Anne

As an episode of Buffy, I'm only rating this a seven, but by golly the cojones on the team for coming up with such a depressing downer of a first episode. Hence the upgrade to a "9."

This is pretty much as dark as Buffy gets. Sparse humour interspersed with black humour completely enshrouded in sorrow and portents.

Even the Scoobies visiting the Bronze almost break fourth wall with their "depressing night" gag.

The fact that Wheedon feels confident enough about his series to start out with such a suicide-in-waiting of an ep just shows how much confidence he has in the rest of the season..

And holy moly, this season delivers.

For the first episode of season three of "Buffy," Joss Whedon spared no expense. Great cinematography, loads of stunt work and great set design. (Too bad that IMDb does not post budget information on individual TV episodes, this episode must have gone way over budget to get in those hellfire factory action scenes.) Plus there is the main plot line, a story as grim as any shown on a broadcast TV series. I edited out the scenes set in Sunnyvale, leaving just the scenes involving Buffy and her encounter with an evil group that preys on runaways. In the 32 minutes running time of my version, Buffy goes from a downcast waitress in a diner to a demon killing machine. I have seen nothing like this "Buffy" on TV since, this episode is made like a big budget mini-movie.

Awesome episode, the production value was top notch, definitely a bigger budget episode. It feels very cinematic, especially with big city L. A location.

The one take that happens on the first day of class scene alone makes the episode a top tier buddy episode.

I totally forgot how a depressing episode "Anne" was. I realized the dark theme when i re-watch this episode about 3 years later after the first time. I already watched whole series one time and some of the episodes 5-10 time but this is my second watch for Anne. (I am trying my husband to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it is really excellent opportunity for me to realize little things that i have not realized earlier.)

While watching "Anne", i feel like this was the exact time when Buffy starts to be alone, apart from everyone. There was no one who could understand her. There was no one whom she could talk to, even Giles. It was the first time she was actually alone, and she could never be the part of the community ever again. I felt really sorry for her.

I think this episode is really underrated as a season premiere - it handles the fallout from the end of S2 perfectly. It's also the perfect set up for Buffy finally accepting and owning that she is the Slayer, and beginning to figure out how to move forward trying to balance having a "normal" life with her Slayer responsibilities.

This episode is also a really good example of how people in desperate situations can't afford to stand up for themselves or to fight the status quo, and that's how the status quo and people in power maintain themselves, and that it is literally a system intentionally created to exploit humans as expendable resources. Buffy has superpowers and she still has to tolerate sexual harassment/assault at work because she can't afford not to without the privilege of her family and friends support system.