Hello everyone

Disclaimer: I've only seen up to the fifth episode of this current Season, so Buffy episodes like Conversations With Dead People, and any remaining Angel episodes, which I'm glad to say I currently know nothing about, are excluded. This is highly personal, and in chronological order.

1) 'Innocence'

I entirely concur with Joss here. This is an episode which jolted the Buffyverse from being a charming, largely episodic, beautifully written horror show to a stratospherically brilliant examination of the pain of growing up, the wedges that fate shoves between good friends and lovers, and the possibility of consolation in people whose sheer love and consideration just might see you through. These are my top 10 Buffy episodes, so it's almost redundant to say this has me in tears, but 'Remember you're my one sweetheart' is as good as that darned umbrella for me. Who is the sweetheart? Xander is no longer Willow's. Jenny is no longer Giles', and Angel is no longer Buffy's, so in this sense, there is a deeply painful irony going on- furthermore the somewhat less sympathetic Drusilla/Spike coupling is starting to be inveigled by Angelus. The truly healing transformative love comes at the end, and it's completely familial or platonic. Giles playing the perfect father for once, (which follows on from the underrated and often ignored ending to 'Never Kill A Boy on The First Dat' which is also lovely), and then Joyce doing the same. Happy birthday Buffy. Oooh, and the DVD commentary is as funny as a Woody Allen film. 'Tony Head is again without pants'; 'Emotional resonance and rocket launchers'. If you've never listened to the commentary, find the time- it's the best.

2) 'Passion'

Shocked that Whedon didn't have this in. I'm going to make a sweeping statement which I'll regret later and say that the way Giles' face melts as he sees Jenny dead is the finest piece of acting in the whole series. The scene powerfully evokes the pain that Angelus achieves by his artistic murders- five Season's before D'Hoffryn's proclamation he already knows 'never to go for the kill when you can go for the pain'. akita's explanation of the words from the opera allows the perfectly romance to take on an extra ulterior power. And there's Joss' skilful remastering of Ty King's original jaded metaphors playing in to the monologue. This is a foreshadow of the noir Angel of 'Redefinition', his next monologue. Here Angel presents the idea of 'Passion' in a beautifully ambiguous way. Because he is alone in saying it, there becomes an irony in his descriptions- he is telling no-one about passion- it is as if he has none whatsoever himself. Of course, in order to be the heartless killer, many of his emotions must be nullified, whether merely by the loss of his soul or by some repression that seems somehow correct. Meanwhile, we see Giles' passion, and Buffy's passion fall apart. Yet we must not despair, for passion is what makes us 'other than dead'. An interesting counterpoint to the end of the season, where Buffy rejects mere passion with Angel in favour of saving the world- her duty above her love, metaphorically at least. 'Passion' fits perfectly into a season which is a wonderful brooding meditation on the merits and traumas of romantic love.

3) 'Becoming, Part Two'

I was chatting with Etrangere once, and she challenged me to back up my assertion that Becoming is funny. Yes, it is. Almost all Whedon's stuff is. The Spike/Joyce conversation and Whistler's insouciance work nicely here. Oz's 'I missed some stuff' perfectly encapsulates his understatement. Xander's 'If you saw what you wanted to see, why would you see me', and Giles' reaction is preiceless 'Becoming' is Whedon's finest piece of simple uncompromising drama. Every single line is a joke, a character development or a plot point, and most often two or three of those come together. It has the mission statement word of the show, which is there under my favourite line question in 'Meet the Posters'. 'Me'. In a show which is prided for its flippant wordplay, this minimalist construction of a statement, the belief in empowerment for everyone, but through women, is as articulate as anything. Yet subversion, subversion, subversion. As Whistler, a kind of mini-narrator, knows, Buffy has one more thing to lose. Angel. The peeling away of the onion of Buffy's life- school gone, home gone, friends isolating her through Xander's Lie, and the Slayer identity- Kendra; what Buffy might be gone, leaving only her. And then, ultimately, she rejects her life- after saving the world through believing in herself only, she believes she cannot save her life. 'I need a hug'. Sarah Machlachlan singing as Buffy leaves town, reflecting on turmoil and the battle won, but at what cost. A moment of despair. Season Three Angel subverts everything in the finale formula, but Season Two Buffy got there first. We say that at the end of the Season Buffy beats the bad guys and all is well. Here, the sacrifice necessary to do that ultimately temporarily defeats her, and if the Season is tied up in a bow, it's a black one.

4) 'Amends'

The pilot for Angel. Buffy in this episode is NOT the main character, which is extraordinarily rare, and usually only occurs very knowingly in episodes like 'The Zeppo' and 'Superstar'. Here, Angel is the prime figure. We see his past misdemeanours coming back to haunt him. There's this Job-like intensity to his pain. Also, Joss has the supporting characters back up his journey, not Buffy's. Note how Oz, usually the 'What They Should Have Done' parallel, here controls the literal and metaphorical monster raging inside him, and allows Willow a second chance. And even after this, he knows when sex would be a statement rather than a symbol of love, and turns it away. And Willow, as in his lorry in 'Innocence', falls head over heels for Oz again. This is what Angel is searching for, the love he must have with Buffy, because, as Spike the proto-joker says in 'Lover's Walk', they can't just be friends. Eventually he makes it due to a miracle. He can never expect forgiveness for what he's done. Giles' fragile civility to Angel represents all that he has already destroyed, although Giles' willingness to help is quite startlingly mature of itself.

And then there's the snow

5) 'The Prom'

Apart from the well-observed moment at the end of 'Graduation Day' where Oz tells everyone they survived high school, there is not so much about the end of school there. It's about all sorts of endings which fit together, and the idea of blowing up the school, but the end of school- the moment of understanding that you're moving on, comes here. The Angel/Buffy break-up scene is good, although the scene with Joyce before it is better. Joyce is being selfless, but is she misguided? Marti Noxon really had all the character's voices working dead-on at this stage of the show, and her emotional scenes are as good as any writers. A couple make me cry although they're not as obvious as the really high- profile ones. The scene between Willow and Buffy on her bed is perfect. Willow is the great friend, trying on the criticiser's role and the shoulder to cry on role. When Buffy says she's just trying to keep from dying, you can see how invested Sarah Michelle Gellar is in the storyline, and it's no surprise to me that she cited this episode as her personal favourite. There are a couple of moments with Giles which are also beautiful.

The episode is to a degree about acts of selflessness which seem too painful. Xander commits a truly altruistic act- no- one knows but Cordelia, who never reveals it to anyone but him in the most lovely of phrases, 'Of course it does'. Narcissism betraying gratitude, as everything Cordelia like should be at this stage. There's Angel forfeiting his fairy tale love for Buffy's future, and for his own independence against the stagnation of his life. Then played against this we have the ultimate malcontent, 'Andrew's brother' Tucker, who is the exact opposite, the person who wants to spoil other people's lives because of his personal pain.

Finally, after Giles' perfect 'blueberry scone' line to Wesley, we come to the manifestation of the gratitude of Buffy's peers to her supreme act of seflessness, which unlike Willow's new-made decision in 'Choices', or Xander's here, has last three years and will last another three. The umbrella is wonderful. The breaking of the umbrella in 'The Freshman' is almost unbearable to me. And Angel finally making the right decision to dance, with the underlying pain still there, but calmed for a while.

6) 'Restless'

The best episode of Buffy there will ever be. The four main characters entirely explained in the most wantonly abstract and funny way ever. There's comedy [the immortal 'And try not to bleed on my couch/ I've just had it steam-cleaned'], foreshadowing [Be Back Before Dawn], the questions of Buffy's calling in the first Slayer, technical mastery of the camera, egregious lesbian kissing, (although brilliantly the network apparently asked the network to cut Xander's reaction face- thereby cutting something entirely implicit), Spike as the film star, Willow as the insecure freshman, Xander as the directionless hormonal young man, Giles as the person finding no resolution in the battle between duty and freedom, and finally back to Buffy, and just who she is.

Visionary dialogue, interspersed with the achingly funny 'Energy, energy, energy', classic feminist subtexts, and all with enough time for a quirky in-joke. Absolutely perfect.

7) 'Fool For Love'

Another character study, this time of Spike, so complexly interwoven with Buffy's own journey that it once and for all proves Doug Petrie's genius. Where is Spike's journey best elucidated? The threatening punk, the timid poet, the lovesick puppy, the Uncomfortable Teller of Truths, the ultimate confidant for Buffy. Ultimately, he is all of these at times, and the externality of his changes through the years, intricately and carefully portrayed in the flashbacks, leads to the final, somewhat intellectual plot twist, that Spike's life is invariant, because he is again rejected by a woman whom he tries to love or idolise, and again is rejected in the same words. His immediate reaction is rage- Spike has never bottled up his emotions. His complex textural collage of a Slayer with a death wish is probably his own carefully constructed fantasy- and it all comes crashing down. As he is once again rejected as Willian the Poet, the suitor for the unattainable woman, he reverts to angry punk Spike, the vampire vindicated by killing Slayers. Ultimately he has transformed again. In the final scene, we see that Spike's story, the Slayer's origins, and Buffy's future are all interwoven. The final scene indicates the show is All About Buffy, and this is where we are shown that so is Spike's life, as Drusilla rejects him because of the Slayer's influence. Buffy is tender, worried about her Mother's mortality, and Spike tries to help. Silence says it best at the end of the story of a loquacious Joker.

8) 'The Body'

The truth of this episode's greatness lies in my temptation not to put it in. Because it's too harrowing and really truthful about loss, and the lack of catharsis in loss. It's not classical drama; it's not even modernist drama, it's just a stream of mundane, meaningless events, ending in nothing- just Dawn not touching the Body, still not comprehending death. Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance is something quite unlike she achieves anywhere else. Trachtenberg is, as always, a mini-God. Emma Caulfield performs the lines which express the complete inexpressibility of grief as it must be. When Anya is bound by lying conventions, she cannot do it,cannot comprehend. Here, noone has conventions, and truth shows real grief. Still painful for me to watch, so I don't as often as any of these others. But Death is one of very few Ultimate Certainties in this life, and this is Whedon's Ode to the Grim Reaper.

9) Once More, With Feeling

This is a moment where a totally happy piece makes me choke up, and it's just because it's nailed on. Anya may deride it as a 'retro pastiche', but 'I'll Never Tell' is excatly how Whedon writes best- comedy, emotional honesty, pain, and the sheer joy of dancing, (Nicholas Brendon copying Anya's moves as Xander's shows again after the Replacement how funny he is as a dancer.) It changes style three times,but remains cohesive, because the overall tone and direction are clear, just like Buffy's drama/horror/comedy/soap. Giles and Tara's duet makes me melt for either of them, (it's one of those moments where everyone should be both straight AND gay), Michelle Trachtenberg really can dance- the dialogue zips along. 'Once More, With Feeling' gave me a bit of an epiphany about musicals. It's not really about the music, as long as it's servicable. 'Somewhere' from West Side Story is a terrible tune. Whedon's songs are all bar a couple mediocre. It's about the words. Playfulness, honesty, parallels. That's why Whedon can do it. He'll never be a writer for pop stars, but he can do 'show numbers', because it's all in the words. How often do we quote a line from 'Once More, With Feeling' on this board? The case rests.

10) 'Dead Things'

Well, this for me is the darkest episode of the series. There are darker episodes in Angel, (vote 'Reprise' for most brilliantly nihilistic episode ever), but not on Buffy, for me at least. There's rape, misogyny, violent sexual relationships, domestic breakdown, suggestions of necrophilia, Doublemeat Palace, and another moment of complete Buffy despair where she realises that she doesn't have a licence to love Spike metaphysically- it's an emotional life choice, and she can't handle it. While it wasn't really her, it was OK.

Steven DeKnight deserves much kudos for turning the Trio easily from uncomfortable but basically comic characters to truly evil. We see how the results of living in a fantasy world is a desensitising of real events. Andrew's 'We got away with murder. That's kinda cool' is bone-chilling, and reflects back all the horrible sentiments perpetuated by the underthemes of brands like James Bond and Star Wars, while mostly criticising those people who choose to leave in these worlds to the detriment of respecting reality. We have the 'You always hurt the one you love, pet' line, after a scene which provoked controversy for Buffy's actions. She's beating up herself, beleieving her to be just like Spike. She almost turns herself into the police because she feels that she is wrong as a person, and hopes falling back on the police will help her. Also, while clearly not her fault, she over-identifies with Faith's quasi-accidental killing of Alan Finch. Was Buffy's enjoyment of the vampire fight the cause for her supposed death of Katrina? Clearly not, but in Buffy's mind, just maybe. The end of the episode is perfect, with Tara, our Speaker of Wise Words in the absence of Giles, telling Buffy that she must reconcile herself to her choices, and not flee from them, but she has nothing to be afraid of. However, Buffy takes several episodes to understand this message.

In a poor run from 'Gone' to 'Normal Again', this is the masterpiece that allows the others to be carried.

THE HONORARY RUNNER-UP:

One 'space' in my top 10 is vacant. It might be the lovely thematic unity of 'Lover's Walk', or the sheer release of 'Checkpoint', or the martyrdom of 'The Gift', or 'Family' and 'The Freshman', which I identify strongly with and think are among Whedon's best, or perhaps 'Selfless'. But I leave the gap to be filled after I complete the seventh season. If I always leave myself a hole, no-one can ever completely disagree with me...

TCH- whose end of holidays, evil exams and as evil coursework has prompted his return to prattling