I was going to say, I might love Passion because I loved the characters by the time I watched it. I don't know. I'm not great with the recs.

Passion was my first ep. It's arc-heavy, but I found that it explained things well enough so that wasn't a detriment. (And I think that helped hook me into watching the rest of it, to find out all the backstory.)

Ya' know, I think the one where Oz figures out he's a werewolf (yeah, yeah, lame that I can't remember the name -- what is it? Phases, maybe?) has a lot of good stuff in it. Kind of gives away the Angel goes evil thing, but if you're not worried about spoilers. There are some good scooby interactions in that ep, I think. En masse and one-on-one. Can't replay the entire episode in my brain, but the flashes I'm getting are making me happy.

ETA: And also not really arc-heavy, I don't think. Or I do think not. Whatever

It is really hard to find a single episode to do it in.

My friend does enjoy musical theater, so that's one of the reasons it occured to me.

But there are weeknessess to using it as a single shot.

I think the main reason I thought of OMWF is that I don't have to get him hooked in one episode, I just need to make him realize he was wrong about the show being stupid and juvenile.

I just need to get him to agree to watch more episodes. Then I can start showing him mini-arcs to get him hooked.

Hush might still be better.

Or possibly Halloween and Band Candy. I bet I can get him to sit still for those two.

I think the main reason I thought of OMWF is that I don't have to get him hooked in one episode, I just need to make him realize he was wrong about the show being stupid and juvenile.

I would definitely suggest Passion for that. Not much juvenile about that ep. (Hush would also be a good choice, but if your friend is approaching it with that frame of mind, I think Passion better counters the preconceptions.)

Halloween is what grabbed me. I'd also say that Angel and School Hard are good ones.

Remind me, which one is Passion again? That's S2, right? Refresh me, I may have seen it.

I think Surprise/Innocence is perfect if you can lock em in for two hours.

FWIW, Surprise/Innocence did nothing for me until I knew the Buffy Angel Twoo Wuv tragic backstory.

I agree that "Hush" is probably the best stand-alone. "Crush" is the episode that made me go from "I watch this show once in a while but I don't see what the fuss is about" to a drooling fangirl, but i'm not sure it would work if someone had no idea what was going on.

Remind me, which one is Passion again? That's S2, right? Refresh me, I may have seen it.

It's the one where Angelus kills Jenny Calendar and tells Joyce he slept with Buffy. Very dark and twisted; one of my top 5 from S2.

Sean, I would vote against OMWF as a first episode. A friend and I were trying to convert another friend to watching Buffy right about the time OMWF aired. It wasn't the first episode that she saw, but it was close to it. Because she didn't have enough background to see what else was going on, even though she liked it, she mostly liked it because she thought it was funny.

The point of showing my fantasy-hating friend OMWF was to convince her that it wasn't a juvenile sci-fi show. (And I was drunk and wanted to sing.) And it worked in that regard. It just didn't make her care about the characters or what was going to happen next.

Passion and Hush are both great in that they are action-packed and don't dwell too much on the high school/college is hell thing.

Halloween hooked me but it is pretty teen-showish.