Whedon Watch: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (Season 1)

  The cast of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

Note: Sorry, my “Whedon Watch” feature got side-tracked for the holidays, but now I can get started in earnest with my retrospective of Joss Whedon’s television work in anticipation of his upcoming Fox series “Dollhouse.”

The first season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” ran from March to June in 1997. (It was a mid-season replacement on the WB which is why there were only 12 episodes.) Unlike the disappointing movie the show was based on, Whedon had complete control, producing the series as well as supervising the writing. He also made his directorial debut in the season finale “Prophecy Girl.”

Taking up from where the movie left off (with a few tweaks), the series begins with teenager Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Geller) arriving in the small California town of Sunnydale with her divorced mom Joyce (Kristine Sutherland). On her first day at her new high school, she meets the characters that will become the nucleus of the show’s ensemble: Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris (male nerd), Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg (female nerd) and Anthony Head as librarian Rupert Giles (middle-aged Brit nerd).

She also meets the mysterious Angel (David Boreanaz) and the school’s clique of rich bitches, headed by Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter). (It is a testament to Whedon's skill as a writer that Cordelia, who started out as a one-dimensional comic foil, eventually evolved into one of his most sympathetic and endearing characters.)

As in the film, Buffy has super-powers that she acquired as part of her legacy to fight demons and vampires, but she was really hoping to downplay the whole super hero bit in favor of leading a relatively normal life. Unfortunately, Sunnydale resides on top of the Hellmouth, a gateway for all forms of supernatural evil to gain access to our world. So much for that normal life jazz.

In the first season’s story-arc, Buffy’s arch enemy is a centuries old vampire known as The Master, played by Mark Metcalf who, of course, will always be remembered for his role as ROTC Commander Douglas C. Neidermeyer (“killed in Vietnam by his own troops”) in the classic comedy “Animal House.”

Another regular feature of the show is allusions to classic horror tales, such as “The Invisible Man” (Episode 11: “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”) and the ventriloquist story from “Dead of Night” (Episode 9: “The Puppet Show”).

To get some idea of this unique blend of comedy and fantasy (which is available on both Hulu and IMDB), imagine the old AIP B-horror movies (“I Was a Teenage Werewolf”) with some grasp of how teenagers really talk and act. If that isn’t enough to intrigue you, check out this fan-made trailer for Season 1 on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El1QsMpT3hQ

(My thanks to the fine folks at Whedonesque for hepping me to this video.)