I didn't pay attention to it when the show first came out. There was a wave of X-Files wannabe shows being cranked out, and Buffy was on the tail end. I hadn't seen the movie (still haven't) but heard it wasn't all that great. The show would probably be another Dark Skies or VR 5: something lousy and sci-fi that would wash away in a few months. But it stuck around. I didn't watch it and didn't know anyone who did. Then a few friends started watching. They said the show was funny and scary and very well written. Buffy got on the cover of Rolling Stone. The show, while not necessarily good, was at least popular.
I broke down and saw an episode. It wasn't love at first sight. Some friend of Buffy's had allied with some villain girl, and the surprise at the end was that he was spying for Buffy the whole time. I guess it would have been a bigger surprise if I had seen all the episodes before, and knew that the girl was a rogue Slayer who was turning to evil, and the guy was a vampire who was Buffy's first love.
It was clearly one of those shows I'd be happy to never watch in my life. I'm happy not because they're bad shows, but because they're shows I'd ruin my life over. The prime example of this for me is Babylon 5.
I've never seen Babylon 5. I've heard many of the same things about it that I've come to embrace about Buffy: giant plots, characters arcs that are built years in advance, extraordinarily well made efforts in sometimes embarrassing genres. I've intentionally stayed away from any and all Babylon 5, because I know what'll happen. The first episode will be confusing, but with more clarity than I was expecting. A second episode would make some more stuff clear, and let me see a bit of how the characters have changed from episode to episode. A third would make want to see a fourth, a fourth a fifth, and pretty soon I'm dressing up like some alien race for Halloween and changing my email account to [email protected].
I'm a joiner. I start watching a TV show, and I don't stop watching until it's cancelled or gets vein-slashingly bad. (Proof how dedicated I am: I still watch the X-Files, even though most people have understandably forgotten it's still on the air.) I've collected comic books long past the time I should have dropped them due to general horridness, because in my mindset I officially joined that comic. Joining a show like Buffy would be a dangerous undertaking. An hour a week gone, for the foreseeable future.
I had nothing to do one Tuesday in 1999, so I tied myself to the mast and watched a second Buffy episode. Each show had some kung fu, a generous helping of monsters, great dialogue, tons of legitimately funny moments, and characters that were more than just the high school stereotypes. The third gave me a better feeling of the whole tone of the show, and the fourth made me want to see a fifth. Some time during this I joined.
I watched the whole fourth season, and then the whole fifth season. I saw how the characters were written, the pacing of the episodes, the developments of both old and new people. During this time I also hooked my brother on the show. I was a fan, but only as much as any other good TV show.
The show's now in the middle of its sixth season, and is unapologetically impossible to follow for the uninitiated. It's not an evangelical religion: it welcomes new members to the congregation but doesn't cater itself just to boosting mass attendance. How can you quickly explain that one of the regular characters is a British vampire with a chip recently implanted in his head to prevent him from harming humans, whose crush on Buffy has given him into a degree of caring that vampires shouldn't have? Or that someone else appears to be a kid sister, but is actually a very powerful energy source hidden as a kid sister with everyone's memories retroactively changed in the fifth season to include her?
I'd still be on my once a week hook, if not for two things. The first was me getting cable. Specifically cable with FX, the network rerunning Buffy twice a night. At 6:00 and 7:00, sequential Buffys run. I tuned in for the end of the third season, right when I initially tuned in. With two episodes at night and nothing else pressing to watch during this time, I could get the entire Buffy saga watched in a short period of time. Every two weeks or so, I'd have a whole season under my belt.
The episodes hold up remarkably well for second viewings. They actually get better in second viewing, in a way that only the Simpsons and the best 1% of sitcoms do. So I'd get my money's worth of the cable, and see some good TV reruns.
I was used to getting two hours of Buffy a night, although half of that didn't usually have Buffy in it. For seasons four and five Buffy was followed by Angel, the spinoff show. Again, a tough explanation for a character: he's a 250 year old vampire who was cursed to have a soul, but would also lose it when he experienced true happiness, which he did and turned evil when he slept with Buffy, but then he got his soul back and now he can't ever sleep with her again and is risky about even seeing her, so he moved to L.A. to fight evil. And Buffy also killed him once, but he got better. Hell, Buffy's died twice herself now.
In a very well publicized network battle, UPN wrested Buffy away from the WB, while the WB held onto Angel. Angel's now on Mondays, and the little crossovers between the two shows (cleverly done, so just watching one part of it won't make you confused about what happened in the other half) have quickly dried up. So for a brief amount of time I was getting one hour on Monday, and a second hour on Tuesday.
That is nothing compared to the quantity of Buffy I ingest currently. Two hours a night, for five nights, plus the new episodes on Tuesday and new Angels on Monday. Plus syndicated reruns on Saturdays and Sundays if I'm close to a TV when they come on. That's a whole lotta Buffy.
I was on the verge of becoming one of those people who spends $200 a pop on collectibles and makes casual references to dialogue quotes like "funny syphilis" or "cup of tea, cup of tea, almost got shagged, cup of tea." And then the second thing happened: the musical episode.
You've probably heard about the musical, even if it was just from a TV critic's Best of 2001 list. A lot of shows have done musical episodes, and most of them stink. A couple rhyming lines, a hastily written piano in the background, and hopefully the cast can sing. But the Buffy one was flat out glorious. It wasn't just a gag either: the theme of the episode was people were revealing their true feelings through song, feelings that they didn't necessarily want the public to know. Not to reveal all the secrets of that episode, but Spike's song was how he was frustrated Buffy wouldn't love him, and Xander and Anya had a great duet about each other's unspoken little flaws.
Sometimes you hear a song on the radio, and you become glad that radio stations replay the same twenty songs for months at a time. The musical episode dropped a dozen of those songs in my lap at once. For two weeks I could barely concentrate at work. I read every review I could, watched and listened to little snippets of them online. If I had a CD burner, I would have cooked up the entire thing to carry with me. In one hour, I completely understood what every musical had tried to do, and what most of the ones I had seen had failed at.
I started checking out Buffy bulletin boards for other episodes, and also slayage.com, a link site to Buffy articles and reviews. Buffy writers and directors are discussed more often than the actors here, and the actors get discussed a lot. How many ER or CSI fans are even aware of who writes what episodes? I haven't posted anything yet, so I don't know if that makes me a borderline redeemable obsessive or a creepy lurker obsessive. I am thiiiiiiis close to starting up on the extensive series of Buffy comics, which are as close to canonical as a comic series can get. I know my joining record: if I buy one comic, I'm buying all 70. Anyone who I think watches Buffy has been subjected to many conversations where I blather uselessly about the show. I'm proudly wearing whatever Trekkie-ish name Buffy fans have dubbed themselves.
People tend to use the telephone between 6:00 and 8:00 (9:00 on Tuesdays and 10:00 if UPN's showing a double episode). Every phone call I've gotten from then (who haven't been fang-worthy telemarketers) hears me say "uh-huh" while I watch a nearly muted Buffy. I really want to watch the show, but I understand that to fully watch it, I can no longer talk to anyone ever again. If someone calls Monday at 6:30, I don't want to say, "I'm busy now, try again Saturday." So I compromise, and have equally useless conversations and Buffy viewings.
Once a day would be a lot healthier for me. Just a 6:00 would let me actually have a coherent phone conversation during the time most people call. Just a 7:00 would let me stick a little late at work or go shopping afterwards, and schedule short to mid-sized phone calls. Either one would free up an hour of video game time, or that human interaction I've read so much about.
The 6:00 P.M. and 7:00 P.M. episodes get rerun the next morning at 7:00 A.M. and 8:00 A.M. This has immensely helped me to get a wee bit of a life. Somehow I can wake up by 7:00 A.M. to watch worthy TV, but I can't do it to make it to work at a decent time.
I just read a whole book of literary criticism regarding Buffy, one of several out there. Cultish shows like Buffy normally have a bunch of volumes like this coming out, treating every episode like a work of genius and reading things into the show. Any show has this ability by its mega-geek fans: I'm sure man's inhumanity to man is well represented by Mr. Ed, if only I ask a big enough Mr. Ed fan. But Buffy is a show where everything's plotted out like literary fiction. Notions aren't tossed away. In the first season, Xander had a crush on Buffy and Willow had a crush on Xander, and five years later, those character motivations are still there, manifesting themselves in little ways. Xander still instinctually hates all of Buffy's boyfriends, and Willow still harbors a bit of resentment toward Xander. Both the writing and the acting get better, the longer you watch them.
The show started off as plot-based. There'd be some villain to fight, normally a variation of a classic monster (mummy, werewolf, invisible man, Frankenstein's monster) rewritten to involve high schoolers. It's moved on to a character-driven core. The emotional arcs of the characters come first, and villain's stories get fit in only where they reflect the current emotional situation of a character. Buffy accidentally became invisible, but at a point in her life where she wanted to become invisible. Xander accidentally gets split into two people, but at a point where he realizes he's a successful person while still being the goofball he was in high school.
It's essentially a show about growing up. Dilemmas involves demons and vampires, but they just as often involve what everyone had to go through in high school, and then college and work. The characters have grown from a high school goof to a competent construction worker, from a shy girl to a lesbian Wiccan, from a recurring villain to Buffy's love interest. And nothing's ignored or forgotten. It's like meeting real people: you can't get a grasp on them immediately, but the longer you know them, the more you want to be there for every moment of their lives. And I can, thanks to the nice folks at FX.
The self-imposed exile is almost over. FX has the third season running now, and I've seen everything else Buffy through over-thorough viewing. I can return to regular life (video games, sitcoms) within a week or so. There's the odd episode I missed in the rerun order, and more than a few I'd like to see a second or third time, but the life-crippling addiction will be over, thanks to snorting the dealer's entire supply.
God help me, there's Babylon 5 reruns on Sci-Fi every afternoon. And I'll have nothing to do come late next week. Pray for me.