Buffy The Vampire Slayer

(May 6, 5:27 p.m. PDT) - This time, the world really is ending.

That’s right. After seven seasons, two networks and 140-plus episodes of fighting off vamps, demons and one apocalypse after another, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" will cease to exist two weeks from tonight.

Her breakup speech was swift but deadly. "The show, as we know it, is over," announced lead actress Sarah Michelle Gellar to "Entertainment Weekly" last month.

And that means despair for me and the 3 million or 4 million other Buffyaholics for whom "Slayfest" has become a tradition on Tuesday nights. After May 20, we’ll have absolutely no idea where to go for the greatest-ever mix of supernatural horror spoof, girl-powered action, gothic romance and coming-of-age comedy. And the future of the comic-book noir spinoff "Angel" is also in doubt.

Professing my obsession with a TV show with a title as deliciously ridiculous as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has never really gone over that well in polite conversation. After all, here’s a show that was adapted from a putrid 1992 movie, debuting on the kid-stuff WB network, about a teenage California girl chosen to save the world from lots of totally evil stuff. And yet creator Joss Whedon & Co. have consistently cranked out high-quality television, only to be overlooked by the majority of viewers, critics and Emmy voters.

If you never got past the tongue-in-cheek humor of the title and the premise, "Buffy" was probably never for you. For the rest of us, it’s been a treasured cult secret. But it’s not too late to get in on Buffymania, with the first of three final episodes airing tonight on UPN, and the first three seasons out now on DVD and more in the pipeline. So here are one fan’s reasons why "Buffy" rates as a modern-day classic.

 On "Buffy," the supernatural was always just a metaphor for the trials and traumas of everyday life. From the start, placing Sunnydale High on top of a Hellmouth allowed for a much cleverer exploration of the "high school is hell" theme than on, say, "Boston Public." After graduation, the allegorical focus shifted to the pitfalls of young adulthood.

Nearly every plotline hinged on its own wicked metaphor. Those packs of vampires roaming the cemetery could have just been high-school gangs. In Season 2, when Buffy’s good-vamp boyfriend Angel magically reverted to evil after they had sex, it sounded like a typical bad-boyfriend situation to me. (He cleaned up his act and got his own show.) And when Buffy’s witchy friend Willow let black magic nearly ruin her last year, it was really a story about addiction. The list goes on.

 By making his hero female, Joss Whedon struck a huge blow against the ancient horror cliche of bubbly-blonde-as-victim. This time the Valley Girl became the Slayer, a breath of fresh air for anyone who’s ever been disheartened by the genre’s misogyny (and by its hatred in general). Casting former teen soap star Gellar - who seems equally well suited to playing Daphne in the "Scooby-Doo" movies and her other job as a Maybelline spokesmodel - was the ironic coup de grace. The show’s slate of complex female characters was among the best in Hollywood; there was even TV’s first lesbian-wiccan romance.

 This was never a one-woman show. A brilliant ensemble cast of at least 15 major characters made "Buffy" fundamentally a show about human beings. For disaffected teens of all ages, there was at least one character to relate to (for me it was Xander, the Slayer’s wisecracking, perpetually platonic best friend). Character development has always been key: Members of the so-called "Scooby gang" could grow and change, disappear for three seasons, get turned into rats and back, or even die - a possibility never too far from the viewer’s fears. The Scoobies talk to each other like real friends, too, with a quirky slang-packed script that can take a while for newcomers to get used to.

 "Buffy" possesses a clear moral center. Although the series has come under frequent fire by religious groups for its subject matter, its protagonists have a sense of right and wrong, and characters who commit evil eventually suffer for it.

Nevertheless, in recent years, the main theme that emerged from both "Buffy" and "Angel" was that all of us are morally conflicted. Every character grapples with the good/evil struggle within, from the vampires-with-souls Spike and Angel, to the repentant murderer Faith, to the demons-turned-humans like Anya and the humans-turned-demons like Cordelia. Even the Slayer has been caught sleeping with the enemy - literally.

 Since the show was over the top to begin with, "Buffy" became a vehicle for sky’s-the-limit experimentation. Its writers routinely played with radical changes of tone, stunning twists, and the ability to deliver both cut-up humor and unrelenting darkness - often at the same time.

Last year’s celebrated all-musical episode ("Once More, With Feeling") was more than a sweeps gimmick. The music made logical sense within the story, and the songs were often quite good. And the death of Buffy’s mother in Season 5 led to a spare episode on grief ("The Body") that was perhaps the series’ finest hour.

The final battle?

Most TV series only have a year or two of great ideas. Some cult shows ("Twin Peaks," the first "Star Trek") were very short-lived, and the decision to prolong a series past its natural shelf life is often more business than artistic. That "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has mostly thrived for seven seasons is something of a miracle. Yet its modest ratings have been in decline for years, and the switch from the WB to UPN was no help.

Purists might argue that things went downhill after the Scoobies finished high school at the end of Season 3 - a problem that’s faced other teen dramas. But despite a sputtering college year in Season 4, Whedon successfully developed a more grown-up focus.

Others have argued that the series "jumped the shark" after the Slayer magically acquired a bratty teenage sister, Dawn, in Season 5 (I thought it was a great idea), or around the second time the Slayer was killed. The last time Buffy heroically sacrificed herself - on the show’s 100th and final hour on the WB - the moment was moving enough to make a fine series finale.

But what did you expect? Buffy moved to UPN and was mystically reborn within minutes. Her resurrection seemed too easy to some fans, who mounted a mini-backlash. Yet that season’s main theme - of Buffy coping with being torn from heaven and returned to the relative hell of material existence - was one of the series’ better ideas. "Buffy" got deeper and darker, which kind of made sense after 9/11.

Still, there is surely a limit to how many near-apocalypses one show can take (25 or 30, I’d guess), so admittedly, "Buffy" may be ending at about the right time. Right now, the Slayer is preparing her friends and a teenage platoon of "potential" Slayers (read: potential spinoff material) for a cataclysmic final battle against the First Evil. How do you follow that?

It’s better to go out blazing than to give us years of anti-climax (see "The X-Files"). The irony is this: While "Buffy" sprung out of an anxious time in the late ’90s, the real world today seems to have become much more dangerous than anything the Hellmouth can produce. "Buffy" provided much joy, tears and comfort in those intervening years. But the Vampire Slayer is now going away, and we still need her. And that really bites.