Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Every Season 2 Episode Ranked
Buffy's sophomore effort is an all-time classic, despite its slow start.
The second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, for many fans, the gold standard of what the show had to offer during its run. By finding its footing as a drama and bringing in more personal, deadly threats for Buffy and the gang to face, it brilliantly capitalised on the potential the series promised with its debut.
Heralding the arrival of fan favourites Spike and Drusilla, the season pits Buffy and the gang against their most horrific adversaries yet, including a tragically de-souled Angel. It's longer than the previous season, but with this added time the overarching conflict is able to really hammer itself home in the most memorable ways.
The season isn't all good, though. It gets off to an admittedly slow start, for one thing, and most of the monster-of-the-week episodes watch like tacky season one leftovers, but there aren't enough of these duds to derail the season entirely.
With that in mind, here are all 20 episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's classic second season ranked worst to best. (For brevity's sake, all two-part episodes are counted as one here.) Major spoilers follow.
20. Go Fish
There are many things wrong with Go Fish, the most jarring of which has to be its placement in the season. Sandwiched between two of its most emotionally devastating instalments - including the finale - its flaws are made painfully clear.
Following Xander as he goes undercover and tries to figure out what's killing the high school swim team, the episode gets immovably trapped under its "drugs are bad" message and abysmal effects, which are aiming for Creature of the Black Lagoon but come off more like an amateur Halloween costume.
It's misplaced and misguided, making references to sexual assault and drug use without tact, and the results create perhaps the show's worst-ever episode.