Welcome to the Hellmouth is a typical introductory episode, taking its time to familiarise the audience with the main characters and explain the premise. The series picks up more or less where the Buffy movie ended, but sensibly assumes that the viewer won't have seen it.

All the various elements are juggled with consummate skill. Writer Joss Whedon still finds time to work in plot strands that will be taken up in the next episode, while admirably driving the narrative forward.

First impressions are very favourable. The main characters are appealing, and the show's premise is commendably unusual. This is hardly surprising, as most of the bugs were worked out by the feature film, and an elusive untransmitted pilot episode. At this stage, the characters seem fairly stock, (the computer nerd, the stuffy British librarian, etc), but they're quickly fleshed out in the next couple of episodes. Even in the era that's given us The X-Files and countless inferior spin-offs, there's no show that's directly comparable to Buffy.