1: Welcome (Back) to the Hellmouth

[00:00:00] 《The Buffy-verse》 That boy was just the beginning. Oh, why can't you people just leave me alone? Because you are the slayer. And to each generation, a slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a chosen one, one born with a strength and skill to hunt the vampires,

[00:00:43] to stop the spread of their evil blah, blah, blah. I've heard it, okay? I really don't understand this attitude. You've accepted your duty. You've slain vampires before. Yeah, and I've both been there and done that, and I'm moving on. What do you know about this town?

[00:01:00] It's two hours in the far way from Neiman Marcus. Think a bit in the history of this place. You'll find a steady stream of fairly odd occurrences. I believe this whole area is a center of mystical energy. The things gravitate towards it that you might not find elsewhere.

[00:01:13] Like, Vevers. Like zombies. We're wolves. Think you by. Suck you by. Everything you've ever dreaded was under your bed, but told yourself couldn't be by the light of day. They're all real. What? You like Santa Way for the Time Life series? Uh, yes.

[00:01:29] Did you get the free phone? Um, the calendar. Go on. But, okay. First of all, I'm a vampire slayer, and secondly, I'm retired. Hey, I know! Why don't you kill him? I'm a watcher. I haven't the skill... Oh, come on. Stake through the heart, a little sunlight.

[00:01:46] It's like falling off a log. Slayer, Slays. A watcher. Watches? Yes. No. He trains her. He prepares her. Pairs me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life

[00:02:04] and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead. Prepare me. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Penny. And I'm Kara. And this is still slaying a Buffyverse podcast dedicated to All Things Buffy. This episode, we're going to discuss one, why we're doing

[00:02:57] this and two, giving you all a sense of what to expect. We are embarking on a rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the 1997 show created by Joss Whedon and starring Sarah Michelle Geller in the title role. So, Kara, you were a kid when the show first came out.

[00:03:19] What are your sort of early Buffy memories? Gosh, I was always, so I was in, I think it was second semester of third grade when the first season aired and then first semester of fourth grade when the second aired, which sounds absolutely ridiculous now.

[00:03:37] But I was always trying to watch things that I probably shouldn't have. And I was a, oh yeah. But I was a very, I don't know, I was a very kind of nerdy, mature kid and I was devouring any books I could get my hands on.

[00:03:55] And whenever I saw Buffy scrolling through the channels, there was something about it. And so I would watch bits and pieces before one of my parents came in and told me to stop. And eventually season five when Michelle Trachtenberg came

[00:04:12] on as Dawn, my mom let me watch it because she figured it was kind of taking a turn for younger audiences. Yeah, okay, sure. And I let her have that impression as I got to watch it and then in, oh gosh, my senior year of college,

[00:04:31] I got Netflix for the first time and it was when you could still get the DVDs in the mail. So that was the very first thing I did with my Netflix membership was binge Buffy from start to finish twice in a row. Fantastic.

[00:04:48] And now, you know, in law school, it was a good comfort watch and I've watched it every now and then just to go back and be a little nostalgic. And it's one of my favorite shows. Me too. I am a little bit older than you.

[00:05:06] So when Buffy first came out, it was right before I started law school and the first few seasons were on when I was in law school. So I didn't have time back then to watch much TV. So I didn't sort of catch on to Buffy being interesting

[00:05:21] and fun until like halfway through the second season. And I think I was like home for the Thanksgiving or something and somebody, one of my sisters or somebody was was like, Oh, this Buffy show is on. Let's watch that.

[00:05:34] And I was like, I had seen the movie and I loved the movie and I was like, Oh yeah, I've been wanting to check out the show. And of course, as soon as I watched it, I was like, Oh, this is this is better than the movie.

[00:05:46] Like I did not know it was going to be this good. And then I was hooked and then it was like a process of back then it was like VCRs, right? So like trying to record Buffy on when I wasn't home

[00:06:00] and setting up a VCR and but like making sure my roommate didn't like change the channel before I got home. And then like sometimes I'd miss an episode and then, Oh God, it was such a relief when the DVDs came out

[00:06:14] and I could just like own whole seasons and watch them whenever I wanted. And it was really good. It is crazy to think of how spoiled, you know, kids and teenagers are today that have never dealt with VHS or having to, you know, run back in the room

[00:06:32] once a commercial break is over to make sure you didn't miss anything. Yeah, exactly. The like hurdles that we would jump running from the kitchen back to the living room. Like, you know, one kid, one sibling would yell, it's on.

[00:06:46] And then the other sibling would like do some kind of dangerous race across the house. And if you're me with my little brother, I was frequently yelling it's on before it actually was just to see how fast I could go back in the room. But it's fine.

[00:07:03] That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. And then I spread Buffy love to like, you know, my siblings and some of my friends. And then when I started working at my first law firm job, I bonded with a couple of other lawyers over Buffy

[00:07:19] and it became like a weekly coffee date to get together on Wednesdays and talk about the previous night's episode. So it was like an early way for me to not go completely insane working at a law firm, which was not a happy time. Otherwise, that is good.

[00:07:37] You got to find the good ones in there. Yeah, you really do. So yeah, Buffy. And then, you know, so we're going to talk about what we might as well just talk about right now. You know, a few years ago, Charisma Carpenter came

[00:07:53] out and said some things that happened to her when she was on Buffy and on Angel and that Joss Whedon, you know, just treated people badly and was a giant jerk. And for a while I it ruined my enjoyment of the show

[00:08:09] and I didn't rewatch it for a while. And then I started thinking about all the other people who made the show and worked on the show and all these actors who poured their heart and soul into it and the other writers, the producers,

[00:08:23] the directors and I was like, I'm not going to let this like jerk ruin something that is important to me. Buffy was the first real female superhero character. You know, like before that we'd had like the Linda Carter Wonder Woman, like police woman.

[00:08:42] There weren't a lot of leading ladies at all and then to have one who was powerful and feminine and vulnerable and funny and, you know, had friends and had flaws. I, she was so real and so whole and then the show was so quippy and funny and sharp.

[00:09:07] I just, it was important to me and it still is and I'm just not willing to let stupid Joss Whedon, you know, ruin it for me. So what we're going to do is just like, he's the one of the major creators of the show.

[00:09:23] He gets a lot of credit. He's a writer of lots of episodes. He directed a bunch of episodes, but we're just not going to talk about him. Like I like it. Just don't let's not give him any airtime. So after this,

[00:09:37] I will say I had a similar, you know, reaction when all of that news came out and I just remember being so angry that this person who had created, you know, this figure and kind of almost role model since I was so young watching Buffy.

[00:09:56] I was like, he cannot ruin this for me. Like this is not fair and thinking about, you know, once listening to what Sarah Michelle Geller had to say, Charisma Carpenter and a bunch of the other women especially that had been associated with him and saying that, you know,

[00:10:13] he is not Buffy. He is not forever tied to us. So it's like, okay, I'll go with that. We can just appreciate what everybody else has done and you know, I just, I didn't want that taken away from me. It was too important. Yeah, exactly.

[00:10:29] I mean, I think that there was talk for a while of a Buffy reboot and I think that the news about him kind of killed that. I'm hoping that at some point there will be a Buffy reboot. My personal hope is that they don't completely reboot

[00:10:46] but that they just do like a Buffy the next generation kind of thing. Like they just, you know, they pick another slayer in the future to follow and that's our hero but I'd be good with that. I think he, the only way it's going to happen

[00:11:01] is if he hands the reins over maybe even just to his brother. I've never heard any bad things about his brother. It's true. He was the showrunner for Agents of Shield, which I loved. I thought it was a great show.

[00:11:12] More Buffy in any form, I would be happy. Yeah, really just anything in that universe. Yeah, more slayers, more watchers. I would, I would watch an entire show about Faith in a heartbeat. Oh yeah. You know, she's so fun. Spike, I would watch Spike forever.

[00:11:36] There's so many great characters that came out of Buffy. Some of them, some of the greatest characters of course have been slain but there's a lot left and it would be fun to watch any of them. That would be great. Gosh, I love Spike.

[00:11:51] I don't think my parents were thrilled when they realized I love Spike. Oh, I'm sorry. But he just, oh, I, there's something about him and still, you know, as a 35 year old watching, I'm like, yep, I love Spike. Yeah. He's entertaining. He's smart. He's never boring, right?

[00:12:10] He's never, and he doesn't brood like Angel's so broody. Yes, he's too dramatic. And I can't get why he's broody and I get why Buffy loves him but like Spike is just so fun. Yeah, and sharp and witty. He's just, uh, yeah, he's delightful. That's a problem.

[00:12:32] He and Faith when I was little, I was like, oh, this should have told me something about myself. How much? There we go. Well, you were too young to understand what it meant, but yeah, those were the early signs of your true personality.

[00:12:47] Yeah, at 35 now I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, all right. I do like the bad boys. Hmm. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So, um, so the show came out in 1997 and back then a TV show was only successful if it was on, you know, a network

[00:13:10] and it was broadcast 20 or more episodes a season. So there's the first season of Buffy is 12 episodes because it was a mid-season replacement and then after that the seasons are 22 episodes long. There's a lot of filler in there and so we're going to try something that I

[00:13:30] I haven't listened to another podcast that's done it this way, but we're not going to rewatch every single episode. We're going to just focus on the ones that we are excited to talk about. So you guys don't have to listen to any episodes

[00:13:42] of the podcast where we're like, uh, I guess I liked the outfits they were wearing. Like we won't be forced to come up with something to talk about because we're going to focus on the ones we love. We'll give you recaps of the ones in between

[00:13:59] and any important plot points and obviously like if you're watching along with us like watch the ones in between but just don't feel like you need to like watch them really closely or anything because we're not going to talk about those.

[00:14:12] Don't need to take notes with Inca Mummy Girl in death. Yeah. Although that's a pretty fun episode. I do like that episode. And you can send us feedback about any episodes or if we're not covering one that is like your absolute most favorite episode like let us know.

[00:14:30] Nothing is written in stone. Things are always subject to change. I will say like, I don't know anybody, nobody in my life like my real life I'll say is a huge Buffy fan. So I want to know what everybody thinks like I cannot wait to talk to you

[00:14:49] and hear what other people think about Buffy because nobody lets me nerd out about this in real life. I know how that feels when you're like a lonely nerd all alone about something. Yes. You need a community to talk to about it. That's how I found podcastica.

[00:15:05] I was trying so hard to get my friends to start like just an email chain about Handmaid's Tale and like I couldn't get it going even the ones I knew were watching the show and then I had already heard Jason and Lucy talking about Walking Dead.

[00:15:24] At that time I was listening to like two or three different Walking Dead podcasts but then when I realized that Jason was coming out with a Handmaid's Tale podcast I was like, oh, that's really exciting. And that's when I started sending in feedback

[00:15:38] and getting like really involved with podcastica. The rest is, you know. I remember your feedback for Handmaid's Tale like you always had really good feedback. Also thank you. That was the first way. I was like, now I know Penny's name

[00:15:51] and then you started popping up more and more and that actually part of like that was a big part of why I started sending in feedback because I listened, oh gosh, to Jason and Karen probably the, I think it was the third episode of their podcast that aired

[00:16:07] and I just never wrote in. I was like, no, like I'm just gonna listen to what everybody else has to say and then maybe like what eight years later you started writing in. I started writing in and I was like, okay, I'm going to do it.

[00:16:21] And now here we are and here we are. Which is great. We are very excited about this project and I am hoping that we're gonna meet a lot more Buffy fans in the podcastica listener family and maybe get some people from outside the already existing podcastica listening family.

[00:16:42] For sure. Tell your friends, you know and really we want it to be a conversation so please send feedback in. The more people who participate the more fun it is for everybody. And if you have like really out there opinions like throw them out. That's the best.

[00:16:58] When somebody writes in with like a completely bonkers opinion I've never thought of before just makes me so happy or calls in. Voice mail is too. We love that. Always. So we're gonna start we're gonna, this is going to be controversial

[00:17:14] but we're going to skip all of season one. Season one is mostly just not that great. And there's a few plot points you need to know but you really don't need to watch season one. Like her name is Buffy. She lives in Sunnydale with her mom.

[00:17:36] She's the vampire slayer which means she has supernatural powers of being strong fast good at fighting etc. She has a couple of nerdy friends and the school librarian is also her watcher. A watcher is like a member of like a

[00:18:00] sort of like a brotherhood of stuffy nerdy people in England who study demons and vampires and you know the forces of darkness and they have these some of them have this role of watcher where they're teamed up with a slayer and they sort of guide mentor train etc.

[00:18:23] The slayer and Buffy's watcher is named Rupert Giles. If you are a first time Buffy watcher you may recognize him from Ted Lasso where he also plays Rupert Rupert Manion or you might recognize him from pre Buffy when he was in the incredibly successful Taster's Choice coffee ads.

[00:18:47] No international delights coffee ads. Taster's Choice. Anyway, there was these coffee ads and they were a love story and they were a series so you had to watch all the ads to get the whole story of this romance between Anthony Stewart head and I have no idea

[00:19:09] who the actress was who played the other person in the in the pair and they were like big news back then they were the first ads that were serialized and like people talked about them they were like oh the coffee couple

[00:19:22] what do you think is going to happen because it would be weeks between each new ad. It's fantastic. So fun and then when he showed up on Buffy I was like hey that guy is familiar to me I've seen him on coffee commercials. Oh gosh. Yeah, he's great.

[00:19:39] He's also done an episode of Doctor Who and some other things. He's much more known in Britain than he is in the US but he will always be Giles too for those of us who love Buffy. Oh yeah. I guess the another important thing

[00:19:54] would be to note that Sunnydale happens to be on top of a hell mouth. That's a really good point. You know like which I guess I'm imagining that most people who are tuning in and tuning in that dates. Yeah. That are listening to us

[00:20:13] have at least seen Buffy or might be familiar with it but if you're not the idea of the hell mouth in Sunnydale is that it's you know essentially a sort of a portal between you know earth as we know it and this other kind of you know

[00:20:29] hell dimension where you have all these demons and other creatures and it's just kind of perfect that Buffy happened to move to Sunnydale where this hell mouth is because things get a little extra supernatural and intense around the hell mouth. Yeah, it has a mystical energy that

[00:20:53] acts like kind of a funnel and draws you know creepy crawlies toward it. So Sunnydale never lacks for demonic activity and Buffy has plenty of things to slay not just vampires and the going to high school on a hell mouth

[00:21:17] is just sort of the perfect metaphor for high school and how it feels you know you feel trapped you feel like you're both too mature and too immature to handle it boys that you date turn into monsters other students turn out to be monsters

[00:21:36] teachers turn out to be monsters like there's a lot about high school that's demonic and we're going to dive into all of those things. I love looking back on that now being far removed from it like just you know for our listeners I just started rewatching the show

[00:21:56] and I think the last time was maybe four years ago and already I feel like I can appreciate it in a you know in a different way than even four years ago. So I can't wait to get into all of the themes that pop up.

[00:22:13] It's going to be so great. So the first episode we're going to cover is season two episode three. The title is school hard and it's parent teacher night at Sunnydale high school and Buffy's mom is going to meet Buffy's principal for the first time

[00:22:31] and she's real nervous about her world's colliding and of course you know wacky high jinks ensue as they always do. So that'll be the first episode we cover. That means of course we're skipping the first two episodes of season two

[00:22:48] called when she was bad and some assembly required. It doesn't necessarily mean that those episodes are bad. It just means they they're not as interesting for us to talk about or as like sort of important to the overall arc of the show. And then after school hard

[00:23:07] we're going to skip Inca Mummy Girl and Reptile Boy and cover season two episode six Halloween which is another one of my all time favorite episodes of the show. So good. See after Halloween we are going to be jumping a few episodes to Ted

[00:23:29] and you know same thing the episodes in between I would encourage you not to skip if you are watching Buffy for the first time of course because they have incredibly important plot points. They just might not be our favorites for one reason or another

[00:23:44] but we will pick up with season two episode 11 Ted which is one of my favorite episodes because we have a guest appearance from John Ritter and absolutely classic. Oh it's so good. It's wonderful and he plays Buffy's mother's new boyfriend Ted

[00:24:04] and everyone seems to love Ted except for Buffy who is very suspicious of him and of course we're on a hell mouth so we understand why and we get to see how that unfolds. It's pretty great. And then we really agreed very quickly

[00:24:22] that neither of us wanted to cover bad eggs. Season two episode 12 I can't watch that episode. It gives me the creeps so bad. It is creepy. Like it's just I'll never watch that episode again. So if you're watching for the first time

[00:24:37] like you might not have a problem with it go ahead and watch it. I personally can't watch it. So sorry we're not covering that. You never know. And we are going to cover the next three which are all I think pretty important for season two

[00:24:54] especially and the overall Buffy verse. So season two episode episode 13 is surprise and this is another episode featuring Spike and Drusilla and they are attempting to essentially gather and put together body parts of a demon called the judge

[00:25:16] and they think it'll be you know now this ultimate weapon essentially that they'll be able to use to finally defeat Buffy and there are also some very important angel and Buffy moments in this episode. Yeah, that's a two-parter episode 13 surprise

[00:25:36] and episode 14 innocence or two parts of the same story and they're fantastic. They're some of the best episodes really are. They're really they're really important. I feel like I'll never forget watching those for the first time probably younger than I should have been but even then

[00:25:57] it's an impact and then episode 15 which is phases is another very important one for the Buffy verse because we are introduced to werewolves and a very important werewolf ends up coming up in this episode. So we get to see Buffy and the gang you know I'm I do

[00:26:20] say Scooby gang for people that are not familiar with Buffy. There are some slang sometimes referring to Buffy and Xander and Willow as the Scooby gang and if you hear me say that that's why but we get to see them kind of deal with this

[00:26:37] new threat and learn more about it. We're going to cover the next two as well. There's episode 16 is bewitched bothered and bewildered. It's a little bit of a rom-com magic fantasy episode and then I don't want to give away too much here but episode 17

[00:27:00] passion is exactly that it's extremely passionate and it's a big turning point in the season. That's a big one. We are then skipping over episode 18 killed by death. That one is not incredibly important plot wise but I think it's still one worth watching if you're going through for

[00:27:26] the first time and we will be picking back up with the two part season 2 finale. So that's episode 21 becoming part 1 and then episode 22 becoming part 2 which is the second half of that finale and this I think is one of the most important finales of the series.

[00:27:50] I know for some people it's not their favorite but this is when the Buffy Angel storyline really comes to a head and it's very very intense finale. Yeah, I think it's determinative. I don't think I said that word correctly but it determines

[00:28:09] a lot of Buffy's future decisions what happens in the season 2 finale. She grows and learns a lot from what happens and it's it's I guess it's a coming of age moment for her. Very true. Pretty much so it's pretty great.

[00:28:27] So obviously Cara and I both have watched the series before so we know what happens ahead of the episode that we're in. We're going to try really really hard to not have spoilers in our main discussion of the episode but we're going to save

[00:28:44] them for the end of the podcast so that if you are a first time watcher and you don't want spoilers you can just not listen to that part will try to shove it all into one section at the end which we're going to call the Watchers Diaries.

[00:28:59] And then we don't have any feedback for this episode because it's just our introduction but when we do you guys will be listening to that feedback at the bronze and a good time will be had by all.

[00:29:13] Man like 13 year old me wanted to be able to go to the bronze so bad. I know how bad. They had some pretty amazing musical acts come through the bronze right like Amy man and played the bronze Nico case played the bronze like that was something else

[00:29:32] rewatching after you know when I was little rewatching in college I was just like holy shit like yeah these are some good bands how did I miss this well you were too little to know who they were but a lot of them were pre fame.

[00:29:47] There was like people who are on like right before they hit or more indie artists but some of the music from Buffy is still on playlist I listen to all the time. Definitely great music. So that's it. That's our show for this introductory episode.

[00:30:05] Thank you guys for listening and I hope you're going to join us for this adventure as we head into season 2. Absolutely and if you would like to get in touch with us or find out more about podcastica you can find all of our contact information at podcastica.com

[00:30:23] and you can write in right from the podcast.com website you can record a voice message there or you can this is the easiest thing ever record a voice note on your phone and just email it to us at talk at podcastica.com

[00:30:39] and or just send us an email or we'll be posting feedback comment posts on our Facebook page. There's a podcastica group and a podcastica page where we'll post those there's also a page that's called the Zeadheads page and that is for members of the

[00:30:58] Patreon group if you want to join the Patreon there's information about that on podcastica.com as well. I got to tell you the Patreon group is a lot of fun. There's you know special content and we have this group that were a member that were members of and

[00:31:14] everybody like chats with each other a lot and we have email threads about all of the different TV shows that we all love and people you know post jokes and memes and it's just a silly fun group of people. It's a nice positive little corner of the Internet.

[00:31:32] It makes me happy. Yeah, have something like that. Yeah, the big rules in the Zeadhead group are no spoilers and don't be a jerk and everybody pretty much follows those rules and it works out really nicely. Kind of nice.

[00:31:48] I will say if you have not listened to podcastica shows and you have stumbled upon us and we are somehow the first podcastica show that you guys have found definitely give some of these other shows a chance. We cover so many different shows anything from you know,

[00:32:06] I know there's a group covering Ashoka right now all the Star Wars shows from White Lotus Yellow Jackets Stranger Things when that comes back eventually will be amazing but there's also Wheel of Time is about to come out

[00:32:25] and there's going to be the second season of White Lotus they're about to start and well if you want to go back in time a little bit Kara was on a podcast about the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and are you currently doing only murders in the building?

[00:32:47] Yes, we are. It's perfectly Marvelous only murders in the building and that one has been very fun to cover. That's great. It's not technically a podcastica podcast but it's Kara. So we support it. Yeah, I got it. I love any murders in the building.

[00:33:03] It is such a great show and I just want to reach through the TV and like steal all of Selena Gomez's coats. I know she has the most amazing coats. It's so good. I love her so much her and that Mabel in that show is cooler

[00:33:18] than I will ever be and I love her so much. Yeah, she's great. And there's so many other shows on podcastica. Like we can't possibly sum them all up but take a spin through the website. You'll see there's so many things that we've covered

[00:33:32] in the past like if you're ever bored there's like probably thousands of hours of podcast listening if you wanted to and we keep adding shows in the future. If there's something that you think you would like us to cover like right in we take suggestions from listeners

[00:33:47] all the time. I cover a show called extraordinary which was on Hulu and in Europe it's on Disney Plus and that was a suggestion from a listener who said like hey this show looks like it's going to be interesting and Greg

[00:34:03] and I just were like okay, yeah sure and it turned out to be absolutely hilarious like one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. So definitely write in and let us know if there's something great out there that we haven't found yet.

[00:34:16] We would we would love to hear about it from you those nurse for sure. Let's Oh and I was like where are we once you've like checked out all of our podcasts like we keep telling you to do

[00:34:31] if you like what we do hit like follow subscribe leave a writing review tell your friends if you think we're horrible then tell all your enemies and you know that's something you can do for them. Just whatever it is that helps listeners find us

[00:34:46] because the more the merrier next time on this show still slang will be covering season 2 episode 3 school hard which is a great episode I cannot wait to talk to you about that.