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Thanks to my good friend Greta (the Buffy goddess), who continues to send me tapes to feed my newest addiction, I am now pretty much caught up through season 4 of Buffy. Just got through the big climactic fight where they finally kick the bad guy's butt last night (after yet another marathon Buffy-watching session -- you can't watch just one!). I gather there's one more episode after that, but I'm not sure If I've got that one on tape or not. Never mind. I figure I've seen enough to have a pretty good handle on the fourth season, and to tide me over until it finally comes out on DVD.

And I find that I have somewhat mixed feelings about it, actually. In terms of the character drama, it was excellent. I mean, if nothing else, you have to have a heart of stone not to ache for poor lil' Willow a time or two in there, and there were all kinds of interesting characterization shifts as Our Heroes adjusted to college life and the sudden onrush of adulthood. It's great stuff, and I was very caught up in it.

On the other hand... Xander has a line in there, somewhere toward the end of the season: "Is anybody but me missing the Mayor?" Truth is, yeah, I have been. The 4th season's Big Bad, Adam, is an interesting character, and very well-acted, but he lacks the sheer presence of earlier villains like the Mayor and the Master, not to mention their quirky sense of humor. I also never felt that his motives and personality were quite as well-defined as they should have been, though it's quite possible that I missed something in the few episodes I haven't seen which would have provided that for me. The climactic battle, while probably unmatched for sheer body count, wasn't nearly as cool as the 3rd season's "Graduation," either... Although it tries, it just isn't quite up to the same level in terms of emotional resonance, or even sheer adrenal quality. And the whole concept of the "Initiative," while interesting to begin with, began to get a bit tiresome by the end of the season, possibly due to the fact that it just felt a bit to X-Files-ish. On the other hand, the idea of implanting an anti-violence chip in Spike's head was just brilliant (and makes me wonder anew if Joss Whedon is a Blake's 7 fan, since that show featured almost exactly the same gadget implanted in the brain of one of the main chracters). Spike's a great, funny character, and it's nice to have an excuse for him to hang around and actually help out the good guys on a semi-regular basis. Also, we got to see Giles singing, which in itself is almost enough to make the season shine for me.

My next Buffy-related project is to get myself caught up on the 7th season as much as possible. I'm getting a bit tired of perpetually being far behind the rest of the universe in my Buffy-watching!

Oh, and apparently the 3rd season DVDs will be out in a scant few weeks. It may be time to place a pre-order...