Happy 15th Anniversary Buffy!

comments 19
TV

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Yesterday. Happy anniversary yesterday, Buffy. Sorry for being a day late. But, you meant so much to me I felt the need to still post something about it. See, Buffy meant a lot to me. For a variety of different reasons.

Let’s go back to 1997. March 10th 1997 was Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s premiere. In America. I can’t honestly remember when exactly it premiered on British television. But I do remember taking the absolute piss out of a friend who professed her undying love to the show. I just couldn’t get past the name. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You’ve got to be kidding right?

I ate my words. Which episode did I tune into and which was it that got me hooked? Probably one of the weakest episodes in the history of Buffy – The Puppet Show. I remember loving it. Thinking it was one of the greatest things on TV at the time. See, I didn’t watch a lot of TV back then. In fact, I don’t think I really ‘watched’ anything like I do now. God I was weird.

Anywho. I was hooked. Every Thursday evening by 6:45pm I made sure I had done all my homework and hogged the TV for 45 minutes. Recorded every episode. Watched them again on the weekends. Obsessed is a word I’d choose for it.

Why? It was a combination of all sorts. I wanted to be a part of the Scooby Gang. I wanted Willow, Xander and Buffy to be my BFFs. I wanted to go to my school’s library and see Giles, and not my stuffy, boring librarian. I fell for the characters. Hard. They were the coolest. The did the coolest things in the world. It’s safe to say that Buffy was probably my first TV show crush.

Circa the year 2000 I had days of a summer holiday to kill. My Buffy obsession was still riding high. I wanted to make a website. Enter, Dusk ’til Dawn. My first ever foray into the world of the web. With a website which included about 5 frames, a flash animation with pre-loader, black background, crazy fonts. It was the best thing ever.

And probably a big point in my life. It’s true. I not only loved being a ‘webmaster’ (I am so glad people don’t use that word anymore.) but I loved my website. It was fun. Everything I did in for it was self-taught. It was something I loved doing – every weekend update the site with all the latest Buffy stuff. My dear lord I was a sad teenager.

Sometimes, I look back and wonder where I’d be right now and what I’d be doing had I not fallen for Buffy and not thought about sharing my obsession with the world wide web. It might be a bit presumptuous, but it almost feels like it shaped my life. In a way. I honestly don’t think I’d be in the web design career had I not created that website all those years ago. Even if I had created the website, what would have happened if I chose a different subject I wasn’t so passionate about?

Oh and I think Buffy started off me getting into ‘fandom’. I didn’t know there was such a thing. Then the interwebs showed me the light of hundreds of other fans out there just like me. It was brilliant!

I know a lot of you all will be looking at me really odd right now. All I can do is gracefully accept your odd looks.

So thank you Joss Whedon for giving the world Buffy. For probably shaping the course of my life. Leading me to make a pretty big decision about 6 years ago.

19 Comments

  1. Buffy was, and still is, one of my favorite shows. I didn’t get on the train until about season 3 or 4, after I saw the first seasons on DVD (or was it VHS?). But once I was hoked I was hooked til the end.

    And the final season, (spoiler alert), when Willow transforms it so that Buffy isn’t the only Vampire Slayer, but “every girl who could be a vampire slayer, WILL be a vampire slayer.” That was a powerful message, and a great way for them to proceed. The male superheroes always seem to be about one guy hogging power and saving the world, while the message that I took from Buffy is that the world is only safe when power is shared, not only with the group of friends, but with everyone!

    • Ahh, the days of VHS! I had the entire set, up to season 6, on VHS. I did upgrade to DVD too. Those VHS boxsets took up a whole bookshelf!

      The ending was hugely powerful. It was the perfect ending. The only ending.

  2. I remember watching the pilot when it started on BBC2 – Mam and Dad had seen the movie but I hadn’t. I also remember trying to get my best friend to watch it and she said to me on the phone “isn’t it like Sweet Valley High or something? I don’t like that”. I told her no, and explained more, and convinced her to watch – she got off the phone and went to watch the next episode that was about to start and which episode was it? Homecoming. Damnit.

    Still, she watched a few more after that and while she never became a massive fan like me she did realise I wasn’t a complete crazy person! She even came with me the first time I went to a signing – James Marsters at Forbidden Planet – because she liked Spike best.

    Oh, and re the conversation above: http://yfrog.com/kfg9feycj πŸ˜€

    • Spike the best? I didn’t know this about your Mam before and now I feel like I need to have words.

      Ha! That’s a wall of videos! I think I gave all of mine that I had to Alison. Just a big ol’ box of them. I haven’t owned a video player in, probably, over a decade!

      • Not Mam – Hils! We used to have Spike Afternoons during sixth form when we were supposed to be at the gym.

        I couldn’t get rid of mine even if I wanted to, because they’re all signed. But they came in handy one day, I was rewatching Buffy and reached season 5 and disc 2 wouldn’t play. Out came the videos and my rewatch was not thwarted!

  3. Oh god, that brings back memories. 6.45 pm on a Thursday or Tuesday if I remember correctly. Anticipating each episode with eagerness! I think I fell off the wagon at season 4, and then went right back on it from Season 5 and didn’t miss an eppy. Even some of the truly awful Season 6 stuff.

    But, honestly if it wasn’t for Buffy, I’d never have gotten to know you!

    • Exactly! If it wasn’t for Buffy i wouldn’t have done a lot of things and met a lot of people. It’s crazy to think it was all down to one TV show.

  4. I’ve not heard of Buffy inspiring a career choice, but it was an extremely influential show. And yes, a show with a name like that I should have despised, but the show really worked.

    • Well, it’s probably a slightly tenuous link, but had I not been so head over heels for the show, I wouldn’t have started off on the web path, which is where I am now.

  5. I never really warmed up to this TV show but my sister was really into it and obviously, it has millions of fans. 15 years… Damn, time does fly by.

    • Ahh… you should have tried harder Castor! It was definitely one of the best TV shows in TV history. Well, I like to think so.

      I can’t believe it’s been 15 years. I was only a couple years younger than 15 when it first started. EEP! Feeling old!

  6. Has it been that long? I suppose anniversary congratulations for the show are indeed in order – interestingly this year will see not one but 2 such anniversaries (and the 2nd one is as critical for me as Buffy was for you) because being 2012, its the 10th anniversary of Whedon’s other wonder: Firefly.

    Anyway, I know what you mean about the joys of Buffy and all that they did with and in the show. I was not as hooked and affected by it as I was by Firefly, but it introduced me to the wonder that was Joss Whedon and an amazing new world and style of story-telling and I love the show for what it was – a benchmark, an icon.
    …and yes, I thought the name was pretty daft when I first saw it too – though I guess I can get some leeway being that I saw the face-palm inducing movie before I saw the show.

    I wanted to ask if you’ve read the ongoing Buffy comics from Dark Horse? I ask because they are plotted and created under Joss’ direction just like the show and have been running as seasons. Season 8 finished recently and now Season 9 is in its first few issues and may I say that as fan of the show its been a fantastic run!
    Season 9 is definitely looking FAR better than 8, but I give that first season in comics a lot of credit because they pushed the envelope, used the medium to do so much that TV and budgets would not have allowed and really took the time to get used to the differences between comics and TV when it comes to telling a story.
    Pesonally I loved both and would recommend them to a fellow Buffy fan – but of course all such things are a matter of taste so I can’t promise you’ll love it. Just thought that someone who was so into it would like to follow the story as it goes on. That said, if you feel the ending was perfect and do not want to change that at all, then thats your call and so be it πŸ˜‰

    Cheers!

    • 10 years since Firefly!? Holy hell! I didn’t realise it’s been that long for that too!

      I too was introduced to Joss Whedon by Buffy and I think he’s the only showrunner/director/writer from TV I truly follow. Even through the ever so disastrous Dollhouse.

      I tried the season 8 comic but after about 20 issues, I gave up. It felt like, to me, they lost the essence of the characters. It felt lazy bringing back old character after old instead of establishing and creating new characters and arcs. It felt like it was just there to appease the old fans. And while I appreciate that, it just didn’t work for me. A big part of me was expecting Fray… that is a fantastic comic. Buffy season 8 just didn’t even get close.

  7. OMG I can’t believe I missed this anniversary.
    Buffy is one of my first TV addiction (along with Dawson’s Creek and Ally McBeal) and it paved the way to nowadays high concept series. Such a milestone.

    Long live Buffy!

    • It did! I think it brought the supernatural back to the small screen on a weekly basis. Made it ‘cool’ again.

  8. It’s been 15 years already?! Strange how it doesn’t feel like it, and yet it also kind of does? But such good memories. I remember being pouty and not going out somewhere I was invited, and so caught the very first episode purely by accident through channel flicking. I may have rolled my eyes at the name of the show, but I loved it by the end of that episode, and thus begin my first real tv show addiction.

    BtVS really feels like the golden era of fandom in a way that nothing else has ever come close to matching. Fantastic times πŸ™‚

    • It does, doesn’t it? I think everyone will have their own version of their golden era of fandom, BtVS and Angel was definitely mine.

Leave a Reply to RachCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.