I needed younger friends, so I could have found it in season 1, rather than season 3.
My boss at the time was 60 and he was the one who kept nagging at me to watch it. But, noooo, I wanted to see Mac and Harm get it on on JAG. It was an FX Buffy marathon that finally hooked me.
I have never been so grateful for having a flu as I am for the one that kept me home in front of the TV the night Buffy premiered.
I found Buffy early in the first season by channel surfing. I heard a few lines of the dialogue and I was in. It took me three years to convince my best friend to watch it. She swears she will never question my television recommendations again. The name was a hard sell. In pimping the show, I must have said "It's a metaphor" a hundred times.
I found Buffy late in season 2 when I moved to a brand new apartment complex that was so new that they didn't have any of the cable lines hooked up yet. I was far away from the big city and the only channel I could get over the antenna was the WB. I turned on my TV to my one channel, expecting to quickly turn it off in favor of PlayStation or a movie. WB was rerunning "Surprise" and "Innocence" to refresh viewer's minds in the lead up to the finale. Despite not knowing what the hell was going on, I was hooked. Then came the frantic search for the 24 episodes that came before "Surprise"; a very difficult task in 1999 with no iTunes or TV on DVD yet.
I caught Buffy once or twice in the first two seasons, but it was always as a sort of background thing, with distractions, so it was never anything that really grabbed me.
Then when I moved out here to California, on that first Tuesday (I'd moved out just before the new seasons were starting), 8:00 rolled around and all the people I was with (including MM, Aimee, and a few others) told me to sit down and be quiet. I proceeded to watch
Alice
and was unalterably hooked by the end.
I caught Buffy once or twice in the first two seasons, but it was always as a sort of background thing, with distractions, so it was never anything that really grabbed me.
Sean is me, only it was moving back to Seattle and getting cable, and I wasn't watching with anyone, and "Anne" came on, and I watched it, and soon I felt like I was cheating on X-Files.
Anne. Not Alice.
I must have gotten confused by waitress "A" names.
I have to thank Megan for hooking me on Buffy. I had seen part of an episode here and there and had blown it off thinking it was pretty lame and cheesy. When I started working where I'm working, I met Megan. Shorly after I started working there, I got cable, on the day my cable was installed, Megan said to me, "You have to go home and watch Bufffy at 8PM." (This was during Season 3.) I came back the next day and I was hooked. I just looked at her and said, "I have many questions."
I think season three was extra fertile ground, for that. There was Faith! And there were illicit smoochies with Xander and Willow, and you knew Angel and Buffy were a big thing, but you hadn't seen season 2, and season 3 was all star-crossed. It was all intrigue, no fatigue, if you were a new viewer. And there was the Mayor. So, so, so, so good.