Buffy the Vampire Slayer Retrospective: Season One

Five years after the modest turnout of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon reimaged it as a television series, which got greenlit by Fox for the WB network. Sarah Michelle Gellar auditioned for the role of Cordelia, but was convinced to tryout for Buffy, landing the part. Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia for three seasons of Buffy before transferring over to the spin-off Angel with David Boreanaz for 4 years auditioned for the role of Buffy before being offered Cordelia. Mercedes McNab, known to fans as the annoyingly lovable Harmony, also auditioned for the role of Buffy.
Like it's film predecessor, the first season is extremely campy. It has a more humorous tone than the rest of the series, not to say that it doesn't get dark when it needs to. I've always loved that the pilot is consistent with the rest of the series in terms of characters and settings. which I've found to be quite rare especially during the 90s. 
Season 1 sees Buffy Summers relocating to Sunnydale from LA with her newly divorced mother, Joyce. Buffy got expelled from Hemery High for burning the gymnasium down while fighting vampires. She's decided to pack in being a Vampire Slayer and yearns for a return to normal life. Things don't go as planned though, as her new home sits atop a Hellmouth -- a portal to Hell. Before long. Buffy finds herself embroiled in a prophecy that could spell out an early death. 

Season One has always been rather meh for me. It was a midseason replacement, so it ran for twelve episodes unlike the usual twenty-two episode order. I appreciate the first season for getting the show started and introducing the relationships that would be the backbone for the series for years to come. There aren't many series that I can think of offhand that manage to keep the main core cast for the entirety of their run; Buffy manages to keep Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, Alyson Hannigan, and Anthony Stewart Head for the whole series. though Anthony Head does leave the series as a lead in the sixth season, only to return as a guest in the finale, and then a regular in the final season.
One of my favorite things about the first season is the development of the relationship between Buffy and Angel. Is there a better example of star-crossed lovers than a vampire slayer and a vampire with soul? Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz have much intense chemistry that it radiates out of the screen like actual heat .I find if hard to believe that they were never a thing in real life. 
Joss Whdeon is notorious for pre-planning in the extreme, dropping hints for events in season five as early as season three; I've never been able to really find any of these easter eggs in the first season.

Having Buffy die, albeit briefly, was a huge shocker to me at the time I first watched the show and even now, knowing that it's coming, I still have that moment of disbelief because it's just such a risky move.
 Final Consensus: I've come a long way since I last watched this series. The last time, I had never been in love, never dated, never kissed, never done a lot of things, so watching Buffy go on dates and eventually fall for Angel was so much more real to me, like something I could relate to, almost bittersweet. 
If I were to have a criticism for the first season, it would be that the fighting, mainly in the first four episodes or so is not nearly as believable as it is for the majority of the series. The grunts that are supposed to be coming from Buffy don't even sound like they're coming from SMG, and the fighting is more dramatic with flips and acrobatics that thankfully cease as time goes by. 
 The first time I watched the series, I hated the character of Darla. I'm not sure if it was her babydoll voice or the fact that she was a wedge between Buffy and Angel, but after watching her story arc on Angel, I fell in love with the character. Julie Benz was given such better material to work with on the spinoff. I wish they had kept Darla around longer on Buffy, as I'd have liked to see her interacting with Spike and Drusilla in the present day. I feel like there wasn't much interaction between her and Buffy save a quick fight scene that was ended when Angel staked his sire. 

I've never been a huge fan of the character of Xander. Nicholas Brendon does a great job portraying him, but I find the character to be annoying: always whining about being the only non-magic one in the group, always judging Buffy for her choice in romantic endeavors, always cracking corny jokes in the midst of danger and drama.  On this rewatch, I'm finding his less annoying so far. 
I do think it's strange that Xander and Willow's friend Jesse (Eric Balfour) is kidnapped in the pilot and eventually revealed to be a vampire before Xander accidentally stakes him and yet he is never mentioned again. In the pilot, Willow barely seems to care that her friend in is in danger. It seems to me that something like that would scar someone for life. 

The first season has a few episodes that follow the Monster of the Week formula and end with Buffy thinking she defeated the baddie only for it to be revealed in the final shot that the evil isn't gone, such as in episode four, "Teacher's Pet." Buffy defeats Ms. French (Musetta Vander,) the giant praying mantis, but the final scene reveals that some of her eggs have survived and begun to hatch. or episode eleven "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" where invisible girl Marcie (Clea DuVall) terrorizes Sunnydale High until she is carted off by men in black. The final scene shows her joining a class where the current chapter being studied is "Assassination and Infiltration." Marcie never appears again, nor do the men in black. Part of me wonders if the MIB are early attempts at introducing the Initiative from season four, but nothing is ever specified. 
Season One isn't perfect, but it is a solid start and it has some good episodes like "Witch," "Angel," "Nightmares" and "Prophecy Girl."
 My two favorite scenes from this season are when Buffy and Angel kiss for the first time and she finds out that he's a vampire and Buffy's meltdown from the season finale where she refuses to meet her death and vows to quit slaying. The line, "Giles, I'm sixteen years old...I don't want to die.." is delivered so brilliantly by SMG.

It's interesting to see a time before cellphones were what they are now. Cordelia has one in the pilot, but other than that, they are definitely not mainstream. A rough laptop appears in one episode as well, showing us just how far technology has come in the last twenty-three years. 
In the episode "I Robot, You Jane," Giles and Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte) argue about technology. Ms. Calendar is all for scanning the library books so that their information is available on the computers, while Giles urges her to keep her technology away from the purity of his books. I appreciate this scene so much more now than I did as a kid because I can see how much everything has changed since those days. Everyone is on their phones 24/7, even books are digital now! Kudos to Joss for the unsuspecting social narrative. 
While short lived, season one of Buffy sets up a wonderful opening act for season two.