rewatching BtVS because it’s 2018 and I am in control of my own destiny FRANKLY

the opening, with the bait and switch of Darla eating the asshole high school boy, is cheap, but I am still OVERWHELMINGLY fond

also the dream Buffy has at the beginning of the episode is throughly my aesthetic and my whole damn bag but also clearly just a stolen History’s Mysteries on The History Channel Halloween special—

o wait that is my brand carry on

let’s talk about the overwhelming sense of fondness and safety I’ve assigned to late 1990s tv sound design

hey just an aside but uh Buffy's history teacher is a lesbian icon

back on my bullshit and aw yeah this is what I like to see in a library

LOOK at this eager fresh-faced infant librarian!!!!!!!!

can’t believe Angel’s fallen so far as to be wandering around suburban alleyways wearing a crushed velvet blazer that was on clearance at K Mart

mostly watching BtVS on my tiny iPod Classic as a teenager really undersold how distractingly tacky this crushed velvet jacket is. why do we as a culture not talk about this ALL THE TIME

Angel, newly freshened up from the old living on the street sucking rat blood out of self-flagellation gig, rifling through bad loungewear even K Mart couldn’t sell, holding up a shiny blazer & going, ah yes, this does resemble a clothing a real person would wear, convincingly,

applying the eventual and very beautiful characterisation of Angel as your weird divorced dad to his earlier appearances is amazing, actually

also like, not that this is new or overlooked information, but Sarah Michelle Gellar really is electric in this pilot

Giles is so SMALL and TOUSEL-HAIRED and SERIOUS and SHARP-CHEEKED and FASTIDIOUS and I want to hurt him SO MUCH

you know, just a minor amount of bludgeoning. a normal amount. knives are more of a third date stage.

“the blood of men will flow as wine, and the Master will walk among them once more, and the earth will belong to the Old Ones, and hell itself... will come to town.” somebody lost momentum there buddy

don’t finish writing your monologue minutes before deadline

did teenage girls in 1997 really wear tailored slacks like they were cool

the fight blocking in this episode is endearingly awful. “stand still while I run up to you with a weapon!” “sure, seems fair!”

sure is awkward to realise that Jesse’s only characterisation whatsoever is just “incel”

there is a LOT to unpack in Jesse’s characterisation and the writing choice of him suddenly for eight seconds domineering Cordelia into being into him because he’s hot now that he’s evil? I am not the person to unpack that intelligently but w o w

Willow's wearing THIS outfit and it still took us four seasons to find out she was gay?

“there’s a veritable cornucopia of fiends and devils and ghouls to engage.” [awkward silence] “well pardon me for finding the glass half full.”

thanks Rupert I feel seen

does Giles..... OWN a hairbrush

wow I definitely super forgot about the bits in the third episode when Giles does some spells which appear to have a component of him inflicting pain on himself and I would like to re-forget it immediately thanks

I do not want my rewatch to have this extremely bad focus, sorry, I’m trying to uninstall it,

nice job not questioning why Giles is super good at spells kids this won’t come back to haunt you in any way

“this was my first casting so I might have got it wrong” nice poker face you got there pal

obviously I know none of the Ripper plot arc had even been dreamt up in season one but I enjoy retroactive dramatic irony

I love Buffy's bedroom, which doesn't get nearly enough credit

look at this amazing shoegaze number!!!!!

the positioning of Xander in season one is really weird and off-putting in a number of ways but most jarringly it feels like Whedon originally saw Xander as the audience surrogate character and that he vaguely assumed his target audience was going to be cis straight men

Xander dreaming about rescuing Buffy is framed like a protagonist scene, like the audience is supposed to sympathise with him unquestioningly and not be alienated and unsettled by Buffy becoming a breathy damsel enacting a type of Girl that no girl has ever been or wanted to be

anyway the show never, in my memory, positions and un-Buffys Buffy as the protagonist’s desirably one-dimensional prize after season one and it’s VICIOUSLY unsettling to watch what became a lot of the show’s perspective and thesis being so utterly betrayed like that

why IS Angel so unnecessarily cryptic about goofy monster of the week threats, did he just say more than eight words together, panic, and have to leave before he just started mouthing “watermelon watermelon” in desperation

Angel, wandering his limited track through Sunnydale with a glowing sidequest exclamation point over his head,

in case it wasn’t obvious I deeply love Angel, who is good at literally nothing on this earth

it’s too bad Xander is the worst because he’s wearing a velour collared shirt and an INTRICATE FOREFINGER RING? and like, oh kiddo

someone more qualified than me, where is the essay on Xander Harris and the toxicity of compulsory heterosexuality and performative masculinity

sorry, this is a bad time, but Giles is wearing GINGHAM

there’s a weird tenderness about the characters’ own pushed-aside grief and the trauma of constantly seeing acquaintances brutally killed in Buffy that I feel like a lot of imitative post-Buffy tv kind of shrugged off?

hey quick question is anything less straight than a signet pinkie ring asking for a friend

excuse me

cw / lol 90s genre tv's favourite convention, "wacky sexual trauma played for laughs or just immediately ignored". do not have a clever analysis of this just "ugh"

“anyway you can have your jacket back.”
“looks better on you,” Angel says suavely, having rehearsed this sentence in different tonalities very casually for the last thirty hours

what was with 90s tv and its weird reliance on “ominous flute” as a musical cue

I realise that this is partly because David Boreanaz too is not good at things but I am incredibly fond of how Angel always looks as if he’s about to molt and is a little sheepish about it

Willow is wearing a CHOKER over a TURTLENECK and it took HOW long to figure out she liked girls?

belatedly realising that eighteen-year-old me sure was gay for these evil twenty-something hyena teens

Giles, miles ahead of everyone else, is confused as to why Xander being an asshole and a dick to his friends is so out of character as to require a supernatural explanation

useful that the school library just happens to have a makeshift extremely strong cage just like built in there, a normal school library function

here we have Giles in a frankly sensational crimson sweater vest paging through the Malleus Maleficarum, a screencap I have taken for no reason,

how much soundproofing for the library has Giles invested in

this is just so much 1997 at once

because this is all DVD I’d FORGOTTEN about the guy with the weird nasal DJ lisp who does the GOOFY INTRO at the beginning of every episode, but HOW

“what’s your family think of your career choice as vampire hunter, Angel, clearly human man I only ever see at night who appears baffled by modern parlance?”
“uh, they’re dead.”
“oh no! was it vampires?”
“sure was! I under no circumstances ate my family. sad stuff.”

the idea of someone tweedily bending over a letterboard and painstakingly spelling things out is only a Thing for me but I have to document it for posterity. that is one sexy letterboard.

letterboards with SERIF LETTER OPTIONS are my sexuality

having a lot of thoughts and feelings about Buffy as a character but chief among them at the moment is: oh, it’s so obvious, Buffy has undiagnosed ADHD and it informs a huge amount of her insecurities and dogged pursuit of a normal she’s never actually fit into very well

watching her try to do homework with Willow is a hilarious window into my actual high school experience: wildly intelligent teen can’t focus or turn a lot of facts into a coherent whole but can and does make inventive and complex deflecting quips about the material

Jenny Calendar literally just showed up for her own class five minutes late with Starbucks and hangover sunglasses

the problem with tv nowadays is that every show doesn’t have a scare-tactics episode about the danger of internet technology any more

even 1997 is no excuse to script a teenage human girl uttering the phrase “e-letter”

on the other hand Buffy is wearing navy velvet shorts so I tacitly approve of all her life choices

2018 Buffy: the ancient demon Moloch is released into the internet and uses it to shitpost on Twitter

man someday I really am going to have to write a thinly disguised Giles and Jenny as supernatural-fighting bi marrieds novel

SO MUCH SQUANDERED POTENTIAL

“Jo you can’t just say that everyone on Buffy is bi” that’s true, Willow and Tara are lesbians and Xander is straight. in this essay, I will

“what about—“ nope. they’re bi.

“well, I’ll see you anon.” GREAT JOB RUPERT

this outfit sure is a series of choices!!!!!

(do NOT speak to me about it)

THIS IS A SEMINAL GODDAMN SWEATER I WILL HEAR NO COUNTER

we're back on the BtVS train here at chez @jolorist with this phenomenally 1997 outfit, thanks Harmony

I love the portentous tone in which teens attacked by monsters describe their experience tearfully to the viewpoint character. it’s so breathless yet wooden in a way that’s highly amplified by 90s tv sound design non-budgets.

are there still monster of the week style shows featuring teens in 2018 I’m no longer as up in the zeitgeist as I once was

stopped watching before the credits finished last night because Distracted By Talking About Stories For Like Two Hours but am back in it and this background character is wearing a red plaid pencil skirt that I almost definitely own in purple

“Giles, have you ever touched a ghost?”

I’ll take out of context statements for $400, Alex

I forgot about the time Angel appears (almost literally) in the darkened after-hours library to give Giles some exposition but this is amazing and unfortunately my traitor brain is now hissing giddily “LET’S...... SHIP THIS.........”

Angel has offered to get Giles an extremely rare occult text and Giles’ entire face lit up and we’re definitely on this horrible train now

they would be so insufferable, two fussy old men constantly appalled by the modern world charging improperly forward around them,

this shirt is an amazing and baffling midpoint in between sexy and dowdy; 1997 was a rich tapestry

man do the writers really not know what the fuck to do with Cordelia till she migrates to Angel and write her as a cartoon that’s jarring with the rest of the tone of the characters and their access to nuance

Marcie Ross deserved a spin-off

anyway we're back on THIS train and Giles is wearing a lovely subtley striped button-down and a waistcoat with a GORGEOUS crimson back. only the important observations here folks.

trying not to make this the Giles Problem Hour but he’s so... boyish and soft-mouthed and anxious that things go well and so rumpled from sleeping in his clothes in his office. I’m a good man. why this.

also... we’re on “Prophecy Girl”. full disclosure: I L O V E “Prophecy Girl”.

apparently the screencap button no longer exists on my ~universal~ keyboard so we must deal with my corded phone fixation in the most shameful possible way

guys I know we talk about this all the time but SMG’s “I’m sixteen years old. I don’t want to die.” speech is so good. SO good. she’s amazing!!!!!! wtf!!!!!!!!!

could spend time dissecting Xander’s bizarre toxic masculinity that is both condemned and weirdly pushed and supported by the script (I sense... some long term writers’ room disputes here) but frankly. I’ll never not have material for this. and it’s dull.

the Sunnydale sewer system is so SPACIOUS and AIRY. a+ city planners for our beautiful roomy sewers.

omg Angel is STILL WEARING the crushed velvet blazer from Kmart. BABYDOLL. GET YOUR UNLIFE TOGETHER.

this is peak OTP business and I hate it.

I love Cordelia biting a vampire and yelling “see how you like it!”

I haven't watched the BtVS opener in years but I have ALWAYS loved it for its insistence in dealing with character trauma and what normal finale stuff MEANS to a character after it happens, even if it's a little messy in getting there.

also Jenny Calendar has greeted the new school year by getting a kickier haircut with much sharper bangs. frankly, rude to the bi corner, which includes one (1) Rupert Giles but also, INNOCENTLY. me.

this is Such a good outfit, adding it to the moodboard

now there’s ALLISON KRAUSS. what a targeted 90s bomb directly aimed at a person who was eight at the time and unprepared.

god I love a lot of what this episode is doing, especially in the context of how weird 90s monster of the week tv was coming into its own and NOT balancing longterm emotional arcs at all, but the emotional throughline in this episode is WEIRD AF

which, let's be honest, I lay fully at the feet of episode writer and director Joss Himself, in a way I might have been more lenient about eight years ago, but come on dude. you're trying to write from the girl's perspective and you STILL write her as Suddenly Random Temptress?

because girls just do that, they like to dance up on nerd boys for Reasons Of Their Own they will Never Explain, because Girl Reasons, it's part of Why Girls Are The Problem And The Reward... christ, man. I wish your writing didn't make a up a huge part of who I am as a person.

(this is a thing I gotta grapple with, and that I both can't and don't want to just throw out bc Joss is a shit excuse for a human, bc... a lot of this shit has meant and still means a lot to me. it's part of what I chew on in this rewatch. because Buffy's arc MATTERS to me.)

meanwhile, this is Inappropriate Wrist Content

I LOVE Angel’s bad weird dialogue and how it’s the thing that SHOULD be least retconnable and yet... completely makes character sense with later context. Angel is LITERALLY trying to be a person and dismally failing. I love this fucking useless dumbass. :’)

also the budget went up between seasons and his clothes look like they come from Nordstrom now, not Kmart. congrats, Angel.

meanwhile aGAIN,,,,,,,,,,,, stop

I also love the slow undoing of the Anointed One — was he always supposed to die in e3? or did the writers’ room just go FUCK IT. NO ONE WANTS THIS VILLAIN.

interesting how ~sympathetic Frankenstein died suddenly~ monster is all “wow I’m beautifully sad that I can’t do sport any more........ wait. stereotypically hot GIRLS. I now have ONE motivation.” insightful worldbuilding, guys.

was David Boreanaz doing pickup lines almost every episode or is he just... that terrible. buddy. we’re all rooting for you.

also Angel wears a beige jacket in this episode like there’s a deleted b-plot that he’s filling in as an extra for a spot in an ON THE WATERFRONT revival. this is never explained.

Oh Good.

we’re about to get into parts of my id I may not have even known were there at that time and I’d apologise if I could.

“me and Dru... we’re moving in.” you crazy goth kids. :’)

ah. the well-documented St Vigeous, a realistic-sounding saint. of vampires. research definitely occurred here.

“you get the hell away from my daughter.” the beginning of a beautiful friendship. ugh the axe emoji isn’t happening till later this year.

this fuzzy sweater is a queer 90s masterpiece

Willow’s bad hats phase in the early seasons is also such an important part of coming to terms with your sexuality. bad hats! we all did ‘em!

WHAT is this. single nipple button.

love that Sunnydale High chooses to welcome its two-week (??????) international foreign exchange students with a dance where white kids (there are maybe 3 non-white kids at Sunnydale High) dress up in racist caricature costumes. don't you just feel welcome!

this is a terrible episode even by early seasons standards.

Willow is wearing a purple velvety/corduroy button-down miniskirt that’s EXACTLY the trend at Target right now, a) I want it b) 90s fashion has come back more intensely than I realised

the frat cultists’ snake god is just a guy shoved into a vacuum tube. amazing.

the most improbable part of this episode however is that a lot of wealthy frat boys got instantly convinced for sacrificing girls to a snake god for decades instead of arguing the evidence was flimsy and covering the whole thing up.

hello friends, we revive this thread over a year later with some perfect 90s aesthetic which when I take a photo of it with my phone looks exactly like finding Halloween decorations in the basement of that one evil hospital in Fallout 4