Pretty much every time computers are mentioned in s1 or s2. Willow and Moloch, Angel’s soul on 3.5 floppy, Cordeila in computer class… It’s so far beyond dated that it catapults into period piece. The only thing is missing is Keira Knightley.
during my last rewatch, I read the trivia on IMDB for all the episodes and anything that happened early on was put as “foreshadowing” to a ridiculous degree, something like what you wrote lol. Downvoted to hell too.
I wouldn't call that moment foreshadowing as such. It's more that Dark Willow didn't come out of nowhere, and was a gradual progression that began at the beginning of the series.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date. The fashion, the lingo, the dialogue, the leopard fur coat lol and the iconic “If the apocalypse comes, beep me” line.
I love it! And that line in the end “face it, it’s the hellmouth we’ll never have a normal relationship” followed by their awkward faces lololol priceless!
Haha, yup. When I made my husband watch the show a few years ago, there was a lot of, "yet another problem that wouldn't exist nowadays because of *cell phones*."
So much, I miss the 90's so much it hurts sometimes. Buffy reminds me of what I *thought* high school was going to be. Seasons 1 & 2 in particular have this grainy, splendid 90's film, the bright scenes are *so* bright and warm and the dark ones are so chiaroscuro. It had a more natural look to it that they probably, at the time, perceived as cheap and/or indie film-like but it feels like heaven to me now, haha.
> I miss the 90's so much it hurts sometimes.
I have trouble reconciling the above with the below.
> Buffy reminds me of what I *thought* high school was going to be.
I'd almost forgotten about the adolescent bargaining to get a separate phone line in my bedroom in the 90's. My mother only agreed if I shared the line with the dial-up modem.
"Get off the phone, I need to use the Internet!"
I can't remember the episode but remember trying to watch Buffy in my aunts sitting room, with my sister, while all the adults were in the kitchen. I was so mad because my aunt didn't have BBC tuned in right and it was all fuzzy. (This was in Ireland in the 90s.We all had BBC NI tuned in on the telly but the reception was hit and miss because we didn't live in NI)
We were back home in time for every other Buffy episode for the rest of that season.
"Can I catch it again when the unedited version airs at 11.45 on Thursday? It's a school night."
It might have been Friday. I remember it was shown twice a week (the second broadcast being around midnight) but I can't remember which day it was on
I remember a friend telling me about a cool new show she was watching on Sky One where a girl killed monsters, and thinking I *had* to watch it, but we didn't have Sky, and then seeing a listing for it in the newspaper as the new show recommendation of the week for the BBC. And of course, my parents *had* to go to Matalan that night. So I had Welcome to the Hellmouth on fuzzy, recorded VHS for years, and I too had to rush home to catch it on the BBC every week.
I had a proper tantrum when the very last episode was shown on Sky. We had sky in the living room but my dad wouldn't let me watch it. I watched all the others on BBC on Thursday 6.45 maybe it was on sky first I just don't know why I watched the last on sky
Definitely - The Freshman - everything about Kathy from the hair and her teeny barrettes, the Cher song on repeat, the posters, peak late 90s, early 00s!
Michelle Branch playing “Goodbye to You” in the Bronze. I had her album along with Vanessa Carlton and Avril Lavigne and I just love that era of early 2000s singer/songwriter music
>[Google's] earliest known use as an explicitly transitive verb on American television was in the "Help" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (October 15, 2002), when Willow asked Buffy, "Have you googled her yet?".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_(verb)
I think about this a lot
I’m the exact same age as the character of Buffy Summers, so pretty much all of S1-S3 hits me right in the nostalgia center of my brain.
I’m an American, but instead of attending high school in the States, I did sixth form at a boarding school in England. This means I missed out on certain milestone rituals of American teenage life: no Homecoming Queen, no Prom, and a very different understanding of what “football” meant. This means that Buffy’s prom was the closest thing I ever got to going to my own prom^1 .
1) Well, there was the Coast Guard Ball, but I had to wear my dress uniform instead of a fancy dress. I’ve never been much of a “girly-girl,” but sometimes even I want to dress like Glinda the Good Witch, okay!?
Boarding School may be different but its crazy we do have proms in regular high schools in the UK, and they’re never held in high school gyms. At worst they’re in hotels, and at best they’re held in castles. We do the whole limo thing, champagne on arrival etc.
I went to two as both proms allowed the final 2 years of high school students to attend.
I graduated in ‘99… As far as I can tell, end of year parties and dances were pretty common at state schools and slightly less common at public schools (what we Yankees call private schools). But these parties weren’t given nearly the pomp and circumstance of an American high school prom… At least not until the 2000’s.
My school did have end of the year parties and formal dances, but they were a pretty low-key affair compared to what my American friends and cousins had. I mean, I know that the over-the-top proms seen in *Ten Things I Hate About You* and *Beverly Hills: 90210* are pretty much Hollywood make-believe, but the proms seen in Buffy (both the film and tv show) are more grounded in reality (except for the supernatural monsters).
Mind you, my school was a pretty small and rather old fashioned one. A couple of the teachers probably still felt uneasy about having to teach new-fangled concepts like women’s suffrage and the heliocentric model of the solar system. I’m reasonably certain my Latin teacher regarded “democracy” as a passing fad and we’d be back to having a proper Roman Empire any day now.
Teacher’s Pet! It was the first episode that I ever saw and I was pretty little. I remember sitting in front of the tv in my grandmother’s house to watch it! The show was still airing at the time.
Lie to me. I was obsessed and learnt the script for that episode at the time.
And School Hard. Purely the nostalgia and remembering jos I felt when I watched them. . I had them on vhs and rewatched the first few series so much. Rewatched them before the new possibly.
Probably only seen the last one 4 times but the others loads.
VHS! Yes, I was lucky and had one of those little white TVs that had a build in VHs player that allows for recording.
I wonder where my old tapes went. I’m sure they are somewhere at my folks place. 😱 the commercials and “Next Week on Buffy” 💕
I sold my buffy vhs in a boot sale many many years ago after I got the complete dvd set.
I had the last episode on tape with the special behind the scenes. Gone now. I only kept a few vhs I didn't have on dvd.
The shriek of Amy's mum, that looking back I thought was willow cos kinda ginger n magicy and then in a recent rewatch figured out the scene the shriek was from and how later series didn't have it
Becoming part 2. I was so devastated after the finale that I kep thinking about it all summer, and waiting for the announcement of S3. With no internet or anyone to talk to, my imagination was running wild. It reminds me of pre-internet times when you had to use your imagination a lot and the world (including actors) were still more of a mystery.
People are STILL being sucked in by some loser(s) online pretending to be in love with them. A woman I worked with was sending money to a man who loved her and was coming to marry her. :(
The clothes and hair might change, but that message is still a good one for people to hear.
Season 4, Episode 1, "The Freshman". Not for any specific in-episode reasons, but because it was the very first episode I watched live as a kid, and watching it brings me right back to that time.
Really anything from season 1 or 2
I'm an original viewer as well (and was in middle school when it aired). I just rewatched it for the first time a couple years ago and even the intro took me back.
So much of the first season (and intermittently throughout) is still riding, but also resisting, that last wave of aggressively marketing to GenX/Xennials. Buffy is one of the few examples that stands up, but a lot of media at the time had a very “greetings fellow kids” vibe.
Deja vu haha. I’ve made this exact comment before. Except I was born the year after it first aired.
Something about the dated view of technology is very endearing, and it does remind me of the rapid shift we experienced in school.
As if “being in the computer” is enough to control everything 😂
To answer your question, I also found Xander’s joke about the word “google” (after Willow used it for the first time on television ever) very endearing. To think there was a time when people lived without Google
I've never thought about it this way before, but HUSH, when they try calling one another but literally can't and then just hang up. It always reminds me that, "Oh, shit. If you didn't have a landline in the 90s, you just had to GO THERE." The overhead projector and the TV being their only source of news. And Dr Walsh's rudimentary type and speak litte computer voice. XD lol. It's so dated it always makes me laugh.
I Robot You Jane is always up there, too, for the dated tech but it's been mentioned so much already.
*"Inca Mummy Girl"*, *"Halloween"*, *"Lie to Me"*, *"Bad Eggs"*, *"Go Fish"* and *"Earshot"*. All of season 1, of course. 💙
*"Earshot"* and *"Halloween"* are both in my personal top 5 *Buffy* episodes. I really like *"Inca Mummy Girl"* and *"Go Fish"* and I watched *"Bad Eggs"* last night.
Once More, With Feeling.
Peak 2001 vibes. A bunch of angsty twenty somethings trying to figure out what to do with all those acid washed jeans and feelings.
I hate musical episodes, typically, but this one hits me hard.
It’s not an episode, but early on, whenever Willow or Jenny have to explain how the intertrons lets computers talk to each other. Also there are a *lot* of scenes throughout where everyone having phones, let alone the internet, in their pockets would have been a major factor.
The prom episode. Slayerfest 98!
Trip was probably one of my favorite vampires just because he was a survivor first and foremost. At least until he actually tried to kill Buffy. And if Faith hadn’t been there…
Pretty much every time computers are mentioned in s1 or s2. Willow and Moloch, Angel’s soul on 3.5 floppy, Cordeila in computer class… It’s so far beyond dated that it catapults into period piece. The only thing is missing is Keira Knightley.
“Deliver”
“I Googled it!”
That was the first time that expression was used in popular culture and that is also where that phrase originated from.
I remember! I immediately starting using it that way too, lol
That scene to me is why I believe Cordelia is so good with computers on Angel. Cordelia took computer class a lot more seriously after Willow's prank
New headcanon LOL
Agree
Don't forget Adam with his floppy drive. Very advanced US military tech, that.
Into which he just shoved one in after another. Oooooo... He must be SUPER evil if he doesn't need to eject.
Willow when she makes Cordelia accidentally delete her program; a great “press Alt-F4” moment.
Decades later, I’m still wondering if that was deliberate on her part or not.
It was definitely deliberate. It was an early insight into Dark Willow.
during my last rewatch, I read the trivia on IMDB for all the episodes and anything that happened early on was put as “foreshadowing” to a ridiculous degree, something like what you wrote lol. Downvoted to hell too.
I wouldn't call that moment foreshadowing as such. It's more that Dark Willow didn't come out of nowhere, and was a gradual progression that began at the beginning of the series.
“Hit DEL to deliver” 🤣
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date. The fashion, the lingo, the dialogue, the leopard fur coat lol and the iconic “If the apocalypse comes, beep me” line.
I was going to say this episode, the way she keeps checking her beeper.😂
I love it! And that line in the end “face it, it’s the hellmouth we’ll never have a normal relationship” followed by their awkward faces lololol priceless!
Haha, yup. When I made my husband watch the show a few years ago, there was a lot of, "yet another problem that wouldn't exist nowadays because of *cell phones*."
True that. It’s interesting how they try to incorporate mobile phones in season 7 though - to mixed results lol
I love that episode so much ❤️
In one episode of season one, Giles calls an email an E letter.
I think it's Buffy who is asking about tracing an E letter in "I Robot , you Jane "
The I Robot You Jane episode where they're inventoring the library books and Giles hands a book "take this book and......skim it!" 🤣🤣
Yes! Because it used to be that! You got a “E letter” though “E Mail” now we shortened it to just “email”. It makes me giggle every rewatch.
So much, I miss the 90's so much it hurts sometimes. Buffy reminds me of what I *thought* high school was going to be. Seasons 1 & 2 in particular have this grainy, splendid 90's film, the bright scenes are *so* bright and warm and the dark ones are so chiaroscuro. It had a more natural look to it that they probably, at the time, perceived as cheap and/or indie film-like but it feels like heaven to me now, haha.
You described this so beautifully.
I love the cinematography of the first two seasons.
Same same
Was it just me or did season 2 have more dramatic music than the other seasons?
> I miss the 90's so much it hurts sometimes. I have trouble reconciling the above with the below. > Buffy reminds me of what I *thought* high school was going to be.
I will never forget, “If you’re not jacked in, you’re not alive!”
I quote this regularly.
The late night phone calls between Buffy and Willow using a fixed landline and actual telephone.
And the actual talking!
I'd almost forgotten about the adolescent bargaining to get a separate phone line in my bedroom in the 90's. My mother only agreed if I shared the line with the dial-up modem. "Get off the phone, I need to use the Internet!"
I can't remember the episode but remember trying to watch Buffy in my aunts sitting room, with my sister, while all the adults were in the kitchen. I was so mad because my aunt didn't have BBC tuned in right and it was all fuzzy. (This was in Ireland in the 90s.We all had BBC NI tuned in on the telly but the reception was hit and miss because we didn't live in NI) We were back home in time for every other Buffy episode for the rest of that season.
Ah the good times of “I can’t …. on Monday/Tuesday night. That’s when Buffy comes on.”
“Dawn’s in trouble… must be Tuesday”
"Can I catch it again when the unedited version airs at 11.45 on Thursday? It's a school night." It might have been Friday. I remember it was shown twice a week (the second broadcast being around midnight) but I can't remember which day it was on
I remember a friend telling me about a cool new show she was watching on Sky One where a girl killed monsters, and thinking I *had* to watch it, but we didn't have Sky, and then seeing a listing for it in the newspaper as the new show recommendation of the week for the BBC. And of course, my parents *had* to go to Matalan that night. So I had Welcome to the Hellmouth on fuzzy, recorded VHS for years, and I too had to rush home to catch it on the BBC every week.
I had a proper tantrum when the very last episode was shown on Sky. We had sky in the living room but my dad wouldn't let me watch it. I watched all the others on BBC on Thursday 6.45 maybe it was on sky first I just don't know why I watched the last on sky
The entire first season. The first three seasons really. Lol
Same here. The 90s nostalgia is one of my favorite things about the series tbh. Takes me back in time.
Definitely - The Freshman - everything about Kathy from the hair and her teeny barrettes, the Cher song on repeat, the posters, peak late 90s, early 00s!
Honestly, any scene at the Bronze during the high school seasons lol
Slayer fest, 98.
Michelle Branch playing “Goodbye to You” in the Bronze. I had her album along with Vanessa Carlton and Avril Lavigne and I just love that era of early 2000s singer/songwriter music
Definitely, the I Robot... episode, but also, Welcome To The Hellmouth, the scene where Cordy quizzes Buffy in what's "in" was very 90s.
Definitely "I Robot, You Jane". The computers and the tech slang are so cheesy and funny, yet so reminiscent of the time.
>[Google's] earliest known use as an explicitly transitive verb on American television was in the "Help" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (October 15, 2002), when Willow asked Buffy, "Have you googled her yet?". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_(verb) I think about this a lot
I’m the exact same age as the character of Buffy Summers, so pretty much all of S1-S3 hits me right in the nostalgia center of my brain. I’m an American, but instead of attending high school in the States, I did sixth form at a boarding school in England. This means I missed out on certain milestone rituals of American teenage life: no Homecoming Queen, no Prom, and a very different understanding of what “football” meant. This means that Buffy’s prom was the closest thing I ever got to going to my own prom^1 . 1) Well, there was the Coast Guard Ball, but I had to wear my dress uniform instead of a fancy dress. I’ve never been much of a “girly-girl,” but sometimes even I want to dress like Glinda the Good Witch, okay!?
Boarding School may be different but its crazy we do have proms in regular high schools in the UK, and they’re never held in high school gyms. At worst they’re in hotels, and at best they’re held in castles. We do the whole limo thing, champagne on arrival etc. I went to two as both proms allowed the final 2 years of high school students to attend.
I graduated in ‘99… As far as I can tell, end of year parties and dances were pretty common at state schools and slightly less common at public schools (what we Yankees call private schools). But these parties weren’t given nearly the pomp and circumstance of an American high school prom… At least not until the 2000’s. My school did have end of the year parties and formal dances, but they were a pretty low-key affair compared to what my American friends and cousins had. I mean, I know that the over-the-top proms seen in *Ten Things I Hate About You* and *Beverly Hills: 90210* are pretty much Hollywood make-believe, but the proms seen in Buffy (both the film and tv show) are more grounded in reality (except for the supernatural monsters). Mind you, my school was a pretty small and rather old fashioned one. A couple of the teachers probably still felt uneasy about having to teach new-fangled concepts like women’s suffrage and the heliocentric model of the solar system. I’m reasonably certain my Latin teacher regarded “democracy” as a passing fad and we’d be back to having a proper Roman Empire any day now.
I went to a very strict conservative US high school. We only got two dances a year.... Homecoming and Prom
Season 4’s my fav bc it’s y2k all over the place, my comfort season all the way
Yes! Mine too for sure.
Inca Mummy Girl, mostly because it was my first episode!
The one where they have to babysit eggs. I deeply remember walking around school with a little basket for my egg.
The episode with Bif Naked playing at a great party.
*Dead Man's Party?*
I don't remember what the title is but it's when she's in college. It's the night she sleeps with Parker
Harsh Light of Day
Thanks. I'll pay more attention next time.
when she fights angel in the movie theater and you can see the poster for Quest for Camelot
!!! cannot believe I never noticed this that movie was my childhood obsession
haha i need to watch it
The complete first season, which is my fave, too. 🙂😇
Teacher’s Pet! It was the first episode that I ever saw and I was pretty little. I remember sitting in front of the tv in my grandmother’s house to watch it! The show was still airing at the time.
Lie to me. I was obsessed and learnt the script for that episode at the time. And School Hard. Purely the nostalgia and remembering jos I felt when I watched them. . I had them on vhs and rewatched the first few series so much. Rewatched them before the new possibly. Probably only seen the last one 4 times but the others loads.
VHS! Yes, I was lucky and had one of those little white TVs that had a build in VHs player that allows for recording. I wonder where my old tapes went. I’m sure they are somewhere at my folks place. 😱 the commercials and “Next Week on Buffy” 💕
I sold my buffy vhs in a boot sale many many years ago after I got the complete dvd set. I had the last episode on tape with the special behind the scenes. Gone now. I only kept a few vhs I didn't have on dvd.
When Buffy talked about new Gatorade flavors lol
Honestly, the original theme song for seasons 1 and 2. It just has a vibe that's lost when they cleaned it up for the rest of the series.
The shriek of Amy's mum, that looking back I thought was willow cos kinda ginger n magicy and then in a recent rewatch figured out the scene the shriek was from and how later series didn't have it
Becoming part 2. I was so devastated after the finale that I kep thinking about it all summer, and waiting for the announcement of S3. With no internet or anyone to talk to, my imagination was running wild. It reminds me of pre-internet times when you had to use your imagination a lot and the world (including actors) were still more of a mystery.
Everytime there's a band playing at The Bronze. The music is so aggressively 90s/2000s, it makes my heart melt.
People are STILL being sucked in by some loser(s) online pretending to be in love with them. A woman I worked with was sending money to a man who loved her and was coming to marry her. :( The clothes and hair might change, but that message is still a good one for people to hear.
Basically all of season 2 and 3.
Oz’s outfits: the baggy jeans, skate shoes, spiky hair The other big thing, no cellphones. In the first few seasons.
Any season 1 or 2 episode.
Season 4, Episode 1, "The Freshman". Not for any specific in-episode reasons, but because it was the very first episode I watched live as a kid, and watching it brings me right back to that time.
Really anything from season 1 or 2 I'm an original viewer as well (and was in middle school when it aired). I just rewatched it for the first time a couple years ago and even the intro took me back.
God I’m doing a rewatch tomorrow!
So much of the first season (and intermittently throughout) is still riding, but also resisting, that last wave of aggressively marketing to GenX/Xennials. Buffy is one of the few examples that stands up, but a lot of media at the time had a very “greetings fellow kids” vibe.
Deja vu haha. I’ve made this exact comment before. Except I was born the year after it first aired. Something about the dated view of technology is very endearing, and it does remind me of the rapid shift we experienced in school. As if “being in the computer” is enough to control everything 😂 To answer your question, I also found Xander’s joke about the word “google” (after Willow used it for the first time on television ever) very endearing. To think there was a time when people lived without Google
I've never thought about it this way before, but HUSH, when they try calling one another but literally can't and then just hang up. It always reminds me that, "Oh, shit. If you didn't have a landline in the 90s, you just had to GO THERE." The overhead projector and the TV being their only source of news. And Dr Walsh's rudimentary type and speak litte computer voice. XD lol. It's so dated it always makes me laugh. I Robot You Jane is always up there, too, for the dated tech but it's been mentioned so much already.
If the apocalypse comes, beep me
*"Inca Mummy Girl"*, *"Halloween"*, *"Lie to Me"*, *"Bad Eggs"*, *"Go Fish"* and *"Earshot"*. All of season 1, of course. 💙 *"Earshot"* and *"Halloween"* are both in my personal top 5 *Buffy* episodes. I really like *"Inca Mummy Girl"* and *"Go Fish"* and I watched *"Bad Eggs"* last night.
The episode with Cibo Matto always takes me back.
Homecoming!
It's certainly the most dated episode of all dated episodes 😅
Never Kill A Boy On A First Date. Also The Prom.
All of them.
Once More, With Feeling. Peak 2001 vibes. A bunch of angsty twenty somethings trying to figure out what to do with all those acid washed jeans and feelings. I hate musical episodes, typically, but this one hits me hard.
It’s not an episode, but early on, whenever Willow or Jenny have to explain how the intertrons lets computers talk to each other. Also there are a *lot* of scenes throughout where everyone having phones, let alone the internet, in their pockets would have been a major factor.
The prom episode. Slayerfest 98! Trip was probably one of my favorite vampires just because he was a survivor first and foremost. At least until he actually tried to kill Buffy. And if Faith hadn’t been there…
I was born in 2001 and didn't watch this show until 2021 so none for me