences the consequences of what the Initiative and Maggie Walsh did with his body). In episode 5: No place like home, takes place Buffy's discovery. She also faces Glory for the first time and learns that this villain is much more than a simple demon.
The following episodes keep taking the supporting characters further: in Family we get to see how much Tara has become a member of the scooby gang; in Fool for love (one of the best if not the best episode of the season) Spike's background is shown (and, very important, by the end of it Spike's careness for Buffy is beautifully achieved in a very moving scene where he is not able to kill Buffy when he has his chance, instead he comforts her).
Shadow and Listening to fear deal with Glory again, and with Joyce's illness. Into the woods turns the focus onto Riley once again, but in order to say goodbye to him. Triangle deals with the relationship Xander-Anya-Willow. How he is torn between the two of them.
Ckeckpoint and Bloodties return to the arc of the key. The council reappears to show to Buffy why is it that Glory is so powerfull, and then comes Dawn's discovery that she is the key.
Then comes Crush, another really great episode, where Spike's love for Buffy comes out. Also, one of the best characters of the series returns: Drusila. Harmony reappears as well, so Spike's three women are together for him to choose between, but in the end he realizes he only wants Buffy.
In I was made to love you the series introduces Warren (very important character in the sixth season), a nerd who makes a robot to please him. The best thing of this episode is the schocking closing scene. Then comes The Body: Joyce is dead... and the whole episode is that fact in the mind of the characters. Intervention is another great episode: Spike forces Warren to make him a Buffy robot that can please him.
As the end approaches Glory and the cruzades surround Buffy. Finally Glory gets Dawn and has a bunch mad men making a tower, where the final battle in The Gift takes place.
Here is my top 10 for Buffy's fifth season:
10. Tough love (Buffy learns that Dawn can be taken away from her... and Tara is taken away from Willow).
9. Real Me
8. The replacement (Xander is hit by a demon's ray and suddenly, there are two Xanders: is the one around his friends a demon?)
7. Checkpoint (the council informs Buffy about the key and Glory).

6. The Gift (it is the final battle and Buffy has to sacrifice something to save the world. will it be her sister?
5. Intervention (While Buffy learns in the desert that death is her gift, Spike entertains himself with the Buffy-bot... but they are seen by Xander and Anya).
4. Into the woods (Buffy's discovers Riley's darkest secret: he likes to get bitten by female vampires).
3. Crush
2. Fool for love (we get to see how Spike killed two slayers!)
1. The Body.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best!!!!
Review: Buffy Season 5 is the best of the Buffy Seasons. It introduces
Dawn; Spike's love of Buffy; The Best truly unstoppable villian
Glory, and an answer about Tara held over from Season 4. This
season also introduces Warren, and Willow using too much magic, which both will play heavily in Season 6. Best of all, an episode called "The Body" that BTVS, and Sarah should have got
Emmys for. "The Body" being the most real, and dramatic episode of BTVS ever made, and it was fueled by Sarah Michelle Gellar that reached a new depth in Buffy we'd hadn't seen and never saw again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Buffy punch has been Spiked!
Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an amazing show and this season is, in my opinon, its finest season. The introduction of Dawn is brilliant and keeps the audience guessing until her presence is explained. It's so well written that I overlooked how annoying her character was and remained until the series' conclusion.
It's fun to watch the characters continue on their journeys. The relationships develope more. Riley gets stupid and then goes to do some stupid military thing... I don't really know what he went to do, but he was gone and that was good enough for me. Tara and Willow get "all snuggly" as Willow would probably describe it, and Xander and Anya go on with their foolishness.
The two best things about this season, however are Spike and the season's villain, Glory. Glory came off as being so much more threatening than Adam, last season's villain ever could, and when she was around, there was always the feeling that she really could defeat Buffy and defeat her easily.
And Spike! Oh, we were all so desperate for him to stop wanting to kill the Scooby gang and join them out of the evilness of his heart. Fortunately, he fell in love with Buffy, just as 75% of the male characters in the show tend to do. What made Spike's love for Buffy so great was that he didn't stand a chance with her. Still, we all routed for him because, well... because he's Spike.
The death of Joyce Summers was a shock and it gave Joss Whedon a chance to make an incredible and truly authentic episode in which Buffy and the rest of them dealt with the news of her death. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one could relate to it. It was one of the few examples in Buffy where a life altering event was presented not as a metaphor but as the event itself.
Good stuff. Buy this you fools!
Later.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Far-fetched, but worth it
Review: When Buffy's younger sister, Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), showed up early in this season, it sent fans crying out that its creator, Joss Whedon, was breaking the artistic consistency of the show.

Being Joss Whedon, however, he of course had an explanation for this sudden appearance of the character.

It was only semi-plausible.

Season 5 had a slightly over-the-top feel to it in general, starting out with the excellently written "Buffy VS Dracula" and quickly introducing a younger sister to the show's lead, a character viewers had never heard of before (except for a bit of foreshadowing in a couple of notable dream sequences in previous seasons).

The writers kept introducing new elements to the plotline, and ended up with a bunch of complex and occasionally clunky plot devices all merging together into a fairly cohesive whole.

Some despised the lead villain, "Glory", or "Glorificus" (Clare Kramer), a god from a demon dimension hell-bent on getting back to her home and destroying everything in her path. But others enjoyed her quirky, Cordelia-like ditziness and glamourous-to-gaudy fashion sense. In the end, she was an interesting character, a very torn personality, but Kramer's portrayal was, on occasion, lacking.

Though it had flaws, this season contains two of the most memorable episodes in the history of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The Body" and "The Gift".

The former is perhaps the most honest look at grief over the loss of a loved one ever portrayed on television, and the total lack of a musical score only serves to punctuate the overwhelming reality of the themes of the episode. It is also one of the best and most honestly acted episodes ever produced for the show, and many fans rate it very highly on their list of favorites.

The latter was written with the intent of serving as a series finale, if the show was cancelled and not picked up by another network (UPN eventually grabbed two more seasons of it). Its climax brought tears to the eyes of the several million viewers watching across the nation. It remains consistently considered one of best episodes of the series.

Despite its over-the-top nature and somewhat muddled plotline, as well as other niggling concerns, Season 5 remains one of the best of Buffy, and thus one of the best of television. It's easily worth any fan's money. Just don't go in expecting a Season 2-3 level of quality.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of Buffy's finest seasons!
Review: Season 5 was an excellent season in the Buffy-verse. Though many give it [a bad time]because Glory was not one of the scarier Big Bads, the overall story is incredible. Joss Whedon showed us his powerful skill as an artist with two stand out episodes, The Body and The Gift. I'm extremely happy that this amazing season that asks the question "What is a slayer?" is finally making its way to dvd. I look forward to watching it over and over again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Buffy" at the height of its run...
Review: Buffy tVS season 5 is the most gripping, thoughtful, and exciting season of the show's seven season run. While many shows would have burned out by the fifth year of storytelling, "Buffy" picks up the peices of a controversial and alternative season 4 (which stands on its own merits as well) and heads into mythic territory with season five.

Many storylines which had been building for numerous seasons come to a climax in "Buffy"'s fifth year -- we are finally introduced to Dawn, the sister whom had been hinted at since late season 3; Riley's "Captain America" image is marred in a move that I thought was beneficial for the character and the actor, Marc Blucas; Spike's heroic redemption finds its roots in this season as well.

However, Buffy has always been about metaphor, and it is this aspect of season 5 which puts it at the top of its game. The theme of season 5 seemed to be "family," and serious issues of adoption, parenting, mental illness, and familial ties are explored. Glory (played by the catty, ferocious, and superb Clare Kramer) and her search for the Key juxtaposed against Buffy's (and eventually Joyce's as well) internal quest to accept Dawn into their family speaks of birth paternity issues, adoption consequences, and what truly makes up a family. Likewise, Joyce's battle with mental illness due to shocking health problems was new, disturbingly realistic territory for a show where monsters and magicks hurt people, not disease.

"The Body," episode 16, is quite possibly the most beautiful and heartbreaking episode of television aired to date. Nothing else can be said without giving away major plot points, but nevertheless this will always stand out for me as one of the best writing and directorial achievements on the small screen.

Other stand-out episodes in season 5 are "No Place Like Home," in which Buffy questions who her own sister is; "Fool for Love," where Buffy goes to Spike and begins what will become a quest for knowledge of the Slayers' past which had far-reaching consequences into season 7; "Checkpoint," in which the Watcher's Council offers devastating information on Glory; "Blood Ties," where Dawn struggles to come to terms with who (and what) she is; "Forever," the emotional follow-up to "The Body;" and the incredible four-part conclusion consisting of "Tough Love", "Spiral", "The Weight of the World," and "The Gift."

Season 5 tied up loose ends to the series which had been dangling for a number of years and concluded with a finale which would effect the entire course of the rest of the show's run. Not until the end of season 6 does Buffy and Co. finally pick up the peices of all the monumental events of season 5. Season 5 is "Buffy" at its best -- funny, thought-provoking, harsh, sad. If there was ever a block of 22 episodes of the series to own, it would be these.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best Season
Review: This is it! This is the ABSOLUTE BEST SEASON of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer there is. Season 5 was like a climax to the show, the height of the entire series, the concepts and emotions conveyed were so excellent on so many levels.

Season 5 introduced a brand new character, Dawn Summers played by the talented Michelle Trachtenberg, who would play Buffy's kid sister but was so much more than that. In the early season Buffy discovers Dawn is a Key who never really existed and they've all been implanted with memories with her existing which to this day are still intact. Later on she discovers The Key will open a portal to all the different hell dimensions and the god Glory (Played by Clare Kramer) wants it to get back to her own hell dimension so she can become an actual god again.

This season also deals with family on a tremendous level. Early on their mother Joyce (Played by the amazing Kristine Sutherland) gets sick and discovers she has a brain tumor. Some pretty talented acting comes through from Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michelle Trachtenberg especially in the episode "The Body." Through it Dawn and Buffy try to stick together and at the end of the season Buffy ultimately gives herself up to save her sister and the world, again in the amazing season finale, "The Gift."

This season also has some very lighthearted episodes ... as "The Replacement," "Intervention," and "I Was Made to Love You." Overall though I come back to this one fact, this season had the best episodes, the best concepts, and the best ideas that will blow anyone away. If you don't get any other season of Buffy get this one. I don't know what the special features are yet but the episodes alone are definitely worth the buy. I'll keep you posted as soon as I see a list though. Get this set when it's released in December. Of course I'm not waiting until Christmas day to get it as a present, I'm buying it the day it's released, this season rocks that much!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Amazing Buffy Season
Review: I'm a huge fan of this show and have watched it since the very first episode aired and in my opinion season five of Buffy is the best season of the series. As a whole, the show has had a lot of fine moments and many of them have been in season five. This is the season where Dawn is introduced as Buffy's sister, Riley leaves, Glory is the Big Bad (one of my fav's) and Spike falls in love with Buffy. The scoobie gang experiences a lot of loss in this emotional and heartbreaking season,(episodes The Body and The Gift, trust me have a box of kleenex by your side for these episodes). The episodes in this very powerful season are:
1. Buffy .vs. Dracula: 9.5/10
2. Real Me: 9.5/10 (Harmony is back)
3. The Replacement: 9/10
4. Out of My Mind: 8/10
5. No Place Like Home: 9/10
6. Family: 9/10
7. Fool For Love: 10/10 (watch with Angel's "Darla" episode)
8. Shadow: 8/10
9. Listening to Fear: 8.5/10
10. Into the Woods: 8.5/10 (Riley leaves)
11. Triangle: 8/10
12. Checkpoint: 8.5/10
13. Blood Ties: 9/10
14. Crush: 10/10 (Harmony and Drusilla are back)
15. I was made to love you: 8/10
16. The Body: 11/10
17. Forever: 9.5/10 (Angel pays a visit to Sunnydale)
18. Intervention: 9/10
19. Tough Love: 9.5/10
20. Spiral: 10/10
21. The Weight of the World: 10/10
22. The Gift: 11/10

...."you think you know what's to come...you haven't even begun."


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