Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Lately I’ve been neglecting my Slayage duties. I haven’t even been to the website in about a month. However, I did race through the season seven DVD set (fantastic by the way, particularly the hilarious “Conversations With Dead People” commentary). After I finished season seven, I decided to go back and watch a few season one episodes.

It was while I was viewing “I Robot...You Jane” that I got a weird sinking feeling in my chest. That episode was always one of my least favorite of the show. To me, it always felt stilted, unfunny, and borderline-stupid. It was while I was watching it for the practically millionth time after not seeing it for a while that I realized just how deeply I actually felt for it. How much I loved the show. How much I missed it. I didn’t abandon episodic TV after Angel was cancelled. I’ve been enjoying “Lost”. I still watch “Scrubs”. I’ve stuck with “Gilmore Girls” (whose best episode this year was written by Buffy’s Rebecca Rand Kirshner) and “Everwood”, two shows with great opening seasons that fell quickly in recent years. I still think there are talented writers out there that are capable of creating great television. But there isn’t any. “I Robot...You Jane”, still one of the worst episodes of Buffy eight years later, excited me on repeat viewing more than any episode of new TV I’ve seen this year (with the possible exception of the Lost pilot). And that’s a shame.

I visited Slayage.com today, my home for nearly two years now. There were over one thousand comments on my previous article “The Freshman”. I had started writing a season five review called “Gods and Monsters” that I hope to have up soon, but after seeing all those comments, I felt this was more pertinent. We all know that whatever universe it is that Joss created, home to Sluggoth demons, and portals to Quortoth, and demon hunters trapped in ventriloquist dummies, and Vampire Slayers, well, we all still care about it deeply. We haven’t forgotten it.

A new book was released recently called “Once Bitten”. It’s something of an Angel-ized sequel to the writer Nikki Stafford’s previous collection “Bite Me”. It made me so happy reading about my shows again (and even happier reading my name in print in the Slayage entry in the Internet section). Someone still cares enough to publish a book about the shows. And there are also people that care enough to leave 1,050 comments on an article about a season of a cancelled show that aired five years ago. And that’s exciting to me. It gave me a real charge to know that. I can understand that. I can agree with that.

There’s such a wealth of material to discuss. I’ve spent so many hours watching the show. I’ve spent almost as many hours writing about it; a frightening thought. And I continue to. And I continue to enjoy writing about it. Thinking about it. I change my favorite character every day. Watching Buffy Season One, it’s Xander. Once Oz shows up, it’s him. It’s Andrew, for Christ’s sake, in season seven. And Wesley most of the time when I’m watching Angel. And sometimes it’s Angel. Or Buffy. Or, yeah, so I don’t piss anyone off, of course sometimes it’s Spike. I can discuss all of these characters and others (see my Faith essay, “Hungry and Horny”, on this very site) at such length it’s almost ridiculous.

Currently I’m just laying in wait for the Angel Season Five DVD, and “Serenity”, the Firefly film that Joss Whedon is working on. They’re coming. And maybe some day he’ll get back to creating “Buffyverse” product. Not that he really needs to though. As it stands, both shows work really well as opened and closed literary pieces. Both shows have perfect endings (Angel’s being somewhat immature maybe-because it was cancelled, the actual product being quite brilliant).

And I’m still finding stuff too. I can’t explain how excited I got when I realized that the bag Robin Wood gives Buffy in season seven’s “Get It Done” was the same bag Buffy found mud inside during her dream in season four’s “Restless”. I couldn’t believe that I was still finding new things within the show. Still noticing. Still believing.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is over. Angel is done with. Firefly feels like a passing dream. But Joss Whedon still stands. His shows are still looked upon fondly with fresh eyes and new dreams. “Buffy Lives” was the ad campaign UPN plastered everywhere at the start of season six. Couldn’t have said it better if I tried.