Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 7

Buffy's final season had a similar dark tone to the last couple, though thankfully it had a strong storyline to keep it afloat like the fifth as opposed to just being sort of aimlessly depressing like the sixth. I really liked it, though still not as much as or for quite the same reasons as the show's first few years. It's not that the show doesn't have a strong mix of humor in with the horror and action; it's still quite funny in places. It's just that earlier on there was a sense of fun to the whole proceedings, as Buffy and her friends could still be kids growing up in between apocalyptic fights to save the world. Once Buffy had to stop attending classes that feeling was replaced with another of dread and constant duty that weighed a little too heavily on everybody. It doesn't mean the show was inherently worse, just different.

There's really a shift in the paradigm that leads into what I know about the comics that continue the story, as the time of the Watchers comes to an end and the potential future slayers are introduced. Buffy has to take more of a leadership role, and you can see how things are affecting her life and the others more than they should be for someone in their early twenties. I'm not sure about the villains this time. Nathan Fillion was quite excellent and actually pretty scary in his big role near the end, but the main bad guy didn't have the presence they probably should have, literally and figuratively. It's kind of hard to effectively convey the destruction of the first evil entity when they don't have a form to be destroyed. Still, the conclusion was a suitably climactic and exciting finale for a long running show like this. One more season of Angel and then it's on to reading the comics.