Better Late Than Never – Buffy Seasons 1-3

Buffy the Vampire Slayer only ever held a passing interest for me. I watched it briefly during my high school days in reruns, the end of Season 3 and start of Season 4, but I had a hard time reconciling the soap opera elements with the fantasy elements. (Of course, I wasn’t too crazy about the fantasy elements, as this was before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons.) Ultimately I lost interest and went on to doing other high school things.

However, in college my opinion on all things Joss Whedon changed when I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into Firefly. It had a reputation among my friends as a great but tragically canceled sci-fi show that even people who weren’t predisposed to liking sci-fi or Joss Whedon liked. But I thought I knew better: I remember Fox’s commercials for it when it was still on, and it appeared to be only a show about space hookers. (Screw you, Fox; the advertisement you intended to draw viewers in instead only turned me away from the show for a long time.) Finally, when the movie Serenity came out, I succumbed and decided I should finally watch the show. And I did, and I was converted fully into Browncoatism.

But it wasn’t until years later that I decided to give Buffy a try. I still remembered it fracturedly as a teen soap opera with fantasy elements thrown in, and high school shows were never really my thing. Ultimately, what got me to finally watch Buffy again for the first time were other shows like The Sopranos and The Wire and Mad Men that convinced me of the value of great character writing and long, slowly unfolding storylines on serial television. That and it was on sale.

Better late than never, then. So how does a show that debuted in 1997 hold up today?

For one, the first season is incredibly rickety. It’s the kind of show that if it were made today, it would’ve been so-bad-it’s-good ironically, not unintentionally. It’s a little hard to see the show taking off if it were made today, especially with monsters like a demon who takes over the Internet or a praying-mantis woman. But at the same time, it’s got a charming sincerity in the way it lays out a strong mythology involving Slayers and Watchers and sets up a fun dynamic between all the characters, and character writing is ultimately what makes the first season kind of fun — who hasn’t felt like shy Willow, dorky Xander, or outcast Buffy (even if some of the high school dialog is wince-inducing)? Although the characters aren’t fully fleshed out — they’re mostly stereotypes, although Cordelia continually proves she has layers — it’s a fun group to hang out with week after week, and the show’s earnestness is somewhat refreshing — I don’t feel like Joss Whedon is winking at me from behind the script, saying, “Yes, I think this script is silly, too.”

It was a clever move to set a drama about vampires and otherworldly evil in high school, where emotions already run high and everything is the Most. Important. Thing. Ever. It’s hard enough feeling like you’re in your own little world in high school, even harder when that world is full of things that go bump in the night. The supernatural as metaphor for high school kicks into high gear in the second season, a dramatic improvement over the first, in particular with the Angel/Angelus storyline, which could have been a show-killer if it hadn’t been done well. Season 2 touches on so many motifs about growing up — the passionate, all-consuming relationship that inevitably goes sour (“Innocence”); the pain that comes with loss (“Passion”); learning that the world does not operate in black and white morality (“Lie to Me”) — that it rings true to anybody who grew up, and the show’s verisimilitude is when it’s at its best. Which is doubly true for Season 3, and all of the inherent anxieties that goes with growing up and graduating and going into the real world. I enjoy the show because it’s an entertaining and funny show about heroes fighting monsters, but I also recognize the real emotions underlining each character’s actions as things I’ve felt myself, the mark of a well-written show.

But it’s also a fun show, and that shines through in Season 2 as well, starting with one of my favorite episodes, “School Hard.” Gone are the tradition-bound vampires who sit around waiting for the appropriate alignment of the moon and stars to attack (I never once thought The Master was that threatening of a villain) — instead we get Spike and Drusilla, who are more than happy to do murder and mayhem because that’s what vampires do. Similarly, I just plain had fun watching episodes like “Halloween” (where everybody is transformed into their holiday costumes, giving us Military Man Xander and Brain-Dead Noblewoman Buffy), “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” (where every woman in Sunnydale falls in love with Xander), and “Becoming” (the ass-kicking finale).

I’m only as far as Season 4 now, but I appreciated what Season 3 brings to the table by deepening the mythology. It introduces Faith the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s antithesis in many ways, as well as Wesley, a younger Giles lacking common sense, and who can forget the Mayor? Likewise, we get more modern-minded vampires like Mr. Trick (who I would’ve loved to see more of) and find out that the city of Sunnydale wasn’t built with the best of intentions.

But I also appreciate the show not letting the status quo reign. The show brings Angel back pretty early on, but refuses to let the show say, “Angel’s back, everything’s back to normal” — the sins he committed as Angelus weigh heavily over his head, and soon he skips town forever. New characters join the cast, like former demon Anya, and more cast members get their day in the sun (Xander in “The Zeppo,” Willow in “Dopplegangland”). It’s a hallmark of a good drama that it’s not content to just let things sit and stagnate — the characters grow and change and the situation evolves organically.

I feel a little silly constantly quoting now a show that went off the air six years ago, but I’m glad I gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer a chance, and I plan to continue to watch Buffy (and Angel) through to their conclusions. Everything’s five by five.