Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Good: Even knowing a major character death was coming I was still surprised at well, just how seriously the show handled it. This is Buffy after all, death is cheap yet it was done well here and it was pretty emotional too. On a completely different note, it's also nice to see the side characters continue to grow (it surprised me but, I actually like Xander now and I remember really disliking him early on in the series) and become more adultlike (and, in the process, becoming much more sure of themselves). Willow and Tara are pretty awesome by this point and Gile's sarcasm is really why I keep coming back to the show, sad that he doesn't have quite as big a role now as he used to.
The Bad: I think part of the reason I liked season four better is because Buffy insists on being a show with a central villain at the end and it was really hard to believe that it took Glory nearly 20 episodes to find the key and then do something about it. Also wasn't really happy with the wrap up to the Riley arc and the start of the Spike arc but let's face it, I almost never like how Buffy (the character) handles romance. Especially since the other characters are in stable happy relationships, it's fairly depressing to see Buffy keep getting screwed over and makes you wonder if Whedon is trying to say anything about love (the Buffy sexbot built by Spike isn't helping either). Finally, Dawn. Yes Whedon I know, little sisters are a pain* and you know that the fans would be so puzzled by her that they would keep watching and you probably wanted her to annoy the fans but seriously, Dawn was really annoying and her personality seemed more the product of sloppy writing than anything else (either that or Whedon was reading too many fanfics and that's where he got the idea for this whole thing).
The Music: Huh, there wasn't an insert song in most episodes this time around, can't say I missed them but that is the music I notice most in the show. Other than that, the opening is still good for rocking out to and no times the music didn't match up with the visuals.
The Visuals: Eh, it's Buffy and that means outfits bad enough to rival the old Who and occasionally the video quality gets really crappy. Glory's underlings didn't look all that great to me but in short, eh, nothing you haven't seen four seasons of before. And I'm sure of it now that they're still reusing sets from the high school sets which just bugs me on an aesthetic level.
So, already started watching season six (I've gotten into the habit again of playing Buffy in the background as I write reviews so that's helping speed things up) but thankfully I have been watching some other stuff and my school got a lot of movies I want to see for the Spring semester. So I won't be breaking the tv/movie-anime-comic-book routine anytime soon folks!
*Or so I've heard, I only have one little, erm, smaller yet much taller than me, brother and we went through periods where we would be closer and ones when we wouldn't talk much to each other at all.
