Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the finest examples of fantasy television I know. The show comes from the mastermind brain of Joss Whedon who wanted to create a spin on the blonde-girl victim of horror films. The opening scene of the show, in Welcome to the Hellmouth' (Season 1, Episode 1) depicts two young teenagers breaking into a school at night. Although the girl is scared the boy encourages her to go on. A media-savvy audience knows what is coming. The beautiful blonde girl with the floaty voice will end up dead. But this is where BtVS redefines the horror genre. After the boy assures her they are alone she turns round to reveal she is a vampire and then proceeds to kill the boy. This opening provides something of a mission statement for the how: nothing is quite as it seems.
Like the vampire (Darla Julie Benz) in the opening credits the protagonist, Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) appears to be the stereotypical damsel in distress; she is the pure Californian girl with long blonde hair, a bubbly personality and an interest in shopping. However our heroine could not be further from the flighty bimbo the audience expects her to be. She is, as the title suggests, a vampire slayer. The writers have perfected the art of bending stereotypes and quashing expectations. One example of this is the episode Earshot' (Season 3, Episode 18) where Buffy overhears someone threaten to kill everyone in school. The following day she discovers the bullied geek Jonathon (Danny Strong) in the bell tower with a gun. The audience, led by Buffy's own assumption, thinks that Jonathon is going to open fire on his classmates in resentment of being picked on. However this could not be further from the truth. He had actually gone to the tower to commit suicide (he was not the threat after all). Buffy reminds Jonathon that people are not ignoring his pain because they are horrible, they are ignoring his pain because they are dealing with their own.
What makes this show so brilliant is not Buffy's role as a vampire slayer, it is the character focus on the difficulties of being the slayer. The action scenes may be fun but the heart of BtVS lies in her struggles to shift between a normal life, as a high school student, college student, friend, girlfriend, sister, daughter etc, to her predetermined destiny as a superhero. The show deals with these difficulties through a mixture of humour and emotion. One example of this is in the episode The Body' (Season 5, Episode 16). In this episode Buffy comes home to find her mother dead on the sofa. When the ambulance crew gets there they manage to revive her and next thing you know Buffy, Dawn (Buffy's sister Michelle Trachtenburg) and their mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) are all smiling happily together as a doctor says everything is fine. Then the show snaps back to reality. This episode is a good example of the raw emotion that makes the series so much more than a fantasy-action programme. Buffy is a Slayer, she deals with death every single day. But yet in this episode Buffy is totally incapable of dealing with her mother's death. The ever resourceful and level-headed killing machine that is Buffy the vampire slayer is suddenly paralyzed with emotion. She does not know what to do, how to help and the show reminds us that at the centre of this fantasy world is not a superhero after all, it is a normal young woman dealing with life as best she can.
Buffy's main way of getting through the harsh circumstances that life throws her way is with the help of her friends. The core group of the show is the Scooby Gang, the main members being Buffy's watcher Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan). The banter between these characters provides the light relief that is necessary to balance out the darkness of the show. Unlike many television shows BtVS is an ensemble. Although Buffy is the Chosen One' she is always surrounded by helping hands, people who actively help her fight the dangers she faces. The depth that the writers have given these characters is another reason why the show is so successful, the audience is invested in every character not just Buffy herself.
Xander the typical high school loser who is always first to crack a joke about a situation and is often a liability during fights. While Buffy is the heroine Xander somewhat takes his place in the role of damsel in distress'. This is seen in multiple episodes in which he follows his male organs without much consideration by his head meaning he has dated a giant praying mantis, a mummy, a demon who intends to drain his blood as well as school superbitch Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) and vengeance demon Anya (Emma Caulfield). Cordelia labels Xander as the Zeppo (The Zeppo', Season 3, Episode 13), the insignificant part of the group that buys the snacks and is little more than a hindrance. Of course this is far from the truth. Xander is the heart of the Scooby Gang; acting without super strength or other mystical powers or knowledge he will never abandon his friends. In the episode Potential' (Season 7, Episode 12) he imparts his advice on Dawn when she realizes that, like Xander, she has no special power and yet she quietly gets on in whatever way she can help. Unknowing he is about to say exactly what the audience think of him he tells Dawn: "You're not special; you're extraordinary".
Giles is the stuffy English librarian who enjoys wearing tweed and drinking tea. With this character however the nothing is as it seems' motif is perfectly utilized. In the episode The Dark Age' (Season 2, Episode 8) a murder is linked to Giles and we see him have an uncharacteristic break down. Usually the stable figure who gets Buffy through appears to have, like most humans do, a rebellious side. We find out that as a teenager Giles was more commonly known as Ripper, a homicidal, off-the-wall rocker who enjoyed dabbling in the black arts to get high. The Dark Age' deals with Giles' past in a serious way bringing up issues of trust and betrayal however in true Joss Whedon fashion there is also a lot of humour to be had from this discovery. In Band Candy' (Season 3, Episode6) all of the adults begin to act like teenagers meaning that we actually get to witness Giles' manic alter-ego for ourselves. Seeing the conservative Rupert Giles stealing a gun from a policeman he just knocked out after breaking into a shop is really quite something.
Perhaps the biggest transformation that occurs is in the character of Willow. In the first few seasons Willow is the insecure nerd who hates to lie, hates to get in trouble and who values school work above nearly everything. However as she matures she develops into a powerful witch, more powerful than Buffy even. Willow's weakness is her inability to cope with her power; she becomes addicted to magic resulting in her girlfriend moving out and her breaking Dawn's arm in a car crash. She becomes so powerful that she threatens to destroy the world when her girlfriend Tara (Amber Benson) is murdered, and becomes a murderer herself. In fact in this very episode, Grave' (Season 6, Episode 22) it is Xander, not Buffy, who manages to stop Willow. Not by using power to stop her, but by using his heart to appeal to her.
Willow's situation highlights the difference between her power and Buffy's. Buffy does not have a choice, her power is her destiny. Willow may have more powerful but Buffy is stronger. Buffy controls her power because she has to, she is the Chosen One. This is another of the big themes that the show deals with; the very real feeling of loneliness while being surrounded by people. The show confronts this in Chosen' (Season 7, Episode 22), the final episode of the programme. Willow is able to control and use her power to change the entire Slayer prophecy. No longer is the Slayer the Chosen One'; the Potentials can choose whether they want to be a Slayer. The final line of the show is said by Dawn to Buffy: "Yeah Buffy, what are we going to do now?" The whole series deals with her burden of super strength, the burden of her destiny. As I mentioned at the very start BtVS is about a normal girl who happens to have a special power and her struggle to accept that fact, to weave her destiny into a normal life'. The final shot is of Buffy. She does not need to reply. Any self-respecting Buffy fan knows the answer: she can do whatever she wants, because finally she has a choice.
BtVS came along just at the right time. Aired in 1997 the first season of Buffy coincided with the global phenomenon of Girl Power brought about by The Spice Girls. The contemporary audience was bored of having their expectations fulfilled. They were (and still are) a media-savvy bunch who have seen it all before. Yet Joss Whedon came up with a show that was so unique, a show that turned everything on its head, and had fun with it. The important feature that gained the show its cult status is that the writers wrote for the fans. I hesitate to use the word postmodern, because this label is so hard to define it cannot do the programme justice, however the show is popular culture at its most self-aware. Joss Whedon catered to a cult audience that would spend a large amount of their time recognising pop culture references and finding connections between episodes. For example in The Wish' (Season 3, Episode 9) we see an alternate reality where Willow and Xander are vampires; in Dopplegangland' (Season 3, Episode 16) the alternate-reality Willow appears in the normal Buffy reality and living-Willow (pre-lesbian) says about her evil double "I think I'm kinda gay"; finally in Tabula Rasa' (Season 6, Episode 8) the characters lose their memories and Willow (who is actually gay now) says about herself "I think I'm kinda gay". Evil vampire Willow also first says the line "Bored now" in The Wish'. She repeats this when she turns evil in the normal reality of Buffy to avenge Tara's death in Villains' (Season 6, Episode 20).
Considering the combination of a crack writing team, led by creator Joss Whedon, along with the stellar cast, it is easy to see why BtVS gained so much critical acclaim. In my opinion, the opinion of both a fan and a critical media academic, BtVS is the best fantasy television show of all time.