Nostalgia Nights: Rewatching Buffy

When my daughter was but a wee thing, and I was in recovery from a yucky medical experience, we watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series together. M was an unusually fierce child, and unfazed by monster makeup (only one monster on it ever scared little her: The Queller Demon). She loved that the main character was a pretty girl who kicked serious butt. She even had a special credits dance that involved a lot of arm flailing and acrobatic leaping. Luckily for her, I do not have video of that dance, but it lives in my memory with all my most joyous visions.

We've been re-watching the series this fall, now that she's all but grown (college in on our near horizon now). In the intervening years, we've watched an episode here and there and memorized the soundtrack to the musical episode, but we've never watched it all again. It's a double nostalgia treat for me, remembering and enjoying again both the series itself and the girls' night bonding of watching it with my girl. We're in Season 2 currently, and plan to watch the whole thing again.

Stuff we love this go round:

• Whedon dialogue. We're especially enjoying all the random musing on words. We're word nerds ourselves, so we also wonder why you can't be gruntled, but you can be disgruntled or if sore thumbs really stick out or why it's the "whole nine yards." Nine yards of what?

• Oz. He's our geeky, fully self-actualized dreamboat. Watching the romance build up with Willow is even better when you already know it's coming. "Who is that girl?" (It's also kind of worse when you already know what's coming after that). 
• The Music: when the show was on, I didn't know most of this music, but now half the songs being played at the Bronze are songs I can sing along with. 
• Cordelia. She's a fuller and more interesting character from the get-go than I previously gave her credit for (even in previous watchings of the show). She doesn't put her head in the sand and pretend there are no monsters. Like any good rich girl, she wants a professional to take care of it for her. Like any independent woman, she also wants to supervise, and might even help sometimes. 
• The clothes. Especially Willow's. 
• Giles. The reveal in season 2 of his history as "Ripper." What a great build and unexpected treat that was!
• The monsters. The insect woman, the bug man, the cowboy Vampire brothers, Ted, Spike and Dru, the Incan Mummy girl, the big tentacled thing with the egg babies . . .and I remember there are still more to come!

Any other Buffy fans out there? What do you love about it?