"I'm a Slayer - Ask Me How!"

Week 2 of the Great Buffy Rewatch of 2011! And it's a doozy. Remember, every week three more episodes will be critiqued. Now, Nikki Stafford is lovely and talented (still perkily Canadian, though), but she can't do it all. Besides, half the fun of watching is yakking about what you've seen with friends. So she roped in a couple dozen folks to pitch in. This week, critic extraordinaire David Lavery (seriously, the man has forgotten more about TV than I know) takes us by the hand to walk us through "Teacher's Pet," "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," and "The Pack." (The title of this post comes from "Never Kill," by the way. And yes, I've seen lapel buttons with the slogan printed on them at conferences. Gotta get one of those!)

At this point in Season 1, Whedon has his major players (the "Scooby Gang") in place, and he starts to flesh out (a term with often gross overtones in a show like Buffy) some secondary characters, like Xander. We also start to see Buffy's conflict between her Slayer duties and her deep-seated desire to be "normal," which will run throughout the show.

Great stuff here!