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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
12 Episodes 1997 - 1997
Episode 0
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Unaired Pilot
25 mins
Buffy Summers arrives for her first day at a new school, and already weird things are happening. She investigates a dead body that is found in the girls' locker room, and, with the help of her new friends Willow and Xander, she fights a gang of vampires. Also, she meets Cordelia and her friends, and Giles, her new Watcher, tells her more about her destiny.
Episode 1
Welcome to the Hellmouth
Mon, Mar 10, 199743 mins
Buffy Summers just moved with her mom from L.A. (where she set fire to the school gym) to Sunnydale, which is, alas, experiencing a plague of vampires. She meets nerd Willow Rosenberg, cool skateboarder Xander Harris, and his mate Jesse McNally, fashionable snooty Cordelia Chase and the somewhat creepy British librarian, Rupert Giles. When a corpse with bite-marks is found in a locker, she realizes, but refuses to acknowledge, that her vampire-killing past is catching up with her and keeps Giles, her watcher (trainer), at arms-length, but is stalked by Angel who refers to the hell-mouth. Finally her destiny kicks in.
Episode 2
The Harvest
Mon, Mar 10, 199745 mins
At night in the cemetery, Buffy saves Xander and Willow from vampires. Later, Giles explains their race descends from primeval demons. Meanwhile, the vampires bring Jesse as offering to their master at the hell-mouth, before his ascension and 'harvest', but hearing about a slayer, he rather keeps Jesse alive as chained bait for her. Buffy realizes the mausoleum must be the entry and, again, meets Angel there. She enters alone but Xander catches up, determined to help his friend. Giles reads up on the harvest. Jesse turns out to be a vampire already, but the heroes escape into safe sunlight. The Master anoints vampire Luke as his killing, soul-devouring vessel. Xander guesses right that Jesse will still go to the Bronze, the town's single cool club, like normal school-kids, and so does the whole vampire gang before Buffy and friends show up..
Episode 3
Witch
Mon, Mar 17, 199745 mins
Against her Watcher Giles' wise advice, Buffy decides to get a normal life, trying out for cheerleader, but it is more competitive then she imagined. Amber spontaneously catches fire on both hands and, soon, various other girls have disabling accidents. Xander feels frustrated when even giving her a cool bracelet doesn't seem to catch Buffy's romantic attention. After some study, the gang concludes it's a case of witchcraft. Suspecting Amy, a girl who trains heavily, coached by her mother, a former champion and homecoming queen Catherine Madison, of using it to eliminate competitors, the run a test and Amy is positive but seems ignorant. Next, Buffy loses her self-control and blurts out she likes Xander, but only because he is not like other boys, rather 'one of the girls.' Giles researches how to break the spell, then Buffy guesses how Amy and mother switched roles and more.
Episode 4
Teacher's Pet
Mon, Mar 24, 199743 mins
Xander dreams of greatness. In Biology class the teacher, Dr. Gregory, is secretly eaten afterward, disappears, and is declared missing. Meanwhile, Angel gives Buffy another cryptic warning (and his black leather jacket) but no real personal info. A substitute teacher Ms. Natalie French steps in to continue the Biology lesson on insects, and her good looks guarantee volunteers after class. Later, Cordelia Chase finds Dr. Gregory decapitated. To Buffy's surprise vampires flee from Ms. French, leaving her and Giles to wonder why. She asks pheromone-soaked Xander to come study with her after class. Another student, Blayne also went to her house, but he didn't return from his previous appointment with Ms. French. When Xander arrives at her house he ends up drugged and locked up in her basement. He still refuses to believe his 'hot date' is a shape-shifting bug, even after being trapped with Blayne, but when she resumes her mantis-form, the and puts Xander in the cage with Blayne he realizes she is something evil. Giles finds out exactly what she is: a Virgin-Killer, and has Willow send Buffy to Ms. French's house. The only problem is that the Virgin-Killer stole the real Mrs. French's identity...Will Buffy make it in time to save Xander and destroy the Mantis' eggs?
Episode 5
Never Kill a Boy on the First Date
Mon, Mar 31, 199743 mins
Yearning for a normal life, Buffy agrees to a date with Owen. Giles discovers a prophecy of coming danger, but she chooses Owen over battling evil. When Giles goes out on his own and is trapped by a group of vampires, Buffy must figure out a way to balance dating and Slaying.
Episode 6
The Pack
Mon, Apr 7, 199745 mins
On a school field trip to the zoo, Kyle DuFours's gang of bullies taunt good boy Lance, till Xander stops them balancing the nerd over the fence of still quarantined hyena's. Suddenly, they are all eerily effected by the evil beasts' magical stare. Willow is completely smitten with Xander, but he chucks in her math tutoring when the hyena spell progresses, as sensed by the piglet Herbert that Principal Bob Flutie introduces as mascot for the Sunnydale High School's 'Razorbacks' football team. Next, Xander dumps Willow, fully joining Kyle's 'hyena pack' of bullies. When the four known bullies are called in to Flutie's office for devouring mascot Herbert, they eat him, too. Luckily, Xander wasn't involved as he was forcing himself upon Buffy, who knocked him down and locked him up. Giles, who first thought Xander was just suffering from pubertal hormones, now realizes it's a Massai Primal cult soul transfer, and Buffy tells him about what zoo keeper Dr. Weirick told them about the nasty hyenas. So they go talk to him while Willow stays with Xander, and learn hyenas retrieve a missing pack member for the next hunt, but not his secret.
Episode 7
Angel
Mon, Apr 14, 199745 mins
The Master in the hell-mouth feels Buffy has slain too many of his 'family', so he sends the Three, strong vampire warriors, to kill her, but Angel intervenes and they both get away. Buffy takes him home to dress his wound, sees his tattoo and learns vampires killed his parents. Even knowing the Three will be killed -as punishment and as a lesson for the master's young son Colin- guardian Giles steps up Buffy's weapons training. When Angel kisses Buffy, he turns into a vampire, but jumps out of the window. However Darla, Colin's older sister, pretends to be a school friend so Buffy's mother invites her in, then bites her and arranges for Buffy to see only Angel holding her mother. Giles research indicates Angelus is an age-old terrible European vampire, who mysteriously stopped feeding since immigrating to America. Buffy sets out to hunt Angel with a crossbow, but asks first why he spared her life, and learns Romany gypsies punished his cruelties by giving him a soul, and thus the pain of a conscience crushed by countless sins.
Episode 8
I, Robot... You, Jane
Mon, Apr 28, 199745 mins
In the twelfth century, the Italian friar Thelonious used the circle of Kayless ritual to capture the demon Moloch the Corruptor into a book, hoping it would never be read. However, it arrives in Sunnydale High Library. Before Giles could examine it properly, it's scanned into the school computer by Willow and possesses it. Virtual evil is now able to spread through the school network, pretending to be Malcolm, Willow's brand new chat pal, for whom she even gives Xander's Bronze invitation a miss. Soon, Buffy notices other normally nice students, like Dave and Fritz in her computer class, behave strangely, and start up the abandoned computer services firm CRD. By the time Giles realizes about Moloch, the demon is very deep, powerful enough to make his minions kill Dave and abduct Willow, his unknowing deliverer to whom he declares his love. Computer-illiterate erudite Giles turns for help to his cultural rival, computer science teacher Jenny Calendar, who reveals herself as a technopagan.
Episode 9
The Puppet Show
Mon, May 5, 199745 mins
Mr. Snyder, Sunnydale High's new principal after the devouring of fatherly Mr. Robert Flutie, believes in order and discipline to instill school spirit. So he orders Giles to produce a talent show and punishes the Buffy, Xander and Willow by forcibly enrolling them as candidates. Then, dancer Emily is found with her heart cut out, but demons don't usually use a knife, yet one was found next to her. So, the human student contestants are screened. The weirdest suspect proves to be gifted ventriloquist Morgan Shay, who treats his inseparable wooden dummy Sid as real, in fact takes orders from it in private. And if it is, as Giles suspects, one of seven demons who take possession of human bodies, anybody may be turned bad by it.
Episode 10
Nightmares
Mon, May 12, 199745 mins
At the hell-mouth, the Master of evil explains to his boy heir Collin that fear rules people better then love or hate. He manages to use the young schoolboy Billy Palmer to make every student of Sunnydale High's terrifying nightmares come true, ranging from Xander appearing in class wearing only boxer-shorts to being chased by murderers, losing one's favorite abilities or poisonous spiders coming out of one's schoolbooks...
Episode 11
Out of Mind, Out of Sight
Mon, May 19, 199745 mins
Cordelia's date for the May Queen election, hunky jock Mitch, is beaten black and blue in the locker-room by a 'floating' baseball bat. Angel tells Giles he can get the Pargamon Codex, the best of the missing prophecy books concerning the vampire Master. The next victim of the invisible batterer is Harmony, a close friend of Cordelia. While the gang looks into missing teenagers, presuming one has turned into a spitefully aggressive ghost as the words 'look' and 'listen' are written near the victims, English teacher Ms Miller is nearly asphyxiated. The gang finds the attacker is Marcie Ross, who became invisible because she felt nobody ever noticed her and is after vengeance on people who ignored her.
Episode 12
Prophecy Girl
Mon, Jun 2, 199745 mins
In the first-season finale, Giles discovers an ancient prophecy which states that Buffy will face the Master and she will die. Upon hearing this, Buffy first denies her slayer roots, but when a small tragedy occurs at school, Buffy realizes she can't run from destiny, and decides to take on The Master.
