why Buffy matters

So my love for writing kicked in when I was about 9 years old, as I watched the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I did not like the ending because my ship wasn’t endgame, and I started writing Buffy fanfic about that ship, unbeknownst to me that that ship was actually endgame in the following comics, tracking seasons 8 onwards.

I hate Joss Whedon, obviously; he is a menace to society, but he is one hell of a writer, and also not the only writer on Buffy. Yes, he did create the concept for the show, and wrote the horrible script for the movie (yes, there is a movie with Donald Sutherland), co-wrote and directed multiple episodes of the show, but most of the people writing on Buffy were actually women, and a woman became the show’s showrunner through its last two seasons.

So while I don’t believe in Joss’s fake feminism and actually believe the predatory accusations being thrown his way, and am happy about him being blacklisted from Hollywood, he also gave us gems: Toy Story, The Avengers, Buffy.

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Please feel free to like and reshare this piece as we’re all trying to fight against AI work, and this work is very obviously not written by AI but by your favorite weirdo, and no computer could come up with most of the shit I write. It would mean a lot if, instead of being a complacent, silent reader, you’d give this a second of your time and push a human-written piece up the algorithm.

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Buffy holds a special place in my heart, and as I am rewatching it (on DVD, I’m not giving Joss any residual because yes, I am that petty), I realized the one thing that made it truly special to me: it was human, first.

The show was interested in telling human stories first and foremost and would influence all of TV going forward, because it told stories in a linear way, without giving us a clear, definite wrap by the end of the episodes because the characters grew by each episode and learned from their mistakes (or not, because once again, this is a show about humans, and humans sometimes don’t learn from their mistakes).

I’ve shied away from writing lately on this platform (my Google Docs have been very active), because I had run out of things to say (more on that at the end of the year because it is quite purposeful), but I could always talk about Buffy. Buffy and The Hunger Games are never-ending subjects for me.

I’ve read all the Buffy books and followed the Buffy studies, and let me tell you, there is a shit ton to get into, but to get you into the show and its harrowing, poorly lit, poorly budgeted first season, just know that season 2 is a slap in the face, mainly due to the addition of Spike and the discussions about souls for vampires, and discussions on humanity being linked to the soul.

In the mythos of the show, humans have souls, and vampires are naturally soulless unless they are cursed with one (like Angel) or seek one out (like Spike); they are stuck in a state of existence that is unable to change, always in a constant state of being and never evolving. But the show takes quite a nuanced approach to the soulless vampire thing with Spike and Drussila as a villain who cannot be killed, says they reeked of humanity and jealousy after spending some 150 years in love with one another. Therefore proving that vampires, even without a soul, can fall in love, which I always found interesting.

You see, Buffy is probably the most nuanced show on TV, on par with something more high-brow like the Sopranos and Succession, which are also two of my favorite shows (although I wish the Sopranos was funnier at times). But Buffy paved the way for shows like these two I just mentioned because they came after the Buffy boom that occurred in ' 96 and was also aimed at a teenage girl audience, which in my head makes it automatically better. Sue me.

But it’s not just about the vampires; humans on the shows are so fucking interesting. They all make mistakes; they all have breakdowns; they all lose their shit at one point or another. Willow starts out as the nerdy bestie to Buffy, before trying her hand at magic and becoming the most powerful Wiccan alive and entering a Wiccan rehab center of some sort after horribly using magic. Cordelia starts out as Buffy’s shadow self, a self she used to be before the Slayer power came upon her: she’s popular, she’s a cheerleader, she doesn’t seem that bright (but she is), she lives on her dad’s money, and ends up dating the deadbeat nerd that is Xander, having a love-hate relationship with one another.

But you see, it’s not just the main cast that gets a story; even tiny characters you barely notice on your first watch get full storylines like Amy or Harmony, and Johnattan. Johnattan starts out as a nerd in season 2 with no lines, only as a background actor for the high school to have more life, before getting his own episode called Superstar in Season 4, and becoming one of the main antagonists in season 6, and being a reminder of conscience in season 7.

Amy starts out as a helpless daughter of a witch in season 1, turns into a witch in season 2, then into a rat in season 3, then into a drug addict in season 6.

Harmony is a sheep in Cordelia’s popular atmosphere, before getting turned into a vampire, trying to fight Buffy but has a hilarious fight with Xander instead, only to have her own redeeming arc on Angel (the sequel show to Buffy).

These are not characters you notice much as you first watch the show; they’re just recurring characters, but their lives are still full, and things are still happening to them in the real world while the show focuses on Buffy and Co.

But you need to remember something about Buffy: this is a show where there is no God, no Jesus; the world is an uncarring, unforgivable, cold place and you have to fight to make your way through it. Whedon (I’m sorry I have to mention him again, but it’s relevant) is an existential absurdist (Angel is seen reading La Nausée by Sartre, my mortal enemy, on the show), and that means that whatever happens to our characters has consequences, and boy, the consequences are chilling.

You see, this is what I love about Buffy: it’s full of humanity, in a world devoid of nuance and humanity. Good characters commit bad deeds, villains become heroes, and Buffy becomes unrecognizable at the end of the show.

PTSD is also a real thing on the show that gets its own moments here and there. All characters suffer from that by the end of it, but at the beginning of season 2, as Buffy already suffers from PTSD due to the dramatic end of season 1, she has a full mental breakdown that she never really gets over.

I know this is already a long article, so I’m going to say this once, concisely: choices have consequences, and as Buffy herself put it in season 2 episode 7 called Lie to Me (yes, I can quote the show from memory): ‘You don’t have a good choice, but you have a choice’. We always have a choice. A choice to care or not, to act or not, and to be a caring human in an uncarring world is incredibly difficult, but it is a choice.

From Marseille with Love,

buy me a coffee

*vapes away*