The nerd trio representing what Xander could become with a little less Willow and a couple more brains.

I was thinking of the ones I remembered. I think he mostly outgrew the unjustifiable hatred of Buffy ' s beaus when he out grew his infatuation with her.

Absolutely. And those are definitely the best big bads in my opinion.

Of Buffy three love interests, Xander only hates the ones that have tried to kill him or his friends.

Probably ended up lightening Wes a bit.

I think that illustrates the differences on the shows big bad. In Angel, the stakes are rather small from a saving the world perspective, but the personal stakes couldn't be larger. Darla to my mind fits this pattern. And the bads often defy the audiences (and probably Angel's) desire for a climatic confrontation. …

I would say Darla is the Big Bad of Season Two.

Really, I don't think they were ever able to top Season 2 ' s Big Bad. It's a good thing they didn't really need them to tell interesting stories.

God bless the essential goofiness of JRPGs. I also like how the master plots always seem lazy when compared to the infinitely more compelling character arcs.

Rewatching Buffy and Angel now. It seems that after Angel left he took all the good Big Bads with him

I really enjoyed 9 (though that final boss was terrible). But I can assure you my reasons over preferring 7 over it have nothing to do with the themes and characterization. The Vivi stuff in 9 is some of the strongest stuff in the series.

This is great. I don't have time to watch the movies and TV shows the AV Club talks about, but dammit I do have the ability to waste time at work on the AV Club and listening to podcasts. Please do more stuff like this (Podmass is only ok).

Your position is definitely the consensus. I just don't really understand it.

This will invalidate my entire position. But I don't think any of these games' stories hold up all that well. But to my then adolescent brain, Final Fantasy VII was important. And this feeling was not replicated when I played 6 and Chrono Trigger later on a pretty substandard PS1 disc. And to this day I can barely…

Have to be a little spoony to like 6 or 4 over the polygon goodness of 7.

Finally, the proof we needed to show that this is clearly the best Final Fantasy (besides Tactics).

The wasted potential of this series is so dumb. Why not Spain during the reconquista? China? Japan? Mali Empire? Ancient Egypt?

Anyone think we are ever going to get one of these set in a non - colonial or European setting? Let's think outside the box because I want to play in Srivijaya

One of my favorite albums. I saw the band on this tour in Colombia, Missouri. My friends and I talked about Catholicism a little with Finn, and then, the non - keyboard, non -Finn contingent went with us to a friend's girlfriend's apartment where we played poker. I drank some Camo, and the band left after a friend…

I look forward to this.