Phuzbox

3
2
6
5
7
4
1

PChmura

2
3
6
1
7
4
5

PalmerJoss

I know I'm in the minority here, but I really enjoyed Season 7. Very emotional overall, mostly because I knew the end was coming. A very close second was Season 3--the Mayor was just the coolest Buffy villian ever.

RobCA

For me, it's a tough call between Seasons 2 and 3. They were both truly excellent, with lots of great eps, but if I had to pick a favorite, it'd be Season 2, just barely.

I haven't seen Season 7 yet, and I'm only halfway through Season 6.

Here's how I'd rank the first five: 2, 3, 5, 4, 1

Rob

Matthew Chmiel

1. Season Three
2. Season Six
3. Season Two
4. Season Five
5. Season One
6. Season Seven
7. Season Four (way to go Marc Blucas for not being able to act your way out of a ****in' paper bag, good job!)

Mok

Season Three Faith

costanza187

Season 2!

Although something about Season 1 is quite charming and fun.

joltaddict

I love it too. Its not as perfect as two and three but I cant believe almost eveybody likes six better than seven. Buffy spent almost the entire sixth season moping around, it didnt really pick up till the last 4 or 5 eps.

Jaime_Weinman

Season 2 was the best combination of a good overall storyline, metaphor, drama, humor, and best of all almost every episode was a self-contained story in and of itself.

Season 1 comes in second for me. It may be a little rough and cheap, but it made wonderful use of high school metaphors, and the dialogue was brilliant (every episode in season 1 had the dialogue extensively rewritten by Joss Whedon, and it shows). Also, it focused more on the friendship of the "core four" than on the relatively boring romance elements (the romance worked in season 2, but only because Angel turned evil).

Season 3 comes third; lots of good stuff, but everything with Angel is totally pointless, there aren't enough good villains in individual episodes, and there's kind of a sameness to some of the self-contained episodes...

Season 4 had a bad overall storyline but made up for it with a lot of good self-contained episodes and more emphasis on the core Scooby friendship. If they had had Xander be the one to join the Initiative, as originally planned (Riley essentially took what should have been Xander's storyline), it might have been one of the best seasons.

Season 5... well, I can't take the Dawn stuff, Tara is the most boring character in the world, and this season marked the emergence of Fonzie Spike. (God, I hate Spike.) There are some good individual episodes, but not enough of 'em, and the core four are marginalized in favour of some dull "family" theme.

Season 6 -- the problem with this season was not that it was "too dark." Remember, everybody loved "Once More With Feeling" which set out all the dark themes of the season. The problem was not that it dealt with dark themes, but that it dealt with them mostly in a stiff, humorless, preachy manner, with bad writing ("axe not gonna cut it") and bad story structure ("Tabula Rasa" is essentially over by the end of the third act and the fourth act is just filler).

Season 7 -- If they had stuck to the original plan of making this a season 2 type of season, with self-contained episodes oriented around the high school, it would have been fine. Everything up to the end of "Conversations With Dead People" makes this out to be a pretty good season. Unfortunately, then they abandoned the high school, abandoned the self-contained episodes, and went in for bad soap operatics, endless yakking about a threat that never materializes until the finale, and endless, endless crap about Fonzie Spike, who by this time was the single worst character ever to disfigure a formerly good TV show.

So basically I think the show got a little worse every year except in season 2...

Amel

It was tough, but I had to go with 3. Only because of the "which season part. Overall, the entire season 3 was simply amazing. Not one bad second in any episode. However, the season 2 arc of Angel/Angelus is the best of the series. The only "bad" thing about season 3 was knowing that Angel was going to be spun-off, so you knew certain things in certain episodes weren't going to happen. But, even knowing that, the eps were still able to keep me on the edge of my seat.

Entire listing, favorite to least favorite:
3
2
1
5
7
6 - hated the evil willow, magic/drug metaphor played out like an afterschool beat-over-the-head-with-a-frying-pan plot
4 - Riley. ugh. The absolute worst character in BtVS history.

Even so, I'd still watch the worst Riley episode ever over almost anything else on tv.

Rivero

Speaking as someone who has never seen a single episode of this show but will soon watch them when my Netflix discs arrive, I must ask: was there something overtly wrong with Season 4? Should I even bother or should I erase them from my qeue?

das Monkey

It's just forgettable. It's a transitional season from the high school years which are the heart and soul of the series (and why seasons 2 and 3 got the most votes) into the more adult years. There's some really good stuff in there, and the season finale is really quite unique, but overall it's just meh. Oh, and it has 'Beer Bad,' which up until 'Doublemeat Palace' was the 'Spock's Brain' or 'Sub Rosa' or 'TKO' of the series.

das

astrochimp

Season four had some really good episodes including one of the best ever eps in "Hush" but Riley wasnt believable as Buffy's new guy and the overall story arc with Adam and the Initiative was weak atleast compared to the previous two seasons.

costanza187

Am I the only person who liked Beer Bad??

Breakfast with Girls

I decided to name each season according to the theme as I see it.

Season 2: Boyfriend Gets Mean
The first part fumbles a bit, but the climax more than makes up for it and is far and away one of the best storylines in the series. A little mushy in parts, but mush never hurt anyone in small doses.

Season 3: Bad Influence
It isn't Faith herself that's interesting, it's how she plays off each member of the group and changes things up, as well as how she relates to The Mayor. The snake sucked.

Season 5: Family
There are some excellent episodes in the season. Lots of waterworks. I liked Dawn, but Glory is a pretty "meh" villain. I think it's a combination of her look and the fact that she was around for a bit too long. I genuinely liked Spike at the end of "Fool for Love," but Amber Benson as Tara was just in over her head.

Season 6: Real Life
Amber improved. The Trio were one of the amusing villains of any season. "Once More with Feeling" is probably my favorite episode of the series, because I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. Also enjoyed "Tabula Rasa" and "Normal Again." "Villains" had one of the most shocking moments in the series for me when I was watching it on TV. Dawn could be irritating, especially in her Shriek Peak, "Older and Far Away."

Season 4: Self-Discovery
I guess I'm one of the few people that actually liked Riley. He never fit in and he knew it. I'll never forget his line to Xander about Buffy in "The Replacement." Still, Adam and The Initiative are good ideas that left a little to be desired in execution. However, the arc finale, "Primeval," has probably the coolest fight in the entire series. The standalone episodes like "Hush" really outshine the main story this season, and "Restless" is my second favorite episode after the musical. The exchange between Buffy and Xander in this struck a chord with me.

Season 1: New Girl
The series started out with some bumps on the way (Darla with handguns remains one of the most cringe-inducing moments in the series for me), but overall it was a pretty strong season, in spite of David Boreanaz's best efforts to change that. The Master is one of the better villains.

Season 7: Pretentious Speeches
Seriously, was there a theme for this season? Season 7 started off strong and tricked everyone into thinking that it would be more light-hearted than season 6, as was promised. But between the meandering plot that reinforced a largely-toothless enemy at every possible moment, we got speeches, speeches, speeches. Caleb was a good villain, and actually had the ominous nature that comes with being the last Big Bad, but too bad he was deus ex machina'd in at the last minute, right? And did anyone, anywhere like Kennedy? Despite all that, the last episode of the series did grant Buffy's innermost desire, and so at least the finale gets some credit in that respect.

joltaddict

[Raises hand]

Tracer Bullet

It's a bit harsh to say season four is "forgettable". It is most definitely a transitional season, with all the problems that inherently brings, but with episodes like "Hush", "Superstar", and "The Yoko Factor", along with the body switch two-parter, it's got a lot of good stuff in it.

I can't remember the plot of more than three or four season six or season seven episodes.

And I've never understood why most everyone seems to hate Riley. Sure, he was a bit... bland, but for hated characters, how about Dawn, who served her purpose in season five and should have left the show.

Gizmo

3
2
5
6
7
1
4

Season 6 may move up another spot if the episodes keep getting better.

boredsilly

My favorite season was the third. That has a lot to do with The Mayor though, my favorite big bad of the series. Faith also was a great addition to the show.

Anyways here is how I rank them:

3,2,1,4,5,6,7

nny

I liked it. Season 4's my third favorite season after 5 and 3.

The only episode I can't find anything good in is All The Way from season 6. Much worse than Beer Bad or Doublemeat Palace. I'd probably say the second worst episode is Bad Eggs from season 2.

Adam Tyner

I get the impression that the writers had a rough outline of how the season was supposed to progress but hadn't really figured out what to do in every episode. It's like they had a 13 episode season mapped out, and then having to fill the back nine caught them completely by surprise. I thought season seven actually had the strongest opening assortment of episodes of any to date, up through "Conversations with Dead People". After that, though... I hated the Potentials, both in terms of concept and execution. I hated Buffy, of all people, who had become an immensely unlikeable character, and the writing was so far off for the established supporting cast that I couldn't really even turn to any of them as a safety net. Tired of speeches. Tired of hours being spent telling us what a terrible, incomprehensibly evil villain she was eventually going to have to face, even though the villain NEVER. DOES. ANYTHING. and doesn't seem to have an actual plan or motive either. Tired of every other scene taking place in Buffy's living room. Come on, UPN was shelling out close to 2.5 million dollars per episode. Did the actors and producers' pockets need that much lining? Spend a little on the show. The library, the Magic Box, heck, even Giles' living room...all great looking sets. A couch and coffee table? Not so much. Way too much emphasis on Spike as well.

My actual ranking of the seasons would probably vary at least a little every time I did it, but I'd absolutely put season three at the very top, probably with the second season in the #2 spot. Season seven would be dead last. Maybe writers were more concerned about lining up their next jobs instead of focusing on their current one.

costanza187

Trying to think of the order I liked them best...

#1 I voted for S2 as my favorite... that being said, I do remember that Bad Eggs was in Season 2, about my least favorite episode of the entire series, it just seemed the storyline of S2 was best.
#2. Season 1 is a lot of fun... it's fun to watch the season in a big marathon, had a lot of humor, seems like every episode had a nice tidy ending.
#3. Season 3 was good, real good

The top 3 here could change depending on my mood and when I have seen them last... I just finished up watching Season 1, this morning in fact, probably why it's up so high right now.

#4. Season 4, it had some cool stuff in it, like Hush, admittedly, the whole Adam thing was just dumb. I liked the early episodes of this season a lot, the Beer bad, the demon roommate, the whole starting college feel...somehow this season took a nosedive eventually.

#5. Season 5, probably some of the best drama out there, but I find it difficult to watch, the whole season feels like doom. Granted episodes like The Body and The Gift are excellent episodes, seems at this point all the funny stuff is gone.

#6. Season 7, There were a few good episodes here, having only seen this season two times, I am not as familiar with it as the others. and as previously stated by others, the speeches got old.

#7. Season 6... Once More With Feeling, excellent thing. BUT this whole thing with "The Nerds", give me a break, somebody just hit these guys in the head with a tack hammer.

LorenzoL

Ditto. This is the only season DVD of Buffy that I have.

joltaddict

I hated Superstar more than Beer Bad or Doublemeat Palace.

RobCA

I actually liked Doublemeat Palace.

I just watched it for the first time this past weekend, and after reading all the comments about how awful it was, I was surprised to find that I actually liked it.

I really like the episodes with lots of humor, and this one had plenty, IMO.


edited to add: I didn't really care for Beer Bad. That's my pick for worst ep*.

*(Disclaimer: I haven't seen any of Season 7 yet, except the finale)

Rob