#buffy season ranking

[firelxdykatara]

Rank the buffy seasons :D?

Oooh, absolutely!

This is my personal ranking, in terms of my enjoyment of each season which is in part driven by what I think of the writing/character work/et al, but it's not necessarily the definitive word on which seasons are The Best or whatever. Also, with the exception of the Dead Last ranking for a bunch of reasons, I did enjoy every season so this is 'most favorite to least favorite but still very high up in my esteem'.

Season 2

Season 6

Season 3

Season 5

Season 1

Season 7

Season 4

Season 2 and Season 6 are really tied for first in my head but I think 2 edges out just slightly ahead because it lays the foundations for basically the rest of the series and especially for so much of what I love about the series as a whole and Buffy in particular. Season 1 is only so low because the others hit me harder emotionally, and while I do love season 7 and don't agree with a lot of the way the broader fandom rags on it, it has 'Empty Places' and unlike the season 3 episode 'Dead Man's Party' which I have similar issues with, Empty Places doesn't occur early enough in the season for the remaining episodes to make up for it.

However, season 4 I dislike overall, despite enjoying quite a few of the episodes individually. It is the season that I think has the weakest overall writing in terms of characters as well as plot--the Initiative was an interesting idea but poorly thought out in execution, and the Big Bad was its weakest point narratively, as hilarious as I find Adam sticking three and a half inch floppies in his chest to download knowledge and skills. I read a post somewhere about how the season would have come together more coherently if Riley had been 'Adam' instead of it just being Walsh's weird cobbled-together project, and I'd have to agree, even apart from my dislike for Riley as a character (and that does feed into a lot of my antipathy towards season 4).

That said, even season 4 holds a special soft spot in my heart because there are a lot of episodes that I love individually and also it's the start of Spike's evil domesticated cat arc so I can't hate it too much. I do think that some of it, too, is the transition from BtVS being a high school show to being a college show and Buffy's own transition into young adulthood perhaps hitting closer to home than I'd care to admit, which I think is part of why I take the failed execution and now badly it did not stick the landing so personally. I wanted it to be good, and it wasn't, and now I sit with all these feelings that have nowhere to really go because there's so much that s4 could've done and been and wasn't. Idk, maybe I'll be able to articulate it better on rewatch.

[buffysummers]

Ranking Buffy Summers' hair evolution (as voted by my followers) 2/11

[clarkgriffon]

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 7x01 | “Lessons” 

[girl4music]

Trust me, you’re not alone in the way you feel with the finale. I feel you so deeply on the dislike for Season 7.

The main problem with Season 7 is that they set up character arcs and narratives and themes only to just drop them and do something else or ignore them completely. Five By Five Takes gave the analogy of buying an IKEA desk and instead of constructing the parts in the proper and most logical way, just dump them on the floor and leave what you’re supposed to get from it a huge mess. Don’t even bother picking them up, let alone actually building the damn desk.

Season 7 is exactly like that. There’s no proper narrative undertaking for any set up they have - it’s all just left there. They have great ideas and honestly some great starter episodes and setups for everything… I mean ‘Lessons’, ‘Beneath You’, ‘Conversations With Dead People’, ‘Help’, ‘Selfless’, ‘Same Time, Same Place’… are fantastic episodes that don’t really suffer from the careless sloppy writing of the later episodes and a weighty main plot that’s that badly executed that it buckles under its own weight. It’s a massive inconsistent mess what they do with the latter half of the season. And they just neglect to properly use all of what was set up in the former half for this messy ass main plot with characters no one even cares about nor would be able to get any satisfying character representation or development so that we can learn to care about them because it’s the final season. There’s no time for any of that character stuff. Not even with the main characters. The point is to CONCLUDE them - to wrap up and tie together this amazing character-driven saga with its arcs and give them all a compelling and satisfying endgame. But nope… this never happens because there’s no time with all the rest of what’s going on taking the majority of the focus for the season. The final fucking season.

To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. But I can’t say I hate the entire season because there is some great episodes from it that arguably are some of the best in the entire show. It’s just I’m so dissatisfied with how they execute everything. They don’t really address Willow and her magic. They don’t talk about Tara’s death and let us properly grieve for her. They don’t properly patch up Willow and Buffy’s relationship… there’s a lot left there. Everything just feels like it’s done wrong. And I can’t even say that I wish they had just dropped Season 6 and 7 entirely because no Dark Willow and no ‘Once More, With Feeling’. 😢

On the flip side - there’s Season 5…

I have yet to see any season of any show whatsoever- supernatural/fantasy or otherwise - outdo the brilliance of Season 5 and its stellar finale. That really set the bar high for TV show storytelling because that is well balanced both in its plot and in its characterization and seamlessly ties the two together in such a way that is so clever and is yet to be beaten or even challenged if I’m honest. Nothing touches it.

[july-19th-club]

hodgins is my favorite guy on bones bc all he has to do is say even a medium leftist take with a little grin on his face and it makes american-flag-colored steam start coming out booths ears

[oncemorewithqueering]

buffy season rankings:

tw: one (1) mention of assault, nothing graphic

also spoilers!

--

this is my opinion and therefore counts for nothing. you can have a dfferent opinion to me and that is totally cool

from last to first:

Season 6: honestly i feel like i need to say very little. the assualt, tara, all of it. good idea in practice but didn't feel like a buffy season to me. also barely any giles and too much warren.

Season 5: i personally don't like glory, i think she's annoying. but i do love dawn and all the drama.

Season 1: this is here purely because it was finding its feet. i love this little baby season so much.

Season 7: i think season 7 was an amazing comeback and i think it is genuinely really funny. minus points for kicking buffy OUT OF HER OWN HOME

Season 4: riley finn ruins this whole season for me. so does adam and the initiative, and its hard to see all the amazing episodes tbh.

Season 2: i cannot describe my pure love for this season. angelus, dru, spike, so many banging episodes and so many classic buffy moments. kendra's 'only shirt'. love it.

Season 3: the mayor. faith. dopplegangland. band candy. mr trick. silly goofy stuff balanced with a great plot. it is the almighty.

jesus i need to go to sleep bye x

[bookhouseboy1980-blog]

Top 5 Best and Worst Buffy S2 Episodes +MVPs

Sub to my channel for more: https://www.youtube.com/@RevisitingTheBuffyverse-yp3ey

[tuiyla]

so you liked season 7 of BtVS even less than season 4?

I'd like to rephrase this to say that I ended up enjoying season 4 more than I did season 7, just to put a more positive spin on it. I would rank season 4 higher.

But yeah. Season 4 is somewhat tainted by Riley's whole deal, Initiative and Frankenboy included but it was overall a decent season with super strong one-offs and character moments. The most I enjoyed season 7 was the first handful of episodes and then whenever Faith was on screen. The rest... was a bit rough, ngl. And I wanted to enjoy the final season but the arc just dragged ooooon and ooooooon without outstanding episodes to break it up. More thoughts on s7 later probably and a retrospective look at all BtVS seasons with highlights and low points.

And then there's season 1, which is wiiiiildly different from the last season but weirdly more redeemable to me? huh

[master-gatherer]

Ok so there's still one ep left in this season but they basically finished the main arc so I have to ask:

How was season 4 considered any worse than the previous seasons?

[wynsummers]

felt like combining two of my biggest interests so this is my ranking of buffy characters by how much they would enjoy the rocky horror picture show

honorable mention - anya. i can't decide if anya would love or hate rocky. the more chaos-loving anyanka side of her would have a lot of fun with it, but i think she might also hate the idea of going to see a movie only to have it talked over by a bunch of hecklers. especially if she went to a theater where they throw/spray props. so i guess it would depend on whether she went to a showing for the experience or the film itself.

9. angel would walk in, sit in the back row, stare with an intense face at the screen for the entire hour and forty minutes of the film and then stand up and leave without saying a word. he would never come back.

8. xander - xander would enjoy rocky for all of the wrong reasons. he is the cishet man who only goes to see the lingerie-clad women. i've met so many xanders in my time. they always have that smug laugh when someone tries to interact with them, but they're too cool to do anything that they can't use to (attempt to) impress a woman

7. cordelia - i don't think rocky is really cordy's scene, no disrespect intended. i think she could have a good time but some of the more extreme traditions might put her off (especially if someone threw/sprayed something at her, i think she would hate that). she would look at it as that fun thing she did once, probably because someone invited her. that being said, though, if she ended up in a shadowcast, she would put her entire heart and soul into playing janet.

6. oz - i can't explain it but oz is both too cool not to be at rocky and too cool to be at rocky. like, oz has been going to rocky every week for two years but the scoobies only find out when they go as a group and everyone in the theater knows him already. i don't think he's ever said a callback in his life but he definitely has a bunch of them memorized

5. buffy - ok now hear me out. buffy needs something like rocky in her life. she needs a place where she can unwind, yell loudly, dance around, and just have fun. i don't think she'd be super into it right away, but i don't think it would take long for her to get into the rhythm of it. i can't see her going so far as to be in a shadowcast, but i can totally see her being a frequent audience member who tells all of her friends about this awesome thing she found

4. tara - listen, tara is a lesbian witch in college. rocky was made for her. season 4 tara is too shy to participate, but i can see it being a place she returns to a lot, and season 6 tara is definitely in the front row of the theater every friday gleefully yelling at the screen. she might even dress up as janet or magenta (shoutout amber benson for performing toucha touch me)

3. willow - this may be controversial, since early seasons willow is kind of reserved and seems like she would be really overwhelmed by rocky. but often that's the exact kind of person who thrives in rocky the most because it gives them a chance to come out of their shell. at her first show, she probably wouldn't participate at all, but something would compel her to come back, and slowly but surely, she'd start doing more. cut to a few months later and she's going full vampire willow in a theater full of people. i think later seasons willow wouldn't have as difficult of a time at first but i still don't think she'd get into it right away. but once she got it, she'd be a regular for life

2. spike - i think spike has been going to the shows for a long time; it's definitely his scene. it wouldn't surprise me if he invented some of the callbacks. yelling stupid snarky shit at a movie screen is so him. i don't know if i can see him dressing up as a character though.

giles - obviously. fucking obviously. in his ripper days he was frank at his local theater and he still goes to the shows all the time. maybe on special occasions they bring him back as frank for a special show. it wouldn't surprise me if he saw the rocky horror show before it was a movie. if buffy and the scoobies found out about his double life they would faint. (if you haven't seen anthony head as frank, do yourself a favor and look it up)

[ikeameatballspoisonedme]

Honestly I didn't have much to say about Season 4... not my fav season... Adam has Legate Lanius potential but eh. The Faith body swap episode was so good tho. Oh yeah Hush is fantastic too. But that's it... I immediately jumped to The Body after I finished season 4 finale and WOW it destroyed me

WILLOW XANDER GARBO IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WILLOW TARA ALL DAYS BABYYYY

[alltimefail]

Entertainment Weekly just placed Dead Boy Detectives on their "Top 19 Best Supernatural Shows to Stream Right Now" list.

Mind you, Dead Boy Detectives is making these lists AFTER cancelation! IT RANKED AT NUMBER 5/19 (and beat out some pretty big names, I might add). The EW is a hugely popular publication! It's so bonkers to me that Netflix would cancel such a highly beloved, successful show that I had to write them about it, yet again!

If you need inspiration to keep talking about Dead Boy Detectives and hold out hope that we can save this show, THIS should help. Keep streaming, keep promoting it EVERYWHERE, keep creating for it, and for the love of all things wonderful keep bothering Netflix. This show shouldn't have been canceled, and we need to keep reminding them of what a poor decision they're making. ESPECIALLY with GeekedWeek coming up, we need to be SUPER noisy for and about Dead Boy Detectives.

A transcript of the email I sent out today can be found below the cut! A list of Netflix exec emails can be found HERE.

!!!! Note: you can use my email as a framework or as inspiration, but DO NOT copy and paste it word-for-word, or else it will be marked as spam !!!!

Dear [Insert Recipient's Name],

I hope this email finds you well! I previously reached out regarding Netflix's unfortunate decision to cancel Dead Boy Detectives, but since our previous correspondence, there have been several articles admonishing the surprising and untimely cancelation of Dead Boy Detectives. The publications include but are not limited to BamSmackPow, CBR, CHIP, Quotenmeter, Serienjunkies, Serienfuchs, Filmstarts, Movie Pilot, Kino, Vodafone Deutschland, Dread Central, Pop Culture, Sentidog, Geek Girl Authority. and Animation World Network.

Three notable articles have come out post-cancelation that I'd like to highlight due to their succinct, well-informed perspectives on why canceling Dead Boy Detectives was a poor decision are as follows:

The Death of 'Dead Boy Detectives' Was Untimely by Lacy Baugher at Tellyvisions.org

Dead Boy Detectives: The Latest Casualty in a Concerning Trend of LGBTQ+ Show Cancellations by Sam Huang at TellTaleTV.com

Netflix made a grave mistake canceling 'Dead Boy Detectives' by David Opie at YahooNews

It would be remiss of me not to emphasize how these publications are not just central to the US and UK; the cancelation of Dead Boy Detectives is being reported and scrutinized internationally, in several languages and countries.

What truly prompted me to contact you again is an article that was released by Entertainment Weekly today, September 11, 2024. In the article, "The Best 19 Supernatural Shows to Stream Right Now," EW placed Dead Boy Detectives in the #5 slot: it outranked other shows on your platform such as Stranger Things (#13) and Wednesday (#18). The Sandman, the show which Dead Boy Detectives is a spinoff of, is notably not present on the list at all. You can find the article here on ew.com.

Dead Boy Detectives was also ranked as the #1 Best DC Live Action Show available on Netflix by MovieWeb, outranking titles such as The Flash (which has a whopping 9 seasons), Lucifer (a show that was so loved by fans that Netflix picked it up after its own untimely cancelation, mind you) and, yet again, The Sandman.

All this to say, Dead Boy Detectives is still making "Best of" lists even after its cancellation, and it is ranking exceedingly well on said lists! This speaks volumes in and of itself; people are just as outraged today as they were the day it was canceled and it's abundantly clear that critics and audiences alike love this show and want to see more of it! You have a hit show on your hands that is growing in popularity daily, meaning Netflix truly has everything to gain by listening to customers and rethinking this objectively unpopular and unfounded decision.

Please do not waste the immense potential of this incredible show that means so much to so many people. I appreciate your consideration today and implore you to listen to the outcries of fans and critics alike, to do right by the cast and crew of Dead Boy Detectives, and ultimately repeal its cancelation.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

[buffysummers]

Ranking Buffy Summers' hair evolution (as voted by my followers) 1/11

[genericaces]

if u did a tier maker of buffyverse ships i would enjoy it 🙏

This is tricky because ships are one of those things that people can get really passionate about, and I don't want to upset anyone. I try to steer clear of any drama when I can, but I also want to feel free to express my opinions, you know? Because god knows I have them.

I guess I'll say before I wade into any discourse that, disclaimer: my enjoyment of a ship doesn't mean I condone what goes on in it, and I can separate fiction from reality. I try not to moralize when it comes to fictional ships and approach them both objectively in terms of quality and also subjectively to my personal tastes. But I also believe that, at the end of the day, it's just fandom and people should do whatever floats their boat.

So with all that being said, here's my (highly personal!) rankings of the ships in Buffyverse:

C Tier:

ATS 1x09 - This is the ship with the bomb that Doyle sacrifices himself to disarm. Now it's a good episode, but this is really the only wide shot we get of the boat. I literally forgot that the climax takes place on the water. The interior is fun with lots of stairs and various apparatuses for fight scenes, but it could just as easily have been a basement or abandoned factory. Honestly, I wasn't too impressed by the ship factor. Rating: 4/10

B Tier:

BTVS 2x13 - You might be thinking, "You're ranking a BACKGROUND ship higher than an actual location?" but hear me out: because the ship is in the background, I actually remembered that this scene had a ship. There's a great fight scene in front of it where Buffy uses the chain along the docks to choke out a bad guy, and then she gets thrown into the water. The ship hangs out in the background the whole time and brings together the whole nautical-themed fight. Rating: Angel diving into the water/10

A Tier:

BTVS 3x15 - Now we're cooking with gas. We get a FULL shot of the whole ship on the dock. The establishing shots linger on the boat more because Buffy and Faith have a confrontation here. Not only do they have a conversation with someone visibly ON a boat, Faith starts out on the upper deck of the boat then swings herself OFF the ramp to argue with Buffy on the docks. Bonuses for a visually dynamic conversation and the boat representing Faith's plans to fuck off, interrupted by HER choice to get off and get in Buffy's face about it instead. Rating: Saving the girl that's supposed to be your enemy/10

S Tier:

ATS 3x22 - I know, we're getting into controversial territory here. But look how beautiful this ship is. Is it a boat? A schooner? A yacht? I don't know, but I DO care. Extra points for it being a plot-necessary boat, of course, since they had to get Angel out into the middle of the sea somehow. What's great about this ship is that it's really condensed all the ship elements into a smaller vessel, so you're aware throughout the tense emotional scenes that you're actually ON a boat in the middle of the sea. It really emphasizes Angel and Connor's isolation at this point in the finale, both physically and emotionally. And, I mean, look at this: we actually have a shot that has most of a boat AND most of a person in it. AND it's the climax of a season finale? THIS is the ultimate Buffyverse ship. Final rating: The misunderstanding-to-patricide pipeline/10

[quasi-normalcy]

If I could reboot Voyager, here are some of the changes I'd make.

Much more serialization. Still mostly episodic, of course, but things that happen in one episode would have lasting repercussions. If the ship gets damaged, well it's going to stay damaged, or they're going to have to figure out how to effect repairs. Maybe have seasonal "big bads", like Buffy.

Play up the initial conflict with the Maquis for the first few seasons, and give the Maquis actual ideological objections to the Federation (a la Eddington on Deep Space Nine), rather than just making them generically rough and tumble. There would be a whole arc where some of the Maquis talk some of the lower-ranking Starfleet officers around to their side on the grounds that Janeway effectively has a dictatorship over them for their entire lives and she's too hidebound and is squandering opportunities to get onside with possible local allies. There'll be an actual mutiny (or at least an attempted mutiny) in the first few seasons, but it will fail because Chakotay (we'll come to him in a minute) opposes it; but the ship will settle into a much more egalitarian social structure nonetheless

Seska will remain on the ship after being unmasked as a Cardassian spy, claiming asylum under the terms of the Federation-Cardassian treaty that created the De-Militarized Zone. Her presence will be a major source of the friction between the Maquis and Starfleet crews, because it turns out that her espionage actually got some of their comrades killed back in the Alpha Quadrant

Give nuance to the Kazon; play up the generational trauma inherent to their backstory, and maybe make Culluh an ambitious but sympathetic empire-builder, rather than just a violent thug

Present the Kazon as more of an actual culture with their own arts and accomplishments, rather than just as Space Gangbangers.

Two waves of despair will rock the ship for several episodes. The first when they've been stranded for a few months and the reality of their situation hits them; the second when they get in touch with the AQ and find out that the Maquis have been exterminated.

Pick an actual indigenous nation for "Chakotay" to belong to and hire actual consultants from that nation for the writing staff. It will presumably be necessary to rename the character accordingly.

Really flesh out the minor characters on the crew: Carey, Ayala, Tal Celes, Suder, Vorik, Jonas, that cosmology grad student on the lower decks who didn't want to be on the ship in the first place. All of them will make the ship feel more like an actual place with the same nine characters doing everything; and when one of them dies, it will hurt.

Relatedly, all of the people who die in the first episode will have names and friendships with the crew, and their deaths will actually mean something.

Explore the comedic and dramatic potential of Starfleet crewmen having to be roomies with Maquis terrorists. I'm thinking some initial "Odd Couple" shenanigans, growing into friendship, with a sort of hurt-comfort romance emerging after they find out that all of the Maquis back in the AQ are dead.

Give Neelix more of a dangerous streak. The first episode made him out to be a shifty conman and the first season established that he had serious PTSD. I want to see more of that Neelix.

Have it take a full season just to de-Borg Seven of Nine. Her character progress is reflected in how many of her implants she has.

Have Seven of Nine push back more on the narrow canons of "humanity" that she's expected to perform; and have it go both ways; maybe instead of it just treating it like a joke when she proposes, for example, that someone try Borg regeneration, they actually take her up on this, and Janeway is accordingly horrified. You could get a neat plot about bodily autonomy out of this.

Establish that the Borg hivemind has developed a sort of "neurosis" around humanity and Voyager, stemming from the fact that they required Voyager's help to defeat Species 8472. This is the Queen motivation for wanting Seven of Nine back in "Dark Frontier"

Kes still ascends, but she hangs around somewhat longer. And she's doing and trying lots of things, rather than just hanging around sickbay most of the time.

Have Seven spend more time with Tuvok; maybe adopt Vulcan philosophy

There are no holodecks for the first few seasons because they need to conserve power. When they finally get them up and running, it's a big frigging deal. Before that, there's a whole plot where someone (Tom Paris) uses the emergency medical holoprojectors to make Sickbay into a holodeck, much to the Doctor's consternation. Janeway, however, allows it for a few hours a day as a means of building crew morale.

They build alliances and trade networks in the Delta Quadrant, and eventually realise that this is home for them now

[spuffybot]

I just did a watch of Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest. There’s so many amazing little things happening in those first two episodes.

1. The Music: there is so much 90s sitcom music happening. Especially at the end of The Harvest when they avert the apocalypse and it’s just Giles, Buffy, Xander, and Willow reflecting on what happened. The music sounds like it’s from an episode of 7th Heaven.

2. Everything David Boreanaz is doing is hysterical. You can tell it’s one of baby’s first real acting gigs. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, his arms are swinging inexplicably, and he makes standing still look so painfully awkward.

3. The Wardrobe: We get some of the best and worst looks in these two episodes and it’s quite frankly, iconic. Buffy’s first day of school look literally defined a generation. However her first night at The Bronze look??? What is happening here? And let’s not even get started on Angels shiny plush velvet jacket. He’s giving hot topic vampire.

4. The Lighting: I love how dark season 1 is, it’s a total vibe and I have so much nostalgia for watching this show when it was first on TV. But there are scenes that are actually impossible to see (the opening sequence for example) and there’s a moment in The Harvest where Buffy shatters a window and you can just see where the prosthetics are glued to Luke’s face.

5. The Prosthetics: If you didn’t know, they changed the prosthetics because they were so hard to talk in! Darla is impossible to understand half the time and they had to change some of Jesse’s lines because he couldn’t say “s” words.

6. Darla x The Mythology: ok so obviously we know Darla goes on a journey. It’s funny to look back at these initial episodes and see her behaving in ways that feel out of character. She doesn’t seem to know much about Slayers. She’s easily defeated by some holy water and a cross (wielded by Willow and Giles of all people.) She’s deferential to Luke in a way that makes her seem higher in rank than a fledgling but certainly not the 500 year old vampire we come to know. There’s also so many small mythology things that don’t make the cut or are evolved over time. Giles has seemingly never encountered many supernatural creatures and is unaware of what a Hellmouth is. Vampires eyes glow in the dark and they have talon like nails. Buffy’s stakes look like coffee table legs. I love seeing how the show grows beyond these beginnings.

I’m excited to continue watching season 1. I almost always skip straight to School Hard in any rewatch of the series and it’s so much fun to revisit these early episodes.