Top 10 reasons to watch Buffy

To kick off my buffy themed week I’d thought I’d give a reason why people should watch Buffy, and her sister show Angel for a couple of reasons. One, if you haven’t seen the show I feel the need to make you. Two, Tim, the second and mostly dormant half of the Get Geek team has yet to watch it.  In all honesty though it was a good excuse to remember the fun times had watching the show, and if you have already seen the show it should be fun for you as well.

Creative episodes like Hush, Superstar, Conversations with Dead People, and Smile Time

The shows were great at pulling off really cool episodes that were very different, but could still feeel like they belonged. In hush there is no talking for most of the episode, in superstar one of the side characters becomes the main character in some alternate dimension episode complete with a new opening theme/title cards. Conversations with dead people features 4 completely isolated, but thematically connected stories. Then one of my favorite Angel episodes, Smile Time in which Angel is a puppet for most of the episode.

The musical episode

Seriously, this is enough to warrant its own spot. I don’t know any TV show besides ones that do music as there stick that has put on a musical like Buffy did.  The music is great and as ridiculous as you would expect. Just check out that clip below.

Cultural References anyone?

Not only the is show full of references to other stuff, but now you too can make references to Buffy.Whenever you want! “Hey man this is like that time that Xander got all mind controlled by Dracula.Man”

The dance of joy

Ok so this is kind of cheating, but this moment is just awesome enough to get its own spot on the list. From the Angel season 2 finale .

Heartbreak(see character death)

Joss Whedon and the writers were not afraid to kill off characters brutally and sometimes out of the blue. He’s also not afraid to do terrible terrible things to people.  Don’t let that scare you off its the part of the appeal.

The Fun Hasn’t ended yet

Buffy Season 9 is going to be kicking off soon in comic book form. What does this mean? It means that when you are done with the TV show you don’t have to leave your new friends behind. Now I’ll be the first to admit that the Buffy season 8 comics were not that great. But I have reason to believe that season 9 will be much better.  You also can’t discount the fantastic spin off’s that exist in comic form like, Fray, Tales of the Slayers, and Tales of the Vampires.

Angel

Angel doesn’t get enough love as far as I’m concerned. Angel took a more noir detective take than Buffy, and often times was the darker of the two. What with the main character becoming a villain every once in a while.  Besides that I think Angel has some of the best character growth arcs spanning multiple seasons that I’ve seen, in characters like Wesley and Cordelia. If it were up to me Angel would be just as highly regarded a show as Buffy, which you can see I stick too, as Angel’s logo is up on the Get Geek Banner on the left hand side.

It’s funny

The show is really funny. To me its just as funny as most comedies(obviously there isn’t as much) but its so much more than a comedy which means when a joke falls flat, its not too big a deal. I’d classify the shows humor as a mix between awkward humor and parody humor of the genre. For instance there’s Clem, a pretty nasty looking demon who eats kittens. But he’s a really nice guy who helps out the scooby gang(Buffy and her crew for those not in the know) on multiple occasions.  This clip below isn’t the best representation of the humor to be found, because Buffy’s humor is not that great when taken out of context. Anyway its a fun video, and well edited.

The Existence of Satyana Denisoff

This is more of a tribute thing, because the existence of someone isn’t going to make you watch a TV show. But its crazy to think that if Buffy never happened this baby wouldn’t have been born…and of course the inevitable awwww, so cute.

The Show’s got heart

Buffy was a sincere show that you could tell a lot of love went in to. Joss has said that every season they planned to be canceled, and that they went out as hard as they could each season. You can definitely tell. I think the biggest compliment I can give it is that in my opinion there are no bad episodes. Some are better than others, but its all entertaining as hell to watch.

Now you have 12 seasons(7 of Buffy,5 of Angel…also holy shit that’s a lot of TV!) of TV to watch. What are you still doing here?