Buffy The Vampire Slayer

In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

And so it begins. The fact that I have seen these first season episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at least a dozen times does not diminish their power. Actually, now that I’ve known for years how everything winds up and what becomes of everyone, these episodes, most of which don’t rank with the series’ best, have gained the power to make me shudder with awe. We see Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) for the first time as she lies in bed, tossing and turning restlessly during a terrifying prophetic dream, only to be awakened by her mother (Kristine Sutherland) telling her it’s time for school. I think, "My God, there she is. It’s happened. We’ve got the ball rolling, and now nothing can be undone."

We see her meet Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and how they discover that Buffy is the Vampire Slayer, the only girl in the world who’s got the power to save us from the apocalypse. We see her first painful confrontation with her Watcher, school librarian Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), who is to instruct and oversee her in her slaying duties despite the fact that she wants nothing to do with them: "This is my first day. I was afraid that I’d be behind on all my classes, that I wouldn’t make any friends, that I would have last month’s hair. I didn’t think there would be vampires on campus."

The whole time I’m watching the first episode, "Welcome to the Hellmouth," I am moved and fascinated by our introductions to these characters who will grow and change over the years, and how it’s laying the foundation for the groundbreaking, breathtaking seasons to follow. Of course, there are many qualities that make Buffy’s inaugural year worth watching, but as a longtime fan, it’s hard not to let your eyes mist over thinking of the entire fictional universe this little show was unknowingly giving birth to (there would be canonical spin-offs in both television and comic books, not to mention an overwhelming array of merchandise).

But let’s get back to the season at hand. Buffy’s very first Big Bad, the villain who drives the season’s overall story arc, is the Master (Mark Metcalf). The Master is a centuries-old vampire who has been mystically imprisoned in the underground remnants of a collapsed church, and who longs to be free. Working under him are vampires Luke (Brian Thompson) and Darla (Julie Benz), who are both menacing in their own right. Helping Buffy to thwart the Master’s plots is Angel (David Boreanaz), the dark and mysterious man she falls in love with; he also happens to be on the outs with the Master after a rather shadowy past.

This seemingly simple set-up is spun into a complex web, and the series’ basic premise — 16-year-old Valley Girl fights monsters — is a defiant social statement about women fighting against the forces that oppress them. Creator Joss Whedon was tired of the dim-witted blondes in horror movies who always got chased down an alley and then routinely killed, and knew what he was doing when he set out to create his Slayer. Says Whedon, "I wanted Buffy to be a cultural phenomenon, period ... that was always the plan."

It’s because of this drive, this mission statement, that Buffy springs to life so fully-formed in its earliest episodes. It’s true that the show wobbles a little before finding its footing, but all the right elements are already in place, especially the wonderful Sarah Michelle Gellar. She is tough yet vulnerable, wise beyond her years yet still a fragile young girl. Without Gellar capably filling Buffy’s shoes, the series would be nothing, even though the scripts are clever and the symbolism strong. The show needs a commanding presence, an actress in charge of what she’s doing, and that is exactly the kind of strength which Gellar exudes.

By the middle of the season, Gellar has such a strong rapport with Nicholas Brendon’s goofy slacker Xander and Alyson Hannigan’s lovable computer nerd Willow, and such a wonderful paternal relationship with Anthony Stewart Head’s Giles, that you feel safe enough in the show’s hands to let it take you where it wants to. Luckily, Whedon and his talented staff of writers take us to some very good, very creepy places.

Besides the Buffy character’s inherent statement, the show utilizes the overarching metaphor that high school is hell. At Sunnydale High School in particular, that age-old idiom couldn’t be truer; the town literally sits on the mouth of Hell, which is what draws all of the vampires and demons. Buffy even comes to find that the decision she and her mother made to move to Sunnydale after Buffy was expelled from her old school in L.A. wasn’t consciously theirs.

So the students must deal with not merely the usual problems teenagers have, but those problems writ large. When Buffy’s mom forbids her to go out one night, she tells her daughter, "It’s not the end of the world." The only catch is that it is. A friendless girl who no one pays attention to becomes invisible ("Out of Mind, Out of Sight"), and a cheerleader who can’t live up to her mother’s past resorts to witchcraft ("The Witch"). Whedon handles these fantastic situations in ways that are believable — almost achingly so — and that perfectly capture the life-or-death minutiae of high school, all with a gleefully irreverent sense of humor.

No other show would be able to get away with something as far-flung as "The Puppet Show," in which it is suspected that a talent show entrant’s dummy might lead a murderous life of its own when other kids start turning up dead backstage. It sounds like the plot of an R.L. Stine novel, but the typically clever execution results in a funny, chilling, and poignant hour of television.

The writers can’t get away with every idea, though. When Xander, struggling with his attraction to Buffy and oblivious of Willow’s love for him, crushes on a substitute teacher who turns out to be a giant preying mantis ("Teacher’s Pet"), it’s awkward and uncomfortable, though mostly for the viewer. Similarly, when Willow finally finds a boy who likes her over the Internet, he turns out to be a demon trapped in the Web ("I Robot, You Jane"), and it’s so silly you’re hardly surprised when he turns up as a Power Rangers-worthy robot at the end (the special effects on the show are always low budget, but they’re not always that bad). Still, even the weaker episodes contain moments of beauty; there’s not a single script that doesn’t include at least one memorable character bit, not to mention half a dozen quotable lines. One of Whedon’s strongest suits is his dialogue, and the characters constantly say things in creative and unexpected ways, which fits in perfectly with the series’ modus operandi.

As the season winds to a close, we get two episodes that point the way to something deeper and better. The first is "Nightmares," in which an abused little boy’s psyche frees itself from his comatose body to unleash everyone’s worst nightmares. Xander is chased by a knife-wielding Nazi clown, Willow is forced to sing on stage, Giles loses the ability to read... and Buffy becomes a vampire. As madness consumes Sunnydale — even more so than usual! — the series delivers one of its brightest and most memorable early explorations of the human subconscious, a theme which will be returned to in later years with even more startling precision.

And then there’s "Prophecy Girl," which begins the grand Buffy tradition of absolutely mind-blowing season finales (every single one is a classic). Before "Prophecy Girl," it would be forgivable if ill-advised for someone to dismiss the show as juvenilia, but after "Prophecy Girl" it is inexcusable. The entire season has been building up to the Master’s liberation and the subsequent apocalypse, and early on in "Prophecy Girl" we’re told of a cat who has given birth to a litter of snakes and other dire warning signs. Blood runs from the school’s bathroom sinks. When Giles discovers a prophecy saying that the Master will rise and Buffy will die, we’re given the big emotional payoff from his and Buffy’s very first confrontation at the beginning of the season. It’s an utterly wrenching scene that ends with a teary-eyed Buffy pleading, "Giles, I’m 16 years old. I don’t wanna die."

Perhaps the scene most indicative of Buffy’s looming adulthood is one where Willow and resident Sunnydale High prom queen Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) find a group of students slaughtered in the A/V room, a bloody handprint smearing a television set as it plays harmless old cartoons. "It wasn’t our world anymore," Willow later confides to Buffy. "They made it theirs. And they had fun."

The entire episode is a stunning tour de force, with Whedon in the director’s chair for the first time. His command of the screen is as present as Gellar’s command of her character, and he crafts the series’ strongest visuals yet. With "Prophecy Girl," Whedon fully delivers on the promise he’s built up, and he accomplishes everything he could possibly have hoped to achieve with this first season, all in one fell swoop. The fact that he still had so much more to say, and so much more to accomplish, is a testament to his genius.

This first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite its occasional clunkers and uneven consistency, reveals one of the greatest American writers of the last decade or so finding his voice and coming into his own. This is even more remarkable considering that Buffy was a mid-season replacement borne from a terrible 1992 film which so butchered Whedon’s intent that he cried when he saw it. Seeing him take back what is rightfully his is a beautiful thing to watch, just as it is to watch Buffy confidently pick up her stake and confront the Master in the face of everything she’s been told.