drusillathekiller:

dreamsofghostsandstars:

drusillathekiller:

God Tier: Halloween, Lie To Me, Surprise, Innocence, Passion, Becoming Part 1, Becoming Part 2, Band Candy, The Wish, The Zeppo, Doppelgangland, Something Blue, Hush, Superstar, Restless, Fool For Love, The Body, The Gift, Once More With Feeling, Tabula Rasa, Selfless

High Tier: Angel, Nightmares, Prophecy Girl, School Hard, What’s My Line Part 1, What’s My Line Part 2, Phases, I Only Have Eyes For You, Anne, Faith Hope and Trick, Homecoming, Revelations, Lover’s Walk, Helpless, Bad Girls, Consequences, Enemies, Earshot, Choices, Graduation Day Part 1, Graduation Day Part 2, Fear Itself, Pangs, A New Man, This Year’s Girl, Who Are You, Primeval, Buffy vs Dracula, The Real Me, The Replacement, Family, Checkpoint, Blood Ties, Intervention, Tough Love, Life Serial, All the Way, Hell’s Bells, Villains, Two to Go, Grave, Lessons, Same Time Same Place, Help, Conversations With Dead People, Potential, Storyteller, Chosen

Mid Tier: Welcome to the Hellmouth, The Harvest, Witch, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, The Pack, The Puppet Show, Out of Sight Out of Mind, When She Was Bad, Inca Mummy Girl, The Dark Age, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, Go Fish, Beauty and the Beasts, Amends, Gingerbread, The Prom, Wild at Heart, The Initiative, Doomed, The I in Team, Goodbye Iowa, New Moon Rising, The Yoko Factor, Out of My Mind, Triangle, Crush, I Was Made to Love You, Forever, The Weight of the World, Bargaining Part 1, Bargaining Part 2, Smashed, Wrecked, Gone, Doublemeat Palace, Dead Things, Older and Far Away, Normal Again, Him, The Killer in Me, Dirty Girls

Low Tier: Teacher’s Pet, I Robot You Jane, Reptile Boy, Ted, Killed By Death, Dead Man’s Party, The Freshman, Living Conditions, The Harsh Light of Day, Where the Wild Things Are, No Place Like Home, Shadow, Listening to Fear, Into the Woods, Spiral, After Life, Flooded, As You Were, Entropy, Seeing Red, Beneath You, Sleeper, Never Leave Me, Bring on the Night, Showtime, First Date, Lies My Parents Told Me, Empty Places, Touched, End of Days

Shit Tier: Some Assembly Required, Bad Eggs, Beer Bad, Get it Done 

I agree with a lot of this and disagree with a lot of it. Personally, I don’t think that Faith’s character really takes off until we get the sliced-up psychotic POV shots when she goes to Angel; any storyline that gives one character/species as much power as Jonathan or the vengeance demons seem to have sets my continuity-protection sensors to beeping; and I don’t really despise any of the episodes in OP’s Shit Tier. I’d love to see you break down a few of the episodes into your specific likes and dislikes, though.

With pleasure! ❤

To provide some variety, I’ve picked one random episode from each tier. Without further ado…

The Zeppo (God tier): Xander Harris isn’t my favourite character. I don’t hate him, but I have at times joined the chorus of condemnation for his less-than-endearing traits, like getting away with some pretty major screw-ups (Becoming Part 2, Once More With Feeling), making sexist comments, or just his general mean-spirited streak. I would also agree that his character hasn’t aged well, drawing more ire with every new generation of fans who are well equipped to recognise a Nice Guy ™ when they see one. However, there is something compelling about the idea of an everyman in a cast of Chosen Ones and super heroes. This episode takes that concept and elevates it into a masterpiece. It’s hilarious. It’s touching. It’s bittersweet. It’s unique. It’s the most likable Xander has ever been. I was roaring with laughter throughout this episode, every punchline landed, every joke tickled me. Just the premise of there being a huge apocalypse and only getting to see snippets of it while our everyman embarks on a side-quest made me giddy. But in the final scene, we see there is a deeper purpose to this episode than its shenanigans (and even if there was not, the shenanigans alone were more than enough to earn this episode a place in my heart). Here, we’re given the impression that Xander might be ready to move past the ugliness of his insecurities. My only complaint is that I wish the character development had stuck.

Life Serial (high tier): “Life is the Big Bad” – as Marti Noxon remarked of season six – was never better expressed than in this criminally underrated episode. Grimly amusing and painfully relatable, here we see Buffy attempt to reacclimatise to everyday life, only she just can’t seem to do anything right. Unbeknownst to her, she is being magically targeted by The Trio, who are tormenting her in profoundly lame and mundane ways. But they are still tormenting her. Haha, Buffy goes to college to try and learn things but the day just speeds by in a second and she has no idea what she’s doing! Haha, Buffy’s retail shift just never seems to end! Ever! Haha, Buffy is drinking to distract from her fear and uncertainty about the future! I first saw this episode when I was fifteen, and honestly I didn’t really ‘get it’ then. Call it blissful ignorance. But oh boy, I understand this episode now. This is the perfect encapsulation of season six’s mission statement, and it really deserves more appreciation.

When She Was Bad (mid tier): This episode was a game changer. Here we see the first hints of the series shedding its ‘Monster of the Week’ format in favour of long-running continuity with high emotional stakes. Here we see for the first time that what happens in the show can have lasting consequences for the characters. Buffy defeated The Master in last season’s finale, but the trauma of drowning has changed her forever, leaving her with PTSD that will make up part of who she is for the rest of the series. And so one of the most subtly tragic aspects of the Buffyverse is born. As I explained in this post- contrary to popular misconception – mid-tier isn’t reserved for average episodes, but good episodes. This was a good episode. It is commonly accepted wisdom that the show didn’t mature past the wacky, episodic nature of season one until ‘Innocence’, but for me the real turning point was Buffy tearfully smashing the bones of The Master, never to be quite the same person again. 

Seeing Red (low tier): I have no problem with TV shows tackling serious or taboo issues. If something exists, then it has a place in fiction. If handled well, then storylines dealing with sexual abuse can spread awareness of the issue and give a voice to the survivors of that trauma. I don’t even think the attempted rape was out of character for Spike (an amoral demon), as so many have insisted it was. But my God, I don’t think the writers could have handled this storyline more thoughtlessly if they tried. Using your female lead’s traumatic near-rape experience to spur on the attempted rapist’s character development, making the victim an accessory for his redemption arc? Bad move. Bad, bad, bad move. This is the first time that I felt Buffy was really betrayed by the writers, the first time she was used as a disposable plot device for Spike. This trend continued into the seventh season, and felt like a cruel betrayal of the show’s core values. Killing off Tara in the same episode she finally became a series regular was also a slap in the face to LGBT fans, who at the time had very few lesbian role models in media. The more I think about it, the less sure I am as to why I saved it from shit tier. Certainly it did more harm than ‘Some Assembly Required’ or ‘Beer Bad’, which were laughably atrocious but not an insult to everything the show claimed to stand for like this was. Speaking of…

Beer Bad (shit tier): this is the shortest episode in the series if memory serves me correctly, but it somehow feels like the longest. Rumour has it that the writers were paid by an alcohol awareness charity to write this episode, and I don’t know if that’s true, but it definitely feels like that. Perhaps the only enjoyable part of the episode was Willow chewing out Parker Abrams. Ironically one of the few episodes of Buffy to be nominated for an Emmy (for outstanding hairstyling, I believe). I was lucky enough that my introduction to the series was the epic character study ‘Fool For Love’, but had it been ‘Beer Bad’? I doubt I would have ever watched another episode.