Darla, a vampire, drains a guy in Sunnydale
High at night.
Buffy has a prophetic dream of vampires
and The Master the night before her first day at SH.
Buffy's First Day: Xander is immediately
smitten with Buffy, he's friends with Jesse and Willow. Principal
Flutie is concerned with Buffy's past at Hemory High, burning down the
gym to kill the vampires in it. Cordelia helps Buffy in class and
accepts her into the popular class but ridicules Willow. Buffy befriends
Willow instead for schooling help, as well as Xander and Jesse.
Giles meets Buffy and offers her a
"vampyr" book which she refuses. Willow tells Buffy that Giles just
started here from the British Museum, and brought many books with him.
Darla's victim is found which Buffy examines. Buffy tells Giles that
she refuses to take part but he tells her that her arrival means the coming
of evil; she fought before but won't anymore. Buffy is the Slayer,
the only one in the world, it's always a girl. Sunnydale is the center
of mystic convergence, a magnet for demons and monsters. Xander overhears
all this. Giles tells Buffy that the energy is building and something
is coming soon.
Buffy's mother Joyce runs an art gallery.
Joyce is worried about Buffy falling in with the wrong crowd again the
way she did in LA.
Buffy is stalked by Angelbut
she confronts him. Angel tells her he wants "to kill them all", that
the Hell Mouth is about to open. He gives her a cross on a necklace
and tells her to be ready for "The Harvest". He tells her he's a
friend, but not necessarily hers.
Buffy visits The Bronze, the only club
in town. She meets Willow, who doesn't date because of her nervousness,
and advises her to seize the day. She also runs into Giles who is
looking for her, and who doesn't know Angel. Giles says she should
be able to sense a vampire even in human form by honing her senses.
Several vampires including Luke perform
the ceremony to raise The Master from his underground mystical prison.
He is weak but The Harvest will strengthen and free him from his prison.
The Master will rise, and the demons will be free to walk the earth again.
Buffy spots Willow chatting up a vampire
and chokes Cordelia briefly while searching for her. Darla chats
up Jesse. Willow and Jesse are taken to a crypt by the vampires but
Buffy and Xander break in. Xander, Willow, and Jesse flee while Buffy
fights Darla. Luke then fights Buffy to the point of almost draining
her...
Analysis:
Willow mentions that Giles brought
many books with him, which over the years we will see as his collection
of arcane knowledge.
Buffy's reluctance to take up Slaying
again suggests something very traumatic happened to her when she first
became a Slayer, and also that some time has passed since she's been a
practicing Slayer. Since the events of the Movie aren't canon we
don't know what happened. It seems that her first Watcher was killed,
which would explain her time away from Slaying. It also seems that
she lost a few friends due to her Slaying as well.
So why exactly does Buffy's arrival
in Sunnydale coincide with The Harvest? Obviously Joyce has no connection
to the Watchers or anything arcane, so her decision to move here was a)
manipulated by outside forces unaware to her, or b) just destiny.
Perhaps the Watchers Council (who in later we see to be quite dubious)
orchestrated Joyce's art gallery being closed in LA then somehow put the
idea in her head to move to Sunnydale, perhaps by creating an art gallery
opening here.
There's also the question of why the
Slayer is always a girl, and why there is only one at any time.
Xander learns about the Slayer deal
by overhearing Buffy and Giles in the Library. Hopefully from now
on they'll think to be more careful when and where they talk about these
things, unfortunately the series won't really show this.
So what exactly is the nature of the
Hellmouth? Giles speech in "The Harvest" suggests that the demons
left Earth to another dimension, the Demon Dimension for lack of a better
term. Presumably the Hellmouth opens to this same dimension, since
the reported goal of all vampires is to return the Old Ones who left.
In this pilot The Master seems more concerned with freeing himself, but
he also mentions that he will bring Hell to Earth. And when you take
into account all the later demon dimensions and portals of various sorts,
it all gets pretty jumbled.
How did the Hellmouth come to be?
Is it just a weak point in the fabric between universes, is it the portal
the Old Ones took, what?
Angel says here he wants to kill all
the vampires, but this vengeful side of him quickly disappears in older
episodes. Also curious in relation to later episodes is his claim
that he's a friend but not of her. This never goes anywhere.
Add that to the fact of Angel's strangely sarcastic behavior (which also
quickly disappears); perhaps Angel was just putting on an act here for
Buffy for some reason.
Giles claims that a Slayer should be
able to hone her senses to detect a vampire. This is another thing
that we never really see, but fortunately for Buffy the vampires never
seem concerned with hiding their identities.
Willow taking Buffy's advise and immediately
walking off into a cemetery with a guy seems strangely out of character.
Then again, maybe this was trying to show her inner strength, like in "The
Harvest" when she sabotages Cordy's computer program.
THE HARVEST (part 2 of 2)
Plot Points:
...Angel's cross necklace saves Buffy
who escapes. She rescues Willow and Xander but Jesse is taken.
Giles explains to Buffy, Willow, and
Xander that the Earth was first inhabited by demons for many eons but eventually
they lost their power and left so Man could raise. Only vestiges
of "the Old Ones" remain like vampires. The last demon to leave mixed
his blood with a human he fed off of, forming the first vampire, who wait
for the Old Ones to return. Vampires use the sewer systems to travel
around in the day. Giles and Buffy tell Willow and Xander that the
police don't have the ability to handle vampires. When a person is
made a vampire he/she dies and becomes a demon.
The Master is brought Jesse by Darla
and Luke, who tells him a Slayer has come. For 60 years he has been
trapped in an buried Church. Luke hasn't lost a fight since 1843
in Madrid because "he caught me sleeping". They decide to use Jesse
for bait.
Willow is a computer hacker and has
decrypted the City Council's security system, including the sewer plans.
She defends Buffy to Cordelia and Harmony then sabotages their computer
program.
Buffy goes back to the crypt and finds
the entrance to the sewer system. Angel visits and says they really
don't like it when he drops in because they really don't like me.
He's afraid of The Harvest. When Buffy asks him about friends he
grows strangely sober and tells her where their lair is, and quietly wishes
her good luck after she leaves.
Buffy searches the sewers, joined by
Xander. Buffy and Xander rescue Jesse, who has been vamped.
Buffy and Xander escape.
The Master makes Luke his vessel for
The Harvest.
Giles and Willow find that in 1937
a rash of murders preceded a great earthquake. The Master came to
America to open the Hellmouth but instead buried half the town and himself,
becoming trapped in a mystical prison. The Harvest can only come
once a century, a vampire is made his Vessel to feed, giving him the strength
to free him.
Joyce grounds Buffy for skipping school,
but she has to run out again to stop the Harvest.
The Bronze is taken hostage by Luke,
Darla, Jesse, and several more vampires. Luke starts draining people,
Cordy is next when Buffy breaks in. Giles, Willow, and Xander evacuate
the crowd and fight vampires. Xander stakes Jesse and Willow burns
Darla with holy water. Buffy tricks Luke into thinking it's day and
stakes him. The Master is still trapped. Angel watches outside.
Public word was a gang war with Buffy
suspected to be involved with them. Giles explains people rationalize
away the truth.
Analysis:
Giles says demons inhabited the Earth
for eons before Man. So is this supposed to be during all the years
of known history before intelligent life, when life was only microscopic
and in the sea, or is this supposed to be some hidden history not know
to us?
Why/How did the demons loose their
grip on Earth and fall into the Demon Dimension? Did they bored and
choose to go or did something make them leave?
Buffy says the police couldn't handle
vampires. Why not? As long as they keep their distance they
should do fine. If a vampire has his brains blown out won't he be
killed? Or if a hail of bullets shatter all his bones? And
besides, after that first bloody encounter Buffy could tell them the rules
and they could stock up on the necessary weapons and kick some butt.
Luke says he hasn't lost a fight since
1843 Madrid when some guy caught him sleeping. Notice that it was
a man who fought him, which means it wasn't a Slayer. This means
that there are, or were, non Slayer vampire hunters who managed to be successful
in their work.
Willow says she decrypted the City
Council's computer system. As we learn in later years, the City Council
is in with The Mayor. So Willow has already hacked into the bad guy's
files! Why didn't she ever find anything implicating them in demon-ry?
Plus in late Season Three Willow tries to break into the Mayor's files
with great trouble; apparently they realized she broke in earlier and got
better security.
Why does Angel refuse to help Buffy
stop The Harvest? As we learn in a few episodes, he is a powerful
vampire after all! Aside from keeping this secret for a later episode,
why is he so terrified to confront these vampires?
How did The Master screw-up in opening
the Hellmouth? Was it a simple mistake, or did some force on the
side of good intervene?
If only The Harvest can free The Master,
and it only comes once a century, then how did The Master free himself
by draining Buffy in the Season One finale "Prophecy Girl"?
Buffy stakes several vampires before
a crowd of dozens of people. Yet her secret identity remains?!
Even Cordy, who right there on the stage, thought it was a gang war!
How they possibly explain the vamps getting dusted?!
For that matter, why does Buffy bother
to keep it a secret from Joyce? Xander, Willow, and Jesse found out.
Every time she helps someone her identity will be revealed. Dozens
of people saw her at the Bronze fighting vamps. Why?!
THE WITCH
Plot Points:
There haven't been any vampire sightings
for a week.
Xander and Willow volunteer themselves
as "Slayerettes" to help Buffy.
Xander gives Buffy a locket and plots
to ask her out, but Buffy mentions he's just a friend.
Buffy tries out to be a cheerleader
despite Giles impotently forbidding it. She was a cheerleader just
before first becoming a Slayer. Joyce is again concerned with Buffy
going bad and mentions Sunnydale High was one of the few schools to accept
her.
Buffy, Cordy, and Amy try out for cheerleader
but a witch magically attacks the try-outs. Cordy is stricken blind
and Buffy is made giddy then dying. Catherine can also preform telekinesis.
Catherine switched bodies with Amy a few months ago to relive her cheerleading
glory days.
Giles preforms the magic spell to revert
Catherine's spells. Buffy turns a magic attack on Catherine, trapping
her in the school medal.
A simple chemical test including the
subject's hair can expose a witch.
Giles' decrepid car makes its first
appearance.
Amy's mother Catherine was a witch
and was cheerleader supreme in High School. Amy's father left them
for another woman some years ago. Amy used to be friends with Willow
in Junior High. Now Amy lives with her apologetic father.
Cordelia remains on the cheerleading
team.
Analysis:
No vampires in a week. Obviously
The Master is keeping them back in the wake of their defeat in the last
episode. It's interesting that The Master is able to control ALL
vamps in Sunnydale though (especially when we see later in the series how
independant they are).
This is the first time Buffy refuses
to follow Giles' orders, about becoming a cheerleader. Giles doesn't
confront her about and instantly collaspses on it. Obviously Giles'
extremely short stay in America wasn't the real factor in his being so
lenient with Buffy.
Sunnydale High was one of the few schools
to accept Buffy. This helps explain why Joyce moved to Sunnydale
as the Watchers Coucil wanted. Either the Coucil pulled influence
on the local school board to get her in, or The Mayor did already knowing
that Buffy was The Slayer. But later episodes suggest that The Mayor
didn't know about Buffy being The Slayer until very recently.
Giles' sorry excuse for a car is curious.
Presumably he didn't have it brought over from England so he just bought
it a few weeks ago when he arrived in America. Doesn't he get any
kind of paycheck from the Watchers to be able to afford a real car?!
TEACHER'S PET
Plot Points:
A giant praying mantis kills a SH science
teacher and replaces him as Mrs French who starts seducing virgin boys
including Xander, taking them home and preparing them as food for her eggs.
Buffy kills it but its eggs survive to hatch.
Angel meets Buffy at the Bronze, Xander
and Willow see him for the first time. Xander is instantly jealous.
Angel gives her his black leather jacket and warns her about a vampire
with a claw hand who sliced up his arm (who she stakes).
Buffy briefly runs into the police
but easily eludes them.
Willow hacks into the Coroner's Office.
Giles went to Oxford.
Analysis:
So whatever happened to those mantis
eggs in SH? Presumably Buffy killed them, but it seems like a situation
where the other students would see something supernatural in nature.
Considering how lame Fork Guy the vampire
was, Angel coming to Buffy to warn her seems more like a pretense to see
her again, to get on her good side by giving her a jacket and some advise
(rather than the smart-ass way he acted towards her in the pilot).
The amazingly inept Sunnydale police
make their first brief appearance.
NEVER KILL A BOY ON THE FIRST DATE
Plot Points:
The Master waits for the Anointed One,
his great warrior. "And the Slayer will not know him, will not stop
him, and he will lead her into hell". The Brethren of Aurelis must
kill five to bring him, but Buffy kills one of them thus alerting Giles.
But the Brethren still succeeds in making the sacrifice for the Anointed
One by massacring a bus full of people.
Buffy's attempts to stop the Brethren
are complicated by her date with Owen. Angel warns Buffy at the Bronze
she needs to get to work on it. Cordy notices Angel and is immediately
smitten and jealous of Buffy.
Giles goes alone to the funeral home
to inspect the bus bodies but gets besieged by the Brethren. Willow
and Xander take Buffy there, but Owen tags along and almost gets killed.
Buffy kills a vampire who they mistakenly think to be the Anointed One.
Buffy drops Owen realizing she can't
be involved with a civilian who would eventually just get himself killed.
Giles was ten years old when his father
told him he was "destined" to be a Watcher, like him and his mother before
him, but he wasn't interested in the responsibility and sacrifice.
The real Anointed One, a child on the
bus who was turned, joins The Master.
Analysis:
Notice that Owen and Angel are very
similar in both dress and somber personality.
Cordy first meets Angel and is attracted,
then jealous of Buffy.
This entire Owen situation is one big
setup for Buffy's relationship with Angel. She learns she can't be
involved with a civilian who would just get killed, thus Angel fits the
bill since he's a combatant (and as we later learn is already dead!).
It's questionable how exactly Watchers
are chosen. Giles said he was "destined" but apparently by family
line, so the Watchers are not selected randomly and mystically the way
Slayers are. It appears to be a family line, which would strongly
suggest most if not all Watchers are English since the Council is based
in England.
If Watchers are not determined by merit,
that's a system that will inherently bring corruption and inefficiency.
Later in the series we see the corruption of the pure purpose of the Watchers,
and presumably we'll see much more in later seasons.
Buffy not 'knowing' the Anointed One
and not stopping him as he leads her into hell makes more sense with him
as this innocent looking child. Then again, in terms of vampire strength
he probably isn't that strong.
THE PACK
Plot Points:
Hypnotic hyenas possess some school
bullies and Xander, making them animalistic, belligerent, and carnivorous.
They torment the populace and eat the school pig mascot.
Willow confesses to Buffy her attraction
to Xander.
The Hyena possessed bullies kill and
eat Principal Flutie.
Hyena-Xander tells off Willow and tries
to rape Buffy. After being cured he claims to have no memory but
Giles knows he does.
ANGEL
Plot Points:
The Master tires of Buffy's slaying
his brethren and sends The Three, but Angel helps her escape to her house.
Buffy invites Angel into his house
(before learning he's a vampire). Vampires can't enter a house unless
they're invited.
Joyce briefly meets Angel (as a college
student helping Buffy study), who stays the night in Buffy's room.
Angel tells Buffy his family was killed
by a vampire, and it's been a long time since he's been intimate with someone.
The Master has Darla kill The Three
for failing and sends her after Buffy (and Angel) instead.
Buffy and Angel kiss, prompting Angel
to reveal his vamp face.
Darla visits Angel at his place to
taunt him and says he will eventually feed off Buffy, she's plotting to
bring him to it so he'll return to his evil vampire ways.
Giles researches Angelus, who came
from Ireland and lived around 240 years, though he disappeared in America
80 years ago where he shunned other vampires and lived without feeding.
The Master once met Angelus.
Darla feeds off Joyce to taunt Angel,
but Buffy only sees Angel with Joyce and attacks him.
Giles meets Joyce for the first time
in the hospital, Giles speaks highly of her.
Buffy confronts Angel.
He explains he fed off a Gypsy girl, and her clan elders cursed him by
restoring his soul and his conscience, and he hasn't fed on a human since.
Darla comes after them with guns, but Angel stakes her.
The Master intended for Angel to be
his right hand man when he arises.
Buffy and Angel reluctantly agree to
keep apart and kiss again.
Analysis:
Buffy should have been suspicious of
Angel. He can beat The Three who out power even her, The Slayer?!
Apparently Angel vamped out in front
of Buffy because kissing her brought his emotions to the forefront.
So Angel was turned around 1757, and
cursed around 1917.
It's interesting to note that The Master
has met Angelus and wanted him to be his right hand man when he arises.
Darla attacking Buffy and Angel with
guns opens up a BIG can of worms for the show. Obviously neither
of them are bullet proof, and Buffy would take a bullet almost as badly
as anyone else. And if Angel got his brains blown out I doubt he'd
survive. So the question becomes, why doesn't EVERY vampire and demon
carry a gun? Answer: Because Buffy would be dead.
I ROBOT YOU JANE
Plot Points:
Willow accidentally unleashes a demon
Corrupter into the Internet who falls in love with her and tries to take
over the world. Giles and Jenny do a spell to contain the demon,
and Buffy destroys the robot body.
Enter Jenny Calendar, the computer
teacher at SH. She's an easy-going techno-pagan who conflicts with
Giles over modern technology, or lack thereof. She hits it off with
Giles regardless.
Xander is jealous when he learns of
Willow's paramour but tells Buffy he only sees Willow as a friend.
Analysis:
Once again Giles demonstrates his curiously
powerful magical abilities.
Jenny is also quite suspicious with
her foreknowledge of mystical goings-on and her own magical abilities.
Looks like Xander does have a thing
for Willow in some small way...
THE PUPPET SHOW
Plot Points:
The new Principal, Synder, is a weasely
hard ass who hates children, with Buffy in particular.
In the 1930s, the Slayer was a Korean
girl.
NIGHTMARES
Plot Points:
Buffy's Dad Hank is only separated
from Joyce and still lives in LA. He only visits Buffy occasionally
on weekends. Buffy blames herself for the separation.
A comatose boy makes everyone's nightmares
come true. The Master and the Anointed One can sense his power.
Giles' greatest fear is illiteracy
and getting Buffy killed. Buffy's greatest fear is her father's rejection
and becoming a vampire. Dander's is a knife wielding clown and Willow's
is singing opera in front of an audience.
INVISIBLE GIRL
Plot Points:
An ignored girl at SH turns invisible
and tries to get revenge on Cordy for snubbing her.
Angel visits Giles to warn him about
The Master planning something big. He steals The Codex, a book on
Slayer lore from somewhere.
Cordy goes to Buffy for help thinking
she's in a gang, and gains some understanding and respect for them.
Angel saves the lives of Giles, Xander,
and Willow from asphyxiation.
The girl is taken by FBI Agents to
a class of other visible kids, where they are taught to be used for assassination
and infiltration.
Analysis:
So just where did Angel steal the Codex
from? Did The Master have it? Given how it's information leads
Buffy to fulfill The Master's prophecy in the next episode, perhaps The
Master arranged for Angel to find it or something.
This episode marks the unofficial induction
of Cordy into the Slayerettes.
This is the last we see of this little
government mystical conspiracy, though it might be connected Season Four's
The Initiative.
PROPHECY GIRL
Plot Points:
Giles translates the Codex which says
The Master shall rise and kill the Slayer. An earthquake inexplicably
rocks Sunnydale, and the vampire population is on the increase. There's
been other apocalyptic signs around America.
Xander asks out Buffy, but she only
considers him a friend. Xander is miffed to say the least and blames
Angel. He then asks Willow but she turns him down because he'd be
thinking about Buffy.
Jenny joins the Slayerettes and learns
the truth about Buffy, The Slayer, and The Master. She learns the
Anointed One is still alive and that he's a child.
Vampires massacre a small school gathering
which Willow witnesses the aftermath of.
Buffy overhears Giles and Angel talking
about The Master killing her. She chews them out and plans to run
away to avoid it, but comes to her senses. Giles planned to go it
alone, so Buffy knocked him unconscious.
Xander recruits Angel to help find
Buffy. Angel knows Xander's in love with her.
The Anointed One leads Buffy down to
The Master's lair. The Master uses a hypnotic power to paralyze Buffy.
He reveals that it is her blood that gives him the strength to break free.
He drains her of blood and leaves her to drown in a pool. The Master
breaks his boundaries and heads for the surface. Xander and Angel
find her, and Xander resuscitates her.
Giles, Willow, and Jenny conclude the
rising will happen at the Bronze, but the vampire gathering besieges them
at SH. Giles, Willow, Jenny, and Cordy fight them off as the Hell
mouth Beast (a three headed monster) bursts forth from the Library floor.
Xander and Angel join the fight while Giles hacks at the Beast.
Buffy awakes with much stronger abilities
and the knowledge of where The Master is headed. She confronts The
Master above the Library, now immune to his hypnotic power. After
a brief fight she kills him, impaling him in the Library. The Beast
returns to the closed Hell mouth and the vampires retreat.
Analysis:
It's a bit surprising that Jenny didn't
know about Buffy being the Slayer after all this time.
So a group of several students gets
killed by vampires in the school... how is this one kept out of the public
eye?
How did Xander know where Angel's apartment
was?
So if The Master did kill Buffy, how
did she survive? Was it merely Xander giving her CPR, or was there
some great mystical explanation for it? Did the power source of the
Slayers resurrect her? Does this make her a particularly special
Slayer?
Is it just coincidence that the Hell
mouth is in the Library? It would seem likely that the Watchers Council
knew it since they installed Giles as the school librarian, but obviously
they never told him. Given later seasons this behavior seems quite
normal for them.
For a great beast of the apocalypse,
the Hell mouth Beast wasn't particularly powerful or dangerous!
Buffy says that she is stronger after
her resurrection, and she does easily beat The Master. So just how
much more powerful is she now? Does this extra strength wear off
or she permanently at this power level? She doesn't seem as strong
in later seasons.
Likewise, how did she know where the
Hell mouth was? It seems like she tapped into the Slayer power source
to some extent, which knew the location of the Hell mouth and lent her
extra power to defeat The Master (something very similar is purposefully
done by Buffy and company in "Primevil").
Do any other vampires have this hypnotic
power, or at least have it powerful enough to affect Buffy?
