It dawned on me (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!) that it’s been ten years since the much-beloved (by the SDMB Cafe Society anyway) series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” debuted. I haven’t seen it in at least a few years, and was just wondering…how well does it hold up after a decade?
The series was always rife with pop-culture references and heavily featured contemporary pop music that would be familiar to 1990s era teens. Do teenagers today get or care about most of the ‘Xanderisms’ spouted ten years earlier? And how about the SFX? They seemed decent and relatively engaging for a TV series when it premiered, but SFX date pretty quickly. The last time I watched an episode, I couldn’t help but notice that during the obligatory fight-scene, it was clearly NOT Sarah Michelle Gellar kick-boxing vamps and staking them. Or has “Buffy” now become a period-piece, pop-culture joke, the likes of which kids like Xander make fun of?
And whatever happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar anyway? Aside from a glorified cameo role in “the Grudge 2”, has she done any acting work since Buffy?
Was Buffy popular with teenagers? I thought Buffy was geared more toward an older demographic – people who’d been through all that teenage angsty stuff and could laugh about it.
I don’t think it’s dated. It’s too soon. My daughter (age 40) watched the DVDs for the first time last summer and she loved it.
I don’t think something as good as Buffy will ever be dated. It’s like, universal or something, the themes.
We still have people starting the series at my vidstore. Most of them who are starting it at this late date have never done so before because they refused to be convinced it was worth their time. So far, 100% of them have been blown away.
It still works for me, and I deal with teen angst every freaking day. The dialogue alone will make it immortal.
“You’re just impressed by any pretty girl who can walk and talk.”
“She doesn’t have to talk.” – Oz and Devon
I just started re-watching it earlier this month. The fight scenes, particularly in the first season, are pretty cheesy, but other than that, I’m still enjoying the heck out of it.
I can confirm what lissener says from the other side. I’d watched a few episodes here and there when the program originally aired, but had never followed it religiously because I worked irregular hours and was rarely home when it was on; I’d been meaning to rent the DVDs and get caught up, but never got around to it. I just rented the first season last week, and so far, I’m very impressed with it. It’s much better than I’d expected it to be. The dialogue is sharp and clever, and the special effects are as good as any other TV fantasy program. I’ll definitely be renting the other seasons over the next couple months.
I’m more or less with lexan; I’m just really really lazy with my TV-watching. I’d seen Buffy here and there and always enjoyed it, and it was at the top of my hey-I-should-get-into-that-someday list.
Welp, Amazon had a sale last week selling the Chosen Collection for $100, and I had a $25 Amazon gift code, so I just today got about nine pounds of Buffy in the mail, and I look forward to working my way through them.
I have been Netflixing the first season, and while it’s not that great, it’s not because it’s aged. There’s only been a few bits of aging that I’ve seen- “really wigged out” being one- but it’s certainly not enough to take me out of the show.
The BF and I just started it and we’re on Season 4. It drives us nuts when it sucks, but we’re still watching it. It can be almost unbearably cheesy sometimes, though.
What the hell are you talking about? Buffy ended in season 5, when she leapt off the tower to keep her sister from sacrificing herself, and in the very last scene it was revealed that Dawn had inherited her Slayer powers.
As we all know, “Once More with Feeling” was a fifth-season episode, aired shortly after Riley Finn (also known as the Prince of Blandness) was written off the show. The episode chronicled Buffy’s great depression after Joyce’s death and Willow’s descent into evil, among other things, and rocked. But the song “Going through the Motions” does NOT refer to a resurrection, because Buffy NEVER CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD. There WAS NO SIXTH or SEVENTH season.
Are you mocking me? And before you answer, bear in mind I have both flying monkeys AND trained bees at my disposal these days. (Also these man-eating oranges, but they don’t have arms so they’re not all that scary.)
I started rewatching it (this’ll be the 3rd time). Still great (nearing the end of Season 2). The special effects were never that great to me, but that’s not what makes the show awesome. I love being able to pay attention to how the characters started and compare to how they ended up.