fter six years of battling every vile creature imaginable, Buffy and the gang are back to face the most terrifying monstrosity of all: high school. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's seventh season opens with Buffy (Gellar) trying to teach Dawn (Trachtenberg) how to fight vampires, a subject that scares Dawn a lot less than living through her first day of high school.
Buffy is also more than a little nervous about Dawn going to the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High, but for different reasons than her teenage sister. The school has been reopened and once again sits on the Hellmouth, a mystical portal where demons converge and nasty things tend to want to come out and
destroy the world. Xander (Brendon), who has construction crews working on the renovation of the school, has checked out the place and hasn't seen anything suspicious, except perhaps that the new principal's office resides directly over the Hellmouth.
No sooner do Buffy and Dawn get to the school than they run into the new principal (D.B. Woodside), who introduces himself and then heads off to "deaden" young minds. As Dawn leaves for class, Buffy decides to look around the new school. It doesn't take long before she begins seeing suspicious things, and when gory ghost-zombie-type things show up in the washroom mirror blaming her for letting them die, it begins to look a whole lot like it's time to try to convince the principal to expel Dawn for about 30 years.
Meanwhile, Anya (Caulfield) is accused of being too nice, Spike (Marsters) pops into the school for a visit, and Willow (Hannigan) spends some time with Giles (Head) in England. But before this lesson is over, Buffy and the Scoobies will learn that something is rising in Sunnydale, and it may well end up being the biggest bad of all.
A lighter slayer segues back to basics
No series on television has taken its characters through more challenges or to greater depths than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even non-genre critics have been won over, and Buffy often makes the top-10 lists of the best shows on television. For those of us who have watched since the beginning as this amazing series continues to challenge and entertain, the question at the start of each season is always "What will creator Joss Whedon come up with this year?" Of course, as is the nature of things, sometimes we're thrilled and sometimes we're not, but we're always ready to jump on for the ride.
This season, Whedon and company promised to go back to the beginning and focus on the "joy of female power." Gone is mopey Buffy, replaced by a Buffy who worries that she might have "mom hair" when she gets mistaken as Dawn's mother. In true Buffy fashion, this series is back from the dead, reborn after a serious last season that some felt changed the tone of the show in a way that was just too grim.
With "Lessons," the seventh season kicks off in fine form, with a wonderful mix of comedy and enough scary bits to add some thrills. While the episode itself is thoroughly entertaining, it also very effectively sets up the season, giving us a hint of what's to come without giving away too much. Whedon, a busy fellow who is also working on Firefly and Angel, wrote the episode, and his wry wit and sure storytelling give a powerful framework for the actors to work with. After six seasons, it's great to see the gang still in good form, and fans will note the addition of several new recurring characters, including D.B. Woodside as the principal, Alex Breckenridge as Kit and David Zepeda as Carlos.
And so we're off on what looks like another fine and possibly final season of Buffy. Even though most of the rest of the cast is under contract for an eighth season, Gellar's contract is up after this season, and she has made it known that she may not return. Anything is possible, but a Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Buffy would be a different show, even in Whedon's sure hands. So rather than worry about the future, let's sit back and enjoy the ride for what may be this one last time, because with Buffy going back to the beginning, it's sure to be quite a trip.
