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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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lot has happened to Buffy Anne Summers (Gellar) these past two seasons—first her mother died, then she's had to cope with her own death and resurrection. The two-part pilot, made up of "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest," may be only five years old, but it takes us back to a blissfully more innocent time in the Slayer's life, a time when she's trying to find herself and come to terms with who, and what, she is.
Nothing can take away from the simple joy of watching these early episodes of Buffy. The formative moments of the Scooby Gang, the delicious cattiness of Cordelia (Carpenter), the tentative shyness of wallflower Willow (Hannigan), the tall, dark and handsome mystery-man routine played out by Angel (Boreanaz), the upheaval and uncertainties of high school-era adolescence—it's all there, starting with Buffy's first day at Sunnydale High School.
After being kicked out of her old high school for delinquency and burning down the school's gymnasium, Buffy and her mother move from Los Angeles to Sunnydale, Ca., to start from scratch. Soon after starting at Sunnydale High School, though, Buffy meets her new Watcher, Giles (Head), and finds there's no escaping her destiny.
Aside from seeing Buffy and the gang in their youth, before the pressures of adulthood and saving the world really got in the way, these early episodes are fascinating if for no other reason than to see how the look of the show has changed. The sets now have a more sophisticated feel, and the lighting is more even. In rewatching the episodes, one gets the distinct impression that back then, scaring the living daylights out of viewers wasn't the only reason behind the dark and moody.
Great episodes, but bloody little else
Considering that Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment understands how to put together an enticing DVD boxed set for a favorite cult television series—witness The X-Files, seasons one through four—the failures of the highly anticipated, and long-delayed, first season box of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are all the more disheartening. The one extra that makes the set worthwhile is creator Joss Whedon's audio commentary for "Hellmouth" and "Harvest."
Beyond that, unfortunately, there's little original material on this set's discs to complement Whedon's witty brilliance. In fact, the few extras are very haphazardly chosen and organized, a direct reflection of the fact that the material has been repurposed from the video release (which encompassed only select episodes). Case in point: clips with Whedon commenting on "Witch" and "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" are on disc two and "Angel" and "The Puppet Show" are on disc three (even though the episodes "Witch" and "Angel" are on discs one and two, respectively).
The first disc actually contains two interviews, one with Whedon commenting on the first two episodes, another that's billed as an interview with Whedon and Boreanaz. Yet both interviews start out the same way, with Whedon explaining where the idea for Buffy originated from. Neither lasts for any length of time—they're both snippets that take less than five minutes to play out.
Furthermore, none of the special features are accessible via a separate menu item from the main menu, as is typical for series packages such as this; inexplicably, you have to click on an episode title, then select special features to access these offerings, even though they're not tied to that episode in any way.
The pilot's script is rather useless as well; it's not fun to read on a television from six or seven feet back, and on a computer, you have to use the cumbersome DVD player controls to move through the script (you can't use your keyboard or print it to read offline).
Another, more crippling issue: the chapter forward scrolling functionality on the script, as well as the photo gallery on disc two and cast biographies on disc three, may not work on all DVD players (I had problems on my two-year-old Samsung player). Also, video quality was grainy considering it's DVD; even worse, the video hiccuped in some spots when played back on my 1-GHz Athlon PC.
New fans of the series will find sudden clarity by viewing these early episodes in succession, while fans will appreciate having all of the episodes on DVD media. I only hope that Fox will give more care to subsequent season releases—and someday re-release this first set and do justice to the season that started it all. — Melissa
Also in this issue:
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
and
Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension
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