Having finally found the time I sat down and finished Season Two.

The first item of note is that this season is twice as long as the second season.   This means that even if the ratio of 'plot arc' to 'filler stories' remains the same, the arc comes across much stronger.

Secondly, I have long noticed a phenomenon with television shows where, due to the uncertain futures series have, most of the best ideas of the creators are jammed into the first season.  The irony being that as a show matures, grows more stable, has more money to spend, the weaker the actual writing gets.  Buffy, at least as of Season Two, seems to have broken that mold.   Season one had a few strong ideas but really didn't build much other than the slow formation of the 'Scooby Gang'.  Season Two, however, saw a great deal added to the Buffy Canon, much of it removed or isolated from the season one foundation. It is in Season Two we go through the Angel/buffy relationship in full, exposing it as a tragic pairing, where Giles becomes a real boy and not just some stuffy caricature, where Willow begins to explore being a witch, and where everyone's character gets an arc of sorts.

Of course, this might simply mean that Season Two is more properly 'Season One' of Buffy, and 'season One' was merely the prequel to set it up... in a shows maturation cycle.  Time will tell.

The season does start very weakly, with Buffy coming back from a nonsensical summer vacation in full on 'Ima Bitch' mode, which persists, I believe, for two episodes.  This, apparently, is her response to beating the Master, and if you like, fate. Or her response to being dead for a minute or so.  Whichever it is, it feels false, forced, fake.  

It took a while to realize that the 'big Bad' of the season would be Angel.  The introduction of Spike and Drusilla happened early on, and the sudden, unexpected removal of the 'chosen one' about three episodes in was something of a shocker. Dull character, no loss.   Armin Shimmerman's Principle remained as stupidly over the top as he was at the end of Season One, going even further into caricature mode... forgivable only once we start to become aware that he is working for "the Mayor'... whom I have cheated a bit and realize in the next season's Big Bad.

The Reveal of Jenny Calendar, and her death a few episodes later was a bit rushed and, again, slightly fake.  Certainly it was meant to put a lie to the idea that Buffy characters can and do die... and stay dead... but it would prove, evidently, to be a failure in this regards.  Regarding her death: I wondered why they didn't use Angel's human face when they killed her, then I listened to Joss Whedon's chicken shit answer in the special feature interview. He KNEW it would be more effective but he was afraid to 'ruin' the character.  

Buffy, of course, continues to be a twit, running into obvious traps just because they appear obvious.  I actually started to root for Angelus to kill her at one point.  

On Spike: While certainly less cool than I had been led to believe, the second half of the season more or less redeemed him, leading up to the Season Finale where he proved an idea that had struck me two or three episodes earlier when he was supposedly trapped in a wheelchair: Spike would have been a much better character for a spin off series than Angel.  

Speaking of Angel: He grates after a while: brooding Emo with a soul, sociopathic court jester without, he's flat and two dimensional.  Spike, with his obviously evil attitude is much more balanced, more developed as a character.  Angel seems to exist within the minds of the writers solely in his relationship to Buffy, really. He has an evil past (more evil than most Vampires even...) for that reason.  Spike, in contrast, appears to possess a personality of his own, divorced from other characters, that informs his interactions with them.  That makes him interesting. Notably, he gets far more interesting as the season progresses, after the first few episodes I was ready to write him off myself as a one-note chump.  

Xander remains a contradiction. They write him as a loser geek but capitalize on his physicality, going so far as to put him on the swim team for one filler episode.  His relationship with Cordelia only highlights the flaws in that character and the weird sort of dynamic they wrote for him.  Despite the most plainspoken expression of his motivations and desires, he remains the most opaque to the others and, weirdly, to the audience.

Oz: a newer character, I will never accuse Seth Green of being a good actor after this, he is irritating in his plainness, even the sudden shift of becoming the resident werewolf doesn't seem to measurably add anything to him.

Willow: I was particularly, painfully, aware of the costuming choices for much of the season having as much to do with making her look as bad as possible, despite the revealing halloween costume and the bare legged moment in the love spell episode.  It almost was as if the creators wanted her to look unappealingly geeky to reinforce her loser-geek aspect, rather than accept that attractive people could be losers and geeks, or that geeks weren't necessarily utter losers.  Its a weird sort of metric.

Cordelia: I suspect I don't like the actress much, but she often seemed to be channeling a stereotyped college student rather than a highschool queen. She actually took several steps forwards and backwards in character developement between the end of season one and all of season two.  There was at least one episode where this was hampered by the show's focus on Buffy.

Also: SMG? Somethign I left out of the season one comments was just how stuffed up she always sounds.  Just sayin'.  Also, as her look changed throughout the season it only reinforced my earlier opinion that they want her to be sexy-beautiful and are unwilling to compromise with 'cute'.  I also suspect that the 'late nineties pain' of the costumes is more 'costume designers have no idea how to flatter a woman's body'.  It can't have ALL been the local fashion scene.  

Am I the only one tired of 'The Bronze'?

I did like the two part season finale, with a few glaring exceptions.  The death of Kendra followed far to closely to sudden reappearence in the show to look like anything other than a set up. The sudden arrival of the cops, coupled with their instant focus on Buffy as a murderess was over the top bad writing, even to create a cliff hanger, and the re-soulling of Angel just in time for buffy to 'betray' him was a tad to pat and predictable, though it did allow some Xander characterization on both sides of the event, and wasn't too cornball. The acting was surprisingly good for the entire scene, given what they had to work with.  The entire 'alienation' theme was overly forced and I really resented the addition of a new player just before he became a player in Whistler.  Foreshadowing, use it!  Also: Angel as homeless bum who cleans up to help the Slayer (when she was 14!!!)... only reinforced my belief that his character was seriously flawed from conception.

A hallmark moment: The Ghost story.  While I was less impressed than Joss at the delicate feminine acting of David Borneaz (SP, I know...), and the entire character of Buffy seemed less organic and more a product of the writer's needs of the moment, the episode was very well done, both as a random, non-vampire filler moment and pushing the story arc.  The cutaways to the original characters and the modern ones was, I thought, poorly done but both sets of actors handled it well, and the entire story carried with it fairly hefty gravitas at the end.  It is moments like that which keep me returning to the well.