I ignored Buffy and Angel when they were being aired but was impressed enough with the dialogue in the one Buffy episode I did catch late one night that I decided to give the series a try. My best friend owned the first 3 seasons of Buffy so I borrowed them and watched them with my 10 year old daughter. Then we followed with renting the rest of the seasons, right up until the finale. We became so addicted that we watched from dawn 'til dusk every day. We found that if we got up early, we could even squeeze an episode in before school in the morning. (yes, I’m a BAD Mum.)
And I tell you, watching them all in one stream of consciousness like that was great. (Then we did the same with Angel ). I agree that “Hush” was a particularly good episode. It scared the bejesus out of me, something they don’t often do.
And, yes, very few fight scenes are meant to have any tension. Slaying vampires is Buffy’s birthright, it’s usually just something that happens in the background while she’s having a conversation or, memorably, in “Once More with Feeling”, from s6, singing a Broadway number. What’s great about Buffy is the firstly the humour, the self-parody (or sometimes very low-brow humour I admit, like masturbation jokes). Secondly the characters are fascinating. The idea that an ordinary 16 (to 21) year old finds herself landed with being THE Slayer, THE Chosen One, a Messiah not given a choice about being a Messiah and the tension between fulfilling this duty and trying to be a normal person too. Then there’s her off-siders: an ugly duckling brainiac-nerd who evolves into a swan, beautiful, powerful in witchcraft, dating a guy in a band (who himself is a werewolf once a month) and therefore being a nerd no longer, then coming to terms with her homosexuality, then battling with her control over her own magic, then dealing with profound loss, rage, revenge, then being able to move on from that. The hilariously stoic werewolf/ guitarist. The ex-vengence demon with her inability to ever really “get” how to relate normally to others once she becomes mortal, and the piss-funny outrageous and inappropriate things she says and does as a result. And the poor sidekick who has no mojo of his own, who is never in the limelight, who is somehow the rock that tethers all the eccentric characters, who observes, who picks up the pieces. And of course, the vampire with a soul, fighting for a redemption for the atrocities of his past, an absolution that can never come.
Which brings me to Angel. It’s darker, and more grown-up, but still very funny in a self-satirical way at times.
One nitpick. I’m all for characters evolving but especially having watched all the series in a matter of a couple of months, it bugs me that they will sometimes make a character evolve to the point that they are in fact a TOTALLY DIFFERENT person altogether. Here I’m talking about Cordelia, the popular, cheerleader, vacuous, shallow bitch in Buffy who becomes some kind of bloody Earth-Mother/ saint by s2/3 of Angel. Or Wesley, the nerdy, weakly, pretentious, naive ponce who evolves into Lee frigging Marvin. What is it with that?
