Rating: 
Summary: Unspeakably Bad
Review: Buffy season 6, how do you suck? Let me count the ways:1) Willow's Crack Magic Addiction. After visiting Rack's Crack House, Willow spends the rest of the season getting high and nearly killing Dawn (YAY!), trying to be clean and sober (which involves attending Spellcaster Anonymous meetings), and then losing control, trying to kill Dawn (YAY!), and then trying to wipe out all life on the planet. Also, there's the endless, self-pitying whine. Get used to it; it's the season's theme song. 2) Xander's uncertainty about his future with Anya. Since getting together in the fourth season, Anya has been unfailing supportive of her man, while he's degraded and belittled her at every turn. (Peter Parker DID make a living through his adventures as Spiderman. He took pictures of his battles and sold them to the newspaper. Doofus.) Yes, she had a demon past, but the didn't stop him from boinking her, and using her to prop up his ego. Marriage though, has him so upset that he casts a spell that results in countless people's horrible deaths. Oops! Not to fear, he's a Scooby, and thus, not to be held accountable for killings, abuse of partner, or attempted world-destruction. (See Willow) 3) Little Miss Sunshine of the Empty, Wasted Mind: aka Buffy. Buffy returns from the dead; a cause for celebration, you say? No, no, my friends. Buffy is depressed because life sucks. And, because life sucks, she starts sleeping with, and also beating senseless, Spike; but don't worry, she has plenty of time left for whining and neglecting her sister. At the end of the season, she has her 42,339 ephiphany, tiptoes through some tulips with Dawn, and all is well. Yay, or something. After 22 episodes of Willow and Xander killing people, through stupidity or malicious intent, all the Scoobies abusing their sexual partners, and a toxic level of whining, the season draws to a close with a brain-damaging speech about crayons. By that time, you may well be praying for your own death.
Rating: 
Summary: DVD vs. Syndicated reruns -- no contest
Review: At least one reviewer has suggested catching "Once More, With Feeling" in reruns rather than ponying up the bucks for this set. FYI, those who choose to go cheap will likely never see this episode in its entirety. On the commentary track, Joss refers to Feeling's excessive run time of 48 minutes (gasp), and that UPN graciously sucked up the lost ad time for its initial network broadcast. I assure you that, in syndication, there are no such sympathies... thus entire scenes (such as Dawn's ballet) and dialogue are missing. This IS the only way to view the uncut version of "Once More, With Feeling", and it's well worth it! (The associated commentary and documentary are also top notch.)
Rating:
Summary: buy it
Review: Season six of buffy is excellent and after that dud of a boyfriend Riley quite sexy with Spike as the Slayer's love interest. If you're into Buffy it's silly to imagine that you could just skip over season six, whether you feel like it's the worst or the best (and in my opinion it is the best). Get it...you know you can't resist. The real reason I'm writting this is because I've read a few complaints about glitches in the dvds. I was quite apprehensive about that as this set does cost a bit of a pinch...but I had NO problems. No glitches, just amazing no commercial vampire slaying action! If you are experiencing glitches it may be the hardware you're using!
Rating: 
Summary: Unpleasant season very well done
Review: The story lines of this season were very depressing, made more so by the competence of the talent on and behind the stage. A lot of the shows are painful but all are so very well done. The extras include a little more of the actors this time rather than mainly focusing on the behind the scenes talent. That is a real plus because I think that they were the greatest cast ever assembled. My main complaint is that "Once More With Feeling" is shown in hard letterbox, not amamorphic format. What were they thinking? Now the wait starts for Season Seven...
Rating: 
Summary: I Was Seriously Tempted to Give this One Star
Review: This season has ONE good episode, the musical. "Once More with Feeling" is a fabulous episode, maybe even my favorite episode of all the series, but the rest of the season is terrible. Everything else this season is horridly mismanaged: Buffy's depression (dragging & boring), Willow's addiction storyline & subsequent walk on the evil side (puzzling & incongruous), Dawn's general existence (pointless) and Buffy and Spike's romance (starts out promising and twisted, but degenerates into a morality lesson about the inadvisability of dating the bad boy). I love this show, to bits, but the absence of Joss Whedon in the writing room (he was busy with ANGEL and FIREFLY) really shows. The writing is subpar, which is the most irksome thing of all. I'm a devotee of the writing, first and foremost, because BtVS had great writing in its first years -- snappy, bright and witty. Even when the subject was utterly dark & forboding, when Buffy and friends were being dragged through the darkest of times, the writing elevated the show above common melodrama. I know fans who defend the show as a realistic portrayal of depression and young adult entropy, but who watches Buffy for that? The show strays far from its roots, a comedic-tinged fantasy/horror satire of high school life & demon slaying, with this season and tries to find a new schtick without quite succeeding. Watching this season sapped my energy, until I felt as hopeless as Buffy, the character. As a piece of entertainment, then, I have to say that it fails utterly. The plotline itself is interesting, and the acting is fine as always, but the writing was just limp as old celery for the sixth season. It wasn't just bad, it was boring most of the time. The only enlivening feature of the entire season was the dangerous sex Buffy indulged in with Spike, the vampire, and even that turned boring. I can't recommend this season DVD set at all, though the musical (with behind the scenes documentary shot by David Fury and accompanying commentary by Joss Whedon is pretty awesome) is an amazing accomplishment -- that's how they should have expressed Buffy's depression throughout the whole season, in song!
Rating:
Summary: no suck in sight
Review: I never watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" while it was on the air. Instead, I picked up the habit on DVD, and have been digesting the show season by season that way. More than a few people had told me that "Buffy" was great... at least until it got to its sixth season, at which point the show started to suck. So, after seeing the enormously good fifth season, I was both terribly anxious for the sixth season and a bit apprehensive, because I expected the show to not be as good. Well, that's just not the case. Out of the twenty-two episodes to be found on this set, not a single one is less than excellent. There are no episodes that achieve utterly stratospheric levels of awesomeness like, say, "The Body" and "The Gift" do in the fifth season, but a few -- "Once More, With Feeling," "Tabula Rasa," and "Gone," for example -- come very close. From what I can tell, the objections some people have to season six center around three things: (1) that it's depressing, (2) that there isn't really a master villain (such as past seasons had with Angel, the Mayor, Adam, and Glory), and (3) that Giles is only in a few episodes. These are all legitimate complaints, I suppose, but each can also be refuted, so that's what I'm going to do. If you haven't seen season five, you might want to quit reading; there will be spoilers for it, but none for the sixth season. Complaint #1: the sixth season is depressing. Well, how could it not be? Keep in mind, Buffy died at the end of season five, and when she was brought back, it would be emotionally unrealistic for her to not be totally screwed up for a while. One way of looking at this season is that it's about the process of Buffy becoming okay with the fact that she is alive and breathing. And trust me, when you watch the season with that thought in mind, it makes a lot of sense, and has some real weight to it. Heck, almost every character goes thorugh a similar process: certainly Willow and Xander do, and I'd say that Dawn, Spike, and Anya do, too. See, the idea is that they are all really becoming adults for the first time, and therefore, the problems they are dealing with are representations of adult problems. For a lot of people, these problems -- with debt, death, addiction, and despair -- make for depressing viewing, and are not the sort of thing they want to see in a show about funny monsters; but "Buffy" was never about funny monsters. It WAS always about emotional truth, and thus, season six is not only a logical extension of the show, it's the only place the show could have gone after season five while still retaining the things that made it great in the first place. Complaint #2: there isn't a Big Bad villain for the season. Not true. First of all, there's The Trio. They're silly villains, yes, but they are utterly in keeping with the theme of the season: as is made clear in the special features on the DVD, these pathetic guys who were incapable of growing up were pefect villains in a season that was all about the necessity of growing up. Perhaps some people also were uncomfortable over the fact that these three guys were sort of a mockery of the type of geeky fanboys who stereotpyically gravitate toward shows like "Star Trek," "Babylon 5," and, um, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I'm one of those guys, and it doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you, either. Really, though, the Big Bad of the season is to be found within each of the main characters: Buffy is fighting herself, Willow is fighting herself, Xander is fighting himself, so forth and so on. I don't want to be too specific; it'd give away too many things that should remain surprising. This element of inner struggle, to me, is much more interesting than would have been yet another demon bent on the destruction of the world. "Buffy" had done that before, several times; here, the creators decided to do something different. For some people, it didn't work, but I think those were people who weren't paying very close attention. Complaint #3: there's not enough Giles. Well, Giles has always been the father figure on the show, not only for Buffy, but for Willow and Xander, as well, when you think about it. And if the season is about the three of them growing into adulthood, it makes sense for them to do so with their father figure absent. Again, it is a creative move designed to strengthen the season overall, and it works. Also, when Giles IS around, he is absolutely awesome. There is one scene in particular in which he is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Trust me; you'll see. My final opinion of this season is that it's the best one yet. It's hard to get better than seasons three and five, but this one does it. It isn't necessarily the most happy story ever told, but since when is that a prerequisite for goodness? The DVDs themselves are good; the video quality is excellent, and the audio is very good for television. The image is full-frame, with the exception of "Once More, With Feeling," which is letterboxed. Sadly, Fox did not see fit to anamorphically enhance that episode, which sucks if you have a widescreen TV; but that's no reason not to buy the discs, and if you have a standard TV, like me, you'll never know the difference. The bonus features are pretty good, with several interesting documentaries, including a behind-the-scenes look at the musical episode and a retrospective of the entire series that even (gasp!) includes interviews with Sarah Michelle Gellar, who normally skips that sort of thing. Best of all is the Joss Whedon commentary track on "Once More, With Feeling"; he does commentaries better than anyone else I can think of. Highly, highly, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Often slow and chaotic, but with some extreme high points.
Review: Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the most daring yet: You will lose not one but two major characters in the core franchise (to differing degrees), and the levels of violence, both physical and psychological, have risen considerably to nearly R-rated territory. Season 5 was to me a blazing high point given the introduction of Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn and the hilarious Clare Kramer as Glory, and Season 6 goes back to more the ups and downs that riddled Seasons 3 and 4. Not all the episodes are equally strong, but when Season 6 hits the mark, it tears up the joint, and even when it doesn't work, you see the show taking admirable risks. One problem with this season is that its central villains are watery: The Trio, three Star Wars-obsessed nerds who can do dark magic and make robots. They just don't have the spark of bad-girl slayer Faith, evil Angel, or crazy, vain hell god Glory, though Adam Busch is suitably slimy as Trio leader Warren, a misogynistic tech whiz who becomes more and more detestable as time goes on. But it's just too easy to dismiss them because they just, well, aren't fun enough to watch, and you just don't have enough sympathy towards them for them to become first-class villains. All the classic Buffy villains were likeable (Spike and Faith being especially so), and the Trio is not. In interviews Joss Whedon said that they believe "When Buffy's in pain, the show is good". I've always felt they took this adage too far beginning with Season 3 -- Buffy's become such a brooder that she frequently borders on self-pity. So it's no surprise that I find the comedic episodes the most enjoyable: "Life Serial" has the Trio messing up Buffy's life with a series of zany tests, the best of which has Buffy stuck in a Groundhog Day-style loop inside the Magic Box store; writer Rebecca Rand Kirshner's "Tabula Rasa" is for me the high point of the season as magic-addicted Willow messes up a spell and erases everybody's memory, leaving it a free-for-all for the characters to theorize about who's who; and "Gone" brings back a Buffy I've missed sorely, the impish, fun-loving gal, as she's turned invisible by a freakish Trio accident and discovers the freedom (and danger) of not being seen.
The fabled musical episode "Once More, with Feeling" was such a hot idea that I know I had unfulfillable expectations of the episode, and it didn't turn out to be as fun as I thought -- too many of the lyrics were direct expressions of what the characters were feeling. But there remain delights -- Dawn's "ballet fight" with entertainment demon Sweet is hilarious, and Xander and Anya's "I'll Never Tell" is enjoyable, reminds me of the recent French musical Jeanne et le Garcon Formidable. Buffy's psychological torment in this season is a hit-or-miss affair. The concept is fascinating -- when Buffy is brought back from the dead and we suspect maybe she would rather have stayed there. But it also often pits the character into the worst kinds of self-importance, such as when she thinks she's committed a murder and turns all high and mighty with moral indignation. The theme has been explored a long time ago (in the episode "Ted"), and far better. But Sarah Michelle Gellar seems to have rediscovered the important bubbly side of the Buffy dichotomy early in the season (or maybe the zanier episodes allowed her to show it), resulting in one of her better performances. Alyson Hannigan hits a peak with her portrayal of Willow's magic addiction, then heartbreak and turn towards evil, and Nicholas Brendon and Emma Caulfield's work in "Hell's Bells" is exemplary, when Xander and Anya find their relationship fracturing -- on the day of their wedding. It's hard not to lose momentum six years into a show and Buffy the Vampire Slayer should get honorable mentions for still being able to deliver on many levels. Many parts of this season feel laborious and the overall arc is messier than usual, but as usual, the rewards are worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Highly underrated!! - Great season
Review: By the time season five ended, we had witnessed the second best season of the entire show. With Buffy dead, and the show moving to a new network, the skepticism definately began to settle in for the future of the show. However, even though Buffy may have died at the end of the previous season, the momentum of the show was still very much alive. Season 6 moves at a different pace than the previous seasons because it relies on the characters to bring themselves down, and less on a major villan like Angelus, The Mayor, or Glory. This is perhaps what made season 6 feel like such a refreshing change of pace. The sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a much darker season however. You see everything from Spike and Buffy in a violent relationship to Willow turning evil. But, there are some light hearted elements that manage to break some of the overall tension like the geeky group called "The Trio" which make it their mission to take care of Buffy using "brains over braun". The group is made up of
Warren - who created the Buffy bot in season 5, Johnathan - who was the nerd of focus while the show was in high school, and a newcomer more nerdy than both of them put together named Andrew (whose sexual preference is in constant question throughout the show). The third and fifth seasons may have been better overall, but season 6 is highly underrated and extremely enjoyable in my opinion. The episode that has gained the most attention is "Once More with Feeling" which is basically a musical with some dialogue mixed in. All the actors did a good job and supplied their own voices for the episode. What amazed me was the fact that everyone from Sarah Michelle Gellar to James Marsters can actually sing. Other episodes worth mentioning are "Normal Again" , "Tabula Rusa", "Seeing Red", and the final three episodes - "Villans", "Two to Go", and "Grave" which brought season 6 to an extremely satisfying close. Overall, the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is definately worth watching and one of the more enjoyable seasons of the show. The DVD set for season 6 is great as well. My favorite aspect was the in-depth featurette "Buffy the Vampire Slayer : Television with a Bite" from A&E. Tons of great information about the whole show. You also get the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences panel discussion, outtakes, and more. A solid 5 stars....
Rating:
Summary: Buffy's darkest year
Review: I was late to the Buffy bandwagon, and season 6 was where I began, after being filled in on a few key plot points by a friend. I loved it instantly. This was a dark, smart story about a girl who was ripped from Heaven and clawed her way up from the grave. I wasn't expecting sunbeams and rainbows. I got a story about friends maturing and going into some scary adult territory - sex, drugs, (here called "magics," which was a little too afterschool special) and the biggest question "How should I live my life?" I've since seen every episode of Buffy countless times, and as much as I love seasons 2 and 3, I still think season 6 amazing television. It's daring, it's scary, and it's sad - also got some killer comedy, damn catchy songs, and wild, well-done FX, especially in the later Darth Rosenberg episodes. I think it's a nice epilogue to Buffy's death in season 5. She crawls out of the grave and comes to some harsh conclusions about herself, takes hold of her new life, and finally emerges into the world as a true adult. If the series ended here, I would've been happy. Buffy and the Scoobies grew up this year - they weren't the brave, quippy teenagers of seasons 1-5, but they weren't the shells of themselves they went on to be in season 7.
Rating:
Summary: ummm.....
Review: this may be the dumb question but what are the Easter Eggs that are spoken of on the description? by the way, this is a really good season. i highly recommend it.
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