Buffy the Vampire Slayer Re-Watch: ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’ and ‘The Harvest’

Welcome to Sunnydale, California!

It’s a lovely place, full of folks that are more than eager to be your new best friend, and the bad part of town is just a half a block away from the good part of town. There’s not a lot of town. 

It’s the perfect place for Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) to escape to after burning down her high school gym at Hemery High in Los Angeles. (The gym was totally full of vampires so, you know, she had a good reason!)

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on March 10, 1997, with “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest,” vampires weren’t at the forefront of anyone’s thoughts, and aside from the mega-successful Brad Pitt movie, Interview with the Vampire, the fanged foes hadn’t really permeated pop culture. The late ’90s were all about boy bands, girl power, and the TRL generation.

Yet here was Buffy Summers, teenage vampire slayer. Many recognized the show’s title from Joss Whedon’s flop film just a few years prior, but The WB was a young network and took a chance on new programming that would appeal to teenagers. Buffy Summers, a beautiful young girl who embodied female empowerment, fit in perfectly, as did her cast of friends, and before we knew it a long-running television hit was born.

Buffy paved the way for a slew of copycat girl power shows (remember Jessica Alba’s flop Dark Angel?) and for the vampy-goodness we see on today’s CW lineup in The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, and heck, even Supernatural.

The reason Buffy the Vampire Slayer stays relevant, after having premiered close to twenty years ago, is because of it’s sheer originality and mix of humor and humility.

Every character we meet is flawed and the writers aren’t afraid to make a joke of it, all the while using a fictional mystical town and looming apocalyptic scenarios as a backdrop to give us higher stakes each season. It made many groundbreaking strides along the way, but all of that will be discussed in good time.

For now, we’ll just focus on the slayer.

If you’re watching for the first time, then you’re wondering who Buffy Summers is and what being a slayer means. If you’re re-watching, like me, then you’re already repeating the next line from your memory.

Giles: Into every generation, there is a chosen one; one girl in all the world. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer.

Buffy’s duty as the Chosen One means that although Sunnydale is supposed to be a new start for her, she can’t ignore what she was born to do. Plus, it just so happens that the new safe haven town happens to sit on the “Mouth of Hell.” There’s creepy old vampire underground who’s desperate to rise to the surface and a few other pretty faces that vamp (badly) into ultra deadly bloodsuckers.

And we’re pretty sure that with all of the mystical energy in Sunnydale, vamps aren’t going to be Buffy’s only problem.

There are also a bunch of new faces that are all very “keen” on getting to know her. Cordelia Chase, Sunnydale High’s resident queen bee, sets her sights on Buffy immediately, and tests her coolness factor to ensure that Buffy is good enough to be popular. (She skips the written exam, because L.A. is so close to SO many shoes.)

Cordelia is a bitch. There’s no nice way to say it. While parading Buffy around to meet new people, she manages to insult so many teens that we’re left wondering how she attained her high social status to begin with. Her biggest insult? Poor, unsuspecting Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), clad in an oversized green jumper that her mom picked out for her.

Cordelia: Good to know you’ve seen the softer side of Sears.

Buffy doesn’t enjoy Cordelia’s insults and recognizes right away that this might not be the type of friend she was looking to make here in Sunnydale and decides to get to know Willow for herself.

She seeks out Willow, as well as other “nerds” Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendan) and Jesse McNally (Eric Balfour), and she feels a bit more comfortable, knowing that THESE are the friends she was really looking to have to be successful in Sunnydale.

Buffy’s status as a slayer makes her an outcast. She can’t really tell anyone (not even her mom!) what she spends her free time doing. She flakes out and disappears to stake vampires and many other teens don’t have time to deal with her weird secretive drama. Willow, Xander, and Jesse seem a bit more understanding of what its like to not quite fit in.

When Buffy hits the library in search of books for her classes, she meets Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), the brand new librarian fresh from England. He’s been sent there to be Buffy’s new watcher in Sunnydale. Giles is the complete embodiment of what television told us British people were like in the ’90s. Uptight, always cleaning his glasses, khaki pants and sweater vests.

Giles is the complete opposite of Buffy’s bubbly, pretty, vivacious teenager. He’s focused on training and hard work, while she’s a girl who just wants to have fun. His old fashioned ways to hunt vamps are not the ones that Buffy follows. When he asks her to spot a vampire at a club and hone her skills, she immediately points to a guy in a bad jacket because you’d have to be dead for 10 years to think that was a style.

Giles: But…you didn’t…hone.

Buffy and Giles’s relationship is the one I most look forward to examining during this re-watch, as it’s always been my favorite one that exists on the show. Two people who couldn’t be more mismatched somehow find ways to work together and beat the odds that are always stacked against them.

Going back to Buffy’s secret slayer lifestyle, that very quickly gets thrown off course. She can’t keep things from her new friends, Willow, Xander, and Jesse, especially not after they’re all kidnapped by vamps and Jesse is taken hostage. There’s really no way of explaining that to anyone and having them believe you.

And it turns out that her new pals are useful. Because Willow is super smart, she’s a computer hacking genius (hello future female programmers!) Xander may not have smarts or brawn, but he’s got a lot of heart and is up for anything he can do to help Buffy. The original Scooby gang (as they’re affectionally called) is officially formed.

Buffy and her new trio of friends aren’t able to save Jesse from becoming a vamp (and from getting staked…RIP Jesse), but they do manage to stop bad guys Darla and Luke from feeding all of the teens hanging out at the Bronze to the Big Bad hiding underground, The Master.

The Master is the kind of bad guy that you have nightmares about. While the other vamps on the show have some bad makeup jobs (though still impressive for television in the ’90s), The Master has just the right amount of wrinkles around his red eyes, and the everlasting look of blood on his lips after a feeding. While Buffy and friends may have stopped him from coming to the surface THIS time, it certainly won’t be the last time that he makes an attempt.

After Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s premiere, we are intrigued by the possibility of what’s to come for this teenager and her gang of misfits who are working together to take on the Hellmouth.

Giles: We’re at the center of a mystical convergence here. We may, in fact, stand between the Earth and its total destruction.
Buffy: Well, I gotta look on the bright side. Maybe I can still get kicked out of school.
Xander: Oh, yeah, that’s a plan. ‘Cause lots of schools aren’t on Hellmouths.
Willow: Maybe you could blow something up. They’re really strict about that.
Buffy: I was thinking of a more subtle approach, y’know, like excessive not studying.
Giles: The Earth is doomed.

All the Feels…Buffy and Angel Watch:

Buffy meets the very mysterious Angel for the first time in an alley on her way to the Bronze. He tells her that she’s shorter than he thought she’d be. She doesn’t like his cryptic attitude. He warns her that the Harvest is coming and when she asks who he is, he says he’s a friend. Buffy’s already got plenty of misfit friends, which is great because he didn’t say he was HER friend.

Angel: Don’t worry. I don’t bite.

Angel is impressed that Buffy took out Luke and stopped The Master with her unusually clever plan to make Luke think it was daytime, but she and Angel don’t have fluffy bunny feelings for each other. Who is this handsome fella who keeps showing up, saying something cryptic, and then disappearing? We’ll be keeping an eye out.

Pop Into Pop Culture References:

• Cordelia is glad that Willow has seen the softer side of Sears.
• John Tesh is the former longtime host of Entertainment Tonight who forayed into music, briefly. He’s the devil.
• James Spader needs to call her? He might have been Pretty in Pink at one time, but now he’s The Office’s Robert California, and we’ll let him go to voicemail.
• The Time Life series? Man, I always wanted that football phone. Giles shouldn’t have taken the calendar.
• “A year’s supply of Turtle Wax!” a staple prize on old game shows.
• Cordelia pulling up the antenna on her SUPER old flip phone. Digest that.
• “You look like Debarge!” ’80s super group for Motown.

Cordeliaisms:

• “God! What is your childhood trauma?!”
• “Morbid much?”
• “Hello Miss Motormouth, can I get a sentence finished?”
• “Excuse me, who gave you permission to exist?”

Today’s Music Was Brought to You By:

• Nerf Herder, who perform the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme song.
• Sprung Monkey, performing “Believe”, “Swirl”, and “Things are Changing” at the Bronze.
• Dashboard Prophets, “Ballad for a Dead Friend.”

What did you think of “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest”? Does Buffy ooze girl power? Is Angel ever so dreamy? Are you sad that Xander and Willow couldn’t make it work after the great Barbie incident? Does The Master give you nightmares? Hit up the comments and talk all things Buffy with us!

I’m so excited to be re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the readers of Tell-Tale TV! Stay tuned for more!

Also, if you’re watching for the first time, here’s another post you may enjoy: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 7 Things You Need to Know Before Watching From the Beginning