Welcome Back to the Hellmouth

When the internet shitstorm in which I live (we all have our own, don’t we?) pushed the pause button on politics long enough to talk about the Whedon News, I cursed my procrastinating self even more than usual. I would’ve liked to have thought about “Prophecy Girl” before that, as small a concern as that is, in the grand scheme of things. But in that grand scheme of things, I was not terribly surprised.

“Out of Mind, Out of Sight” is a very Cordelia episode for season one—in fact, it opens on Cordy, who loves spring, primarily because it gives her the chance to campaign to be the May Queen. She’s a peculiar genius at making things about herself, from the very turning of the seasons to The Merchant of Venice. “Shylock should get over himself,” she opines, in a glorious moment of obliviousness.

“Nightmares” is one of season one's stronger entries, though it doesn’t hang together perfectly. It feels a bit like two halves of different sandwiches; they line up, but they still don't match. (One of those halves is the Master, and the other half is the nightmare plot, in which the Master essentially has a meaningful cameo.)

“So, we think school events are stupid, and we think authority figures are to be made fun of.” Why, hello, Principal Snyder, clearly no one saw you there. “The Puppet Show” is not one of Buffy’s high points—though it does contain a Buffy high point at the very end—but it does feature the hideously, deliciously authoritarian debut of Armin Shimerman as Sunnydale’s new principal, who has almost as little patience for smug librarians as he does for rebellious students.

“I, Robot… You, Jane”—which I am going to call “IRYJ” from here on our, because it’s easier and it looks like a new Meyers-Briggs type—was never a good episode. Not ever. It was dated from the moment it was written, and on top of that, it contains some of the clunkiest you-don’t-support-my-relationship dialogue ever written. But I kind of love it.

Angel, when it comes right down to it, introduces the complexity that eventually leads the show to season six and the trio and the horrible problem of monsters who are also just people. We’re a long way from that, at this point. But he’s a bug in the system, in the Slayer mythology that says what she does is right and what they do is wrong. He’s helped her and cared about her and sure, been mysterious and annoying, but generally, it’s seemed clear that he’s a good guy. Just a good guy with fangs.

And in its own very first-season way, “The Pack” is so Buffy. The show didn’t really excel until it stepped out of the “make a high school thing monstrous” zone, but these early episodes do serve as a kind of worldbuilding baseline. You never know what you’re dealing with in Sunnydale. It might just be Cordelia—or it might be a gang of apparent 30-year-olds in the most astonishing ‘90s fashion, possessed by hyena spirits and ready for lunch.

I regret to inform you that “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” despite the title, is one of the most forgettable Buffy episodes. Ever. That title, in fact, might be the most Buffy thing about it, a play on a thing girls aren’t supposed to do, rewritten for a slayer’s lifestyle.

There have been a lot of arguments that Xander is Buffy's Joss Whedon insert character, but that’s too simplistic: Xander is part of Whedon, but so is Willow, so is Buffy, so—even—is Cordelia, and on down the line. But Xander is the lone teenage boy (at least until Oz appears on the scene), and is presented as his own kind of cliche.

Cheerleading is the perfect stage for an episode that, in broad strokes, is about the harm parental pressure can do—not just to one kid, but to those around her. It’s a sport that’s widely disdained as superficial and dumb (a perception that's changing, sure, but this was the '90s), and one done mostly by women. “Cheerleader” is common teen movie shorthand for “popular, perfect, unattainable, probably mean unless she’s the really sweet one.”

What’s astonishing, in hindsight, is just how good this two-part premiere is. It doesn’t start with Buffy, but with another petite blonde who also isn’t what she appears to be. Like Buffy, she’s not the girl in trouble. She is the trouble. But she’ll be the last one standing ... because she ate everybody else.