Slayer'ed

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
7 Seasons, 144 Episodes. All done now. All have been put into my eyeballs and brain and stored for future reference.

I suppose I should say SPOILER ALERT - I'll be talking about the show in general. Sorry.

Thoughts:
1) I wish I had actually watched this show back when it was on. It's great to be able to barrel through the DVDs, but I think I would have had a great time watching it realtime. And of course, it's impossible NOW to talk about this great show that started 13 years ago and stopped airing in 2003. Might as well start raving about "The Drew Carey Show".

2) The series ends with the "Hellmouth" under Sunnydale collapsing, ending the flow of evil, and leaving a huge crater where the town was. Everybody's happy until someone says "There's a Hellmouth in Cleveland, you know". Oh I know. I KNOW. And Cleveland hotel rooms is where I watched almost all 144 episodes, come to think of it. Plus airplanes.

3) 7 years was enough - everybody was looking a little tired by the end. Except James Marsters. Dude kept getting better and better. I'm happy with the story having been told. Actually, there were 4 places things could have stopped:

End of Season 1: The Master is dead, much rejoicing.
You could stop there, but the character development in seasons 2 and 3 were just great. Lots of good writing ahead, and classic episodes aplenty. Plus, Spike!

End of Season 3: The Mayor is foiled, the high school is burned down. Yay.
A lot of people end there: High school is over, the adventure needs to move somewhere else. But Season 4 has some great bits, including "Hush" and "Restless". Plus Season 5 is great.

End of Season 5: Buffy sacrifices to save the world.
You could totally end there: Season 6 is a surprisingly bleak examination of "moving on" from one phase of life to another - lots of depression, working things out, addiction... this is not the same fun show it had been in Season 3. But it's actually really good. But I can't blame anyone for not wanting to "go there" and consider Season 5 the end.

End of Season 7: The Hellmouth is closed!
Well, you do end there.

Anyway, I'm very glad to have watched this show from front to back. There are a dozen episodes that I'd watch again, and even more scenes that stick in memory. I'm a huge Alyson Hannigan fan now - she's just wonderful... and I also further love Seth Green. And I'll now watch James Marsters in anything (Caprica!!!) - count me among the fans of Spike.

Allright, here endeth my updates regarding Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will still recommend them as a fun bit of video. Sure there were bad episodes, but the characters were great, and I sleep better knowing there are teenage girls with wooden spikes out stopping any vampires from biting me.