Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Seasons Six through "Eight")

[Jeff of Earth-J]

This is a continuation of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer thread I started over on the “old board” last April. Alan and Mike convinced me that the show’s move from the WB to the UPN and the start of season six is a logical time to move this discussion to the board’s new home. For those of you who might be new to the discussion, I am in the process of watching this series, start to finish, for the first time. I don’t provide much in the way of recap because I’m working under the assumption that most of you reading this thread have at least a passing familiarity with the series. The ground rules of this discussion are simple: I can (and will) spoil anything I want to, but you can’t spoil anything I haven’t seen yet. Ready? Okay, let’s begin.

SEASON SIX: EPISODES 1/2: “BARGAINING—PARTS 1/2”

I actually don’t have much to say about the two-part season opener. Most of it was spent resetting Buffy’s apparent death at the end of season five. Shouldn’t her death have triggered a new Slayer to have been called up? Judging from the opening credits it looks as if Giles is going to be out of the cast on a permanent (or at least semi-permanent) basis. I’m really enjoying the development of the “relationship” between Buffy and Spike thoughout last season and into this one. Apparently even vampires are subject to classical conditioning!

[The Baron]

"Hanselstadt"? Is that just down the road from "Gretelburg"?

[Jeff of Earth-J]

My thought exactly!

(See? Great minds really do run in the same channel.)

[Ana Canino-Fluit (Anacoqui- mod)]

The demon didn't just eat Slayers...it used to eat Children...thus the Hansel and Gretel reference.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

SEASON EIGHT: ISSUE #24: “SAFE”

Like all the stories in this collection, another example of life under the new status quo. Faith and Giles are featured and a new Slayer, Courtney, is introduced. There are a certain number of neo-Slayers who reject their heritage; in effect, they “choose not to be Chosen.” The European town of Hanselstadt is being protected from vampires by a Slayer-killing demon, and Giles, Faith and Courtney are lured into the trap.

A decent little one-off adventure “where vampires reign supreme and Slayers are public enemy number one.”

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Yeah, I should have pointed that out.

SEASON EIGHT: ISSUE #25: “LIVING DOLL”

A little wooden puppet is the third (of three) manifestations of Dawn’s curse by the Thricewise and, may I add, the end of this sub-plot couldn’t have come soon enough for me. I’m often good at guessing where Buffy plots are going (well, sometimes… okay, never) but I really expected Dawn to come into her “Key” heritage on TV, perhaps during the series finale in order to save Buffy. I guess Whedon just wanted Buffy to have a little sister. Huh!

Wasn’t the little Wood Folk being that fell out of the tree Jeremy (the “Nowhere Man”) from Yellow Submarine?

BS8 tpb5 wraps up with “Harmony Bites” and “Vampy Cat Play Friend” from MySpace Dark Horse Presents, little codas to issues #21 and #22, respectively. They were both mildly amusing, but the real funny is in the three-page “Harm magazine” sampling.

Well, that’s it for me! I’ve dragged this out as long as I could, but I’m caught up to the most recent tpb which shipped last week. According to “Comics in Stores October 7, 2009,” BS8 #29 is slated to ship tomorrow, but I’m going to continue collecting this series in tpb. (Now watch Dark Horse release a BS8 Omnibus collecting all the material I’ve bought in tpb format; that’s what happened Image did with Invincible.) Anyhow, I’ll be staying off this thread until BS8 tpb6 is released (in six months or so?), but if anyone else wants to continue this discussion from issue #26 onwards, please be my guest. In either case I’ll be back after I’ve begun reading BS8 tpb6.

See ya then!

[Alan M.]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Anyhow, I’ll be staying off this thread until BS8 tpb6 is released (in six months or so?), but if anyone else wants to continue this discussion from issue #26 onwards, please be my guest. In either case I’ll be back after I’ve begun reading BS8 tpb6.

See ya then!

Hey Jeff...vol. 6 came out back in March, and vol. 7 comes out in about four weeks... Just wondering if you're going to return to this thread. :)

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I do plan to return to this thread... sometime. I even thought about bumping it up when volume six was released, but because I had nothing to report I decided against it. Figs asked me about Buffy comics just last week and here's what I told him: "After I finished watching the TV series I moved directly into the Season Eight comic book tpbs, but by the time I got current and waited for the next one to come out, I had lost the story. My long-term plan is to wait until Season Eight is complete and has been collected, re-watch the final season of the TV show, and read it then." I'm burning through Lost more quickly than I have any TV series collected on DVD and I want to remain focused on that, but when I'm caught up, who knows...?