Buffy III

Oh,Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

1. The first season's chief villain was called the Master. Although not every villain called 'the Master' turns out to be cool (see, for example, Eric Roberts), it's always nice to have one around. I liked him best in the alternate universe episode where Buffy never came to Sunnydale, and we see him sipping espresso and designing machines to juice humans like tasty, nutritious oranges grown on a small organic farm.

2. The juxtaposition of naughty, naughty supernatural evil with American high school life is inherently, to some degree, absurd, and I am very partial to absurdism. The characters have to do homework, sometimes get grounded, date, worry about fornication, feel rampantly insecure, and battle unspeakable eldritch forces from beyond space and time.

3. The Mayor. The Mayor--bear in mind I'm in the middle of Season 3 right now--seems to just encapsulate all the wonderful absurdity of the Buffyverse. He is of course some kind of utterly evil demon-worshipping prince of hell, yet he's also a hygeine-obsessed, prattling (he talks of 'loose cannon rocking the boat,' and then goes on to worry about whether he's mixing metaphors or not 'til he rationalises it all), golf aficionado. He'll talk of unleashing hordes of vampiric death while practicing his putts. You can imagine him asking his secretary to cancel his eleven o'clock disemboweling because he has an important brunch.

4. There's the cuteness factor. Chief among the sources of cuteness is Willow. She is cute incarnate. All insecure and geeky and fumbling and warm and fuzzy and excitable and so forth. Like a kitty. A geeky kitty. Maybe a geeky kitten. She's especially cute if you yourself were intelligent and not terribly popular when you were an adolescent. Unlike Doctor Who's Adric, who reminds one of all the worst, greasy, whiny, qualities you probably possessed--despite having a name that's an anagram of 'Dirac', which should've propelled him to greatness--Willow makes you think of the best, of innocence and enthusiasm and goodwill, and fluffy little bunnies having tea-parties with the Golem Queen, and so forth.

5. Anthony Stewart Head. He's English. Every programme needs at least one English actor. If I had my way, everyone on every show everywhere would be English. Well, British. The various British accents are, by and large, just easier to listen to than anyone else's. I may have been permanently warped to overexposure to public television as a small, impressionable child. But that is neither here nor there. Anthony Stewart Head plays the mature and worldly Watcher, Giles, an excellent counterweight to the other lead characters' youth and immaturity. Cool Giles Fact #784: Young Giles was part of an occult circle that summoned up demons to get high. Also he bonks Buffy's mum. Giles's hidden boozy, druggy, fornicatory past is I think a good influence on the youngsters.

6. Pointed social commentary. When Willow's mother finds out she's a witch, the dialogue (deliberately, I'm sure) sounds an awful lot like a coming out. As it did when Buffy's mum found out that she's the Slayer. Also, the intolerance of the masses is loathesome, and what is valued by the 'ordinary' mainstream folk is invariably not what is actually important. Bad things happen to good people, but the good fight must always be fought, in defense of nebulous but nevertheless potent ideals which will eventually triumph.

7. The swim team in Speedos.

8. Obvious Lovecraft influences.

Posted by aloysius at September 22, 2003 11:54 PM | TrackBack |