Tuesday, June 8, 2010

TV Meme: Day 8

Day 08 - A show everyone should watch

A show everyone should watch is Buffy The Vampire Slayer because I've never known anyone who actually watched it who didn't like it.  It starts when Buffy is in high school in Sunnydale, California.  The city is located on top of a center for all demon activity and Buffy is the newest in a long line of girls who fight vampires.  It's a show that a  lot has been written about, from amateur devotees to scholarly papers.  And Buffy was recently one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Characters of the last 20 years.   In fact, she's #3.  However, the other characters are what makes the show terrific.  Allyson Hannigan (now on How I Met Your Mother) as Willow is Buffy's best friend.  She grows from a nerdy, awkward girl with a crush on her best friend, Xander, to a confident wicca dating werewolf Oz, through to finding herself in college and in love with Tara.  
Her last romance with Kennedy is pretty forgettable, but she's a pretty terrific character  from start to finish.  Her odd arc in season 6 can get close to "after-school special" addicted to drugs, but she brings it around pretty well.  Xander is often just an extra person to talk to, but even he grows, particularly as Willow falls he gets stronger.  The interplay between the characters is what makes the basic subject matter of fighting demons and dealing with magic more interesting.  The other supporting characters, Giles, Anya, Tara and Joyce are terrific adding their own humor and pathos throughout.  It's the bad guys that somehow make the whole thing worth watching.  I love Angel in the first seasons, and when Spike returns in the last season I just love him too.  I think they're funny as well as good looking.  I love when they do flashbacks of the two of them fighting.  Overall, the show only improves every season, and the musical episode raised the bar for all other TV shows. 


3 comments:

David Bishop said...

I love love love Buffy, but I don't necessarily recommend it to everyone. I think there are people out there, unfortunately, who would dismiss it as nothing more than silliness even after giving some episodes a shot. We can only do our part to convince people that there's a very deep layer to Buffy that shouldn't be missed.

Also, I'm such a Buffy fan that I've read the season 8 they published in comic book form. It has all the same writers including creator Joss Whedon working on it, so it feels very much like reading Buffy episodes. I find it pretty amusing that the main villain in season 8 is called Twilight.

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Rachel said...

I'm glad I finally got into Buffy. I just wish I'd done it sooner. Season 1 was difficult to get through but the show got so much better in Season 2.