MOSTLY THEY'RE JUST GONNA KILL YOU
When Buffy The Vampire Slayer first aired in the UK, I wasn't interested at all. A TV reboot of a movie that had flopped only a few years earlier seemed like a terrible idea. And I'm not sure if the term Young Adult was as widespread then as it is now, but I was certainly aware that this was being marketed as a teen show, and at the ripe old age of, I dunno, 24 or something, I felt like this hot new series was probably beneath me.
But then Melody Maker, at the time still just about my music paper of choice, picked up on the show and started dropping favourable references, with Taylor Parkes or someone writing a feature about it that piqued my interest. And I think Clare, who if my dates are correct would have been my girlfriend at the time, encouraged me to watch it round at her house one winter teatime. It would be an exaggeration to say I was immediately hooked, but I certainly started to understand the appeal of the show.
I didn't watch every episode of every series - this was long before streaming or catch-up services existed, and I wasn't sufficiently invested to bother setting up a clunky VCR to record if I was busy that week. But I think Buffy aired early on a Wednesday evening, a night of the week when I would invariably be off out later to DJ Hammy's excellent residency at the Rhino, and Buffy was perfect pre-club viewing to get me in the mood for a night on the tiles.
This was a service which, a few years earlier, My So-Called Life had fulfilled (though at that point Hammy would have been DJing at Thursdays), and while this earlier series only dabbled in the supernatural when Juliana Hatfield showed up as an angel (not Angel), it was certainly one of Buffy's precursors, along with the varied likes of Carrie, An American Werewolf In London, The Lost Boys, Clueless, Interview With The Vampire, The Craft, Heathers, The X-Files, Doctor Who and Marvel comic books. In turn, Buffy felt contemporaneous with, and even shared some cast members with, both the Scream franchise (and its slipstream of self-aware teen horror flicks) and American Pie's reinvention of the high school comedy. Looking ahead, it would influence a whole swathe of popular culture, both good and bad, and certainly not confined to this list: Twilight, True Blood, Mean Girls, the Harry Potter films, Heroes, Riverdale, the Sabrina reboot, The 100, The Hunger Games, The Big Bang Theory, Supernatural, Sex Education, the resurrected Doctor Who and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Please don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that Buffy should be blamed for the existence of whichever of these you dislike, in the same way that Rage Against The Machine and Faith No More shouldn't be hauled up before the music judges for seeding the idea of Limp Bizkit).
More importantly perhaps, Buffy The Vampire Slayer had a huge effect on people's lives, in a way that the sort of shows that normally score highly on Best Of All-Time lists simply don't, particularly as its audience will have skewed younger than that of, say, The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. Buffy didn't patronise its viewers, expecting them to keep up with its characters' emotions as much as the plot's twists and turns. Many people would have been introduced to the idea of feminism by the strong female characters throughout the show's run, while the quick-witted dialogue will have left a permanent mark on plenty of viewers' sense of humour. As time passed and the characters grew older, Buffy dealt with a raft of important milestones: how to adjust to life beyond school, struggles with one's own responsibilities, how to deal with grief, developing sexual identities. Willow and Tara's relationship will certainly have helped teenagers struggling to come to terms with their own sexuality, or to understand others' preferences (and probably encouraged a smaller number to dabble in Wicca, to boot). I've no doubt that people will have named children after characters or had Buffy-related tattoos done. And I've met several blokes who have continued to regard Spike as a fashion icon, a decade or more after the end of the show.
Anyway, the reason I'm banging on about all of this is that, starting during the first lockdown and stretching into the second, I've rewatched all 144 episodes of Buffy, and it's occupied my thoughts to the extent that I had to write this simply to get it all out of my head (which, thinking about it, sounds a little like the sort of curse that might have fuelled a storyline in the show - look, I said it's taken over my thoughts, OK?). I'm not sure how important it is to flag this when discussing a series that finished 17 years ago, but there will obviously be SPOILERS. To avoid confusion, and in case you haven't spotted it already, I'm going to refer to the character as Buffy and the show as the italicised Buffy. I've avoided reading any fansites or anything, so I've no idea if the opinions I'm going to share are going to be totally predictable or rage-inducingly controversial, but as conscious as I am of how important the show was and remains to its audience, I'm not going to gloss over any criticisms I might have. Like, for example, that the first season isn't actually all that great.
HYENAS AREN'T WELL-LIKED
OK, hang on! I'm aware that to some people this will have been Buffy in its purest manifestation, and inevitably it will score maximum nostalgia points as most folk's introduction to the series. But watching it back this year, it feels like the young cast are learning on the job, not always delivering that famously witty banter in a way that properly lands. I don't remember this being an issue first time round, so maybe teenagers genuinely did speak faster in the late 90s. Or, as I'd have to concede is not unlikely, I've just slowed down.
Buffy, Willow and even Cordelia feel like rounded characters pretty quickly, given more to do than simply fall into the standard tropes of Hero, Best Friend and Queen Bee. It takes a while for show creator Joss Whedon to show quite as much interest in the male regulars. Giles is, at first, a somewhat cliched representation of a stuffy, tweedy English academic, though as the main cast's token grown-up, Gold Blend advert star Anthony Stuart Head does pack an understated authority which anchors any scene in which he takes part. Through no fault of Nicholas Brendon, Xander often seems either annoying, slightly creepy or both, an opinion which in all honesty it will take me several seasons to shift. And I get that this character is supposed to be brooding and enigmatic, but David Boreanaz's performance is, initially, so flat that whenever Angel appears, it's like the crew have just shunted a large item of furniture onto the set. From his first few appearances, you wouldn't peg this guy as a credible, lasting romantic interest for Buffy, let alone someone who could headline a spin-off series a few years down the line.
As a villain, The Master (now where have I heard that before?) is actually quite engaging, Mark Metcalf's performance combining camp and genuine menace in a way which feels a little like someone from The League Of Gentlemen team playing a Batman villain. However, he spends most of the series waiting to escape from the Hellmouth, leaving a seemingly endless parade of identikit vampire minions to head topside and get their arses handed to them by Buffy. Clearly, nobody would have wanted to spend twelve episodes on this, necessitating a slew of Monster-Of-The-Week episodes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a good done-in-one, and every season bar the final would continue to sprinkle these amongst the main story arc, but these first ones are generally on the lame side. A female teacher turns out to be a giant praying mantis in disguise, a pack of bullies are possessed by magic hyenas, that sort of thing. These episodes feel disposable, the lessons they impart on the predictable side, and they don't necessarily feel like the beginnings of a series which will turn out to be as significant as Buffy.
What the first season does very well, however, is world-building, in a way which totally appeals to the comic book geek I'd been not too long before it first aired. There are plot developments that will be referenced throughout the seven seasons; supposedly minor characters are introduced who will recur, with greater significance, later on. And somehow, through it all, the main cast become people we care about (yeah, except Xander). The episodes improve towards the end of the series, leading to a satisfying finale where it finally feels like something is at stake (no pun intended). Obviously the fact that Buffy actually dies (not for the last time) for a bit bolsters that impression, but for me it's a less flashy scene that seals the deal. Up to this point, it's often seemed that the teens of Sunnydale are remarkably sanguine about the numbers of their classmates who've been murdered by vamps or other miscellaneous forces of evil. (The high death toll in Sunnydale will be used as a punchline sooner or later; this is a show which is remarkable good at recognising its own tropes and mocking them in a lightly meta way.) However, in that last episode Willow discovers a bunch of teen corpses in the high school, and Alyson Hannigan does a fine job of conveying her genuine horror. For one of the first times, we really feel that this is something which has happened to people she knows, in a place where she should feel safe. It's not the last time that Hannigan will prove to be one of the cast's most important talents.
WHENEVER WE FIGHT, YOU ALWAYS BRING UP THE VAMPIRE THING
I'd argue that the second season is where Buffy really starts to become something special. The writing is better, with both a more intricately-plotted main arc and some infinitely improved done-in-ones; I'm particularly fond of the Halloween episode where everyone turns into the character they've dressed up as, and I Only Have Eyes For You, where people at Sunnydale High are possessed by the ghosts of a murder-suicide couple from 1955 (seriously, this high school has an absolutely fucked strike rate when it comes to violent demise). In Ted, an episode which veers between menace and comedy, Buffy's mum Joyce gets to have a love life, while Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered is a Xander-centric episode which backs up my argument that the dude's shifty as hell, when he tries to get back with Cordelia through the rather icky notion of a love spell that'll change her feelings for him (not unpredictably, this does not go at all well, though somehow Cordy actually forgives the creep and rekindles their romance anyway).
We'll come back to affairs of the heart shortly, but first let's note that the second season is also significant for introducing a few characters who surely deserve the epithet "fan favourites": Spike, Drusilla, Oz, even Jonathan. Spike and Dru provide a punk rock blast of evil to fill the vacuum left by the vanquished Master, even if their English accents remain utterly unconvincing to viewers on this side of the Atlantic. Spike initially seems like a fairly Constantine-ish character, being a
cynical blonde Brit with a penchant for smoking fags and wearing long
coats, but within his first episode, he makes a joke about Woodstock ("I fed off a flower person, and then I spent the next six hours watching my hand move."), kills the Anointed One (a pointless child vampire who he not inaccurately dubs "The Annoying One") and crashes a PTA event; yep, he fits into Sunnydale pretty well. Meanwhile, acting royalty Juliet Landau (daughter of Martin, who not long before had played a vampiric Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood) plays Drusilla with a streak of genuine-feeling insanity, all creepy childlike malevolence like something out of a black-hearted reimagining of Alice In Wonderland. Their appearance on the scene is the cue for a series of Anne Rice-esque flashbacks which further flesh out both their and Angel's backstory. While David Boreanaz's pre-vamp accent is even worse than James Marsters', this context all helps Angel become a more compelling character, particularly when he turns to the dark side after Buffy literally fucks his soul away. It turns out, too, that Boreanaz is actually pretty compelling as a baddie, his dastardly deeds including the cruel killing of Jenny Calendar and leaving her body in Giles's bed, a neat encapsulation of the way Buffy doesn't stint on having its bad guys do genuinely unpleasant things - something that's necessary to create a real sense of threat.
Oz is a very different proposition. Introduced as a love interest for Willow, he's part of a welcome trend in this season to give the non-Buffy cast more interesting love lifes. Where Season 1 was mainly Willow mooning over Xander mooning over Buffy, while the latter kept getting diverted by the large wardrobe that someone had just pushed into the Bronze Angel, this time round we get the comedy of Xander/Cordelia, the feels of Willow/Oz, and the this-isn't-going-to-end-well of Giles/Jenny Calendar. Hell, even Spike and Dru are a couple, with dark Angelus muscling in to make for a particularly sharp-cornered love triangle.
Of all of these romantic developments, Oz and Willow provide undoubtedly the sweetest pairing, with the former continually asking himself "Who is that girl?" as he spots her in various situations, including when she's dressed as an eskimo and, in the Halloween episode, one of the first times she isn't dressed like a 70s childrens TV presenter (though she is, at this point, technically a ghost). Oz provides a welcome counterpoint to the rest of what has become known by this point, in a suitably pop culture-referencing turn, as the Scooby Gang; while dry wit abounds amongst them all, it's normally delivered at a mile-a-minute, whereas Oz's more taciturn delivery only emphasises his droll nature. Of course, he turns out to be a werewolf, albeit a reluctant one, leading to one of Willow's great lines ("I mean, three days out of the month, I'm not much fun to be around either."). He's also guitarist in Dingoes Ate My Baby, a band nearly as terrible as their name, and a perfect excuse to discuss music in Buffy.
Aside from a certain episode which we'll get to later, and that pretty deathless theme tune (which I have to admit we ended up muting most of the time in this extended rewatch, to avoid hearing it 288 times in six months), the musical component in the show is mostly made up of bands performing in the Bronze. Despite being almost constantly under attack by vampires or other manifestations of darkness, the Bronze is a bafflingly popular Sunnydale nightspot. It's notoriously hard to find a decent representation of real-life clubbing or live performances in film and television, and this certainly isn't one, but I'm sure that the appearances of this wholly unrealistic watering hole nevertheless helped get me in the mood for the Rhino back at the turn of the millenium. The bands who played are mostly unfamiliar to UK audiences; when Four Star Mary, K's Choice or Cibo Matto are amongst the best-known, it's clear that tastes in Sunnydale didn't often align with those over here. There are exceptions, though: The Breeders pitched up in the last season to play some tunes off their Title TK album, marking the only crossover between Steve Albini's recording history and the world of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (unless there's an unaired episode somewhere with Zeni Geva or someone), while Aimee Mann's stop-off in Sunnydale even allowed her a deadpan line of dialogue ("Man, I hate playing vampire towns"). The most obvious time when a non-Dingoes band actually interacted with the storyline came in Season 6, however, when a high-on-magic Willow and Amy do everyone a favour by turning some dreary complaint-rock blokes into far-preferable femme-punks the Halo Friendlies.
There are various signs that Buffy exists in a world different to our own. And, really, just as much as the vampires, demons, blah blah blah, there's the fact that Widespread Panic and The String Cheese Incident are huge in Sunnydale. Once you start noticing the posters and stickers, on lockers and around the school, in the Bronze, on walls both inside and out, you just can't stop. OK, so during the time Buffy was on air, jam band Widespread Panic had four albums which charted between Number 50 and Number 68 on the Billboard chart. I'm not sure bluegrass-centric jammers The String Cheese Incident had any. Either way, there's no way their main demographic were the sort of cynical, spiky teenagers getting into shenanigans at Sunnydale High. On another note, I'm fairly sure I clocked a couple of Greg Ginn shout outs: a poster in Oz's room, and a sticker in the ice cream van Xander briefly drives. Black Flag would have been cool. But solo Greg Ginn? Come on, lads.
What's particularly noticeable is what's lacking. Nu-metal was huge during this period. So was hip hop. But apparently, in this corner of California at least, Widespread Panic were more popular than Korn, Limp Bizkit, Eminem and Dr Dre put together.
Anyway... the second season also introduces the notion that Buffy's death, however brief, has nevertheless created a situation where there can be more than one Slayer. This will lead elsewher later on, but for now this means we get Kendra The Vampire Slayer, belatedly the first major character of colour in Buffy, albeit one who doesn't survive ends the events of another strong season climax. Ultimately, what it all comes down to is a well-choreographed, genuinely exciting sword fight between Buffy and Angel which ends with our heroine running her ex through with a sword and consigning him to an unspeakable Hell dimension, just as - O, tragedy! - Willow remotely conjures a spell to restore the big feller's soul. Understandably bummed out by this turn of events, Buffy then sneaks away on a bus out of town, and there is no more Buffy The Vampire Slayer ever.
OK, that's obviously not true, but I've realised I'm not gonna be able to do all of this in one go, so we'll leave on that cliffhanger. Who knows, maybe next time I'll actually discuss the character of Buffy, and Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance in the title role? And at least a couple more seasons, no doubt.
The big moments are going to come.
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