By Troy Brownfield
5.24.03
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The
largest regular cast of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer",
circa Season 5. Willow, Giles, Buffy, Tara, Dawn, Xander,
Spike, Anya and Riley were still on board. Oz had departed,
Angel, Cordy and Wesley were on their own Season Two,
and Andrew and The Potentials had yet to appear.
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Bye-Bye
Buffy
One of
my favorite TV shows of all time finally shuffled off the
televised coil this past week. After 144 episodes, a spin-off,
and literally millions of words of analysis in magazines,
websites, and term papers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
chose to go out on a high note. In a time when series linger
long after their welcome has worn out (Friends, Frazier, I'm
looking at you), Buffy managed to say good-bye in a
terrific hour of TV that recalled the show at its best and,
incredibly, left you wanting more.
The final
episode (warning: here there be spoilers) contained a microcosm
of everything that was worthwhile about the show: action,
humor, devilishly clever writing, and a capper on the recurring
themes of female independence and empowerment. Creator Joss
Whedon wrote and directed with his influences and ideas up-front;
no fan of comics or Tolkien could possibly have been disappointed.
There was also a great moment just before the final battle,
where the four original principle characters (Buffy, Xander,
Willow and Giles) met to discuss . . . what they'd do tomorrow.
It was hilarious and touching, echoing episodes past and reminding
us of the journey that each character had taken. Buffy had
matured from a girl burdened with unwanted power to a woman,
a leader, and in many ways, a mother. Willow had blossomed
from tentative nerdishness to power and beauty. Xander proved
that despite his lack of special powers, he was a hero in
the truest Campbellian sense; fiercely dedicated to his friends,
he would fight no matter the odds, even to the cost of an
eye. Hell, Xander even got to save the world at the end of
Season Six. As for Giles, he found the middle-ground between
his Season One stuffiness and his wayward youth, ending up
as something of a hip father figure that acknowledged his
own fallibilities.
In fact,
one of the truly rewarding elements of Whedon's universe is
that nobody is truly one-note. Perhaps the least complex
character of all was The Master, the villain of Season One.
Beyond that, I challenge you to find a character that didn't
make some type of advancement along the way. Anya morphed
from vengeance demon to a vibrant, funny mortal woman in love
to a jilted bride and finally to a woman that was willing
to lay down her life because she'd come to understand the
heroism inherent in her friends. Andrew moved from geek follower
and unwitting murderer to redemption-seeking comic relief.
Then,
of course, there's Spike. He's been the source of debate for
years, most recently in a wrong-headed Salon article that
pronounced him the ruination of the show. The writer claimed
that the "cool" Spike ruined the high-school-geek-outsiderishness
of the early seasons. Apparently, the writer failed to notice
a few things: 1) Spike was a geek himself, a terrible poet
that only found "cool" because he became a vampire.
No matter how badass Spike could be, he was always a sop around
the women he fancied. His lack of self-esteem was never more
evident in the episode earlier this year where he felt like
he had to reclaim his old clothes in order to fight. Spike
may have fooled that writer, but he didn't fool us. 2) The
show, no matter how many people whined about it, had matured
past high school. There's a near universal truth: if you were
a geek in high school, you become infinitely cooler once you're
out of that stupid fish tank. It's true. People grow up; get
over it.
I think
that's why so many people bitched about last year, Season
Six. It was diffuse, depressing, and challenging. What they
didn't realize is that Whedon and the gang were presenting
you with the dark side of your 20s. Despite what Friends tells
us, your 20s don't guarantee a swank job and a huge apartment.
There's a lot of difficulty in those years, and its the final
formation of who you are. Of course parts of Six were hard
to watch; it's hard to live through. Spike was a great example
of that; Buffy's relationship with him was every kind of bad
choice. It was the rebound, it was the dalliance, it was the
lure of the bad boy (again).
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Perhaps
the greatest season of the show was Season Three. It
introduced rogue slayer Faith, shuffled Angel off to
his own show, and ended with a spectacular battle at
the Sunnydale High Graduation.
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But enough
quibbling. For me, the main appeal of the show was always
the super-intelligent writing. Whedon and his co-horts took
the pop-culture referencing of a guy like Kevin Smith and
fine-tuned it into art. Take for example the first episode
of Season Four, which works in, often with amazing subtlety,
tributes to the original Planet of the Apes, the Avengers
battle-cry from the comics, Star Wars, the Nuremberg rallies,
the operant condition work of Dietrich von Freiberg's Treatise
of the Intellect and the Intelligible, the novel Of
Human Bondage, Monet, Gustav Klimt, Lay's Potato Chips,
Hugh Hefner, America the Beautiful, the film Grand
Canyon, Scarface and the Dadaist movement. All this from
a show that some people wouldn't watch because of the title
(or the God-awful film that we all, Whedon included it seems,
wish would go away). However, the appeal of the show wasn't
just the humor. It was the sweeping, almost operatic drama
that went along with it. The horror/maturation analogies were
easy, but the writers and actors developed their archetypes
into believable characters. It was truly great TV.
Most of
the shows that I have great love for ended early. Look at
Twin Peaks. Babylon 5 nearly got capped a couple
of times, and actually had a downer of a last season with
that sketchy telepath plotline. Buffy, in its 7 seasons,
managed to begat Angel (now embarking on Season Five),
and, in a very real way, likely inspired the creation of shows
like Dark Angel and Alias. There was grumbling
from fans this year that the show had lost it by bringing
in the Potentials and spreading around too many ideas. I actually
take that as a compliment. When you have a show that's so
rich in characters and ideas that people gripe that you aren't
fitting enough in, that just means that they want more.
Well,
I want more too. I wish the show was still around, but I understand
why it won't be. This cast and crew has learned the lesson
of shows past, and are saying good-bye before we wanted them
gone. We'll still have Angel, coming off of a solid
season and newly reinvented. We'll have some old friends dropping
by on the show as well. And even SMG herself has noted that
a sweeps appearance for the brother show isn't out of the
question.
Once all
seven seasons are out on DVD, it'll be like looking at an
epic novel on the shelf. Sure, you liked some chapters better
than others, but on the whole the entire experience was rewarding.
Some shows may be artier, and some shows may have more popular
appeal, but I'll be damned if I can think of many that I liked
more and had more fun watching. That's often a
component we forget in critiques. Ultimately, the best thing
we can say about Buffy is that it was intelligent,
well-crafted, emotionally gratifying, and best of all, fun.
Buffy and her friends may have saved the world a lot, but
they made the fans smile a whole lot more.
Troy Brownfield is the Editor-in-Chief of Shotgun Reviews.
Email Troy at psikotyk@aol.com
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