I’ve just spent almost my entire weekend without leaving my place once. Between 1am Saturday morning to 7pm Sunday night, I stayed exclusively at home. The highlights included watching Shrek, the ending of Four Weddings and a Funeral, a DVD movie called Wicker Park, a few hours of Rage and a British horror movie which, while admittedly was fairly lame, did feature a few glorious scenes in which a somewhat younger Kate Beckinsale was nekkid.

On top of all that, I also invented a new vegetarian spaghetti dish with Hoi sin sauce and mayonnaise and I won three regular season games with my fictional Dallas Mavericks team on the Xbox. It’s becoming too easy I think.

I didn’t spend a single cent all weekend.

The last thing I did, that I want to talk about, is entertain myself by way of running my very own slayerfest. Five episodes of Buffy, thus finishing off season 5. And here’s what I realised:

Buffy’s damn good.

Buffy the series should’ve ended with season 5. Buffy dies and that’s that. Actually, Joss Whedon did plan for it to end with 5. But what was he supposed to say to an offer for two more seasons worth of cash? Season 5 was just so poetically complete. There’s a real feel of finality to it. The next two seasons, in comparison, are like the Degrassi High reunion episode and the hobbit pillow fight in Return of the King. Yes, you did want to know what happened after, but after you watched it, you kinda didn’t think it was all necessary.

I didn’t need to see Buffy bonking Spike almost every episode in Season 6. Really wasn’t necessary.

Anyway, when people used to ask me why I liked Buffy, my standard reply was ‘She’s a cute blonde chick that kicks arse. What’s not to like?’ But now I realise that’s really not doing the show any justice. The greatest trick that Joss Whedon did was convince the producers of the original concept. Buffy just sounds like a lame concept. I didn’t buy into it. But what they did during seven years of the show was often pure brilliance. The mythos they built up, the characters they developed. This was a really well-written show with a more-or-less coherent universe.

Spike is a very interesting character. I hated when he went soft, but in the context, it was somewhat understandable. Glory is a fantastic villain – a stunted hell god gone insane from frustration and sharing one body with a human vessel. The whole plotline with Dawn being inserted into the show without prior notice was fantastic.

Ironically, the best episode of the season may have been one that didn’t involve the supernatural. ‘The Body’, which was about the early stages of grieving for Buffy et al after the death of her mother, is possibly the most realistic portrayal of post-loss grieving that I’ve ever seen on screen. It was equal parts uncomfortable and brilliant to watch. Everything was spot on.

Anyway, now I have seasons 2 and 3 to go. I know I said that the show should have ended with season 5. But I kinda wish the show never ended at all.