I also blame auteur theory for the weird "stylist" vs "actors' director" that this article hasn't invented, but is content to run with. A director can be both (and more), and a lot of it has to do with a given film's other contributors - the writer (as you point out), but also the cinematographer (which, Nichols…

Totally, I was just saying on another thread somewhere that is was really Faith's appearance on Angel (and Dushku's pretty excellent performance) that pointed that show towards its future.

It's totally true, but I think she learns it each season through the filter other seasonal elements that she has to deal with - lost love, betrayal of a friend, death of family, etc. So, while each season she has to sort of re-learn that her friends are there for her, she has to do it against a backdrop of being very…

But Seth Green only had, like, six lines in the whole series (I kid).

It's really only Marc Blucas who never totally got the hang of delivering the dialogue, maybe the actress who played Kennedy. Dushku and Trachtenberg could be hit or miss, but got better as they went along. But all the Scoobies really did nail it from day one, yes. And Charisma Carpenter, too.

I sort of fanwank her role in Halloween as Buffy herself being so out of it that it accounts for the poor performance. Lame, perhaps, but it works for me.

Yeah, I'm a big Buffy fan, myself. I think a lot of people watch the show through the eyes of a favorite character (I've got a good friend who's convinced the whole show is really more about Willow and her journey than it is about Buffy - I disagree, but she makes some convincing arguments). And we often tend to…

Yeah, that's good. I like the moment in Who Are You when they ask him what he's doing and he says, "going to church," like it's the most normal thing (which, maybe, but not so much in Whedon).

You're probably right about all that. And S4-5 really is the time during which Xander shows the most personal growth throughout his arc. He just never seems to shake a kind of petty meanness that colors my thoughts about most of his actions, no matter how noble (S6 finale aside, for obvious reasons).

"When things get rough he
just hides behind his Buffy,
now look he's getting huffy,
cuz he knows that I know."

Yup, I can't think of much else like the episode "Angel" that was
running on network TV around then . . . X Files? But the movie had been such a flop . . . and that title!!! . . . it's no wonder it wasn't really until the Angelus arc hit its stride that people started
admitting to being blown away more widely.

Well, I'd agree with you (or your implication) that Xander got Riley in a way none of the others did, and so it was cool of him to stick up for the guy. But it's just one of so many self-righteous Xander moments, all of which seem to stem from Buffy rejecting him way back in S1 (which, at least, is true to character!).

True, but that's sort of what Buffy does to everybody, and sort of what her journey's all about . . . learning, by Chosen, that she doesn't have to do it all on her own. Takes her A LONG time to get there!

Ugh, I feel almost exactly the opposite (see my other comment) - Xander's speech to Buffy is one of the many points in the series when I find myself yelling at him to shut the hell up.

Well, I think they wanted different things from it - so Buffy was bit guilty of not getting that she wasn't being what Riley wanted. But Riley was suffering from "my wife makes more money than me" syndrome, so what he wanted was actually pretty unreasonable.

Yeah, but even early S2 has it's Reptile Boys and Inca Mummy Girls (yeesh!). From about Halloween on, though, it's pretty unstoppable (aside from a couple other scattered stinkers). But even the worst Buffy eps have their stellar moments.

I love Who Are You so much - an ep I think often gets overlooked in all the "best of" lists floating around. And combined with Faith's trip down to LA on Angel, it really turns her character from a fairly one-note (if interesting) single-season player into one of my favorite parts of the Buffyverse. Plus SMG plays…

But Riley doesn't really start to suck until S5 - the actor is great at the aw shucks, Iowa cornfed stuff. It's when he tries to get deep . . . and dark . . .that he really blows it.

I'd definitely start with S1 - as others have said, low production values and a few real clunkers, but from the beginning the dialogue is great, the cast gels really quickly, and a lot of the show's mythology gets set up in intriguing ways. Plus, it's fun as hell!

For all the really nice things that people are saying about what a wonderful, warm human Nichols was (all, I presume, totally well deserved), it's worth remembering that he was one of our best at depicting humans being really really cruel to each other.