Horror series spent seven seasons slaying vampires, teen angst
May 20, 2003
By Mark Dawidziak
Plain Dealer Television Critic
The last episode of UPN's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" airs at 8 tonight on WUAB Channel 43. The news is being received by the show's legion of fans like the proverbial stake through the heart.
Since its premiere on March 10, 1997, "Buffy" has been a show beloved and appreciated by a relatively small but fiercely devoted audience. Never among the top 80 programs for any of its seven stylish seasons, writer-producer Joss Whedon's weekly creep show was an occult series with a cult following.
What these loyal fans appreciated was that, as with the best horror stories, "Buffy" used the scary stuff as metaphor. Behind all the show's Halloween masks were the faces of angst and anxiety that torment teens and young adults in American society.
"Buffy" was a horror show, all right. It was a show about the horrors of feeling lonely, different and uncertain. It was about the terrors of alienation, peer pressure, societal expectations and responsibility.
In any given episode, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy Summers might wrestle with vampires, demons and a choice of shoes at the mall. It was all packaged with a sly wit, an antic sense of humor and a thrill-of-the-chase sense of adventure.
This was what "Buffy" fans cherished through five seasons on the WB and the past two on UPN. But it all comes to an end with tonight's episode, "Chosen," which finds Buffy leading the Scoobies and the Potentials into the Hellmouth for a grand-finale war.
Like most prime-time attempts at a grand finale, the "Buffy" goodbye tries to do a bit too much and reaches a bit too far. There is a slight letdown when more than six years of supernatural threats culminate in a Cleveland joke.
No, I'm not kidding. Whedon couldn't resist punctuating the big battle with a Cleveland joke. Nobody laughs when the anemic gag is made after gallons of blood have been spilled, and perhaps that's because it's about as funny as serving garlic bread to a vampire.
There are times when the last "Buffy" does gleam with the go-for-the-jugular humor we've come to expect. Gellar is in top form coping with a jealous Angel (David Boreanaz), who's in a vampiric snit because of Buffy's feelings for Spike (James Marsters).
"Are you just going to come here and go all 'Dawson' on me every time I have a boyfriend?" she asks the green-eyed Angel, whose spinoff show will be back next season on the WB.
Whedon also tosses in some well-meaning messages about empowerment. The climactic Hellmouth showdown is a little, well, anti-climactic, yet type-D- negative dialogue ("D" for duh) and Cleveland jokes shouldn't detract from everything "Buffy" has accomplished during seven remarkable seasons.
The series finale, for all its flaws (and it does have flaws), reminds us why this show has been undervalued and underrated.
Underrated? Look, this is not the type of series that wins Emmys or critics' awards. And it didn't. Since its 1997 debut, "Buffy" has been in the shadow of such heavyweight dramas as "NYPD Blue," "ER," "Law & Order," "The Practice," "Homicide: Life on the Street," "The West Wing" and "The Sopranos."
Whedon launched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as a series on the WB after being disappointed with what filmmakers did to his script for the 1992 big-screen version starring Kristy Swanson. He wanted a show that cleverly blended drama, comedy, horror, romance and action.
He wanted a series about a strong, young woman who was both tough and vulnerable. He wanted a "Buffy" that took a more serious look at the issues teens face in those terror- filled halls of high school and college.
Whedon got it all, but critics and Emmy voters frequently didn't get what he was doing with the series. Why the resistance? Start by asking, what's in a name?
"I think a big part of the prejudice against the show is its name," says Candace Havens, author of "Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy," a biography published this month by BenBella Books. "The people who vote for the Emmys just aren't going to vote for something called 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.' You get older, more conservative voters with the Emmys, and they've never been able to get past the title.
"Another thing has been the smaller networks it has been on. The WB and UPN don't have the same profile as NBC and Fox. But you have had performances and writing on that show that have been equal to those on 'The West Wing' or 'The Practice.'
"And there is a prejudice against anything that even remotely resembles science fiction, horror or fantasy. People tend to dismiss it as kids stuff. The same prejudice works against Stephen King as an author."
Havens believes Whedon and "Buffy" should be given credit in at least three storytelling areas. First, for using horror to explore teen themes: "Joss would take those high school issues and exaggerate those feelings, brilliantly using the horror metaphorically. Anything you could feel in high school was done during those first few seasons."
Second, Havens says, for staking its reputation on taking chances: "Joss was mixing genres in every episode. One minute you're laughing, one minute you're crying and the next minute you're getting the crap scared out of you."
And third, for paving the way for series about strong women: "Joss wanted the type of woman who could walk into a dark alley and kick butt rather than having her throat slit. That's what he created. Now you have quite a few shows with strong women at the center.
"You hear the mother of a high school girl say, 'Oh, she can be so vicious,' but you ask that same girl's best friend, and she says, 'Oh, she cries on my shoulder all the time.' Sarah was able to show that and turn it on a dime."
"Buffy," though, finally faced a foe she couldn't defeat: cancellation. The ratings are down. Gellar's contract was up after the seventh season. And Whedon, who had three shows on the air last fall (with "Angel" and Fox's canceled "Firefly"), is a new father looking to take a break.
Having carried the humor- horror torch passed from such prime-time predecessors as "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and "The X-Files," Whedon deserves the break. And he deserves the credit for everything "Buffy" has achieved.