Yeah, I'm going to beat the drum again to encourage you to watch the entire thing. Note that S1 is VERY different in tone, more "campy", closer to the movie version (which you DON'T need to see if you haven't); I think Joss was still deciding on the tone of the show, as if he hadn't committed one way or the other. Prophecy Girl pretty much settled that question.

And the parallels are amazing - Restless refers back to Puppet show in it's imagery twice. The entire show is so dense in it's imagery and each season builds on the others, it's more like a novel than most tv shows I've seen.

Giles is a bit different in S1 at first - tweedy, incompetent; he says in the Witch "That was my first spell" etc. I don't think they had come up with the Ripper backstory yet, based on what I see onscreen.

Re: Buffy "takes a long time to 'see' someone" - are you referring just to Spike and the later seasons? I can see what you mean in the early seasons with Angel, not realizing who he is at first (but then he keeps information from her); but in many instances she's astonishingly compassionate AND intuitive. In episodes like The Hyena, Ted, Living Conditions, she knows intuits that something is off, that Xander is bespelled or she's dealing with demons or bad forces when everyone else (Giles and the SG) dismiss her suspicions. Conceptualizing her entirely through the lens of Spuffy misses huge chunks of her story.