Buffywatch

It’s Tuesday, and if you're reading this weblog, chances are that you already know that I'm a huge Buffy fan. You know not to call me between 8 and 9 tonight, unless you’re watching the show too, and it’s a commercial break. I schedule my appointments and plans around Tuesdays, and sometimes, I look forward to them more than Fridays. What inspires this devotion, you may wonder?

Most people dismiss the show as some kind of teenage Dawson's Creek/Charmed crap. With a name like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," on the WB (Why Bother?) channel, I can't really blame them. I had certainly thought along similar lines when the movie came out, but a friend had me watch it when it came out of video. It wasn't great, but the dialogue was written better than I expected. Out of curiosity, I watched a few episodes of the first season when it debuted. It was a little difficult to get over the campiness (at this point, I was a hard core X-phile) and the special effects were like a low budget Next Generation. It was actually pretty watchable, since it managed to capture some of the high school experience. I mentally filed it as a "guilty pleasure," something to flip on if nothing else seemed interesting.

When Gaby and Justin moved upstairs from my apartment, we had a nightly ritual of making dinner and watching TV together. One of Gaby's shows was Buffy, and we started watching during the second half of the second season. It blew me away - Buffy's loss of virginity ("Innocence") to Angel was handled unlike any other show I'd seen. It wasn't a simple "coming of age experience," something to giggle and brag about to her friends. Her actions had serious repercussions, for which she had to pay (a theme which has continued to this day), and it wasn't just teen pregnancy or STDs. It was also an effective metaphor for the kinds of fears and emotions that come from such an event in many young people's lives, and a cautionary tale for becoming sexually active. You sleep with your boyfriend for the first time, and he suddenly turns out to be someone you thought he wasn't. There's no escape from what has happened, things don't get better next week (in the next episode), and he's still around, behaving like a major creep. Despite her being a superhero, Buffy’s pain and heartbreak were easy for the audience to relate to. The harsh "morning after" scene, when he tells her that he never really loved her, that she was easy and he was only pretending that he loved her so she would sleep with him, and that she was terrible in bed - isn't that anyone's worst nightmare? But because Buffy is an empowered female, she pulls herself up by the bootstraps, and with the support of her friends and family, gets her groove back. Angel eventually redeems himself, but again, not without serious repercussions (he and Buffy can never be together - he has to get his own spinoff show).

You'd think that in a show about a superhero vampire slayer, character death would be a small matter. However, because this is the Buffyverse, a (major) character's death has a huge impact on the other characters. It's been about two years since Joyce Summers, Buffy's mother, suddenly died, ironically, of natural causes (in "The Body", one of the most affecting meditations on death ever broadcast on television - take that, Six Feet Under!), yet the most poignant moments of this season (the seventh) is when she appears to Buffy, either as dream, flashback or hallucination. It reminds us that her loss has left a gaping hole in the Summers household, and that they're still grieving for it.

Are you still with me? I salute you on your attention span.

Since character death is such a huge event, character resurrection is also a heavy topic. It's not easily accomplished, it's unnatural, and of course, there are consequences. Last season dealt with Buffy's depression, self-loathing and ennui and her escape into a violent, self-destructive fling with former arch-nemesis, Spike, after her resurrection. While most say that the last season was too dark, and spent too much time dealing with the Buffy's angst over her resurrection, I felt a little bit unsatisfied with the overall results. Resurrecting her meant messing with powerful forces, and disrupting the natural order of the universe. Shouldn't there be a heavier cosmic (not just emotional or mental) toll to pay? The episode that followed Buffy's resurrection touched on this theme, but the rest of the season didn't really deal with it. Sure, when resurrecting Buffy went to her head, Willow eventually went all Dark Phoenix in her magick addiction spiral, but that had more to do with her lack of self esteem, rather than cosmic retribution. Buffy herself said that when she died, it had been her time to go (she was in heaven - being alive again was hell for her). This season has begun to tie up loose threads from events of previous seasons, and go "back to the beginning" - dealing with the First Evil, and potential Slayers. It's my wish that they deal with this issue. I could write more about other themes, but I think that's enough for now.

On a lighter note, the show also balances the angst with sharp dialogue and deft pop culture references. The cast is also the most underrated ensemble of actors on television. Sarah Michelle Gellar is no Edie Falco, but the day I see Carmela Soprano exchanging snappy banter, execute a flying kick, brandish a broadsword while simultaneously singing and dancing in stilettos ("Once More, With Feeling") is the day I consider making more space at the top of my "Best TV shows" list.