Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 19-SEP-2006
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2812 in DVD
• Brand: GELLAR,SARAH MICHEL
• Released on: 2006-08-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 40

Amazon.com
From its charming and angst-ridden first season to the darker, apocalyptic final one, Buffy the Vampire Slayer succeeds on many levels, and in a fresher and more authentic way than the shows that came before or after it. How lucky, then, that with the release of its boxed set of seasons 1-7, you can have the estimable pleasure of watching a near-decade of Buffy in any order you choose. (And we have some ideas about how that should be done.)

First: rest assured that there's no shame in coming to Buffy late, even if you initially turned your nose up at the winsome Sarah Michelle Gellar kicking the hell out of vampires (in Buffy-lingo, vamps), demons, and other evil-doers. Perhaps you did so because, well, it looked sort of science-fiction-like with all that monster latex. Start with season 3 and see that Buffy offers something for everyone, and the sooner you succumb to it, the quicker you'll appreciate how textured and riveting a drama it is.

Why season 3? Because it offers you a winning cast of characters who have fallen from innocence: their hearts have been broken, their egos trampled in typically vicious high-school style, and as a result, they've begun to realize how fallible they are. As much as they try, there are always more monsters, or a bigger evil. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the core crew remains something of a unit--there's the smart girl, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) who dreams of saving the day by downloading the plans to City Hall's sewer tunnels and mapping a route to safety. There are the ne'r do wells--the vampire Spike (James Marsters), who both clashes with and aspires to love Buffy; the tortured and torturing Angel (David Boreanz); the pretty, popular girl with an empty heart (Charisma Carpenter); and the teenage everyman, Xander (Nicholas Brendon).

Then there's Buffy herself, who in the course of seven seasons morphs from a sarcastic teenager in a minidress to a heroine whose tragic flaw is an abiding desire to be a "normal" girl. On a lesser note, with the boxed set you can watch the fashion transformation of Buffy from mall rat to Prada-wearing, kickboxing diva with enviable highlights. (There was the unfortunate bob of season 2, but it's a forgivable lapse.) At least the storyline merits the transformations: every time Buffy has to end a relationship she cuts her hair, shedding both the pain and her vulnerability.

In addition to the well-wrought teenage emotional landscape, Buffy deftly takes on more universal themes--power, politics, death, morality--as the series matures in seasons 4-6. And apart from a few missteps that haven't aged particularly well ("I Robot" in season 1 comes to mind), most episodes feel as harrowing and as richly drawn as they did at first viewing. That's about as much as you can ask for any form of entertainment: that it offer an escape from the viewer's workaday world and entry into one in which the heroine (ideally one with leather pants) overcomes demons far more troubling than one's own. --Megan Halverson

Customer Reviews

The best $190 I ever spent
I put off buying this collection for awhile. It's pretty expensive for an average Amazon purchase, so I argued that I just couldn't spend it. But, I'm a huge, huge fan of the show and I found out that I was spending more money and valuable places in my Netflix queue on Buffy episodes. So, I finally had enough one day and bought it. And I don't regret it at all.

Lots of other people have evaluated the show, so I'm not going to do that. What I am going to do if give you an idea of what to expect in the actual collection.

The pictures are accurate: it's a boxed set with all seven seasons forming one Buffy cast shot. The same extras that come on the individual seasons are included on their original discs. But, as a bonus, you get a booklet with an episode-by-episode breakdown, a note from Joss, and an extra disc that has extras not released before this Collection.

The only downside to this collection is that the box is not particularly sturdy. I don't recommend leaving it open at any time. I only had my set a week and already the box lid is coming off because it was left open. It opens in a rather strange way, so the whole thing will collapse if it's not closed. So, construction is a little iffy, but not so bad that the set isn't worthwhile.

Slaying with Style!
This every bit the beautiful and impresive package that I imagined it would be. It looks as great on my bookshelf as it does on my TV screen. Seems like alot of cash (It took a couple of years to finally be able to aford the cost) but, being a huge fan of this show, it was well worth it.

BUFFY is just plain bad
Buffy the vampire slayer is an oddity. Its a show that had terrible plots, terrible acting and terrible production value yet has a following here on amazon. A show so bad that it was cancelled twice and no 3rd willing to take a chance on it. This is clear dumming down of sci fi. The onluy bright spot was Sarah Michelle Gellar.But even she couldnt save this show from disaster. My advice is there is much better sci fi than buffy. save your money for something better. something good