Best of Buffy

We are off to college! Buffy and the scooby gang have graduated and they are off to bigger and better things, well some of them are. As we are going through, the Best of Buffy season 4 will not rank on most people’s lists. It is often a very mocked season and I am here to change your mind about that. Because quite frankly I’d rather watch season 4 then season 5, but we will get into that. New places, new love interests and new big bads. Let’s get into Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Big Bad #1: The Initiative

I suppose I could just put Maggie Walsh on here as the first big bad, but I don’t subscribe to the whole “I was just following orders” bullshit, so the entire initiative gets to go on here. Not only were they experimenting on any creature they could capture but they had absolutely no interest in delineating between harmless and dangerous. They also didn’t care, they literally planned on locking Buffy and friends into this secret lab, unleashing a bunch of these monsters and allowing them to slaughter eachother (including their own soldiers) so that they could build lots of Adam’s and use them as military weapons. Batshit insane.

Big Bad #2: Adam

And then we have the creation of the initiative. Adam was a pieced together monster, very much like frankenstein's monster and I do think that is the vibe they were going for this season. He was like Ultron or really any tv/movie villain who was new, he was built and therefore his mindset and thought process were depicted as very pure. Pure in the sense that they were untainted by emotion. Now while this is happening he was still in a way, programmed, by Maggie Walsh as he was supposed to be a foot soldier and a weapon. So we could go ahead and say that his villiany was not his fault at the start, but at a certain point he started acting on his own impulses.

Best Episodes

Episode 10: Hush; Critics would often say that Joss Whedon was only considered a good writer because he was good at dialogue, so he wrote an entire episode without any. And it turned out to be one of the best episodes in the history of television. It is truly brilliant, all of the actors are at their best, because they have to be. And the story was eerie, creepy and truly fantastically written.

Episode 21: Primeval; People are going to hate this choice and I just do not care. This episode is incredible okay. Very often both in and out of universe characters and audience members ponder why Buffy keeps taking these civilians along. They are constantly in danger and getting injured. But this episode does a great job of showing that every single person in the group brings something that makes Buffy stronger. She needs them and she wouldn’t be the slayer she is without them and I don’t think anyone could point to a single episode in the series that shows that better then this one.

I actually really love season 4. We get Spike back, I think that even though it is collectively agreed upon that we hate Riley, he was a great opportunity for character growth in Buffy and an interesting addition to the group. I also think the filler episodes of this season are a lot better then most of the other seasons, that said I do understand the fandom disdain for this season as it also contains some of the worst episodes of the series, like Beer Bad. But this season also gave us one of the best episodes of television and I think that more than makes up for one or two missteps. When I rewatch I very very often start with season 4 so I really don’t get the hatred for it but some people just like being wrong.