Like a child experiencing puberty, the first season of a television series hopes you don't notice that it hasn't found its voice yet, that it has no sense of style, and that it's just getting used to the fact that everybody's ogling it. The pressures can be even greater for a TV show than for a teenager: while experiencing its growing pains under a microscope, it has a limited number of chances to catch ratings lightning in a bottle; imagine saying to a gawky adolescent, "Impress me." With the near-simultaneous DVD releases of "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer - The Complete First Season" and "Friends: The Complete First Season", there's an occasion to reflect on how a series becomes popular (although the zeitgeist is always such a mystery that we can't ever hope for a demonstrable hypothesis) and, for fun's sake, retrace the evolution of these unique TV-watching experiences.

Week after week, "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" proffers the formula for an emotionally fickle, concentration-deficient nation. Steering between lowbrow silliness and teary crescendos at breakneck speed, it couldn't be less done in by genre while remaining as faithful to its gothic origins as it does. Creator Joss Whedon isn't just Anne Rice with a sense of humour; he's Anne Rice with the ability to separate drama from fetishism. Abandoning its cinematic roots (Whedon wrote the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, and his dissatisfaction with the final product led him to re-imagine the concept for television), the show--the flagship for start-up netlet The WB--begins with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) already aware of but also resistant to her slaying instincts, having been expelled from her last high school for letting her super-strength get out of hand.

Transferred to Sunnydale High, which happens to be situated atop "the Hellmouth" (making the town vulnerable to supernatural phenomena), Buffy is appointed a "Watcher" named Giles (Anthony Head, of the serialized Taster's Choice commercials). A British expert in the occult, Giles does double-duty as the school librarian, which is frequented solely by Buffy and her small circle of friends: Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon). The self-proclaimed "Scooby Gang" (ironic that Gellar went on to play Daphne in the live-action Scooby-Doo) would expand in seasons of "Buffy" to come, but for episodes one through twelve, it's just a trio assigned missions by stammering Luddite Giles.

Each year of "Buffy" follows a thread involving a different supervillain's plan to claim the world for his kingdom. Buffy's nemesis in Season One, The Master (no relation to Doctor Who's nemesis), doesn't strike much terror in us: dispatching loyal subjects with Vaderian callousness, his threat to Buffy nevertheless lacks immediacy because he's trapped underground. Whedon and co., meanwhile, are overindulgent of Xander's secret attraction to Buffy--Ross and Rachel they're not. (It wasn't until season two that Brendon lost the undercurrent of hostility that was plaguing our like of Xander.) Buffy's early love interests suck in general, actually: one was glad to see her relationship with Angel go into overdrive the following year, sparing us further mismatched suitors like "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date"'s (episode 1.5) wide-eyed Owen (Christopher Weihl).

"Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" had yet to catch its rhythm in its debut season: many of its jokes were unattended-to bombs; the cast hadn't quite gelled (Gellar, Hannigan, and Head were marvellous off the bat, mind you, if not always in tandem); and many of its best, creepiest plants suffer from weak pay-offs down the line, such as the identity of the "Anointed One." (Click here to visit the most thorough "Buffy" episode guide on the web.) One hour, "I Robot--You Jane" (1.8), suggests a third-rate "X File." (The series didn't figure out how to do sci-fi properly until Season Four, wherein the archenemy is a cyborg.) All in all, however, the show "hit the ground running," as ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY wrote in a 2000 guide-to-"Buffy" issue, spoiling us with sharp, intuitive, imminently quotable writing that successfully reinvented (and replaced--"Buffy" has spawned many imitators) a musty literary mythos.

"Friends" hit the ground running, too, and is in its own way innovative. Sometimes it's the simplest conceits that prove the nimblest: the chronicle of six twentysomething friends (three guys, three gals) who convene daily at the fictitious New York café Central Perk exhibits few signs of exhaustion as it prepares for its ninth and final year on NBC. I wondered if it might be a bit regressive to start back at square one with the knowledge of Chandler and Monica's marriage, Rachel's pregnancy, Joey's "Days of Our Lives" gig, and all that jazz, but "Friends" works as a sitcom first and a soap opera second: Warner's first season package is chock-full of renewable jokes.

The ensemble clicked instantly. Matthew Perry (sarcastic Chandler), Courtney Cox (obsessive-compulsive Monica), and Matt Le Blanc (dense Joey) were veteran sitcom floaters; it took some kind of genius to put them in a room together, where the three could stand on equal footing. Rounded out by Lisa Kudrow (flighty Phoebe), Jennifer Aniston (neurotic Rachel), and David Schwimmer (geeky Ross), the cast members are so easily distinguishable in terms of both physicality and personality it's clear that co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane took a page out of "Cheers"' (and, really, that of any successful sitcom) book: if the sets are limited, keep your characters colourful.

The strong arc of season one is established in the debut episode: Ross' growing affection for Rachel, the daddy's little rich girl who ditched her fiancée at the altar only to move in with Monica, Ross' sister. Stumble-free for the most part, the pilot doesn't quite justify Monica's lack of discomfort when Rachel claims the spare room of her apartment, and it ends on a peculiarly sour note that's meant as a Mary Tyler Moore, we're-gonna-make-it-after-all baptism: the Central Perk gang forces Rachel to snip her credit cards in two. The writing tightened thereafter, the occasionally loathsome characterization (Susan (Jessica Lundy), the lesbian lover of Ross' ex-wife, for example, or "Fake Monica," a thief of Monica's credit cards (karmic payback?) with granola taste in clothing) nothing less than a testament to "Friends"' consistently effective scripting. But while we're on the subject of "Fake Monica": thank God we never saw her again. Or that damn monkey.

Fox DVD's box set "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer - The Complete First Season" spreads twelve episodes (the program launched mid-season) out over three platters. Video quality is across-the-board mediocre. Bear in mind that the series was initially shot in 16mm--a grainy, soft image is the best one could ever hope for. Colours--lawn-green, in particular--are bold. The Dolby Surround sound is not a vast improvement upon the broadcast audio, though dialogue is generally easier to understand on these DVDs. Bass is undetectable except in the climactic shenanigans of "The Harvest" (1.2).

Extras are scant but not without merit. For starters there are three separate interview segments with Joss Whedon (3 mins. each) pertaining to the episodes "Welcome to Hellmouth" & "The Harvest," "The Witch" & "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," and "Angel" & "The Puppet Show." These originally introduced VHS twofers and spill such beans as the origin of Whedon's cute "Mutant Enemy" logo. (Whedon's talking head returns in a superfluous 4-minute piece featuring Boreanaz.) Whedon also contributes educational commentary tracks to "Welcome to Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" (a two-parter), drilling it into our heads that his and the other producers' inexperience in the medium had them defying standard practice at every turn. A photo gallery, a section of character/actor biographies, a trailer for the first season, ROM links to "Buffy" websites and screensavers, and the script for the 2-part pilot (reproduced on-screen as white text on black) finish off the set.

Warner's 4-disc "Friends: The Complete First Season" boasts of good-looking transfers of the season's 24 episodes, a number of which contain previously unseen footage. (I noticed a couple of additions to the pilot's introductory scenes but don't know "Friends" obsessively enough to clue you in on the rest of the new material; it's a purchase incentive in any case.) Audio is remastered Dolby Digital 5.1, and if they sound a little tinny, I became quite accustomed to hearing the laugh track over my shoulders and found subsequent cable airings of "Friends" disappointing in this regard. LFE info is present during the percussive transitional music.

There is bonus material on discs 1 and 4 of the "Friends" collection. An excellent commentary track from creators Kevin S. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane supplements the pilot; separately recorded, they cover everything from fights with NBC over the opening title sequence and Monica's one-night stand with "Paul the Wine Guy" to on-again/off-again director James Burrows' alterations to Monica's apartment. On the final DVD, you'll find an interactive tour of Central Perk (with commentary snippets from a handful of crew members and links to relevant clips of the show), a "Friends of Friends" list of Season One's guest stars (with opportunity to sample their individual cameos), a "How Well Do You Know Your Friends?" trivia game, and a trailer for the second season ("The One with the Trailer for Season 2"). Note that one can view a thirty-second preview of an episode prior to selecting it, a nice touch.-Bill Chambers