I think Gina Torres is perfectly cast for the role. I don't think the writers made the most of the role, but I think she did.

Having a violent misogynist be the physical incarnation of the ultimate evil in the final season made sense for Buffy, thematically. But the show had done a violent misogynist Big Bad only one season before, and while Caleb was scary, he wasn't as scary as The First was *supposed* to be.

Dawn was a decent character other than her whiny uselessness in season 6 and the fact that Michelle Trachtenberg really was not a very good actress, especially at first. In season 7 I think she definitely deserves her spot in the main cast though.

Completely agreed. Connor in S5 was a character I actually wanted to spend time with. I liked him in Angel & Faith too.

This. The Angelus arc of season 4 is literally just a way to fill time. It's effective in theory in that the characters were already in a horrible situation and suddenly it gets ten times worse, but its ultimate effect is just to have a smaller problem take up the team's time for a few episodes to distract from the…

Ugh I HATE that. My partner and I paused the show and agreed to wipe that scene from the show's canon in our memory. We both really liked Skip and that scene was just stupid and insulting.

I would say the Jasmine arc is ALMOST great, but it doesn't really do enough exploration of the philosophical ideas at play, at least not until "Peace Out." The idea that World Peace could only come through mass delusion/hypnosis and that it is ultimately a force of evil in the world is an interesting one. But Jasmine…

It's so, so dumb that a human Anya kills multiple uber-vamps in the finale.

Agreed. There's actually plenty to like in the first half of the season and there are a couple genuinely great episodes there but ultimately the show wasn't able to follow through on the creative opportunity of having Team Angel in charge of the W&H LA Branch.

The first half of season 7 is really good. "Conversations With Dead People" and "Sleeper" set up The First to be a really great and truly terrifying villain. But then they ended up having to kill time until the end of the season so they had The First go "into remission" which pretty much ruined it as a compelling…

The only part I really hated is that first episode with Rack, where Willow drags Dawn to what is essentially a magic crack den and crashes her car and shit. That one episode felt way too Lifetime movie to me, but otherwise I don't hate the storyline and I really like the Dark Willow trilogy.

I really like the whole "Life is the Big Bad" angle of season 6. For whatever the season's many flaws, it's maybe the most emotionally resonant season of any show for me at least in terms of my own life (rather than say something like Breaking Bad season 5, which is emotionally devastating but doesn't feel nearly as…

I'd say season 4 of Buffy was easily the funniest. "Living Conditions," "Something Blue," "Pangs," "A New Man," "Superstar"… and of course the staking miming from "Hush." Season 4 is definitely one of the weaker seasons of the show but humor is one of the things it does really really well.

I love s6, but I actually know people who have suffered from depression who nevertheless hate s6. I don't know, I mean it was definitely a different show than what had come before and the stretch in between "Tabula Rasa" and "Normal Again" is pretty rough (with the exception of the excellent "Dead Things"; "Doublemeat…

Angel season 5 is much better than Buffy season 7, although I'm one of those weirdos who thinks the best Angel season is s1 (to be fair I've only watched the whole show once through and might change my mind about that if I were to watch again). I think as the show went on it lost the thread on who Angel was as a…

I divide the world into two types of people: people who love both Buffy and Angel very very much, and the wrong kind of people.

The only comics of either series I've read were the first season of Angel & Faith which I liked but didn't love. Then the second run of it was no longer written by Christos Gage and I heard it was no longer nearly as good so I didn't bother. From what I've heard the first season of Angel & Faith is probably the best…

Well said.

Yeah, whatever else you think of her it is pretty impressive that she only just started acting on a national platform and already she's been cast in a big blockbuster all at the age of 47.

Nah, I think she'll do fine on film where there are multiple takes. She's a funny person, I just don't think she's a very good live performer.