The Master: Most Pathetic Big Bad Ever?

So I've been re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 with Jeff, and enjoying it quite a lot. I think he is too, but he's not enjoying it quite as much as I hoped. There are some parts that are genuinely scary, usually the Monster of the Week, like the jackal-possessed children and the smokin-hot teacher that's actually a praying mantis, but honestly the first season is pretty ridiculous, and the vampires are the least scary part. At the pinnacle of unscariness is The Master, of whom I must ask: is he the most pathetic big-bad ever?

Here's a typical plotline involving The Master: he gets some supposedly super-strong and scary vampire to go and kill Buffy, or to facilitate some plan to escape the hand-wavy (literally) stuff that keeps him locked inside his lair for some reason. Buffy kills or defeats them, occasionally with the help of Angel, and TM has a screaming temper tantrum like a 3 year old. He's supposed to be like 1000 years old, but he has less maturity than the Chosen One, or whatever he's calling the 9-year-old vamp who is somehow supposed to help him escape. Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane posed more danger to the Dukes of Hazzard than this guy poses to Buff. Cordelia is like 1000 times scarier than this guy.

While I'm on the subject, it is also more ridiculous than ever at my age that a 240-year-old Angel would fall madly in love with a 16 year old Buffy. Although this led to a pretty funny conversation with Jeff, in which he said that Angel looked like a teenager. I said that he looked almost thirty, at which he pointed out that so did all the other "teenagers" in the show.

I wonder if I should just skip straight to the season with Spike and Drusilla?