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426 of 451 humans found the following review helpful.
In my opinion, the finest series in the history of TV
By Robert Moore
Most severe fans of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE already own all of the person sets that make up this DVD collection, so I thought I would address this review to those who own none of them and will make up the indispensable target for this set and focus on two questions. First, how does this set differ from the person season collections? The answer is that they are identical. This set does not represent a new product in any way, but merely collects all of the seasons in a new, low price. If you don’t own any of the person seasons, this is an perfectly idealisti way to discover the Buffyverse. Second (and for me this is the fun part), what’s this Buffy chick all about?
What sets BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER apart from most other shows, isolated from the person brilliant scripts that graced most of the episodes, is that the show over the course of seven seasons tells a story. What the casual viewer of the show could effortlessly miss is the semi-tragic themes underlying the series: young, happy cheerleader and inevitable prom queen is pulled away by fate from the life she loves to unwillingly undertake the burden of being her generation’s Chosen One: a super-empowered heroine to fight versus the powers of darkness. This is a obligation she has neither sought nor desired, and one of the persistent themes of the show is that fate basically dealt Buffy a nasty set of cards. Sure, she has super strength and agility and recuperative powers, but she also knows how she became The Slayer: an individual else died. For one becomes the Slayer only by the death of another Slayer, which calls attention to the fact that she, too, is destined to die to make way for another Slayer. As she puts it in one episode, “Every slayer comes with an expiration date.” She goes from a carefree, happy young girl to someone who wonders if she will make it to the age of 25.
Ultimately, however, the show isn’t when it comes to a girl with super powers, but in regards to taking obligation for one’s life, for accepting the cards that life has dealt one and making the most of that. Over the course of seven seasons all of the major characters struggle with this precise issue. All of them continually have to face up to the demands of the moral, and what is strange for a genre show, they all have to work hard to be better people. More than when it comes to fighting vampires, the show is in the long run in regards to the fighting of one’s inner demons, with the external monsters being mere metaphors for that which lies within. As a result, all of the major characters changed dramatically over the course of seven seasons.
A second outstanding theme of the show is that of community. The show in truth holds a bit of a lie in the widely known and esteemed opening words that introduced the show in the primary season: it says that unto each generation a Slayer is born and that SHE ALONE possesses the strength to fight the vampires and demons. Only, that isn’t at all the case on the show. In fact, Buffy becomes less, not more, effective when she becomes a loner. As Spike, an evil vampire who has killed two Slayers in the past, said at the beginning of Season Two: “A Slayer with family and friends. That sure as hell wasn’t in the brochure.” And it isn’t! Says so right at the beginning of the show. The Intro must read “She and her spacious support network” will fight the demons. And showing that no one comprehends this better than Spike, in Season Four he attempts to help a demon demolish the Slayer by sowing discord amongst the Scoobies, as the demon fighting buddies referred to themselves (this was before Sarah Michelle Gellar’s unfortunate forays into the SCOOBY DOO movies). He fails when the four key members respond by forging a more inviolable bond than ever.
Over the seven seasons, Buffy struggles perpetually versus her destiny, initially fighting and resisting it, gradually accepting it, many times resenting it, and at last embracing it before the splendid solution in the final episode. While there is always only one Slayer (though on Buffy, there are two, but that is a dissimilar even though very interesting story), there are always some potential Slayers. In the final episode of the series, Buffy realizes how they may make all the potential Slayers into actual Slayers, and after they do so they are competent to defeat the baddies and save the world from evil, again. In in a literal sense the last five seconds of the series, Faith, the other Slayer, asks Buffy what she’s going to do now that she’s no longer the only Slayer. In a gorgeous solution of the central disaster in the series, a blissful, contented, expectant smile breaks out over Buffy’s face. Her life has been given back to her. The expiration date has been repealed.
Those who have only occasionally dipped into the show will not be capable to be grateful for how brilliantly written the show is. It is as if each person writer knew each other line ever written in the show, and the result is a self-consciousness in the series that is highly strange for TV. At the very end of Season Six, for instance, Buffy’s best friend Willow utters the words, “Bored now,” which is not merely a reference to something she said in Season Three, but brilliantly explains where her reputation is at that point in the show. The scripts are, in my opinion, plainly the best TV has ever seen. They are dramatic, they are believable (astonishing in a show regarding vampires), they are profoundly emotional, and they are funny. In fact, the show genuinely did manage to be various things at once. I think this capacity to stride various barriers is one of the reasons why BUFFY, though effortlessly the finest show on television for most of it is run, never won or even received an Emmy nomination for Best Show. Should it have been nominated as Best Drama or Best Comedy? (The finish neglect by the extraordinarily conservative Emmys of BUFFY has inspired Salon to give rise to a new TV award, the Buffy, for the most unjustly neglected show on TV, with THE WIRE as the primary recipient.)
The writing genuinely was the key. I don’t want to infer that other things weren’t done as well. Though not one of the great casts in TV history, all of the actors did a outstanding occupation and there were a lot of veritably unforgettable characters, from Buffy to Willow, Xander, Spike, Giles, Cordy, Anya, and Angel (who went on to star in his own spun off). The sets were always basi rate and it was one of the few shows on TV to have it is own perfectly distinctive look, plainly from the lighting and camerawork. Speaking of camerawork, few TV shows have ever taken so much care with the way scenes were shot. There was even their own distinguishable blend of camp. For instance, fighting vampires is tough work, but Buffy inevitably went on patrol wearing a great deal of fabulously stylish outfits. My favored is when she goes to the graveyard in Season Six wearing an ankle length white cashmere duster. I’m sure any individual in regards to to engage in physical combat would determine to wear such an costly and delicate item. But as good as all of these constituents were, it all came in the end back to the writing. The show was brilliantly written on multiple levels. Many of the sequences were astonishingly good, but within them the person lines were plainly astonishing. I have a heap of shows that I love, but in the history of television there are only two that holds dozens of lines that I may recall with ease: MONTY PYTHON and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. But isolated from the person sequences and the huge panoply of unforgettable lines, the seasons were almost always well conceived and executed. And even when person seasons contained flaws in their, such as Seasons 4 and 7, these were more than made up for by the way they all fit into a more prominent story.
In the end, no series that I recognise of had a better story to tell than BUFFY. As much as I loved THE X-FILES, the series was always better on the person episode level than it was as a whole. Lone sequences of THE X-FILES are as good as any in the history of TV, but the deep back story by the end of the series ended up being more than a little muddled and incomplete. When BUFFY ended, there was a single brilliant and wondrous manufacture tale of a young girl who was forced to give up her life for the dandier good, but who in the end managed to get her life back again. I candidly believe that BUFFY will be the gold popular for television shows in the future. It has raised the bar for what may be done and must be done on television, so in the end Buffy might not have saved the world from the powers of evil; she just might have saved television as well.
225 of 240 persons found the following review helpful.
You buy “The Chosen Collection” so your kids will leave your “BtVS” DVDs alone
By Lawrance M. Bernabo
My premise here is that by the time all seven seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” were freed on DVD the vast majority of fans who were inclined to do so had gone out and purchased all seven sets. I am sure there are a few frugal fans who were waiting for something along the lines of “The Chosen Collection,” but they would be comparatively conscious (something akin to being a vampire with a soul). Of course I had all of the sequences of “BtVS” (and “Angel”) on video tape (even made up my own particular boxes with cover art and episode synopses on the back) before I went out and purchased all of the DVD sets, but I had occasion to buy “The Chosen Collection” as well.
That is because my oldest daughter is away at college and she was not permitted to take my “BtVS” DVD sets with her. I had purchased the introductory season for all three of my kids (two are away at college so it is not like they are all in one place) and was intending to finally get them the other six but “The Chosen Collection” is too good of a deal to pass up and not just because of the price. This one big red and white box takes up a lot less space (a bit more than a third). That is because when you open it up inside you will find wallet-like cases for each of the seven seasons. So it seemed an suitable gift for somebody turning 21 who writes when it comes to Buffy whenever possible in her college classes.
I have covered each of the seven season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” elsewhere, so here I want to talk regarding the “EXCLUSIVE, NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN EXTRAS” included on the 40th DVD in “The Chosen Collection” (Yes, the other 39 discs are the same produced for the person series sets):
“Back to the Hellmouth: A Conversation with Creators and Cast” is a casual 54-minute speech amidst candles and old books with Whedon, Marti Noxon, Doug Petrie, Nicholas Brendon, Emma Caulfield, Danny Strong, David Fury, Jane Espenson, Charisma Carpenter, Drew Z. Greenberg. Topics covered include initial Buffy moments (for Joss it all goes back to a scene in Invisible Girl), favored Buffy moment, and various behind the scenes stories, all with choice inserts from sequences (e.g., Nick in a Speedo) and piano music. Noxon does a good occupation of getting off topic to interesting things (e.g., Joss writing the musical for the duration of his down time), but the fact that writers talk more than actors is scarcely surprising. This is the best extra, what with finding out how Fury got Giles fired ends up getting Allyson Hannigan married and all, plus how being a mid-season alternate permitted Whedon to make the original twelve sequences before their aired so that the WB was refused the chance to tinker with the show. There is sufficient new stuff here for those who do not pick up this set to make friends with someone who has to check this out at least once.
“Buffy Cast and Crew: Favorite Episodes” is short and to the point, altho the selections are basically made by those listed above with a few other additions. However, if you are waiting for Sarah Michelle Gellar to weigh in on any of these featurettes you will be totally disappointed. Hannigan only popped up once, which is not sufficient for me and I suspect galore others as well, but cast members Amber Benson and Danny Strong both speak well for the series and David Greenwalt shows up as a key talking head as well.
“Buffy: An Unlikely Role Model” begins with Joss Whedon’s explicit aim of creating a role model and has the cast and crew talking when it comes to why it actually worked (personal actions are key) without getting into ivory tower explanations.
“Breaking Barriers: It’s Not a Chick Fight Thing” focuses on Buffy stunt double Sophia Crawford and Stunt Coordinator Jeff Pruitt and details how she got the gig (she had good kinetics according to Joss) and what they tried to do in terms of constructing Buffy’s martial arts fighting style, with a great deal of of Crawford’s best fights (e.g., “Anne”) caught by behind the scenes cameras. So you in truth get to see intimate things in a new way with this one.
“Love Bites: Relationships in the Buffyverse” looks at most of the major romantic entanglements as things went from metaphorical sex to the real thing for Buffy and her friends. Vampires are always rich in veiled sexuality and the show combined that with the of the utmost importance that teenagers need to be punished for sex (see “Friday the 13th,” et al.). There are a few perceptive remarks from a few actors and writers on this featurette.
“Evil Fiends” is a brief look at not so much the person Big Bads but rather at the system of belief on the show of turning teenage troubles into tangible monsters. Nothing in truth new here and it is so short it hardly seemed worth including and ends the bonus disc on a weak note.
But then I am hardly arguing that this one disc justifies picking up this set if you already have the finish “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” because it does not. I do think it is an idealisti present to stop family and friends from always want to borrow your sets, altho I may also see where you might determine to buy this one for yourself and let the kiddies (or whoever) take your old ones (I held those but made sure I got to see the bonus disc, twice, before she takes it back to college). Of course, now the next generation of fans are going to want the “The Angel Collection.”
79 of 83 people found the following review helpful.
Looking forward to a great collection
By S. Maxey
A friend got me hooked on Buffy earlier this year by loaning me her season-by-season sets (seasons 1-6, still waiting for 7). I was skeptical, and season 1 didn’t do much to move me–clever dialogue, yeah, but the monster-of-the-week format didn’t seem like anything special. But by the third episode of Season 2, I was hooked. I was watching two and three sequences of Buffy a night, looking at the characters grow and modify in fast-forward.
There are internet sites that dissect the occasional flaws and inconsistencies of fact, but what I was amazed at was how consistent it was at heart. The characters alter and grow, they have good weeks and bad, but they all grow in ways consistent with their characters as we original meet them.
And we come to care in regards to them, deeply–to feel for their pains and losses, to grow frustrated with their weaknesses and blind spots. Yes, the series is full of humor and adventure and scary demons, but ultimately, it is full of these rich and complex characters, their trials, their fears, the dilemmas–big and small–that they must wrestle, and the internal demons they will have to face.
The firstborn person to review this box says that “this set does not represent a new product in any way, but plainly collects all of the seasons in a new, low price.” I’m hoping that that’s not precisely the case. Yes, the discs will hold incisively the content of the seven person season collections. however, while there is no picture for this collection as I write this, on Amazon’s web site in the UK, there are pictures of a nice single vertical box with an embossed seal on the outside and each season in it is own CD-sized package. The spines of the season packages stack up to assemble an effigy of Buffy. While the UK package is a fixed edition (10,000 copies), I’m hoping that the US packaging for this finish collection will be evenly distinctive and beautiful (and compact). [UPDATE: Unfortunately, this was not the case. I purchased this set, and I'm not at all disappointed by the quality of the discs or the series, but I in truth would have preferent a more compact and unified package for the entire series, and I think Fox Video is being rather stupid by supplying that delicious looking package to just 10,000 Brits and not to American fans.]
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