Buffy the Vampire Slayer

By turns clever, emotional, scary, funny, insightful, thrilling, and heartbreaking. Has some of the best characters and writing to come out of a "genre" show. Great stuff.

The toneshifts are marvellous, shlocky camp one minute and serious issues the next. A lot of it has dated of course from the politics, to the "fetch" slang, to the effects, to the Whedon of it all. However, they managed to lovingly pastiche a giant swathe of classic monster and adventure tropes with their own fresh takes while maintaining substance. The actors are super locked in to their characters and it just zips along charmingly with its growing ensemble always getting a chance to shine.

Though it looked cheap (though was full of charm) at the beginning and had run out of steam (though looked nice) by the end, through its middle five seasons this was a great and important show, almost singlehandedly introducing to the medium of TV ideas like killing off major characters without warning and the seasonal "Big Bad" shifting villain structure. Great core arcs but also great "gimmick" episodes (like the S6 musical). Characters like Faith, Spike, Willow, Xander, and the Mayor delight.

People complain about how Whedon-esque everything is these days, but that's only because genre TV plagiarises successful ideas like crazy. At the time, this teen-friendly show shook up/rewrote every concept of what a TV series was. Long-form story arcs, experimental genre-breaking episodes, possibly the best YA drama long before YA became a genre. There are some rough patches but they can be overlooked when considering just how original and trendsetting this show was overall.

The early stuff is pretty cheesy and it was often limited by budget/technology, but it was masterful at its tongue in cheek horror/teen melodrama mix.

1x; Stopped watching after S1.

Season 1: was okay. More episodic with focus seemingly on introducing and establishing core characters and worldbuilding. Season 2: the finale was devasting. Overall a more cohesive season with great character developer. Season 3: still watching

S1 only. Loved Chandler Bing in this.

Never was big on it, but it was one of those ubiquitous, 'always on' shows back in the days of cable. It doesn't hold up very well, with very 90's action, effects, attitudes, dialouge, etc.