Notes from a Buffy Virgin

[Lapis Exilis]

I'm experiencing Joss Whedon's ouevre in reverse. Firefly was my first and I still think it is tremendously clever and amusing.

Once there was no more Firefly, and at the urging of various friends (*coughSpacemanSpiffcough*), I decided to give Angel a whirl. While I never found it to be quite the level entertainment that was Firefly, it was pretty good and definitely had some fun and satisfying moments - sans the entire Connor arc, which was painful. But the Wesley/Lila/ Fred material was great, and if Angel himself wasn't all that compelling to me, I at least began to understand why Boreanaz is such a fan fave. He carried the show well, and was occasionally uproariously funny.

Recently visiting my best friend who is deep into Buffy for the first time, I saw about 5 eps from the evil Willow arc and thought I'd go ahead and go from the beginning, despite having seen the occasional Buffy episode years ago and never finding it all that interesting. I'm about halfway through Season 2 at the moment. And here's my review for whoever might care.

Probably the biggest reason I'm watching is because of the influential place Buffy holds in contemporary fantasy fiction. I can see how the show is a watershed - gathering together threads from the B-horror comedy genre (Fright Night, etc) and its wink-at-the-audience self-consciousness and mixing them with superhero comic tropes (the show is so completely a comic book that it's almost distracting sometimes). Throw in a perky Valley Girl who kicks ass... and therein lies the rub, for me at least. I find it hard to care about Buffy. The only thing interesting about her is how she's constructed - that is, her interest is in the metanarrative, not in the actual narrative. She's a tremendously generic superhero so far, complete with requisite forbidden love interest and the non-stop angst of desire for a "normal life". I really thought about this, and whether or not it seems old hat because a lot of things have spun off of Buffy - but I'm afraid Buffy spun off a lot of things herself. She's not a terribly original character other than being a girl, and for that she's only original for tv. The Teen Titans covered this material in much the same way way back when I was a kid.

Xander and Willow get most of the humor, and the two of them make a good comic relief team. I like Alyson Hannigan tremendously, Nicholas Brendan much less so, but his timing is improving as things move along. Giles is a pretty stock guardian/ guide and Anthony Stewart Head plays him with solid surety, though a tad too much is made of his nervous tweediness.

As for the writing... well, as I said, it's very, very of the late 1970s comic book writing school. I know I can skip the ten minutes before the last 5 minutes of each episode, because it's just going to be yet another roundhouse kick fight. It is completely freak-of-the-week formula. It's mildly entertaining, but I must admit to being a little baffled as to why the show has the status it does. I want to get it, I want to like the show, but it is requiring some effort to do so.

Meanwhile, I'll keep watching, at least through the second season.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Stick with it. Buffy's first season is very weak. The show really starts to get good when a certain bleach-blond vampire shows up during the second season. As for Buffy herself, I'm sure many fans will agree with you that she is the weakest character on the show. I always loved the supporting cast far more than Buffy.

 

[RoJoHen]

The show didn't really do much for me until the latter half of Season 2 (starting with "Surprise"). I watched it for the first time about 2 years ago, and I had the same feelings as you toward the Buffy character. She was kind of uninteresting for a lead character, but I enjoyed the rest of the cast enough to be distracted.

It really does pick up the last half of the season.

 

[WillsBabe]

Stay with it! I'm sure you will be rewarded. I found season one to be nothing special, then became hooked as season two really got into its stride. I enjoyed your commentary, Lapis.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

It's mildly entertaining, but I must admit to being a little baffled as to why the show has the status it does. I want to get it, I want to like the show, but it is requiring some effort to do so.

Meanwhile, I'll keep watching, at least through the second season.

Stick around until a two-parter in mid-to-late Season 2, "Surprise" and "Innocence", and "Passion" a few episodes after that, which should answer your confusion a little bit. From there on, the show changes and never looks back. If you've seen Angel already, this stuff won't be a complete surprise, but it's generally considered the 'turning point' of the series, the change from "well this is a fun show" to "Omg we luuuuv this show!"

From that point on, particularly in Season 3, the show is a lot more 'story arc' based.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Stick around until a two-parter in mid-to-late Season 2, "Surprise" and "Innocence", and "Passion" a few episodes after that, which should answer your confusion a little bit. From there on, the show changes and never looks back. If you've seen Angel already, this stuff won't be a complete surprise,

It's definitely a little weird to have seen things in reverse, so when Spike and Dru show up, I already know their ultimate fates, etc. Interestingly, so far the personal "history" of the show seems far more involved with Angel's past than with Buffy's or the Slayers.

Another issue I have, which may be cleared up eventually, I don't know, has to do with the basic set up of the show. So far, nothing has addressed why there are so many vampires and monsters running around the world in general (as opposed to Sunnydale and the Hellmouth and all) and how their presence relates to the normal world, and why the Slayer, who apparently is so important to the world in general, just hangs out in Sunnydale - at least the introduction of Kendra opened things up a little, but it also confuses the mythology of the whole one Slayer at a time business. In short, the rules of the fictional world are poorly defined at this point. That's a pretty big problem for a fantasy show, given the genre's dependency on world building. I'm willing to roll with it and I know Whedon likes to drop reveals that add a much wider context to the stories he's telling, but it does catch me up from time to time.

 

[Lindley]

There aren't supposed to be more than one Slayer at a time; Kendra is an exception to that. Actually, technically the Slayer line goes through her now; Buffy's just a past Slayer who accidentally managed to stick around.

The Watcher's Council tries to identify potential Slayers before they're Called, so that they can be trained early. Even normal humans can make decent demon fighters with the right training, as I'm sure you recall from Angel---the Slayer is just the metaphorical "big gun" in their arsenal. However, the methods for identifying Potentials aren't perfect, which is why Buffy never received any training before she was Called.

 

[ITL]

As much of a fan of the show as I am, I never did get why there's only (supposed to be) one slayer at a time. Seems rather short-sighted, to me...

 

[RoJoHen]

I think Buffy would have been cooler (and I realize this would have been really hard on a budget) if she had traveled all over the world to FIND the next big evil threat. It was a little silly that every bad thing always happened in Sunnydale.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Well, the Hellmouth acted as sort of a monster magnet. Demons and the like were drawn to it, hence why Sunnydale was such a hotspot for activity.

 

[RoJoHen]

Well, the Hellmouth acted as sort of a monster magnet. Demons and the like were drawn to it, hence why Sunnydale was such a hotspot for activity.

And yet there is supposed to be another Hellmouth in Cleveland.

 

[Lindley]

As much of a fan of the show as I am, I never did get why there's only (supposed to be) one slayer at a time. Seems rather short-sighted, to me...

Control. It's the same reason why the Watcher's Council doesn't pay Buffy. The Slayer is just a tool for them. Give that kind of power to too many people at once, and they just might decide they don't have to take your orders anymore.

 

[ITL]

^ Yeah, true. But it always struck me as funny, nonetheless.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Especially with so many apocalypses going on (Let's face it, they had two major ones occurring just in SoCal at the same time. ), one would think they'd want to balance things out a bit.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Well, the Hellmouth acted as sort of a monster magnet. Demons and the like were drawn to it, hence why Sunnydale was such a hotspot for activity.

Which is a nice narrative device, yet we know Buffy was originally in LA, where she apparently had no trouble finding vampires to kill - and of course, Angel ends up there, also having no trouble finding bad guys to go up against. I gather the Hellmouth is an explanation for why so many apocalyptic events go down in Sunnydale, all fine and dandy, but there is little to explain how and why so many monsters exist in general, and why, if they do exist, the world seems pretty much like our own, except it comes with monsters. My problem with that is, our world plus monsters really wouldn't look like our world. I don't know, it seemed to me that Angel did a pretty good job of riffing on that idea, but Buffy is a little more obviously mixing horror movie and superhero tropes. I guess the genre-bending that Whedon is known for is just in its early stages here, and he gets a little smoother at it as he goes along, maybe? Buffy at this point feels a little clunky.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Going back to the OP's original points, it's true that Buffy is stuffed to the gills with "tropes". The appeal is the presentation of the material, rather than the material itself: good writing and FANTASTIC cast chemistry being it's two chief virtues.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Well, the Hellmouth acted as sort of a monster magnet. Demons and the like were drawn to it, hence why Sunnydale was such a hotspot for activity.

Which is a nice narrative device, yet we know Buffy was originally in LA, where she apparently had no trouble finding vampires to kill - and of course, Angel ends up there, also having no trouble finding bad guys to go up against. I gather the Hellmouth is an explanation for why so many apocalyptic events go down in Sunnydale, all fine and dandy, but there is little to explain how and why so many monsters exist in general, and why, if they do exist, the world seems pretty much like our own, except it comes with monsters. My problem with that is, our world plus monsters really wouldn't look like our world. I don't know, it seemed to me that Angel did a pretty good job of riffing on that idea, but Buffy is a little more obviously mixing horror movie and superhero tropes. I guess the genre-bending that Whedon is known for is just in its early stages here, and he gets a little smoother at it as he goes along, maybe? Buffy at this point feels a little clunky.

Well, I could go with a pat answer and say (as is pointed out in the show itself) that people see what they want to see, and likewise don't see what they don't want to see.

I don't know if there's a deeper answer than that. Ultimately, it's a genre convention...

 

[Ethros]

It's kinda like The X-Files. Which too is meant to exist in "a normal world" where your average person knows nothing of all the paranormal shenaggins happening, and yet where seemingly every single town in America has some sort of monster, vampire, ghost, alien, witch, werewolf, demon or something or other going on.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

^ True, it is rather a convention of the contemporary supernatural genre and only a few try to address it, such as the Sookie Stackhouse books and how they center on regular human society dealing with the knowledge of vampires. Maybe I'm a bit of a throw back but the idea of supernaturals being relatively rare appeals to me and is more in line with traditional horror. Sunnydale seems to have as many supernaturals as it does regular humans! Of course, this is also a trait of contemporary superhero comics, which are overrun with powered characters.

I really think half my issues with Buffy stem from my not realizing until now how much it is a straight superhero story. And I've been burned out on the particular formula of superhero comics for years now.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

It is amazing to what lengths people on these shows will sometimes go to rationalize the supernatural. Principal Snyder explained away the vampires in "School Hard" as "a gang on PCP." And then there were all those socialites in "Players" coming up with ludicrous explanations for all the weird stuff that happened in Angel Season 4. (Someone around here once posted a fake CNN webpage that attempted to give some "scientific" explanations for the rain of fire & blotting out the sun.)

I'll agree that Buffy's longing for a normal life is far from original. Peter Parker pounded that plotline into the ground long ago. However, I think there is something very earnest & real about Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance during the 1st couple seasons. I can relate to her because it's very palpable how lonely, insecure, & isolated she feels, not because she's the Slayer but because she's human. (Unfortunately, she gradually starts getting selfish & bitchier starting with Season 3. By Season 7, I absolutely hated her.)