Buffy The Vampire Slayer

I’m not going to lie to you. If this article seems a bit stream of consciousness, that’s because it is. It’s rough having to come put with somewhat interesting topics on a weekly basis, and this week I couldn’t think of anything. I thought for a really long time. I’ve written about spoilers, villains, Angel, Firefly. Hell, I even wrote a piece about Buffy Porn. What else is there?

The struggle. That’s right, the struggle. We’ve all gone through it. The title of our favorite show is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, not the most scholarly of titles. If it was just called Slayer, no one would bat an eye when they find out it’s your favorite show. But we are ridiculed and patronized. And we have to deal with it.

I guess that’s the test of the true Buffy fan. The true Buffy fan can tell anyone that it’s his or her favorite show without so much as a hint of embarrassment.

It doesn’t sound, or look for that matter, like a prestigious or innovative show. It is. We know this by now. We’ve all seen ’Becoming’, or ’Hush’, or ’Restless’, or ’The Body’, or ’Once More With Feeling’. We know the brilliance of the show. We have to deal with the people that have only seen ’that praying mantis one’ or ’the one with the dude from Three’s Company’. This isn’t to say that those episodes, ’Teacher’s Pet’ and ’Ted’, are without merit. But, to the uninitiated, they seem to be.

It’s hard to get others into the show. There’s an initial reluctance to watch it, based entirely on the title. Then, there’s the fact that the show is so rooted in its own mythology that it’s nearly impossible to get into it now. Imagine that you’re a channel surfer that happened to catch ’Showtime’ randomly. You would not get anything that was going on.

There’s no jumping-on point. I once told someone about the end of ’After Life’ and it intrigued them so much that they decided to actually watch the next episode, ’Flooded’. This person watched it without an inkling of what was going on and never went back for seconds.

This summer, I showed my friend Stephen ’Innocence’ and it took me fifteen minutes to get him up to date. Then, while watching this most brilliant of episodes, he would quote Alyson Hannigan’s American Pie catch phrase of ’this one time at band camp’ every time Willow appeared onscreen.

Recently, Marvel Comics has been lowering the prices of issues that are good jumping-on points for new readers. Writer Mark Waid’s first issue of The Fantastic Four was solicited for nine cents, the first issue of the recent Daredevil story arc, ’Lowlife’ was twenty-five cents, and they’re doing the same thing with Uncanny X-Men next month. Sadly, there’s no way to lower the price of a television show.

Writing this article has gotten me thinking about whether I’d support a different title, like Slayer or something simpler and more serious than the one it already has. I’ve come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, despite the scoffing that erupts whenever it’s mentioned, is the perfect title for the show. We have the bright side of life represented in the loopy California name Buffy, that’s immediately obscured in the darkness of the term Vampire Slayer. This is just like the show that exists with a joking nature that is always pushed away in favor of the dark. However, the show has also shown us that this lightness can coexist with the dark. That’s what’s called ’shades of gray’, loyal readers, something that most shows aren’t capable of portraying. Recently, I watched an episode of the wretchedly black and white 7th Heaven. Need I follow through with my opinion on that trash?

Anyhow, the struggle. I’m trying to make this article cohesive. Perhaps a better title for this article would be ’Rant’. Perhaps not.

The struggle exists. People poke fun at you for watching it and you argue (and I know you do) that it’s critically acclaimed. They ask if it’s ever been nominated for an Emmy. You argue that it was nominated for a writing Emmy and even won an Emmy for Christophe Beck’s score. Yes, but that’s Writing and Score.

Which gets me started on the Emmy’s. The Emmy’s, which are far less prestigious than the Oscars and far more prestigious than the Grammy’s, are a sorry excuse for a show to award great television. Constantly, they award such supposedly hip fare as Ally McBeal or The Practice (two David E. Kelley shows that won best show in their respective genres in the same year). They give bundles of awards to the ever-decreasingly interesting The West Wing, the declining The Sopranos, the stereotypical, not to mention unfunny Will and Grace, and the so-atrocious-I-can’t-believe-the-critics-like-it Malcolm In The Middle. The year Joss Whedon was finally nominated for Best Writing for the deserved ’Hush’, he was nominated against three West Wing episodes. Blecch.

Remember that time ’The Body’ wasn’t nominated for anything? That’s the moment in history that made me lose all respect for awards shows. However, you’re friends look to the Emmy’s for guidance on what to watch, am I right? Alias is a buzz show, Jennifer Garner gets nominated, ratings go up, it gets the post-Super Bowl slot. Need I remind you of Friends (yes, I watch it just like everyone else in the Universe. I’M SHALLOW, DAMMIT!)? Your friends don’t see Buffy getting nominated for awards, therefore critics don’t like it, therefore they don’t watch it, and therefore ratings remain low.

There isn’t so much more that I’d like to detail. The Struggle will exist long after Buffy no longer does. We love it. They don’t. Rejoice in your solidarity.