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Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000)

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Review

Duration: 3:13:43

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer's second season is one of the most iconic bits of television, so let's take a look at exactly what makes it work, and what doesn't. From its high highs at Innocence to its low lows at Bad Eggs, from how Buffy's arc is wonderfully successful to how Willow's feels a little out of nowhere, I'll nitpick and gush in equal measure about a truly wonderful season of TV. Join me in this leisurely tour of Sunnydale in one of my favourite seasons ever.

Throughout this video I often refer to The Phi Phenomenon - https://www.phi-phenomenon.org/buffy/ - for data on how Buffy was perceived in the early 2000s.

Timestamps:
00:00 - When She Was Bad, a highly ambitious but clumsy follow-up to Prophecy Girl
08:50 - "Early Buffy" is not just monster-of-the-week: How Some Assembly Required...
13:11- ... and Inca Mummy girl have subtly different writing philosophies
21:38 - School Hard, a bold and beautiful statement episode. Also, Spike is perfect.
33:00 - Early Season 2's Monster of the Week Golden Age, and why it's required.
34:00 - Reptile Boy, or how NOT to "teach Buffy a lesson"
37:36 - Writer Break: David Greenwalt - vital behind the scenes, clumsy when it comes to the bigger picture, master of tiny moments
41:47 - Writer Break: Carl Ellsworth, single-episode master.
42:38 - Halloween - peak Monster of the Week goodness
47:52 - The Dark Age, or how Faith is Buffy if Buffy was Giles
56:05 - A slight apology to Dean Batali & Rob Des Hotel - The Dark Age rocks, actually.
57:39 - Joss Whedon's not bringing his best this season
59:14 - Lie To Me, decent, but frustratingly hollow and self-important
1:04:14 - The weird fuzzy, frustrating structure of Season 2, and why What's My Line? is fake-significant
1:07:57 - What's My Line? Parts 1 and 2 - Important, intelligent, boring. Kendra might suck, but the ideas she brings are really cool
1:18:19 - Yay. Ted. We love Ted. Yaaaaaay.
1:26:12 - Bad Eggs, a nothing episode with the silliest premise.
1:28:09 - Writer Break: Marti Noxon, maybe the second most important person to Buffy as a show, a brilliant master of the extremes of tone who's off to a rocky start.
1:31:18 - Surprise, a fairly ramshackle set-up to Buffy's most important episode
1:36:23 - Innocence: How Buffy the Vampire Slayer hits its stride
1:57:26 - How Innocence changes the structure of the second season
2:03:28 - Phases & Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: Radically different approaches to writing a character-focused episode.
2:16:24 - Passion, a cruel, painful gutpunch
2:22:35 - Writer Break: Ty King, Buffy's most inexplicable writer
2:24:53 - The two remaining bad episodes: The silly, cheesy and massively insensitive yet watchable Go Fish...
2:29:13 - ...Written by (Mini Writer Break!) David Fury and Elin Hampton...
2:29:57 - ... and the mind-numbingly boring Episode 18
2:33:37 - A brief farewell to and look back on the work of Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali
2:34:16 - I Only Have Eyes For You: A clever setup to Becoming that buckles under the weight of its own metaphor.
2:42:44 - What is Go Fish doing after I Only Have Eyes For You? Or "I go on an unimportant tangent about quality whiplash for 6 minutes"
2:48:50 - Becoming, possibly the most iconic episodes of the show
2:52:29 - Xander and Willow's storylines in Becoming could've used some more time.
2:55:59 - Xander's Lowest Point - not a bad storyline, but problematically inconsequential
3:01:52 - Joyce just keeps not being good
3:03:39 - Spike's phenomenal... face turn?
3:06:28 - Angel(us) and Buffy - the cruel, painful core of Becoming, or how One Girl in All the World isn't enough
3:10:41 - Future video update
3:11:33 - Season 2 may be rocky, but it's one of the best things I've ever watched. I love this show.

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