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Buffy the Vampire Slayer is generally regarded by everyone with good taste as one of the best television series of all time. Joss Whedon could go on to make ten more box office shattering superhero movies, and his most seminal, iconic work would remain the story of the plucky blond destined to fight evil in the midst of cramming for finals. Acclaimed critic Alan Sepinwall even dedicated a chapter of his book to explaining how and why the series (1997-2003) changed the landscape of TV as we know it today.
Part of that impact was delivered through groundbreaking, form-challenging episodes, regarded as classics today, like the silent episode "Hush," the musical "Once More, With Feeling" or the devastating hour when Buffy and co. deal with a very human death in "The Body." Throw those in with the show's highly celebrated season finales and other event episodes, and you've got a catalog other series would kill for. It's a feat no one expected this series to achieve when it debuted 17 years ago to the day as the TV spinoff of a forgotten, campy teen movie.
Of course, the side effect of having 144 episodes means for every fondly remembered hour like "The Zeppo," there are dozens that become forgotten with each passing year. Episodes that, while maybe not as transcendent, still found the writers room and cast firing on all cylinders. On the anniversary of Buffy's premiere, here are a handful of episodes we feel are underrated and overshadowed: The 15 Greatest Buffy Episodes That Nobody Talks About.
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15. "Life Serial" (Season 6, Episode 5)
The one where: Buffy tries to get a job, while her newly evil nerd classmates from high school hold a contest to see who can fuck her life up the best.
It's great because: The Trio (Adam Busch, Danny Strong, Tom Lenk) were designed to be a non-threatening source of levity from the bleak real-life theme of the season, and their first major introduction as a virginal crime syndicate works toward that goal like gangbusters here.
This is hands down one of this consistently funny series' wackiest episodes, from the Trio's Saturday-morning cartoon-esque schemes to random weirdness like Spike taking Buffy to a demon gambling hangout where kittens are the poker chips. Plus, the Trio has ultra relevance now that Danny Strong is Hollywood's new favorite It guy.
14. "Selfless" (Season 7, Episode 5)
The one where: Anya's latest grant of vengeance turns bloody, forcing Buffy to confront the harsh truth that she's a threat in need of putting down.
It's great because: As one of the series' lowkey best characters, an Anya-centric hour full of flashbacks is basically a layup, and none of them disappoint from the welcome return of Olaf the troll to a "Once More, With Feeling" reprise. Plus, it's great to see the show deal with the whole friends-with-killers issue, especially the gang's—especially Buffy—tendency for favoritism and pardoning. Despite somewhat of a cop-out ending, it's the first truly solid hour of the final season.
13. "Something Blue" (Season 4, Episode 9)
The one where: Every declaration a despondent, woe-is-me Willow makes inadvertently comes to fruition—including mortal enemies Buffy and Spike's sudden desire to get married.
It's great because: It's a fun, goofy hour that manages to deal with Willow's despair over Oz's departure while also getting it out of the way by episode's end. And when you have Giles bumbling around blind while Buffy and Spike morph into hilariously sickening, PDA couple (remember this is a whole two seasons before their genuine, torrid love affair, one season before Spike even developed feelings for the slayer), plus an endless horde of demons hunting Xander to fill the hour's action quota, this is a slam-dunk of a filler episode.
Consider that the episode before this is the Thanksgiving classic "Pangs" and the much-heralded silent episode "Hush" follows—season four really does get an unfair bad rap.
12. "The Puppet Show" (Season 1, Episode 9)
The one where: Demonic murders are happening in the lead-up to the Sunnydale High talent show and all signs point to the nerdy kid and his creepy ventriloquist dummy.
It's great because: Most of season one was spent working out the kinks in the transition from Forgettable Campy Movie to One of the Best TV Shows of All Time, but "The Puppet Show" is a solid hour that does what few episodes that season could, successfully toeing the line between campy and creepy.
The plot offers a nice subversion of the typical killer dummy story, all you have to do to enjoy this one is ignore the fact that most schools would probably cancel the talent show after one of the students is found with her heart missing backstage. Bonus points for serving as the introduction to everyone's love-to-hate favorite, Principal Snyder.
11. "Homecoming" (Season 3, Episode 5)
The one where: Buffy and Cordelia's competition for homecoming queen coincides with bad guy Mr. Trick's awesomely named "Slayerfest '98" murder competition.
It's great because: You need more than "Slayerfest '98?" Well how about Charisma Carpenter, who basically proves why she more than deserved to follow Angel to spin-off land in her hilarious/badass/sexy turn here as she and Buffy are forced to turn competition into cooperation to survive the "Slayerfest" contestants.
10. "Family" (Season 5, Episode 6)
The one where: Tara's oppressive family (including guest star Amy Adams) comes to town on her birthday to take her away, alleging that all the women in the family become demons on their 20th birthdays.
It's great because: The plot is so low-key you wouldn't be blamed for forgetting it's one of the special episodes to be both written and directed by Joss Whedon. But the focus on personal stakes only is what makes it such a nice episode, doubled by Willow and Tara's status as the most charming couple on the series.
At their core, every Whedon work is about lonely outcasts and oddballs finding sanctity in makeshift families that end up transcending blood relation, a mission statement that's hammered home quite nicely here.
9. "Enemies" (Season 3, Episode 17)
The one where: Faith and the Mayor conspire to awaken Angelus and succeed...or do they?
It's great because: The whole thing is a sting to prove Faith, the worst double agent of all time, has gone dark to the side. The show gets to have its cake and eat it too, appeasing the thirst for more Angelus without being redundant of season two and honestly, any time Eliza Dushku gets to shit-talking and villainous stunting, the result is gold.
Of course, the big Buffy-Faith showdown wouldn't come to full fruition for a few more episodes, but damn if this wasn't a good tease. (It's just too bad that by the time Faith met the real Angelus she'd gone all good and boring on us.)
8. "Band Candy" (Season 3, Episode 6)
The one where: Hexed fundraiser candy makes every adult in Sunnydale—including Buffy's mom, the dickhead principal, and atypically stuffy Brit GILES—revert to their teenage personae.
It's great because: Hexed fundraiser candy makes every adult in Sunnydale—including Buffy's mom, the dickhead principal, and atypically stuffy Brit GILES—revert to their teenage personae. Do we really have to spell out what type of hijinks a show as witty as this can get into with that concept?
7. "The Dark Age" (Season 2, Episode 8)
The one where: Giles' wild and dangerous past—back when he was known as "Ripper," and was much less stuffy—is revealed, and comes back to haunt him, when old friends start turning up dead.
It's great because: Revealing that the prim and proper mentor character used to get turnt back in his day is basic, sure, but who cares when Anthony Stewart Head sells Giles' dark side as well as he does here. And when that dark past rears its head in the form of a such an awesome concept as demonic possession as magical high.
Eyghon the demon and its methods are effectively unsettling, as is the make-up work on all the victims it possesses, especially Giles love interest Jenny Calendar. Bonus points for featuring Ethan Rayne, frenemy of Giles and one of the series' best recurring bad guys.
6. "The Initiative" (Season 4, Episode 7)
The one where: Buffy and Riley begin courting each other and the true nature of the lurks creeping around campus in military gear and capturing monsters is finally revealed.
It's great because: Yes, Riley was ultimately the most swagless, his relationship with Buffy was more boring than C-Span, and The Initiative storyline never quite soared to the heights that it could have. But the episode in which all of those story threads began to take shape is golden, in large part because of the genius decision to lower Spike's threat level and add him to the main cast.
It's shouldn't have been surprising that he became the season's secret weapon when his official debut as a main player features a scene as amazing as him failing to kill Wilow and learning he can't kill anymore, written as a metaphor for sexual impotency. As if that's not enough to warrant a spot high on anybody's list, the same episode also features Xander fully embracing his bitchassness in a slow-mo slapfight with Harmony.
5. "I Only Have Eyes For You" (Season 2, Episode 19)
The one where: Sunnydale High is plagued by two ghosts from the '50s who possess unwitting hosts to reenact their last fateful encounter.
It's great because: It's a well-executed ghost story, by way of supernatural Cold Case, with a few tweaks that keep it from being too standard. The lovers' are doomed to play out the same script with the same results, with innocents as their collateral damage, but Buffy and Angelus inadvertently flip said script with a genius role reversal. This one also has a lot of surprisingly good scares when the high school goes poltergeist, complete with solid floors turning sinkhole, snakes, and a swarm of locusts that engulf the entire perimeter.
4. "The Freshman" (Season 4, Episode 1)
The one where: The gang starts college and Buffy gets a cold welcome to adulthood from the campus' resident gang of vampires.
It's great because: Season four has an unfair rep for being among the series' weaker years thanks to a boring Big Bad, and it's because of that stigma that "The Freshman" is often overlooked as being the show's best season premiere.
As the elitist upperclassmen from Hell, Sunday is one of the best one-off villains the show has ever presented and her plot to pick off straggler, lost-in-this-world freshmen is lowkey genius. And by immediately addressing all of the #lifechanges that come with college and then moving past it, Buffy became the rare high school show to pull off the dreaded transition relatively smoothly.
Plus, the end of the episode features one of the series' most badass, iconic kills, as featured above.
3. "Forever" (Season 5, Episode 17)
The one where: The gang is still reeling from Joyce's death.
It's great because: "The Body" is a damn hard act to follow but "Forever" manages to keep the thoughtful meditation on death going as everyone tries to pick up and move on in the aftermath.
Angel pops in for a nice visit that's (mostly) devoid of any inappropriate sexual tension, but the younger Summers steals the show with her childish plot to disobey the laws of nature and resurrect Joyce. It makes for a crushing conclusion when Buffy, upon discovering what her little sister is up to, throws responsibility to the wind just to see her mother one more time, and Dawn steps up to make the tough, but ultimately right choice.
2. "Lies My Parents Told Me" (Season 7, Episode 17)
The one where: Flashbacks reveal the misguided, fucked up thing Spike did immediately after becoming a vampire while Principal Wood's obsession with him is explained in the present.
It's great because: It's like, really intense, dude. At this point in the series it had been so long since Spike had a plot separate from his thirst for Buffy, and while it's not as impactful as his insta-classic first flashback episode, the revelation of his relationship with his mother continues to flesh out the character's backstory in new ways without reeking of retcon.
Meanwhile the attempt to avenge his own mother briefly enlivens the heretofore (and after, to be honest) two-dimensional Principal Wood. It's hard to consider dude bland when he's bouncing Spike all over his garage, screaming about his dead mom.
Also, "Early One Morning" is kind of catchy, on the low.
1. "Conversations With Dead People" (Season 7, Episode 7)
The one where: A vampire psychoanalyzes Buffy; Willow gets a warning from a dead friend; Dawn tries to communicate with her mother; Andrew and Jonathan return to Sunnydale on a mission; and Spike has a date at a bar.
It's great because: From season's four's silent episode onward, each year of Buffy has one audacious event episode, executed in some stylistic fashion that sets it apart from the pack and proves why it ranks so high in the TV pantheon. But because the final season's "Conversations" isn't silent, nor is it a musical, and it doesn't feature a crushing take on the reality of death, it gets buried at the bottom of the stack (if even considered an event episode at all), a shame since it's easily one of the series best episodes.
The four vignette structure was born out of scheduling conflicts for both the actors and writers, and what started as a logistical quick-fix (each vignette was written by a different writer despite only two being credited) resulted in a special hour that intensely kickstarts the series' final arc with stories both creepy and ultimately heart-wrenching, like the surprisingly reflective psychoanalysis of our not always likable heroine. Even perennial punchline Jonathan gets a moment of gravitas.
Meanwhile, Dawn's vignette is one of the show's most legitimately scary sequences across all seven seasons (see picture above). The mood has never been quite as palpable as the episode's end which unifies each story thread leaving all parties involved, and the audience at home, genuinely unsettled.