Hopping onto Buffy-blogging at season 4. So, the gang has graduated, blown up high school, and averted the apocalypse at least a couple times.
Willow: Very excited to be in college. Has new hair. Is cute.
Oz: Still Willow’s boyfriend. Still terminally laid-back.
Giles: Unemployed due to blowing up the high school library. No longer technically a Watcher, either.
Buffy: Not handling change very well.
Oh, season 4. I always put off watching you. And “The Freshman” is just unpleasant. It seems like every season has to start with Buffy disconnected from her friends and feeling unsure of herself. And this made sense after dying in season 1 and having to run Angel through with a sword in season 2, but Faith aside, “Graduation Day” was a pretty unalloyed victory.
Anyway, if high school is hell, so is college, because Buffy just kind of turns into life’s punching bag this episode, getting yelled at by a professor and getting beat up by the cool college vampires. But students are going missing, leaving notes about how they just can’t hack it there and Buffy wonders if she can’t either. She tries the adults in her life, but Joyce has used her room for storage and it turns out Giles has a personal life.
Xander cheers her up, though, in a very sweet sequence that is only slightly marred by a lecherous throwaway remark, and she defeats the vampires who have been eating college freshmen* and gathers the Scoobies into a rousing group hug type of ending.
*I really hope the parents of out-of-state students read up the Sunnydale mortality rate.
We end with an ominous shot of masked soldier tasering and dragging away a vampire, thus setting up the season arc.
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