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All pumped? Good.

Buffy giving her best 'don't mess with me' eyesBeing a vampire is all the rage these days but not so when Buffy The Vampire Slayer first aired in March 1997. Primetime shows about the supernatural were practically non-existent – a notable exception being The X-Files – which is hard to imagine in the current era Buffy helped usher in. Numerous shows, like Charmed, Supernatural, and True Blood, have become popular shows with millions of fans. To see the potential in supernatural offerings to the hungry teen demographic you need look no further than the Twilight juggernaut (remember, I said popular, not necessarily good).

How did Buffy grab us by the jugular? It felt fun and fresh. We’ve all been through – or are currently still living with – the horrors of high school: the changing cliques which we were and were not a part of; the principal who had it out for us; the unrequited love; the embarrassing moments we pray senility will rob us of. Buffy’s creator Joss Whedon added all of these memories into the pot and then took the metaphor of surviving high school to a whole new level. Buffy and the Scooby Gang had to contend with painful math homework, along with the monster of the week and the looming ‘Big Bad’, and didn’t even break a sweat. Okay, maybe Xander did, but that was to be expected.

I wish I’d had Buffy’s writers cooped up in my brain throughout high school. Not only did they create classic lines that were idiomatic and witty, they always shaped the lines to the personality of the characters:

I mean, you can just feel the Willow in her line, “That’s me as a vampire? I’m all evil and skanky…and I think I’m kinda gay”.

Buffy was all the other things we remember high school for, too. It was superficial and occasionally an entire episode dragged on and on like a class we knew we shouldn’t have gotten out of bed for. Contrary to reality, the show and its characters were at their finest in high school. The further Buffy moved away from Sunnydale High, the further she left her quirky side behind. Season 6 failed to balance high drama and emotion with comedy and fluff, and by Season 7 the Buffy we all loved was gone.

I’d be staked and trampled on by an army of Buffybots if I left out the storytelling moments that did succeed. ‘The Body’ was an intense hour of television that poignantly dealt with the fallout from Joyce Summers’ death; ‘Hush’ demonstrated the show did not depend on its pithy dialogue; ‘The Gift’ is the series high on which the show should have ended.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a classic television show that wasn’t afraid of dragging its heroine and her loyal band of followers through hell and high water. Not many shows can spin a yarn on the universal themes of sacrifice, love and redemption, and then have the leads dance around in a trashy nightclub to some equally trashy music, but Buffy could, did and was so self-aware it mocked itself straight after. Not bad for a show that started life as a mid-season replacement, ay?