Buffy the Vampire Slayer Followup: Season 1

This week I finished watching all seven seasons of Joss Whedon’s cult TV classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer. To commemorate whatever accomplishment I can lay claim to — primarily being unemployed and hitting the “next episode” button a lot — I’ve decided to do a series of writeups on each of the seasons and highlight their strengths and weaknesses.

For spoiler-related reasons, I have to choose upfront whether this exercise is for fans or non-fans. On the assumption that most people who’d be interested in a Buffy blog fifteen years after the debut are probably up to speed, I’m gonna stick with the former and thus venture into some of the show’s grittier details. Yes, I realize that less than a month ago I would have been an exception to this rule, but going in I knew practically nothing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer that couldn’t be inferred from the title. There were a number of seemingly irrelevant details that I was happier being surprised by — even details that made the cover of the DVD packaging. So even if I didn’t think I was posting spoilers, I’d argue that your best bet is to trust nobody, me included, and just get going on the show. I mean, it’s Joss Whedon. Do you really need someone like me to encourage you to get started?

Anyway, onto season 1 which follows the events of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie (which admittedly I haven’t seen yet) as Buffy moves to a new high school, hoping to leave her slayer calling and all its pesky responsibility behind her. This is an understandable sentiment. After all, her family was uprooted by a gym fire she caused at her old school while defeating a vampire hoard — and of course she can’t say what she was really up to, so everyone, her parents included, just chalks it under the “Buffy is a lunatic pyro” category. Her parents are divorced — which we later learn is due in part to her slaying activity — and her mother had to quit her job and relocate so Buffy could change schools. So yeah, understandably the teenage girl is more than ready to figure out something else to do with her life.

Unfortunately, Buffy soon learns that, whether by fate, dumb luck, or the maneuverings of a powerful secret organization, she has been relocated to an even more prime location to continue her slayer duties. Her new hometown, Sunnydale, sits on what her new watcher Giles calls a “hellmouth.” The details are a bit fuzzy, but basically this means that mystical energy surrounds the area drawing in all kinds of demonic activity — including, but not limited to, vampires — and causing otherwise normal human activities to gain supernatural significance. In Sunnydale, if you and your friends act like a pack of hyenas, there’s a good chance you might actually become one.

Reluctantly Buffy accepts the role of Slayer once again and tries to balance it with the demanding life of a normal teenage girl. She also makes a couple good friends, Willow and Xander, falls in love with a mysterious stranger, Angel, who turns out to be a vampire, and manages to save the world. Twice. Not bad for an abbreviated 12 episode season.

What Works?
The metaphor of high school students as monsters resonates on an archetypal level, and Whedon actually has the guts to do it justice. This is an unforgivingly brutal season of television — even by later Buffy standards — where sympathetic and central characters run the risk of turning evil or being violently dismembered at any moment. That makes for some great standalone horror episodes like The Pack, Teacher’s Pet, Nightmares, and Out of Mind, Out of Sight. But I’m not just talking about brutal physical violence. The show is also psychologically daring, venturing into the tricky realms of school violence, child abuse, suicide, and rape, all while maintaining the show’s pulp sensibilities and not hiding behind the “very special episode” mentality most shows have when addressing such topics. 

The central cast is also great right from the get go. Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and Angel (David Boreanaz) take a while to round out, but they’re still extraordinarily well cast and written. Meanwhile Xander and Buffy arrive fully formed, with Nicholas Brendon charmingly channeling Whedon’s nerd voice, and Sarah Michelle Gellar shining right away as an up and coming star. Those two characters work their way through compelling arcs despite the abbreviated 12 episodes, and although there are more than a few rough spots along the way,  the show finds some form of perfection by its finale, Prophecy Girl, which is a series highlight.

What doesn’t work?
The finale aside, the arch-plot of Season 1 simply doesn’t work. The vampires hoard, led by “The Master”, seems content producing a lame assault or generic prophecy every couple episode that the main heroes find some equally generic way to defeat. The exception to this is episode 6, Angel, where Buffy and the titular vampiric lover have a complicated love triangle with one of the Master’s minions. But considering the Drusilla/Angel/Spike/Buffy arc from Season 2, these dramatic complications run pretty thin. Mark Metcalf infuses his “Master” with charisma every now and again, but 70% of the time he’s just a Power Rangers villain and his plots aren’t a whole lot better. In most of those episodes, I expected the vampires to “Grow!” after their defeat and start smashing Sunnydale’s cardboard skyline. Fortunately the standalone “monster of the week” episodes are pretty stellar this season, Puppet Show and I Robot, You Jane notwithstanding.

Of the central cast, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) is the only one who never really comes into her own. Unsurprisingly she also has the least screen time. While I kind of like the way she’s played off of other students at the end of the season, especially in Out of Mind, Out of Sight, I don’t think the writers ever conclusively make her work in Season 1; and she is truly unbearable in the first few episodes. Also a lot of the high school dialog near the beginning is vintage 90’s — not how people talked in the 90’s, but how people talked on TV shows in the 90’s. The trademark Whedon patter is more or less up to snuff by season’s end, but it’s pretty rough going early on.

Conclusion
The central irony of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that a show can have a title like that and still be painfully emotionally honest. Consider a conversation between Buffy and her mother in the second part of the series debut, one of my least favorite episodes. Buffy has to go save the world, but her mom won’t let her leave the house. This could have easily been played off as a joke, but Whedon ignores any present irony and makes sure that at its core, this is a conversation between a mother and daughter in a strained relationship.

Truth is the key.

You can have all the vampires and witches and insect women you want — we’ll even forgive the occasional chatroom demon robot — so long as the characters feel real and their plight honestly explores some aspect of the human condition. Buffy never had a truly perfect season, but for its entire run* its characters were fascinating and believable. Even when the narrative stalled, I was willing to just hang out with them because they felt that real.

This extends beyond the primary cast and into the supporting players, including the villains from week to week. There’s even a sense in Season 1 that the monsters themselves are the protagonists. The most relatable ones range from cheerleaders to bullies to social outcasts, all lost in some way in the perilous woods of adolescence. Whedon doesn’t celebrate their negative decisions or their angst, but he does create a show that’s not the least bit squeamish about expressing the depth and severity of their pain. And he provides an alternative: an empowered young girl who feels the same pain and the same weight of the world but manages to overcome it. That’s the very definition of a hero; all the more startling when the hero’s domain resembles real life.

*…save a few smaller gripes with a later season, which I’ll get to later

Best Episode
Prophecy Girl

Worst Episode
– Welcome to the Hellmouth

Other Classic Episodes
The Pack
Nightmares

Nearly Classic
Witch
Teacher’s Pet
Out of Mind, Out of Sight

Late Night Confessions

I recently remembered someone complaining that I only blog about movies. Looking back on my blog entries, this seems like a pretty valid complaint. so because I’m depressed and awake, and ranting on Twitter only makes things more depressing, I’ve decided to compile a random list of confessions and publish them online. Because at 4am that is always a good idea. Recommendation: get them while they’re hot. There’s always the chance I will read them in horror in the morning and remove all evidence they exist. Then again, who knows. Maybe this could become a running Friday night serial. What will crazy old Ryan say next!?

 

1. I know for a fact that I have a cavity in at least one of my back teeth. I’ve arguably had this cavity for over a year, but I secretly still believe that brushing hard and often enough will make cavities go away.

 

2. Also I’ve recently contracted poison ivy, which I am extremely, abnormally allergic to. The last time this happened it spread to every part of my body and kept me from sleeping and was one of the most miserable physical ailments I have ever endured. You might think that this would make me especially proactive about stopping it’s spread this time. It hasn’t. In fact, I haven’t really done anything yet. I went to Walgreens and asked them what I should do about six days after I started breaking out. They told me to buy this one $40 stuff that would work right away, and that I should accept no substitutes. I bought the $15 stuff next to it instead. It has done nothing.

 

3. I should mention that I’m still on my mom’s insurance and it covers almost all doctors visits 100% as well as medications and I could probably get all of this taken care of for free. This also applies to the dentist and the cavity thing. While I was working I kept saying I didn’t have time to make it to the doctors. Now that I’m not working for a while, I  feel I can’t make it because I have to move soon and need to spend as much time with family as possible before that happens.

 

4. I have a gnawing fear that some terrible psychological disorder keeps me from doing things to help myself, or even doing things that I enjoy. For instance, I love movies as much as anyone I know, yet I rarely watch them. And sometimes I can be watching a movie and loving it, and then just randomly stop watching it. I cannot explain why. Also, I have a REALLY hard time doing more than one big thing in a single day. When I was going to school, I would skip classes on the days of major events. I never really planned on doing this. It just sort of happened. I’ve read books/parts of books/internet articles about Aspergers, ADHD, dissociation disorders, narcissism, tourettes, depression, and anxiety, and whichever one I read last is the one I’m most convinced is my primary problem. It’s worth noting I’ve been medically diagnosed with a majority of them.

 

5. I have a psychiatrist right now. I don’t really ever see him. I also haven’t talked to him about most of the things I’ve mentioned here. He just signs refills for my ADHD meds. Admittedly he’s very difficult to schedule, and I should probably find somebody else, but…

 

6. …I have an irrational fear of disappointing people. It borders on psychosis. I literally started tearing up when I told my manager at Wal-Mart I was leaving. That’s not an exaggeration. I go through months-long stints of depression every time I forget to give someone back a book or a DVD. Ironically, this does not stop me from being the worst person I know about getting things back to people. My friends can attest to this.

 

7. I don’t think the protagonists in Noah Baumbach or Charlie Kaufman movies are weird at all. In fact they are the only movie protagonists I relate to.

 

8. For this reason, I have a really hard time watching those movies. Whenever something happens to a protagonist that would embarrass me in real life, I usually pause it and most of the time I don’t pick up watching again. I suspect this is some form of dissociation (I also don’t really know what my face looks like because I ambiguously avoid analyzing it in the mirror) but I randomly stopped reading the dissociation book at page 50 and whenever I go to talk to my psychiatrist I’m feeling pretty good so I assume it’s not an issue and don’t bring it up.

 

9. I have made a list of my 10 favorite films from 2011 at least once every two weeks since last November. The selected films are essentially the same each time, with the rankings shifted somewhat even though I probably haven’t seen any of them since the last time I ranked them. Currently it goes:

 

A Separation – Asghar Farhadi

Tree of Life – Terrence Malick

Pina – Wim Wenders

Poetry – Lee Chang-dong

Moneyball – Bennet Miller

Of Gods and Men – Xavier Dubois

Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen

Attack the Block – Joe Cornish

The Trip – Michael Winterbottom

Terri – Azazel Jacobs

 

I’m considering publishing a supplement to my original list once I get the chance to see Margaret and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

 

10. I have had many opportunities to see We Need to Talk About Kevin and have not taken any of them.

 

11. I discover irrefutable things about myself and tell myself I will remember then, and then after a couple of weeks I usually doubt they’re true. For instance, I really, truly, deeply, at the core of my being love writing and making films. It makes me happier than anything else in the world. Every time I make a film, at the most miserable, stressful point in the process, I always pause just so I can remember that at the actual worst point it is still my favorite thing. Yet when I’m done with the project, it takes A LOT of coaxing to get me to do another project. I haven’t directed a film in two years.

 

12. I blame the Midwest for a lot of my problems. Sometimes I really want to die unhappy and unsuccessful just to spite the Midwest. This is of course absolutely absurd. I’m not sure what other force in my life the Midwest is standing in for — myself, God, etc. — but since I feel like digging into that will open a really uncomfortable can of worms, I just don’t explore that train of thought any further.

 

13. I blame technology for a lot of my problems. I’m almost certainly addicted to Facebook and Twitter, but because I despise the idea of being addicted to them, I refuse to believe it’s true whenever I’m feeling good.

 

14. I simultaneously need to be around people more than anyone else I know and hate being around people. I’m absolutely miserable in the presence of multiple people. It drains every ounce of life out of me. I’m way more alive when I’m alone, but I’m also miserable then. I really only watch movies, talk about movies, read books, talk about books, or better myself in any way shape or form for social reasons. When the social reasons cease to be tangible, I cease to do that thing. That said, I despise the idea of being that type of person and therefore actively avoid being social.

 

15. I blame a lot of my problems on my parents loving me too much. Since I didn’t need to earn their love, maybe I don’t think I need to earn anything else in life and so I don’t work to keep the things I want and assume they will be given to me and then when they’re not I think the world is going to hell and feel wronged.

 

16. By that logic I only graduated and hold down a job because of my ridiculous fear of disappointing people.

 

17. I secretly believe that I hate film and writing and that my entire life is just one big Jonah metaphor and there’s some big thing God wants me to do and I’m using those things as an excuse to run away from it. No idea what that thing would be. Logically I’ve reasoned it probably has something to do with water in Africa.

 

18. As a student of literature and drama, I can totally see parallels between myself and almost all major protagonists. I know that self-respect and responsibility are key, and that immersing myself into any form of service should fulfill me. But I secretly believe I am the exception to this and that if I volunteered at a homeless shelter my lack of social skills would horribly insult all the homeless people and they would get so depressed at the lack of human connection with me that they would kill themselves. If anyone reading this does not know me personally, my ego requires me to point out that I don’t just sit on the floor all the time. I generally function as a member of society and help people out when I can. In fact there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m absolutely normal, am justified in thinking everything I think, and I could take you in a fight.

 

19. Arguably I won’t believe any of these things are true, or that I even ever believed them, in the morning. But right this second I can recall hundreds, if not thousands, of circumstances in which I have thought them and accepted that I always thought them. Because I most recently read the book on dissociation, I believe my Aspergers, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and tourettes are all misdiagnosed and this repeated duality is the beginning of a multiple personality disorder.

 

20. I’ve knowingly lied or excluded major details at least four times in this article, in each instance to make myself seem better than I actually am.