That was nifty

Posted at 11:52 PM on 31 May 2003

By the end of last year, I'd only seen, at best, six episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - some of them more than once. I was, I have to say, almost completely dismissive of it; it was a silly TV show, based on a dire, forgettable film and, let's face it - "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"? It even sounds shite. But those six or so episodes, much to my surprise, weren't that bad. Silly, yes. Funny, yes. Actually, really not that bad. One moment of madness later, and I'd ordered the season 2 DVD box set.

I really wasn't expecting much, and I allowed that box set to gather dust for months.

My bad.

I eventually got around to watching a few episodes. I'm not completely sure how or why I started, I guess they were taunting me. "Ha ha! You spent how much?" I was admonished every single time I saw the box. But something unusual happened; the episodes were good. The writing was excellent, as was the cast. Character development actually happened. I became hooked.

It wasn't long before I owned every episode of Buffy that had been released on DVD up til season five. Whilst I lapsed and watched the musical episode, "Once more, with feeling", I was determined to only watch season six when it had been released as a box set. My patience was rewarded: it was superb. My favourite season of Buffy ever.

But there was a problem. Season seven was being broadcast in the US, and it was set to be the last ever. I was beside myself; the season seven box set wouldn't be released for ages yet, and I didn't, couldn't wait that long.

There was no choice but to start downloading episodes off the Internet.

I was initially skeptical; I thought the quality would be rubbish. I was surprised to find that actually, the quality was very good; I'm guessing the sources being hacked Tivos than dodgy videotape.

I have to admit at this point that my wife doesn't like Buffy at all (yes, I know) so I've ended up watching nearly every episode on computer, so it didn't feel particularly abnormal to watch the final episodes in this manner.

I'm glad I did. They are excellent examples of TV drama: emotional, engaging, exciting, exhilarating. It depresses me to think that there will be no more, but on the flip side: all good things must come to an end, and it's better to bow out in style than to peter out through lack of ideas like so many programs seem to these days.

Anyway. I'd like to thank Scott for giving me access to his Buffy mpg collection and allowing me to eat so much of his bandwidth, and TV Torrents for allowing me to download episodes when Scott's FTP server went tits up.

The TV Torrent site also allowed me to download the "unaired" Buffy pilot, which I've also watched. Let's put it this way: I can see why they ditched the original Willow. Nice idea, but it didn't work, and I don't really think it was the fault of the actress.

Anyway. I am now officially Buffy-ed out. ;-)

PS. I worked out that if you played every episode of Buffy without taking a break between them, it would take four days and eight hours to see them all. That's a lot of Buffy...

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