BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: A REVIEW
Thrills and Chills, and a Buffyverse of Pain
While I have never been able to sit through more than a
few minutes of the tedious and insipid movie that gave rise
to the TV series, I fell in love with Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, the series, about half-way through its 7-season
run, having ignored it pointedly before then because without
really giving it a chance, it was just so easy to dismiss
it as another bit of banal teenage fright fluff.
Well, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Did I mention I was wrong?
The TV series started out being to a great degree about
completely genuine and legitimate teenage angst, then evolved
into a more general, often ingenious (if sometimes vastly
flawed), metaphorical study of human angst, pain, and misery,
as well as delving into many other aspects of the human
condition. Of course, there was much more about the series
that captivated me and kept me coming back for more thrills
and chills, for the rather pervasive, wry, firmly tongue-in-cheek
humor and running gags that were often its saving grace,
and its relentless onslaught of cruel, cruel punishments
-- which is how it felt at times, depending on which characters
you empathized with; there was truly no end to the vicissitudes
of the Buffyverse, and our beloved and flawed heroine herself
once perished, quite horribly -- admirably having sacrificed
herself to save her sister, who wasn't even really her sister,
but that's a whole other subplot -- and yes, Buffy was resurrected
the next season, but it wasn't pretty, and she was never
really herself again. (Think about it; would you be?)
It simply didn't pay to get overly attached to a character
in this series, as the Buffyverse was simply awful to all
of them sooner or later. It somehow kind of reminds you
a bit too much at times of this parallel universe you and
I inhabit. I'll bet you never seriously believed that there
were actually many fates worse than death...at least not
that many. Think again.
Oh, and yet -- at the same time, somehow, much of the
time it managed to just be so much fun. It was a
wild, unique ride.
A number of books now exist about the philophosy behind
what fans often also refer to as the Jossverse,
after Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy and its
spin-off, Angel. A plethora of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer novels
are also available.
2005 Copyright © C.
Maria Plieger
