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Neatorama: You spend a lot of ink discussing the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how ground-breaking it was. Of all the ground it broke, what do you think was the most significant in terms of influencing the future of TV?

SA: Did we talk a lot about Buffy. I did try and keep it balanced. But it is a key show particularly in many of the ways we have talked about above. It attracted people who would not necessarily call themselves cult TV fans and they began to engage with the show on a cult level. But to answer your question, I would say that it marked a key shift away from the episodic quality of much of TV toward asking your audience to engage with much broader and developing seasonal arcs. The characters on this series grew up, they evolved and the show grew up and evolved with them. The show has memory and it encourages the audience to share that memory not just move on from episode to episode and forget what came before. As much as I love The X-Files, one of the frustrations of the later seasons is that Scully still plays the skeptic despite everything she has been witness to. It is unbelievable that she would still be so resistant to the supernatural. On Buffy the characters reflect back on the audience and their actions often show how they have evolved as people. This is one way I think that Buffy has influenced TV. Now we see this type of memory in all types of shows.

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http://www.neatorama.com/2010/06/28/the-cult-tv-book-interviewgiveaway/