20 years ago, Joss Whedon turned the just-okay movie he wrote -- but wasn't happy with -- into an exemplary, game-changing TV show that would influence dozens of sci-fi and fantasy projects to come while also elevating genre TV as a whole. Debuting on the WB network on March 10th, 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the world that triumphant television could be made from stories featuring a teenage girl battling vampires, demons, and other assorted things that go bump in the night.
Buffy would make TV history as an unexpectedly moving, thrilling, funny, and socially aware series that was a perfect mixture of comedy, drama, and heart. Oh, and monster slaying. It was an ensemble that would help redefined the notion of a ragtag team while giving us teen, and eventually college-age, angst and anxiety among the backdrop of a perpetually nye apocalypse.
To celebrate this wonderful and peerless series, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as the titular vamp-staking heroine, we've come up with a Top 10 list of episodes - WHICH WAS VERY HARD TO DO! After seven seasons and 144 episodes, there was an over-abundance of great installments. We even cheated a bit here and did the whole "counting two-parters as one" thing. So here's the best o' "beep me, bite me" Buffy!
"Conversations with Dead People"
Season 7, Episode 7
This spectacular entry from the seventh and final season featured several different stories (though none of them containing Xander or Anya) all taking place during one fateful night in Sunnydale. Buffy ran into an old high school chum (and recently sired vampire) in a graveyard, Dawn communicated with her late mother, Spike picked up some "food" at a bar, and Willow received a frightful message from The First.
"The Gift"
Season 5, Episode 22
Season 5's fierce finale featured an all-out Scooby Gang battle with hell god Glorificus - AKA Glory - and marked the second time that Buffy, who'd previously learned in a dream state that her "gift was death," sacrificed herself for the sake of stopping a cataclysm - choosing here to die in the place of her retconned younger sister Dawn. Like her epitaph read, "She Saved the World. A Lot."
"Graduation Day, Parts 1 & 2"
Season 3, Episodes 21 and 22
For a series that, initially, had a lot to do with "surviving high school," Sunnydale High surely wasn't going to survive the graduating class of 1999. Not with Mayor Wilkins having dire designs on turning into a massive snake demon and eating everyone at the commencement ceremony. "Graduation Day" Parts 1 and 2 -- whose second half was delayed for two months due to the traffic Columbine massacre -- featured Buffy battling and besting Faith, Willow kissing Oz, Wesley kissing Cordelia, Angel drinking from Buffy (to save his life), and a kickass final battle that incorporated Buffy's besieged classmates.
"Passion"
Season 2, Episode 17
In what would become Buffy's first unsettlingly traumatic episode (of many to come), evil Angel -- in the form of Angelus reborn, playing the role of a demented ex -- methodically stalked the Scooby Gang and ultimately took the life of Giles' love, Jenny Calendar. Giles, out for savage vengeance, then went rogue and took the fight to Angel. "Passion" stands as one of the show's first ventures into truly dark territory, creating a "you'll always remember where you were when you watched it" moment for an entire generation.
"The Wish"
Season 3, Episode 9
A spiraling Cordelia experiences an alternate timeline vampire apocalypse after she meets Anya (a stealth vengeance demon) and wishes that Buffy had never arrived in town. After Cordelia is killed mid-way through her own story, it's then up to Giles to figure out if the reality hellscape he's in was caused by a spell - a spell that can be undone. "The Wish" took us on a haunting and fun journey filled with evil Sunnydale-2 doppelgängers and a final battle featuring all our main characters killing each other.
Continue on for the five best episodes of Buffy...
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