Product Description
As long as there have been vampires, there has been the Slayer. One girl in all the world, to find them where they gather and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their members. She is the Slayer.Exclusive Interviews, Totally Pointy Profiles, Behind-the-Scenes Info, and Other Buff-stuff About the Hit Show.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Boreanaz, Nicholas Brendon, Charisma Carpenter, Seth Green, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head, James Marsters, Juliet Landau, Mark Metcalf, Robia La Morte, Armin Shimerman, Joss Whedon, and more!
Love Bytes: Boy meets Girl, Girl meets Monster: does anyone live?
A Walking Tour of Sunnydale's Hot Spots (both of them)
The Slayer Handbook (according to Buffy Summers)
Character Guide -- who knew what and when?
Monster Guide -- vampires vs. Bezoars: who's deadlier?
Special Guest Stars -- John Ritter?!
Playlist -- what song did Buffy and Xander slow dance to?
Don't Try This at Home -- an interview with the show's stunt coordinator!
Bonus! Never-filmed dialogue from the original scripts!
Never-seen, behind-the-scenes photos -- Seth Green in makeup, Xander's closet, those icky fish guys!
The Monsters, The Mythology, The Villains, The Victims, The Fashion
Don't be caught dead without The Watcher's Guide.
Amazon.com Review
One of TV's best shows now has a superb tie-in book--and this watcher's guide is even better than the one for The Simpsons. For novices, the title is a pun: Buffy, an ordinary high school girl with all the normal problems, also must spend her nights battling vampires and demons, supervised by her "Watcher," who poses as the school's librarian.
But the book serves novices and obsessive Buffy fans equally well. Each episode of the first two seasons gets a snappy yet learned summary, including a "Quote of the Week," a quick recap of each love entanglement and relationship switcheroo (and no soap opera is tanglier than Buffy), a "Pop-Culture IQ" guide (when Oz hunts for Buffy--who's been turned into a rat--that's Michael Jackson's "Ben" he's singing), countless pop-up balloons of fun facts (Buffy was turned into a rat in order to free up her schedule to host Saturday Night Live), and a catalog of "Buffy's Bag of Tricks"--her weapons, plus all the spells, chants, incantations, and previously incomprehensible rock-band lyrics on the show.
There's way more than we can list here. Not only do we get an ample sample of dialogue nearly as clever as Seinfeld's, there are scenes from the original scripts that were cut for length and cast interviews. Every single vampire, demon, witch, zombie, mummy, werewolf, shape shifter, ghost, reanimated cadaver, invisible killer, prehistoric parasite, monster puppet, and psychotic robot on Buffy's acrobatic dance card gets its due.
Get this book, then send one as a gift. Friends don't let friends miss out on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
useful at times, but overall boring to read, 2008-05-20
The most useful part of this book is the multitude of quotes supplied for every character, theme, and episode. The book is also peppered with interesting sidebars containing trivia, the show's famously funny stage directions, and Buffyverse info only noticeable through multiple watchings. Yet the character descriptions, intro to Buffy mythology, bios, and other text-heavy parts of the book are deadened by a juvenile style of writing that lacks color yet overdoses on complimentary language. If you are considering buying this book, you probably already know how great "Buffy" is and how clever Whedon is, and don't need to be convinced. The general gushiness, which is tempered and balanced by serious character and plot review in other books, is dull when supported only by lengthy, boring recaps. My suggestion: buy it used, because it's not worth the list price or Amazon's price.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Non-Fiction, 2008-05-05
Very informative, and a lot of fun.
Along with brief episode descriptions and information there is a whole lot more fun stuff to be found in this look at the first couple of seasons of the tv show.
Informations on the various quips and references made by the characters, and also some quotable quotes will come in handy for fans, no doubt about it.
Plenty of other bits and pieces following the characters and their relationships.
Good stuff.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Great resources, but..., 2008-04-26
The watcher guides are great. But The Big Book Of Buffy Bites 2008 contains things even they missed. For Buffy collectors the Watchers Guides are must have and great reads. But for the avid fanatical BtVS fan who wants it all I highly recommend The Big Book Of Buffy Bites 2008. This book is up to date (2008 and season 8 info), and contains everything you could possibly want to know about Buffy the Vampire Slayer...and more. One feature I have not seen in any other book, is a detailed time line of all the slayers...from the First Slayer...all the way to Buffy. This was a pleasant surprise.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Not the best, but a must have for any avid fan, 2004-05-24
This isnt the best book if you're looking for a behind the scenes one. But it is great when it comes to quotes. Behind the Scenes is more in the 2nd volume.This has an excellent array of quotes from seasons 1 and 2(which is what this book covers). It also has pretty good episode reviews, with some deleted scenes usually showing up along with some unknown facts.
But it also has some information that I found boring, which included a tour of Sunnydale.
But on the whole, not to bad of a book.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Pretty interesting though a bit lightweight, 2003-12-06
I like the books by Kenneth Topping a lot more than the official guides. They are more fun, more informative, and because they aren't "official" can be fans more than authors maintaining an official relationship with the show. But having said that, this and its companion volume are both really informative. And although I knew all the quotes anyway, it was a lot of fun reading them all. The best part of the book is the interviews with people you normally don't hear as much about, like set designers and associate producers and such.