Buffy

I don't think I can adequately write how much I loved and still love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was going to just do another 5 things post about my favorite Buffy moments but decided I wanted to write more about what is my favorite tv show ever. On the surface it was a teen fantasy/horror soap opera about a teenage girl fighting vampires and other monsters while spouting funny pop-culture one liners, but it was so much more. At it's best Buffy episodes were post-modern morality plays, parables, fairy tales using the vampires and demons as metaphors to deal with topics such as the nature of evil, redemption, sex, guilt, existential angst, selflessness and sacrifice, faith, hope, love, free will, friendship, betrayal and other realities of growing up all done with cool fights, cool music and witty well written dialogue.

In addition to watching the show when it first aired I've watched the seven seasons on dvd and it's darker more existential spinoff Angel's five seasons numerous times and it probably won't be very long before we start the cycle again. I would love to see a boxed set of both shows combined so we could watch it as one big story. I originally started watching the show with my youngest daughter Latisha, but over the years we gradually pulled the rest of the family into the cult of Buffy. It was/is not a show to be watched passively, it will engage you emotionally and intellectually. It has sparked hours of conversation and discussion within my family. Have I told you I love this show, I really do. Joss Whedon who created the show is very good at creating shows and characters that feel real and true even if the setting isn't. The characters in Buffy struggle, they fail, they fall down and don't always get back up, they can be petty, selfish, irresponsible, stubborn, self righteous and pretty unlikable but they are also capable of great acts of kindness, loyalty, self sacrifice, love and heroic bravery in the face of danger. The world of Buffy feels real also, actions have consequences, it's a world where evil exists and must be fought and even when defeated you always know there is more, life isn't fair but we can choose how we deal with it, redemption is possible but not without a price, it's also a world of friends, family, love, hope and humor. What more could you ask for in a tv show? Ah, but there is more.
It is in my opinion one of the most spiritual shows ever broadcast. Maybe not in a literal, fundamentalist evangelical way or in the sugary sappy simplistic way that shows like Touched by an Angel or Highway to Heaven were or overly earnest like 7th Heaven ( a show I liked alot for the first few seasons) but in the honest way Whedon (an agnostic/atheist not really sure which) deals with core issues of faith, hope and love. There's also the unintentional/intentional overriding theme of Buffy as a Christ figure and the countless uses of religious symbolism and imagery in the series. I've thought about writing a book or series of lessons based on Buffy and Angel, thought I'd call it The Buffyverse: Parables of Faith, Hope, Love and Redemption.

As I've stated a couple of times so far, I Love this show and I've tried to explain why and i think they're pretty good reasons for loving the show but when I really get down to the main reason I Love it so much is because of my daughter Latisha. I said earlier that originally it was just Latisha and I watching the show, Natasha my other daughter came next (kinda funny story), then Latisha's husband Stephen, then finally my wife Dianna. We started watching Buffy together when she was in the 8th grade. We weren't casual watchers, no this was mutual obsession watching, locked doors, refusing to answer or talk to anyone on the phone, leave us alone we're watching Buffy watching. Even when she went to college we still basically watched it together, sometimes watching while on the phone to her, sometimes just knowing she was in her dorm room watching then talking on the phone immediately after. As much as I loved making vhs copies for Natasha to watch when she was in Baton Rouge and the discussions we've had about it, or downloading episodes so we could huddle around the computer screen to catch Stephen up when he got back from Iraq, or enjoying them again as Dianna really watched them for the first time, it all comes back to Latisha. It was our's first, just us together, even now when I watch part of me still thinks of 8th grade Latisha, and 9th grade Latisha and ..... watching together. I love this show.