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Homepage > Joss Whedon’s Tv Series > Buffy The Vampire Slayer > Reviews > Best Buffy Episodes - Dan Erenberg Minion #1
From Slayage.com Buffy The Vampire SlayerBest Buffy Episodes - Dan Erenberg Minion #1By Daniel Erenberg Thursday 18 December 2003 I’m going to open the Dan Erenberg mailbag up today. Occasionally I make jokes about having fans and stuff. It’s just for fun. The fact, however, is that I do have my fair share of minions. Oftentimes I get e-mails from some pretty good people. One of them is Ashleigh Caldwell who is good friends with Nicholas Brendon’s twin Kelly Donovan and his wife. Then there is Clayton Sutherland whose complex feelings on all things Buffy eclipse even my own. I’ve also had e-mailed correspondence with published Buffy authors Nikki Stafford and Keith Topping (both incredibly talented writers in their own unique ways). But yesterday I got this e-mail from this guy Stephen Frug who has now become Daniel Erenberg Minion #1 (am I Dan or Daniel in this column? I can never remember). Check out this e-mail: Dear Daniel, In an early column you wondered if your column had any fans. Well, I’m one. I, like you, like Riley and Season Six more than most — although, I think, I didn’t like Season Seven as much as you did. Anyway, as a fan I just did a little bit of figuring — it can hardly qualify as statistical analysis! — on your list of Buffy episodes in order of preference (with "Chosen", "End of Days" and "The Witch" integrated as you suggested in your FAQ2 essay). I thought you might be interested in the results. I thought I’d look at which seasons your favorite and least-favorite episodes fell into. Obviously this is not the same as which is your favorite season — best and worst episodes are one sort of measure, but there are a lot of others, such as over-all thrust and power — but I thought it might be fun. I decided, rather arbitrarily, to use the top and bottom 20% as an interesting marker — it gets used in statistics a lot, so what the hell. Since there were 144 Buffy episodes, that meant that we were looking at the top and bottom 29 episodes, rounding off. The problem came with the top 29: in some cases you listed two-parters together, in some apart. I decided on an inelegant compromise: I took the top 29 items on the list, which included the opening two-parter of season one and the closing two-parter of season six, but then treated the combined two-parters as separate episodes then counting — thus, there are 31 items in the top 29, though only 29 in the bottom 29. Whatever. (I note parenthetically that you divvied up the two-parters slightly differently in your top ten episodes essay than you did in your longer list. I don’t know which makes more sense. Personally I’d treat each episode as a separate one. On the other hand, doing them all together, as you did in your top-ten essay, is at least consistent; in your longer list, you lump together some but no others, and not always in a way that made sense to me — though I think the criteria seemed to be whether or not it played on a single night. (I didn’t watch them when they first aired, so this is less intuitive to me, I guess.) Anyway, here are the seasons into which your top 29 (i.e. 31) episodes fell: Season 3 6 Season 2 5 Season 7 5 Season 1 4 Season 4 4 Season 6 4 Season 5 3 And here are the seasons into which your bottom 29 episodes fell: Season 7 0 Season 3 2 Season 6 2 Season 1 4 Season 5 5 Season 2 7 Season 4 9 And, finally, in a final rush of stupidity, I subtracted the latter from the former and got: F A few thoughts about these probably-pretty-meaningless results. First, the favorites are much more evenly distributed than the least-favorites. (Was this deliberate?) Secondly, the lists confirm your preference, as stated in your FAQ essays, for season 7 — although season 2, your other favorite, is oddly schizophrenic, with high numbers of both favorites and least favorites. Season 4 doesn’t do so well — odd since I think of you as a defender of it (as I would be), what with your defense of Riley, of Cordelia et. al.’s leaving, etc. I personally can’t imagine making a list of least favorites in which Season 7 had no entries — the weakest season of Buffy, I’d say, although obviously you quite disagree. Season 5 does worse than I would have expected; Season 3 comes out expectedly well, Season 6 perhaps surprisingly well (although, again, you defend it (as I would.) Obviously, if one took a different percentage — top 10%, say, or top 20% — you’d get different results, maybe quite different. Another method would be to give each episode a point for its rank on the list (i.e. "The Body" would get 144 points, "Chosen" 143, etc., down to 1 point for the lowly "Beer Bad"), but that would take too long even for an odd list-making obsessive like myself. You might want to try it, perhaps. I thought you might be interested in this, as I said. I thought the results might be unexpected — perhaps you wouldn’t have guessed which seasons your favorite and least favorite episodes would bundle into if you hadn’t looked at it explicitly. Perhaps it might even inspire a column! yours in listamania, Stephen How about that, baby? A FAN! Alright, though. There’s a lot to talk about in this e-mail. I’m here to spark some conversation about the statistics. First the top 29: It’s very accurate and fairly evenly distributed. The two best years, seasons two and three are deservedly at the top, followed closely behind by season seven. Then there’s seasons four, one, and six on the same plane and five last. I find this very interesting considering I have an extreme love of season five. I contemplated this for some time and I think I’ve come to a conclusion. Season five, of all the seasons (and I think this could be said of seasons four and six as well) were very much a consistent story with very consistent themes. Season five probably has the least in this top 29 list because there were fewer outright great episodes because they were all part of the same story. Stuff like “Checkpoint” or “Intervention” or “No Place Like Home” or “Real Me” or “Shadow” that I really like don’t really stand on their own, and that is part of the criteria of that list. Speaking of the list, I should probably print that at this point: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER EPISODES FROM BEST TO WORST 1. The Body Okay. Now let’s move on to the bottom 29. It’s interesting that season seven had zero. There are a lot of season episode episodes smack dab in the middle of the list. There’s no episode in season seven where I sat up and said, “That sucked”. There always was before season seven. In season six, I hated “Doublemeat Palace”, in season five it was “Triangle”, in season four it was “Beer Bad”, season three didn’t really have one either, in season two it was “Killed By Death” and in season one it was “I Robot, You Jane”. Season seven didn’t have a “Beer Bad”. Interesting, however, how many (9) appeared in season four considering that I’m a huge supporter of the season. I’m pretty sure that this is because there were so many episodes around the middle of the season that were just not stand-up-and-take-notice episodes. While advancing the story and keeping my interest, they felt kind of blah. I’m speaking of stuff like “Pangs”, “Fear Itself”, “The I In Team”, and “Doomed”, the ultimate in blah. Finally, there are the final results according to Dan Erenberg Minion #1: Season 7 5 Season 3 4 Season 6 2 Season 1 0 Season 2 -2 Season 5 -2 Season 4 -5 It would appear that season seven is the best and season four is the worst. This isn’t true. The best seasons are probably seasons two and three and the worst is probably season one because of its lack of knowing how to really stage a good demon. Interesting results anyway, though. Weird that season two is so low. If you want to be a minion, just e-mail me. I’ll add you to the list. Hey, if (Ultimate) Drew Goddard can have them, so can I. And to close, there’s a joke that appears in my site bio which should appear in a beige-ish box below this article. It says that if you’ve fallen in love with me, e-mail me. Just for fun, check this out. Dear Daniel, I am a beautiful woman who has fallen in love with you... and am also, of course, a Buffy geek. And an Angel geek too. And my lovely fingers are getting numb and raw, checking back again and again for your review of Angel 5.8, "Destiny." Of course I saw it myself and have my own opinion, and have read all the other reviews... but none of the other reviewers holds a candle to you, my love. You have until Jan 7 before a new one airs, but it would excite me so... not to have to wait any longer, to hear from you, on this account. You are so learned, so clever, so creative, so intelligent, so witty... though, alas, I have not agreed with you on every point, but you have made your points so well... that you have helped to open up my mind, to consider new possibilities... And you see so clearly your own point of view. An very admirable trait in a man who writes... I know you are busy, gothic novels and all, but if you could find the time to share your brilliant views on "Destiny" soon, I would be forever grateful. Thank you. Your humble lady-in-waiting, SurayaRose Oh, yeah. And I dug “Destiny”. |
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