Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Best: Season 3 Unrated, 16 hrs., 30 mins., 1998-99 (Fox) High school is hell - that’s the essential conceit underlying the adventures of Buffy Summers and her Scooby Gang. While the college years certainly yielded brilliant television (’’Hush’’ and ’’The Body’’ stand out), what truly informs creator Joss Whedon’s clever insights costumed as campy horror throwaway is the universal experience of adolescence: battling derisive cool kids (possessed by evil hyenas) and fancying unavailable brooders (because sex can turn guys into monsters). Best at embracing the charm and terror of high school on the Hellmouth was the slayer’s senior year, when a briefly telepathic Buffy braved a sea of teenage insecurities to prevent school violence (’’Earshot’’) and Willow resisted lesbian advances from the vampire version of herself (’’Doppelgangland’’). All this built to the explosive Big Bad battle with the OCD serpent mayor and his frisky sidekick, Faith, on ’’Graduation Day.’’ But no number of stakes could ever slay us as profoundly as Buffy’s wrenching last dance with Angel at ’’The Prom.’’

Worst: Season 7 Unrated, 16 hrs., 30 mins., 2002-03 (Fox) If Buffy’s brilliance hinges on innocence lost to the hellishness of growing up, what happens when the Scoobys reach adulthood? Buffy takes a desk job? Xander gets hitched? Why not open the Buffy Summers School of Slaying, for girls about to enter their own adolescent hell? (Wait, we’re kidding.) Without the silly mockumentary, ’’Storyteller,’’ and poignant series finale, ’’Chosen,’’ the Slayer’s last season would have met a tragically limp demise.