10 Most Underrated Buffy The Vampier Slayer Episodes

10. Nightmares

At its surface, Season One's “Nightmares” is a typical monster-of-the-week episode: a boy in a coma who makes people’s nightmares come true, and a demon trying to stop Buffy from uncovering a morbid truth. But each character gets a chance to shine. More than that, they get the chance to go face-to-face with what they fear most.

In many ways, this episode is an early example of what was to come, and how good the show and the characters were going to be. It also showed that the gang were the core of the show, and it wasn’t all doom and monsters and vampires.

Key moments such as Xander taking on a killer clown, Willow getting stage fright, Giles imagining Buffy is dead and Buffy herself imagining she's a vampire and also responsible for her parents’ divorce. All these great dives into the characters makes this an episode well worth re-visiting.

It also gets bonus points for Xander confronting his old birthday clown: “Your balloon animals were pathetic. Everyone can make a giraffe.”