#121 – Get It Done – season 7, episode 15
Season 7 is hardly a perfect year. I defended it in the write-up while noting that it is not without flaws. Its biggest sin is in the middle stretch of episodes, where it feels like the writers had run out of story and were stretching things to the point of insanity just to fill out the twenty-two-episode quota. The good news is this is the last episode before things turn around and pick up the momentum on the way to the finale. It’s a whole lot of nothing here, though. Buffy hops into a portal to learn the origin story of the Slayers. A demon hops out of that portal to give Spike something to fight. The end. On its own, it’s not terrible, but coming after a handful of episodes where very little happened to advance the story dragged it down.
#120 – Inca Mummy Girl – season 2, episode 4
Another season 2 episode that belongs in season 1: Xander falls for…well the title says it all.
#119 – Shadow – season 5, episode 8
This is the one where Buffy fights the snake monster that looks like a season 1 costume. When the highlight of the episode is a laughably bad fight with a rubber snake monster, there’s not much else to say.
#118 – Bad Eggs – season 2, episode 12
This episode only works when you see the subtext as a set-up for what comes in the next episode. This one teaches the lesson that “sex has consequences.” Watching it live you would never imagine such a plot point would have such a disastrous and season-shaking payoff in the very next episode. Here it’s just a silly story that sends up Alien and Invasion of the Body Snatchers to subpar results.
#117 – Never Kill A Boy On The First Date – season 1, episode 5
I think my biggest problem with season 1 is that it hadn’t yet figured out the flow of a typical Buffy episode. The A and B plots tend to work against each other instead of complimenting each other as they will in, say, season 3. Here, however, the problem is not a conflict between the two plots but it’s the lack of a B plot entirely. There are two things going on here: Buffy trying to date Owen and Buffy needing to stop the rise of a prophesied big bad vamp. There is no jumping from one plot to the other, however. Both feature Buffy so the story ends up being told in a very monotonous way.
#116 – Where The Wild Things Are – season 4, episode 18
This is the episode that features Buffy and Riley getting it on in a Frat House that seems to feed off the getting-on of Buffy and Riley. I’m pretty firmly in the “hate Riley” camp so my annoyance with the episode cannot be overstated. I liked it from a visual standpoint; director David Solomon did some trippy things here. The story is bunk, however.
#115 – Reptile Boy – season 2, episode 5
Buffy and Cordy go to a college frat party, are date raped, and are nearly eaten by a monster the frat boys worship. That’s it. That’s the episode. Great Cordy and Buffy banter keep it from falling any lower.
#114 – Gone – season 6, episode 11
Buffy cuts her hair. Buffy turns invisible. Buffy acts wildly out of character vs the rest of the season. Gone is just a tonally confused mess of an episode.
#113 – Doublemeat Palace – season 6, episode 12
I so wanted to put this one higher on the list. It’s very much a guilty pleasure episode in how bananas it gets in the end. It takes too long to get there, however, and if you’re one of those people predisposed to hate season 6, you’ll probably give up on the episode long before it gets hilariously cheesy for the big climactic fight. The first half of the episode has too much of the moping and depression that makes season 6 so polarizing. I don’t think it’s a particularly good episode, but I do have a soft spot for it.
#112 – Real Me – season 5, episode 2
As with Doublemeat Palace, this one has a place in my heart, if only because Harmony makes for such a fun villainous foil. Buffy takes slaying so seriously (apart from the many quips) that a vapid moron like Harmony is precisely the kind of baddie that would get under her skin. Other than the gags, however, there’s really nothing to the episode. We don’t yet know what is going on with Dawn, who she is, why she is, etc, and it’s not yet intriguing enough to carry that half of the story.
