The Buffyverse: Right Back To The Beginning

I must say this right now: there will be numerous spoilers in the upcoming posts. Buffy and Angel both had more wonderful plot twists than you can shake a stick at, and I don't believe I can do these wonderful series justice without following where the story takes us.

Having said that, if anyone is a newcomer to the Buffyverse, I still encourage you to read this, as I will try to make it clear where the spoilers lie, and I hope that these posts will encourage you to finally take the plunge and discover one of the greatest fictional universes ever created.

As you no doubt remember from my Firefly and Serenity posts, Joss Whedon is a master storyteller. His ability to create compelling and extremely human characters, imagine situations both epic and mundane that enthrall the audience, and make us laugh one minute and cry the next with his wonderful dialogue is nearly unparalleled. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is probably his most incredible work, not because it is his best (I don't know what I like most, Buffy, Angel, or Firefly; they are each wonderful for different reasons), but because it was both a success and a failure. Both loved and hated. And it has the longest story of anything he's ever done, in terms of both length of produced material and behind the scenes events.

The story started in 1992 with the film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After graduating from Wesleyan's graduate program (where he was a TA for one of my film professors!!!), he started writing for Roseanne. He was good (the man is hilarious), but he wanted to create his own story. Whedon decided that he wanted to tell a horror story, but turn all of the cliches upside down. Usually, the first victim was a helpless blond girl, and the hero was a man who had to save the damsel in distress. Buffy Summers was a ditzy-looking cheerleader who had to save the helpless guys from vampire attacks. He planned the movie to be a horror comedy, which was a hard sell back then. Unfortunately, Whedon's script was heavily retooled after FOX bought it. The tone was lightened up to be more of a straight comedy, many of the dark scenes were replaced, among many other alterations. I've heard that Whedon became so frustrated with the changes that he walked off set and no longer wants to be associated with the film in any way. The film received mixed reviews, and did fair, but no one thought that the story of Buffy Summers would continue.

That is until four or five years later, when Whedon was approached by a FOX executive who offered to turn his original idea (apparently, the original script was praised in Hollywood, even though the final product was not), and the "true" Buffy the Vampire Slayer was finally born. The concept was broadened from that of an empowered woman to encompass the idea of high school as hell (brilliant!), and Buffy was moved from the LA suburbs to a town called Sunnydale, which happens to sit upon a "Hellmouth". The Hellmouth is a writer's device used to explain why so much demonic activity happens in Sunnydale; it is a mystical entity that acts as a kind of magnet for demons and vampires. Buffy was also given a group of fellow outcasts to make up her network of friends (the series begins after the events of the film, so Buffy has already lost her popularity, and has begun to walk the path of the Slayer, which is usually a solitary path).

One such outcast was Angel, a 250 year-old vampire cursed with a human soul and conscience. Created to be the male half of a Romeo and Juliet-esque couple, Angel should have been Buffy's sworn enemy, since she was a Slayer, but instead, the two fell madly in love. It didn't take long, though, for Whedon to realize that David Boreanaz, the actor portraying Angel, had the potential to carry his own show, and immediately after Buffy's third season finale ended, viewers were treated to their first Angel promo.

The next twelve posts (with probably a few LOST ones showing up in between) will cover the seven seasons of Buffy and the five seasons of Angel. However, I will do them in airing order; since Angel began its first season during Buffy's fourth, the first four posts will be about Buffy, and then they will alternate. Get ready...

Up next: Welcome to Sunnydale...