That's because SEASON TWO ROCKS HARDER.

Phhht! Sorry - Season two hurts more (in the good way), but season 3 kicked ass. I mean, seriously, What's My Line Pt. 2 over the best of season 3? A Kendra episode?

Don't get me wrong S3 was great. But S2, mmm. That's some good watching.

Yes, but do you really think What's My Line (and I'm personally inclined to put the all the official multi-parters together as single units) is better than every season 3 episode?

Mostly I'm talking trash, really. But I think S3, for all it's almost as good as S2ness, is more than the sum of its parts.

The following is more a musing on what you said, ita, than any kind of argument, just to put that out front:

More than the sum of its parts or less?

I think 2 had more gutpunch, but had several weak episodes.

I think 3 was damn near impeccable in terms of the episodes individually.

I think the crucial thing is what hit you as a viewer more - the Angel(us)/Buffy saga, or the Faith/Buffy saga.

Angel(us) was about the person you love turning into someone you don't know.

Faith was about the part of yourself you try to keep buried. The latter spoke to me more than the former. But I understand why that's not everyone.

I still find it impossible to rank my favorite episodes in order...but I have a feeling that 8.4 will be up there considering all the on screen Xander/Andrew lovin'...although since it was sketchy about which parts of the episodes were dream sequences and what were not, it may have been a dream...but this also begs the question, "Who's dream was it?"

I can pull my favorite episodes from each season.

S1 - Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest, Witch, The Pack, Angel, The Puppet Show, Prophecy Girl

S2 - School Hard, What's My Line pt 2, Surprise, Innocence, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, Passion, Becoming pt 2.

S3 - Band Candy, Lovers Walk, The Zeppo, The Wish, Earshot, The Prom, Graduation Day pt 1, Graduation Day pt 2.

S4 - The Harsh Light of Day, Pangs, Something Blue, Hush, Doomed, A New Man, The I in Team, Who Are You, Superstar, The Yoko Factor, Primevil, Restless

S5 - The Replacement, Family, Triangle, Checkpoint, I Was Made to Love You, The Body, Intervention, Weight of the World, The Gift

S6 - Life Serial, OMWF, Tabula Rasa, Smashed, Wrecked, Doublemeat Palace, Seeing Red, Villans, Grave

S7 - Lessons, Beneath You, Same Time, Same Place, Selfless, CwDP, Never Leave Me, Bring On The Night(which is odd because first watch I hated it), First Date, Storyteller, Dirty Girls, Chosen.

Well minus the gimmies(episodes that everone loves like OMWF, Hush, Restless) I cannot really tell a pattern in my favorites. Although I feel like the stretch of episodes in S4 starting with Pangs through The I In Team is my favorite in the entire series.

I find season 4 woefully underrated. The Initiative/Adam arc really didn't work, despite moments. But 4 had some of the most outstanding stand-alone episodes in the history of the show. And also has my personal favorite season ending episode - Chosen would be my second. Yeah, I know - heresy, but I thought Chosen was the big finish to end all big finishes, and I thought Restless was fucking sublime.

Notable in that they don't have a single Season 3 Ep. in the top 10.

"Earshot" was outstanding and should make any top 10. It was a great standalone ep and it really summed up the high school experience. Plus, we got to hear what Oz thinks.

I think that Doublemeat Palace would have fit perfectly in S4. In S6 it was out of place, but I loved it anyway. S4 was my favorite season easy. It was fun and great standalones that still had great character development. Plus it was basically the turning point for the entire series. Big things happened that somehow at the time didn't seem so big. Spike's chip, Willow and Tara, Xander and Giles dealing with where do they go next, Buffy moving on from Angel, Faith starting to realize that good is the way to go, and the unbelievable brilliance of Restless setting up the show for the rest of its run.

I, too, love S4 for the stand-alones (save for Earshot, my converter eps come from S4.), but I'm a sucker for arcs. I may love S2 more in a few years, but at this point, S3 is my Buffy uber-arc, so S3 gets best season vote from me.

I totally agree on the Doublemeat Palace comment (you know, except for the season-specific elements. Wouldn't a remix of Doublemeat Palace with Xander be interesting, though...) I think it would have been more fun back then, though, just based on the over-arching worldview at that point, if that makes sense.