On March 10, 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted on the WB Network as a mid-season replacement show. Based on the 1992 film of the same name, this show was overseen entirely by Joss Whedon, who wrote the screenplay for the film but was horrified to see how butchered his work was in the final product. As the showrunner for the TV show, Whedon was able to tell long-form stories, develop characters slowly, and experiment with different styles and filmmaking techniques that couldn’t be done in a single, two-hour format. Because of his willingness to experiment and his abject refusal to be traditional and “usual” with his show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer became—over the course of its seven-year run—one of the most groundbreaking, influential, and unpredictable shows in television history.

The show was made in the years before the revolution of modern television. These were the years before Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Wire brought a level of drama and acting previously unseen on television. This was before Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian brought feature film budgets and special effects out of the theaters and into the home. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not a Netflix original. It wasn’t an HBO showcase. It wasn’t made with a big budget and, despite its loyal fan following, it existed for almost its entire run living season to season, with the threat of cancelation always lingering, unsure if its current run of episodes would be its last.

With such technical and production restrictions in place, Whedon and his team of writers allowed their creativity to thrive, and even though some of the seams are showing in the audio/video quality, the heart is still there and as the show nears its twenty-fifth anniversary, the quality of the writing is still evident, as is the passion poured into the characters by its tremendous cast.

Between now and the March 2022 anniversary, Cult of Whatever is going to be looking back on Buffy and its sister show Angel, examining the shows on a season-by-season basis for the rest of 2021, before considering the episodes, in particular, counting them down “from bottom to best” throughout the first quarter of 2022.

If Buffy isn’t a show you’ve seen before, if you never could get past the (intentionally silly) name, or if you’re a long-time fan who, like me, grew up with the likes of Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Cordy, Angel and the rest, then consider this your ultimate (spoiler-filled) look-back on one of the true gems of late-20th century television.

SEASON ONE

Buffy’s first season is easily the show’s weakest entry, and yet, despite its many shortcomings and misfires, there are enough flakes of gold to be found to make a viewer continue digging for the real nuggets of greatness that will be enjoyed in the years to come. Only two of the season’s twelve episodes are rated highly (by me), with the third-best outing placing about halfway through the countdown. Nevertheless, with those two standouts, the show realized what it can be and what makes it so special, and uses those two as the templates to follow for the six seasons that came after.

Usually, a show’s creative team takes in feedback from fans as a season is ongoing. Ratings reflect what storylines and character focuses are working and which need revamping (or dropping entirely). Online responses provide the harshest and most unapologetically raw commentary possible on the quality of a character, an episode, or a season-long arc. Starting with Buffy’s second season, Joss Whedon and his writing staff would use the still-burgeoning internet to get instant, real-time feedback on the direction of each season, and unlike some creative types, Whedon listened to the fans and, even when he disagreed with their desires for some things and loathing of others, he almost always, in his own way, accommodated the wants and wishes of the masses. I say “in his own way” because, as fans of both Buffy and Angel can attest, Joss Whedon has a way of giving you what you want only long enough for you to love it…just so he can yank it brutally and tearfully away from you.

If there’s one constant through the eight years of Buffy and Angel, it’s that Joss Whedon is a glutton for your punishment.

But while Buffy’s writer’s room employed the feedback from the viewers from season two onward, they did not have that luxury during season one. That’s because the entirety of Buffy’s debut year was written, filmed, and edited for release all before a single second of footage aired on The WB. The show launched as a replacement series after the primetime soap opera Savannah (midway through its second season) failed to find an audience and was canceled in late-1996. Its final episodes were produced and aired in January and February of 1997, leaving the final three months of WB’s Network TV season without any content to air. Typically a Network would just release syndicated shows or reruns to fill the final three months of first-run airtime, but with The WB being a young and fledgling network it was actually a cheaper alternative to put a new show on the air to fill the space. The only catch was everything would need to be produced ahead of time, to ensure the Network would have enough content to last until late May/early June.

Thus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer—a show with a silly name, a relatively unknown cast, a hokey “horror movie-meets-high school drama” backdrop, an unproved TV creative team, and on a little-watched network—dropped twelve episodes in as many weeks, produced with only the unshakeable confidence in its head-writer/creator to vouch for it. Everyone working on the show believed it would be a one-and-done series never to see a second year. Series star Sarah Michelle Geller was told not to worry about working on the show, as she was “sure to find real work next year.”

Instead, rocky though it was, Buffy’s first season was a success, enough for The WB to greenlight a second season after the first one ended to great reviews.

The central premise behind Buffy is established in the opening scene of the first episode: A pair of high schoolers—a risky-looking jock and his nervous blonde lady friend—sneak around the hallway of their school at night. It’s a scene seen in many a horror movie. We know where this is going: the blonde is done for. Except no, after checking that the coast is clear, the blonde bears her vampiric teeth and sinks her fangs into her date, making him into a meal and making the audience watching at home into surprised (but satisfied) viewers.

The idea of subverting expectations—specifically with regard to gender—is at the crux of Buffy’s mission statement. Whedon said that he wanted to turn the cliched notion of “the ditzy blonde being the damsel in distress” on its head, to make her into the hero and “the thing that monsters have nightmares about.” The other overarching theme of the first season (which only evolved and grew as the characters did) was the phrase “high school is hell.” It’s a line uttered by anyone old enough to have survived high school, but in Buffy’s world, it’s taken literally. The personal demons an adolescent faces are presented in the show as actual demons, and while the metaphors sometimes landed a bit awkwardly and heavy-handedly in season one, the writers would continue to fine-tune things in years to come, developing a better balance between the horror, drama, and comedy that would come to define the show’s identity.

Most importantly, Joss and his writers never forced themselves to continue doing something just because it was “always done that way.” Buffy’s creative team frequently shook up the status quo, never letting things get too comfortable, too predictable, or—worst of all—too boring. Characters that, in lesser shows, would stick around as background players and bit parts for the duration of the series might, on Buffy, grow and evolve into major players, or they might die in shocking ways. Other characters that, in lesser shows, would wear “plot armor” that protected them from mortal danger might, on Buffy, find themselves also dying in shocking ways. No one is safe in the world of Buffy and Angel but it’s a testament to the writers and actors that almost every major character who dies in these two series (and there are a lot of them) are characters whose deaths create a powerful, visceral reaction out of the audience. There are no cheap deaths. There are no unearned deaths. And there are no consequence-free deaths.

When things happen in Buffy, they last.

That sense of unpredictability is best seen in the show’s various season finale episodes. Because Buffy was always on the brink of cancellation, Whedon never knew if the finale he was writing would be the end of the “season” or the end of the whole “series.” As such, he always wrote the final episode of the season to work, not only as the end of the storyline/arc being told that year but also as the wrap-up to the whole show itself. The only exception to this was in season six (coincidentally, it’s the only season finale not directly credited to Joss Whedon) which was the first for Buffy to air on UPN. The show switched networks after its fifth season and was picked up with a guaranteed two-year deal, meaning season six was the first to be made with the understanding that a follow-up was going to happen. Not surprisingly, it’s the only true cliffhanger of the seven finales. The others all end with a strong note of finality (season four’s ending is a bit more complicated, with a season finale-like episode coming one week early, followed by an episode-long coda, but more on that when we get to it).

Buffy’s first season is a rocky one, with monsters and plots that are cheap, dated, and unrefined in all the worst ways, but every episode has at least one hilarious moment, at least one clever scene, and at least one interesting idea, and, as said, the two episodes that stand out the best—episode 7’s “Angel” and the season finale’s “Prophesy Girl”—provide the show with the template Joss and co. would use to build its entire identity around.

In “Angel,” Buffy discovers that the young man of mystery that’s been popping in to aid her in her work as the Slayer (and whom she’s been falling for) is actually a vampire himself. “Angel” is the first episode of the show that eschews the “freak of the week” format and instead lets the characters and “lore” of the show carry the drama. It works, and because it works, the writers walked into season two with the confidence that they could tell more stories that were about their characters, without having to rely solely on a gimmick monster driving the plot.

In the case of Season One, the year ends with Buffy wrestling with and overcoming the question at the heart of the arc for the season: Does she still want to be the Slayer? When confronted with her destiny in the first episode of the series, her instinct is to run from it. By the end, she is marching confidently toward the final battle while her theme music plays. Prophesy Girl is the first episode Joss Whedon directed and he would go on to be the show’s greatest asset behind the camera. His talents as a writer were already well-established (Toy Story, for one) but it was on Buffy where he grew into the director that would eventually helm the first two Avengers movies. He even said that he used the show as on-the-job training for becoming a feature film director, and the episodes with his name attached as director are almost always experimental, epic, or significant in one way or another.

Every Buffy season explores a key aspect of life and maturity befitting the title character’s age and development. In season one, Buffy tackles her calling. In season two, it’s her first love. In season three, it’s the end of childhood. In season four, it’s the awkward transition between being immature and mature. In season five, it’s the grim realities of adulthood. Season six is more introspective as the true villains of the season are the three heroes themselves; the theme is the messiness of living without parents or guardians shepherding you. The final season is about letting go and moving into adulthood for good. These themes are introspective by nature but they’re explored in Buffy’s world through monsters, magic, and mayhem of both the horrific and hilarious kinds.

There simply is no other show like it.

Buffy is a show about kids becoming adults and dealing with the challenges of letting go of youth. Incidentally, its sister-show Angel is about newly-christened adults dealing with the challenges of adulthood. Angel tackles the grown-up struggles of managing a start-up company and dealing with staff turnover and legal troubles (season one), with finding its footing as a functional company, while dealing with personal problems messing with the workplace (season two), with growing and expanding the operation with new staff, while ostracizing a once pivotal partner (season three), with the challenges that come with trying to get over the hump, while family drama pushes against workplace responsibilities (season four), and finally with selling out to the man and suffering the feeling of hypocrisy that follows (season five). Angel starts from the sort of emotional place where Buffy’s seventh season ends. Angel’s show is not about growing into adulthood; it’s about living with it. They’re two very different shows, despite sharing so much of the same DNA, and are equally excellent for different reasons.

I can’t wait to dig into both of these series over the course of this year and early into 2022.

In conclusion for part one, if I had to pick one random moment to show to someone to explain what I love about this show, it would be this…

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

There are a thousand ways to make the joke at the heart of this scene but Whedon and co. went for the most low-key, classic form of hilarity available: blocking and facial expressions, the hallmarks of silent comedy.

So so perfect.

OH! Or maybe this one:

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Talk about capturing the kind of humor the show is capable of: No one comes out of the show unscathed. Everyone, at one point or another, “gets the piss taken out of them” and never is the show afraid to undercut a sweet or dramatic moment with a gag (with one gigantic exception of an episode in season five, which we’ll get to later).

If you’re hoping for an episode-by-episode breakdown and critique, don’t worry, it’s coming. Right now I’m focusing on the broad strokes of each season. Next month, we’ll dig into the big picture of season two, the year where Buffy found its groove, its best villain, and some of its most gut-wrenching moments.

Until then!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Twenty five years later (Part one)

SEASON ONE

> Part Two

You might also like

FIND THE TOPICS YOU WANT...

Recommended for you