Always nifty when a newb embarks on The Slayer's Journey.

Pointy | May 30, 20:55 CET

Yeah, it's fun to see people being introduced to it this long after it aired and loving it. :)

snakebyte | May 30, 21:07 CET

I introduced my 10 yr old niece to it this spring after she expressed interest in Twilight. I told her I had something much much better. She now talks to all her friends about it and they all want to see it. :) Hopefully, by the time she is old enough to watch Twilight, she will be thoroughly unimpressed after watching Buffy.

IrrationaliTV | May 30, 21:10 CET

I recently went through it (first touch with Joss being in around September 2008) but I'm such a massive fan seeing and read everything Joss now I can't imagine my life without him.

Jaymii | May 30, 21:15 CET

The latest friend I introduced to BtVS is on S5 and S2 of Angel. She is loving it, of course. Always glad to see more converts and it is so much fun to hear their impressions.

newcj | May 30, 21:26 CET

He's in Season 2, and he's smitten. How cool is that? He's really gonna' groove on the nerds.

Peanut Noir | May 30, 21:28 CET

Add me to the number of late coming fans. I'd heard of it, of course (knew my mom was a fan), but somehow never got around to watching Buffy (or Firefly) when they first aired. Enjoyed Serenity, but it wasn't the same without a prior 'relationship' with the characters. I caught a few episodes of Firefly when Sci-Fi ran marathons and wanted to catch up with all of them.

Then, last summer, Dr Horrible changed my life. After losing count of how many times I watched it (iTunes, Hulu, soundtrack, now DVD), I went in search of everything else these 'horrifically' (pun apologetically intended) talented people had done.

I started with HIMYM online, then bought the Firefly set. Then ended up with two copies of Serenity - my daughter kept one at college and had to borrow the Firefly box to share with her friends). I put off starting Buffy because -- 7 seasons! How was I going to have time to watch all that?

Seasons 1 and 2 on Hulu, watching at home and on my breaks at work. Bought 3 and 4, borrowed the rest. Angel followed, on hulu and borrowed disks. Then when the fan-created movie trailers for Buffy season 1 was linked here, I had to watch them all again. Made it through season 4 this time around, waiting to buy 5, 6, and 7.

My daughters (17 and 20 now) watched some of it with me, even with the eyerolling "Mom, not that again!", they were caught up in the stories.

Thank you Joss and co. for all of this! And thank you Whedonesque for my daily fix of news!

jill | May 30, 21:31 CET

Awww that's so sweet. He's only on season 2 and he loves it.

I loved the comment someone made about how Bruce Campbell should've been cast as Xander's dad or uncle. I've always thought that. :)

menomegirl | May 30, 21:33 CET

I'm currently getting my stepdad to watch Btvs and Angel. He staying with us four nights a week. We're now on season 5 of Buffy and season 3 of Angel. He's really enjoying it. Admitted to turning over the channel when he gets home. Said "the people who make this are very creative". Laughs at Angel and Spike a lot.

Very good times.

edit: forget to add that stepdad is apprx. 70 years old.

[ edited by bubblecat on 2009-05-30 21:36 ]

bubblecat | May 30, 21:35 CET

Sadly, I never could get my father to watch Btvs. I always thought he'd love it, if he could've just got past the name.

menomegirl | May 30, 21:38 CET

Hah, I never considered the similarities between Bruce Campbell and Nicholas Brendon. They totally look related, wow.

Kris | May 30, 21:45 CET

I dood it! If not thematically, at least nominally... And I used Angel instead of Buffy - but hell, The Master started at the top in Buffy... so I call fairsies.



"Darla"

"I believe that you heard your Master sing
When I was sick in bed.
I suppose that he told you everything
That I keep locked away in my head.

Your Master took you traveling.
At least that's what you said..."

- from Leonard Cohen's "Master Song"

(Rarely do these two of my Big Loves intersect - Joss' Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the songs of Leonard Cohen. How delightful for me... and for Jeff - how I envy anyone just discovering Buffy now.)

QuoterGal | May 30, 21:45 CET

I lived in a house of four guys last year and two of us were die-hard Whedonites. By the end of the year we got the other two guys (and a girlfriend and a boyfriend) to watch all of Buffy & Angel. That's four new fans under one roof!

CrazyKidBen | May 30, 21:56 CET

Hah! Love it when someone discovers Buffy and starts loving the show. It's like when you have read the best book of your life and you're jealous of everyone else who will have that experience for the very first time. But for me, Buffy is timeless - I don't play the DVDs consistently. I wait awhile, sometimes a year, then I start watching from Season 1 and always, always am taken/charmed/beguiled/overwhelmed/weepy/overjoyed/stimulated/challenged and grateful all over again for the experience.

By the way, wish Jeff had proofed his blog. I hope this: Still, the actor's coming timing more than makes up for his lack of nerdiness.) was really meant to say comic. I mean there's man crushes, and then there's man crushes... ya know? :=)

Tonya J | May 30, 22:06 CET

I just got my friends into the show, in preparation for a Buffy RPG I'm going to be Directing. My friend initially just wanted an overall taste of what the Buffy-verse was like, so I made him an episode list and lent him my DVD's, and now he and his girlfriend are really digging it. They come to me with questions about stuff and we've been having many a conversation about how Buffy compares to Firefly and how Joss' writing style has evolved from Buffy to Dollhouse. They're only on Season 4 now, but I expect by Season 5, my friends will be pretty Buffy-devoted fans.

Astonishing_Chaos | May 30, 22:26 CET

A long-distance friend finally--finally!--started watching a month or so ago...she's just seen OMWF and her take is, "There seems to be no limit to the ability of Mr. Whedon to amaze and enthrall" or something very similar to that.

Yes, I do envy those watching for the first time!

Chris inVirginia | May 31, 00:01 CET

Jeff is so awesome. Great writer too. I'm happy for him to finally see the light.

Tmas | May 31, 01:04 CET

I've been introducing a friend to BTVS, and it's so strange to watch it with someone completely unspoiled. I love listening to her endlessly-wrong predictions. This Friday we got to "I Was Made to Love You" and "The Body."
She said that Joss is a sadist.

jcs | May 31, 01:12 CET

I'm struggling to get my mother to love Buffy. She isn't all to keen and the latest episode we watched (about a month ago) was the introduction of Spike. She'll begin to love it, I'm sure.

The only real problem I reckon with people these days is the dated look of the first few seasons, yeah 16mm doesn't help.

Jaymii | May 31, 02:37 CET

And he gets Xander which as Oz would say, is of the good.

lycoming | May 31, 04:00 CET

My friends tease me about being a "pusher" of my favorite shows. I LOVE watching shows I love with people who are watching it for the first time.

I have officially "lent" my Buffy DVDs to about 8 different people and gotten every single one of them to love it. :)

jcs, I loved your mention of your friend getting her predictions wrong. Just one anecdote: I got one of my friends hooked onto the show while she was watching a few episodes of S3 with me.

It was pretty easy to convince her to watch the show from the very beginning. She loved it from the very first scene - as a feminist, she was simply tickled by the Darla twist. Also, she's a great predictor of plots, and she was one step ahead of Whedon quite a number of times.

But of course, having watched some of S3, AND watching "Becoming, Part II" for the first time, she had a false sense of security starting that episode to say the least.

Then came the moment and WHAM! - she was bowled over like I was the first time. Hehe... good times.

P.S.: This article is a great intro to noobs as to why they should check out the show. Thank you, Jeff.

[ edited by Ronald_SF on 2009-05-31 13:30 ]

Ronald_SF | May 31, 13:27 CET

I'm always thrilled to learn of someone just discovering the awesomeness that is Buffy.

I'm a real latecomer to the jossverse - started watching Buffy re-runs about four or five years ago, moved rapidly on to Angel and Firefly, went to see Serenity on crutches with my knee in a post-surgery cast (no way was I going to miss it in the theater), bought all the DVD sets that I couldn't afford and started all over again with the glorious sans commercials phase.

Lucky Jeff Green, so much to look forward too. ;)

Shey | May 31, 13:40 CET

Yeah, I hope the poor guy has gut-punch insurance. It's all sunshine and floating pencils...for now.

alexreager | June 01, 15:33 CET

My friend who is just watching BtVS s5 for the first time had an interesting reaction. When Dawn was introduced, she assumed that she was supposed to have been being raised by their father or something and that the writers had been sloppy in saying that she had been there all along. When she said that it took me totally by surprise, though I understood it. I have often had the problem of thinking something was a clue in a mystery when it turned out to be a mistake by the writers or actors, and thinking it was a mistake when it was actually a clue. I had to reassure her that it was not a mistake and the writers were not being sloppy. She is back on track now headign for Fool for Love and Darla.

Oh, and my son has decided to watch Angel. When he was younger he found it "not as scary as Buffy, but boring." Now that he is older, he is finding it interesting and still not as scary as Buffy. Yeah, he takes after me, we're wimps in the scary department. ;-)

newcj | June 01, 17:28 CET

Fun article, and I share his trajectory: the fate of Principal Snyder in "The Pack" (which is what I assume he is referring to) totally won me over.

Septimus | June 01, 17:42 CET

Snyder was the second principal. Flutey was the one with the puppy problem.

newcj | June 01, 18:25 CET

newcj - when we first met Dawn in 501, I went nuts, because I knew I'd missed a few episodes in Season 4... but, you know, not that many...

So, I thought it was a combination of my missing episodes & writer lameitude that led to my shock & surprise about Dawn. I really should've known better.

I love watching Buffy with someone who hasn't seen it - every now and then on my (almost) continual re-watch, my partner A will come in and say, "Hey, I must've missed this one" and sit down & watch it with me.

So satisfying to watch his face as it unfolds.

QuoterGal | June 01, 19:16 CET

It wasn't long after I started watching Buffy that I saw Superstar. Took me a while to realise that Jonathan wasn't actually supposed to be like that. (I tend to FF through the opening credits, didn't notice the changes for a long time)

zz9 | June 01, 19:50 CET

LOL, QG. I saw episodes when they were first on, only now and then because my son was born just before the series started. I just did not have time to watch TV and when I did, BtVS was too scary to have on if my son was awake. I remember turning it on at some point and wondering how Buffy suddenly had a sister. It was not until years later when I got hooked and got the DVD's that I found out and laughed like crazy at their audacity. The whole series is like that for me. That's one reason I love seeing unspoiled reactions.

newcj | June 01, 20:28 CET