You all know we’re into some of the best of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer material now with this rewatch. We’re gasping for air after “Becoming,” and Faith, the Mayor, and all the goodies that make up the Season Three story arc are ahead. It’s fun ahoy, and I hope you’re all enjoying the ride.

“Anne” and “Dead Man’s Party” are the intertwined and bloody thread that tie these two phases of the Slayer’s journey together.

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The Buffy the Vampire Slayer S2 finale opens with a flashback to the land of TeeVee History, where the men are men and the pubs are Ye Olde. Back in these longago times we see Liam, the callow youth destined to become Angelus, out on a booze-up with a buddy. He runs into Darla (Hi, Julie Benz, always happy to see you again!) who inexplicably takes a shine to him. Maybe it’s his bad manners, or his shaky Irish accent, but she gives him a wisp of a sales pitch about seeing the world and being all that he can be. Liam, bored to the teeth with everything around him, snaps up the bait. 

“Close your eyes,” Darla tells him, before moving in for the kill. 

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Three episodes bridge the gap between “Passion” and the two-part finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s second season, and each has at least one foot in the past. “Killed by Death” explores a loss in Buffy’s childhood, while “I Only Have Eyes for You” evokes a poltergeist from the Fifties. In “Go Fish,” a coach and the school nurse use Soviet fish fumes from the Cold War (say that three times fast!) to chemically enhance the swim team, with typical Hellmouthy results.

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The decoy villain phase of BtVS is over. Angelus is firmly established as the big bad secret ingredient of S2, and he’s made a few good cat-and-mouse moves since he lost his soul. He had a minor go at killing Willow in “Innocence” and a more serious one against Xander in “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”... and come up scratch both times.

A thing about TV villains is they lose legitimacy fast if they can’t pull off at least a few real wins. The alleged stone-cold killer who never manages to harm the heroine, or anyone from the core cast... who in fact only ever kills extras, will over time lose their power to impress audiences. How many shows have you seen do this—set up a scary bad guy, only to have him become ridiculous? (Sit down, Spike.)

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The string of BtVS episodes that follow Angel’s loss of his soul—the second half of S2, in other words—are all about love. Last week we looked at “Phases,” wherein Willow and Oz move out of their un-holding pattern of chaste dating and into one of the coziest and longest-lastingest romances on the show. And now we’re up to Valentine’s day 1998, and the next evolution in the fractious Xandelia relationship.

The trouble begins when Harmony and the other sheep start ripping Cordy a new one for hanging with Xander. Or maybe it begins when she buys in.

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It was Suzy McKee Charnas, author of the unforgettable werewolf story “Boobs,” who first pointed out—to me, anyway—that the werewolf is the most tragic of the classic horror monsters. It’s self-evident, once you consider it: they’re ordinary people for the vast majority of the time, sometimes they don’t even know they’re lycanthropes, they’re helpless to prevent their periodic transformation into monsters, and they’re contagious to boot. It is a terrible fate and one its victims rarely, if ever, deserve.

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“Surprise” opens with a stake and a poof, when Buffy has a dream about Joyce breaking dishes and Dru killing Angel.

The Angel part causes her to freak out, understandably enough, and the Slayer doesn’t waste any time checking that Angel is safe, shirtless and smoochable at home. Then she concludes that maybe Dru and Spike aren’t as dead as previously hoped.

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“Ted” and “Bad Eggs” are the kind of episodes that should have their own Jonathan Coulton anthems, don’t you think? (Actually, The Future Soon would almost do it for “Ted.” Is there a candidate for “Bad Eggs”?) They’re the stuff of classic campy horror; “Bad Eggs,” in particular, draws on the rich tradition that includes things like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.

What these episodes have in common is they’re about responsibility, specifically parenting.

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It’s Career Day at Sunnydale High, which for Buffy Summers means taking superfluous aptitude tests and getting her nose rubbed in bitter, bitter reality. She’s sixteen, all her peers are contemplating possible futures, and with her birthday on the horizon she’s already years into the only real job she’ll ever get to have. And those folks at Destiny, Inc. are cheap employers, what with the no salary, no hazard pay, no medical benefits thing. It’s hardly a surprise when she starts thinking that her lot in life kinda, well, stinks.

And that’s all before Giles decides to take her to task for On the Slay slacking.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, in my opinion, one of the first shows to do arc writing perfectly, to build up a large conflict, bit by bit, in tightly-focused episodes... and then to bust out the huge, game-changing developments that took our breath away. Wham! Then they’d do it again: seem to ease off, move into self-contained stories so the Scoobies could catch their breath—and we could too!—and meanwhile, relentlessly, working up to the next big explosion.

As season two inched toward the events of “What’s My Line,” viewers were treated to a scattering of those more intimate stories. I’ll call them one-offs, or standalones, but I recognize that’s not quite accurate. Each had ties to the bigger plot, after all, and most had at least a little bit of Spike and Drusilla (who, in those early weeks, appeared to be the year’s big villains).

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Why am I doing one essay on “School Hard” and “Halloween”?

Easy. They’ve got the same plot: Spike tries to kill Buffy while she’s vulnerable. Swing and a miss, you might say, and swing again.

This may sound like a complaint, but “School Hard” and “Halloween” are wonderful episodes. They illustrate why there’s nothing wrong with presenting the same plot to viewers, or readers, if you tell a different story each time. This is the truth that makes episodic TV, and much of Western fiction, possible. It’s not so much about what happens, right? It’s about how, to whom, where and why.

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One of the many things I appreciate about Joss Whedon’s shows is that they wrap up at the end of the year. Viewers aren’t left with a big lingering battle about to unfold at the finale; each season finishes as though the story’s over. Sure, there are loose threads to pick up later, and some of them are mighty tantalizing threads at that, but even so you get that bit of satisfaction that comes from experiencing a story’s end.

(This is merely a taste thing, and I’m sure some of you prefer the cliffhanger. Which is cool too, of course!)

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“Doctor Who and the Praying Mantis.” This is the not-so-loving nickname I’ve given one illustration for a story of mine. There are two reasons:  first, the guy in the picture looks like William Hartnell. And then there’s the alien. I’d written a tidy and meticulous little paragraph of description, one I quite liked, which outlined all the ways the alien looked like a balloon animal and specifically not a big space bug. What did we have? Yep, giant space bug.

The main reason this particular minor gripe has stuck with me is that I’ve been selling fiction since 1989 and the only time I’ve had story art that felt at all off-target was that once. I’ve been very lucky; almost all of my stories that have had illustrations have had beautiful work, by the likes of John Berkey and Charles Vess, images that in addition to being attractive and intriguing, gave me the opportunity to see what happens to my words once they’ve leaked into someone else’s brain.

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“Prophecy Girl”

The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer established a pattern that held through all that followed. Each year was a mix that offered some largely stand-alone adventures—a few serious, a few comical—while building up the bits and pieces of a larger arc that would, come the finale, pit the Scooby team against the season’s big villain.

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It’s almost impossible to look at Angel in the first year of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and not think of everything that awaits him in the second, and beyond. There’s the big, obvious, unforgettable stuff, of course, the events of “Surprise,” “Innocence,” and of course “Becoming.” But it’s little things too: in “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” Cordelia gets her first sighting of the Broodiest Vamp Ever. For seasoned fans, this whisper of an encounter brings up so many memories, calling up the whole story of Angel and Cordelia and their peculiar evil-fighting partnership.

Big things happen to Angel in his opening year in Sunnydale—that much is indisputable. He meet the Slayer, falls for her, and comes out to her as a vampire. He sacrifices Darla, gains Buffy’s acceptance and... well, other than that, he spends a lot of time avoiding her, actually.

It’s too painful, he says, by way of an excuse, to be around Buffy.

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The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was promising, entertaining, exciting, fast-paced and funny... but not the show’s finest hour. (Not the show’s finest twelve hours, actually, but who’s counting?) I can say this the more confidently because I’ve just rewatched the whole thing, every frame, praying mantises, invisible girls and all. I had a great time, but I also knew the best had yet to come.

This is a good thing. It would have been terrible if the show had peaked early. But it does mean that S1 of BtVS doesn’t merit a full-on, loving, episode-by-episode examination.

[So what aspects of Buffy season 1 are worth talking about?]