Buffy

Ah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I remember the existence of the movie back in high school, knowing only that it had a funny name and Dylan from Beverly Hills 90210.  The next time I heard about it was around second season.  Some of my female friends in college raved about how good it was.  I dismissed it as paranormal romance drivel, especially after I heard that the male vampire lead was named Angel.  

I first gave Buffy a fair shake the year after I graduated, during season five.  I had full time job for the first time, and my evenings had plenty of hours to fill.  The early 2000s are my personal golden age of television. Buffy, early West Wing and Gilmore Girls, Everwood, The OC - I’d record all of them on my VCR and rewatch them over and over.  

I can’t remember the first episode that I watched, but I do know that “The Body” was one of the earliest.  To this day, it’s one of the best episodes of television that I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been as transfixed by anything in the medium as I have by that first act.  Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar somehow made me feel every emotion that was coursing through Buffy, especially the shock-induced numbness and dissociative feeling that you’re watching everything happen from outside your body.  

Then there’s the third act with Anya’s heartbreaking monologue and Willow’s desperate need to find just the right outfit.  So powerful.

My chest gets this empty feeling just watching those scenes again.  

Anyway, safe to say that I’d never doubt Buffy again after that episode.  I’d eventually catch up on all the seasons that I had missed. I’d learn why second season was so brutal and why Oz was so cool.  I’d come to see tv shows as the product of visionaries with something to say, not just the discrete packages of entertainment I’d previously thought them to be as a kid.  Buffy and Joss Whedon were obviously linked forever more in my mind.

Buffy dropped in quality for seasons six and seven.  With the exception of the groundbreaking, trendsetting musical episode, those seasons would not be the ones that I’d first revisit for a rewatch.  But I still mourned the end of the show, and when Dark Horse announced that Whedon would be writing a canonical season eight in comic form, I couldn’t wait to start reading.  

Tomorrow I start reviewing the result.