In regards to the acting coach’s perspective on Buffy season 1 (last reviewing Witch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tt5L6IeHT4

Witch was actually the very first episode shot.

Many new shows will film a few filler episodes first while the actors are still building their chemistry, so that the first episodes aired will be even better. This was absolutely the reason why Witch was filmed prior to Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest. Might be worth noting in terms of green performances and chemistry. The chemistry is great already, though this is luckily a very fatherly episode for Giles, so it’s not as jostling as that slightly creepy, personal space-intrusive version in Welcome to the Hellmouth shot later. In Nicholas Brendon’s case with his visible waiting for the next line, outside of the unaired pilot, *this* was actually his first episode.

Obviously, this is one of the cases where the pilot was never aired (for good reason–and not just because of replacing Willow and Flutie) and many times those will have scenes redone for airing. Sometimes things are reshot due to replacing an actor, but without reshooting the whole thing. For example, Smallville had a Martha Kent stand-in due to Annette O'Toole being already cast, but only available at a later date.

In Buffy’s case, the unaired pilot was obviously a lost cause. They were still working out how to do major SFX staples of the show like the dusting effect (they tried stop motion before settling on dodgy CGI with no skeletons until season 3), as well. Even the makeup changed a bit over the first season from Julie Benz being the original test dummy for The Lost Boys prosthetics, as can be seen by the white/purple makeup being made more flesh tone. It was her first scene that coincidentally changed the least in the rewrite and performance (except for a costume change) from the unaired pilot to Welcome to the Hellmouth. She also was originally meant to die in what became The Harvest’s showdown, but was kept for another episode (and then a lot more episodes!) by having her run away (note how often Darla runs away from danger!) from Willow’s holy water.

Darla’s costume change became the Catholic schoolgirl look (she was just wearing a floral ‘90s grunge dress before) that got an explanation in 1x07. Darla doesn’t know she’s trying to jealously scare off a Slayer (she doesn’t know until the mausoleum scene) with the dead guy in the gym locker, but she knows Angel is in Sunnydale and has been following a schoolgirl. Darla later mocks Angel for this, but also exposes her insecurity and jealousy, all the way later in Dear Boy on his spinoff. Angel, of course, is Catholic, so that’s another pointed jab. A lot of viewers don’t even pick up on the Catholic schoolgirl uniform, which was worn prior to Darla knowing Buffy’s secret identity, being that meaningful. The other thing viewers don’t pick up on in regards to 1x07 is the in-hindsight meaning of Angel having human blood in his fridge after two decades eating rats and how that potentially affected his ability to socialize with humans and why he knew about delivery day at the hospital in The Dark Age, despite Whistler mentioning blood from the butcher. Something as simple as a costume change got a whole character-building backstory in a later episode. That layer of storytelling was absent in the pilot.

For continuity reasons that weren’t because of anything being performed badly like Buffy’s hair color and the school library becoming a set (Torrance High’s spiral library staircase would’ve clearly become a hazard for Tony Head!), the footage had to all be redone. Buffy had a slightly longer dialog in the library scene, for example, that is actually something of a loss because it goes into more depth about what happened to her in L.A.

Xander’s tour of the school isn’t strictly necessary for the plot, but was a chemistry-building scene, and perhaps a remnant of Joss Whedon’s intent for him to be the every man who wins the fantasy girl who is out of his league, rather than the female protagonist instead winning her unattainable, forbidden fruit fantasy (the male gaze vs. the female gaze).

Whedon was still being talked into having the Angel character at all back then, originally intending for Xander (notoriously known for being Whedon’s not-so-nice “nice guy” self-insert) to be the love interest. David Greenwalt, Marcia Shulman and Gail Berman were Angel’s biggest cheerleaders and the latter two (rather degradingly described as “puddles of drool”) outvoted Whedon during casting. The WB also only agreed to renew the show (they were actually quite disappointed by season 1) if season 2 contained more Angel and the Bangel romance, which was heavily promoted (look at any of the WB’s ad campaigns) and brought in the show’s highest ratings (the entire show’s ratings peaked at Surprise/Innocence).

Not only was Whedon against casting David Boreanaz, comparing him even to the jocks who beat him up in school and talking about how he hated making a spinoff about a white Alpha male lead as a hero, but he was reluctant to have any good vampires at all. Come season 2, Whedon was also pushing James Marsters up against a wall and threatening to fire him because he was getting too popular. Whedon made the remark that Marsters had it easier than him getting laid because of how he looked (that was on Marsters’ second day of work well before School Hard ever aired!). Whedon didn’t like it when he ended up with a good vampire sex symbol the first time, then ended up with two sympathetic vampire sex symbols on his show.

Coincidentally, both characters weren’t meant to stick around and survived intended final death scenes, as well. Angel was never meant to be more than a cryptic messenger for a few episodes (before he became the love interest or a vampire), then wouldn’t have come back from hell if it weren’t for the spinoff (which the WB wanted–it wasn’t just Whedon being finally impressed by Boreanaz’s performance as Grace Newman). Spike was originally intended to be killed by the church organ falling on him. Faith was originally going to hang herself after staking Finch.

For that matter, the original villain of season 2 was meant to be the Anointed One (hence the absurd build-up in season 1 that goes nowhere) until it was apparent that Collin’s actor had grown up too much and wasn’t that successful (cue Spike flash-frying him in a cage), with Whedon reluctant to believe Boreanaz could carry the Big Bad role. Angelus arguably turned out to be the Buffyverse’s greatest villain and Buffy’s most personal. The most subtle foreshadowing was undoubtedly the fact that the production didn’t feel the need to hire Mark Metcalf for a silent performance of the Master in When She Was Bad, so it’s actually Boreanaz (look for his wider mouth shape) beneath the Master’s prosthetics. Buffy’s having nightmares of the Master, but it’s really Angel underneath! When She Was Bad also teases what would happen if it came down to a fight between Buffy and Angel.

Whedon’s intentions being outvoted so forcefully by other writers, producers, the network and audience is mirrored by the likes of Sera Gamble attempting to villainize and kill off Castiel (whose Little Mermaid-esque arc arguably overshadowed the Winchesters and created an unintended third lead, no matter how much he was nerfed of his powers and left out of Monster of the Week episodes due to him making human hunters irrelevant) on Supernatural, only to fail with a massive audience outcry and was forced out of the show herself. Shows occasionally get away from their creators or showrunners.

Greenwalt had to also create the soul/curse mythology (massively to the franchise’s benefit!) to explain how Angel was the first gray-area exception to Whedon’s black & white world-building where vampires and demons are always bad and only there to be allegories for human problems. This is in stark contrast to today’s vampire mythologies that are no longer default-evil and mostly about “choosing boyfriends, the movie”, whereas the Buffyverse ended up taking most of its vampire archetypes from Anne Rice, despite Whedon absolutely hating “that crap”. Ironically, Rice’s vampires are all sexually impotent and murderously evil, despite Louis feeling guilty and eating rats in alleys (sound familiar?). Come the spinoff, it wasn’t just Angel, but characters like Doyle and Lorne (not to mention Wolfram & Hart’s human lawyers) further muddying that original intent. The Buffyverse was straddling two eras of genre fiction in regards to the development of the evil-to-sympathetic/misunderstood-to-good monster.

The pilot definitely felt like it was a better set-up for Xander to not be so easily friend-zoned, but the friend-zoning is complete here in Witch. That one scene here in Witch actually turns out to be a significant one, and it’s especially significant in an episode that was shot first and doesn’t contain Xander’s rival. By the time that Witch was filmed, it appears the writing staff were aware that Xander wasn’t going to be the love interest. The next few episodes also are aware of it, even when Angel doesn’t or barely appears. Earlier drafts for Never Kill a Boy on the First Date and The Pack didn’t have Angel juxtaposed against Owen/Xander (this episode got the heaviest rewrites of all) or the scene of Buffy (wearing Angel’s jacket) and Willow discussing Angel in the Bronze + Xander’s jealousy under the hyena spell at all.

Only 25 minutes were presented of a full-length pilot script (dated January 1996) that even contained Angel (back when they hadn’t even decided he was a vampire yet and you’ll notice the bigger Angel episodes were all the last episodes written and shot with scenes dropped into earlier scripts that didn’t contain him before) as a mysterious motorcycle guy who stakes a vampire outside of the auditorium showdown. Boreanaz even mentioned shooting the motorcycle scene in the 20th anniversary special that probably confused anyone who hadn’t read the unaired pilot script (which is only a minute fraction of the franchise’s older diehards who even know where to get a hold of it!)!

Despite Boreanaz being already cast with a cut scene, it is only Mercedes McNab who is in both the unaired pilot (yet not Welcome to the Hellmouth) and Not Fade Away. Boreanaz is the only actor in both Welcome to the Hellmouth and Not Fade Away. He’s also in the most episodes by a far margin. Angel is in 167 episodes, with Willow coming in at 147 and Buffy only 146.

When the Master asks for help to the Rani

Master: I will help you with this BUT-

Rani: Don’t say it don’t say it don't–

Master: You have to help me with dating- I mean, killing the Doctor in exchange.

Rani: Ughhh

Oh heeeeeeeeyyyyy…